I'm Dan Carmody, president of the Eastern Market Corporation, a nonprofit charged with managing Detroit's venerable Eastern Market. When I was eight, my dad bought a farm out in western Iowa, and so I had a perfect youth to be a manager of a large public market in a big city. I spent my summers on the farm learning how to be a farmer, or trying to learn how to be a farmer, and the school year in the city. 

Food in general just plays such a central role in people's lives, it has the ability to touch and affect people more than many other industries do, but with the forces that are tearing apart this country and maybe the world – places that bring us together are I think, even more highly treasured than they were five years ago. So on a day like Saturday, when you look at the range of people who are here, people that come across all the lines that tend to separate us, whether it's age or race or walk of life or income… you derive a lot of energy from this wonderful urban chaos that the Saturday market can be. 

Three or four things that make the Eastern Market I think beloved and important; its authenticity as working food district, but its role as a place for everybody is welcome, its role as the place for people without a lot of means go to start a business and its a defender of small independent businesses. So, we see those as crucial roles and if we do our work right, we can renew this wonderful institution's life for another 125 years.