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RIVERFRONT EAST CONGREGATIONAL INITIATIVE

AN INVITATION

TO THE

2nd ANNUAL PEOPLE’S FESTIVAL

Saturday, June 16, 2012 10 am – 3 pm

7200 MACK AVENUE AT E. GRAND (Comer of Mack and E. Grand BLVD)

We are the transforming voices of our community, dedicated and committed to the work of changing ourselves and creating a NEW vision and practice for Detroit that is truly based upon the voices and experiences of the people from OUR communities.

The energy that spirits this work comes from YOU the people, with dignity, love and hope to move forward and “MAKE A WAY OUT  No WAY”

We gather this day to CELEBRATE, HEAL AND TALK.

We gather to show our love unity, care and vision for our future. the new 21St Century Detroit, one Community at a time.

We want to share ideas on how to re-create our communities, to develop “new work” not jobs, build sustainable houses and Put the “NEIGHBOR BACK IN THE HOOD”.

Last year over 400 people came and celebrated with us as we declared our love and hope for the  future of Detroit.

We want YOU to join us this year!

FOOD, GAMES, GIVEAWAYS, PERFORMANCES, INFORMATION, VOTER REGISTRATION, FUN!

BRING YOUR FRIENDS, INVITE YOUR COMMUNITY!

LETS SHARE OUR IDEAS!

VENDOR CONTRACTS DUE JUNE 2, 2012

VENDOR SPACE FREE UNLESS SELLING ITEMS – $15 PER TABLE

SPACE IS LIMITED APPLY EARLY!!l!!

FOR MORE INFORMATION: JEANETTE MARBLE (313) 921-2667

21st Century Revolutions and Constitutions

By Grace Lee Boggs

December 16th, 2012

The ongoing struggle in Egypt between President Morsi and protesters is about power.  But it also challenges us to think about the principles that 21st Century   revolutions and constitutions need to include.

Fifty years ago when the African nations won their independence, there was little  consciousness of the fundamental contradictions inseparable from rapid economic development.

The main goal of the new African rulers, mostly men who had studied in Europe and the U.S., was to emulate the rapid economic development of the global North. The result has been continuing dependence, subordination, disintegration.

21st Century revolutions and constitutions need to include new principles setting forth not only our rights but our responsibilities to Nature and to one another.

Arab Spring leaders could benefit by studying the Principles of Environmental Justice adopted at the First People of Color Environmental Justice Summit in October 1991.  It came out of the experiences of people of color whose pain and suffering had made possible rapid economic development AND the visionary organizing of Bunyan Bryant.  For example, the Preamble:

WE, THE PEOPLE OF COLOR, gathered together at this multinational People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, to begin to build a national and international movement of all peoples of color to fight the destruction and taking of our lands and communities, do hereby re-establish our spiritual interdependence to the sacredness of our Mother Earth; to respect and celebrate each of our cultures, languages and beliefs about the natural world and our roles in healing ourselves; to ensure environmental justice; to promote economic alternatives which would contribute to the development of environmentally safe livelihoods; and, to secure our political, economic and cultural liberation that has been denied for over 500 years of colonization and oppression, resulting in the poisoning of our communities and land and the genocide of our peoples, do affirm and adopt these Principles of Environmental Justice:

#7  Environmental Justice demands the right to participate as equal partners at every level of decision-making, including needs assessment, planning, implementation, enforcement and evaluation.

#12  Environmental Justice affirms the need for urban and rural ecological policies to clean up and rebuild our cities and rural areas in balance with nature, honoring the cultural integrity of all our communities, and provided fair access for all to the full range of resources.

#17 Environmental Justice requires that we, as individuals, make personal and consumer choices to consume as little of Mother Earth’s resources and to produce as little waste as possible; and make the conscious decision to challenge and reprioritize our lifestyles to ensure the health of the natural world for present and future generations.

A Different Vision: Saying No to Hantz

By Shea Howell

December 16th,2012

Something very new is happening in Detroit. Forces long dispersed are coming together, recognizing the possibilities of creating a future based on values of care, compassion, local production, and sustainable ways of living. Thanks to the Hantz Farms/Woodlands proposal, the question of what kind of city we will become is being discussed in barbershops, community centers, and around kitchen tables with a new sense of urgency.

On December 10 close to 1000 people gathered on the Lower East Side to talk about another path for development. The crowd flowed out into the street, with some people waiting in the cold almost two hours to be admitted through a cumbersome and invasive security check. Long time residents, architects, army veterans, retired teachers, home owners, young people, gardeners, artists, activists, preachers, politicians, real estate developers and concerned citizens voiced objections to the Hantz deal.

Hantz Farms/Woodlands, and much of the corporate elite who support him, envision a city that fosters land speculation, spectator sports, and a service economy dedicated to providing for the comforts and pleasures of a wealthy few.

Hantz, whose corporate history emphasizes banking and finance capital, has repeatedly said his motivation for the project is to “create land scarcity,” thus increasing property values. This approach to development echoes the land grabs happening around the world where corporate forces consolidate their hold on lands that once supported and sustained community life.

What emerged on Monday night was a very different vision. Speaker after speaker talked about creating a city that grows from the strengths of local initiatives to improve neighborhoods. They talked of fostering urban gardening that builds communities, home ownership, and locally owned businesses supplying neighborhood needs. People suggested policies and programs that would rebuild neighborhoods in ways that honored the work that many in the room had been doing for years.

Council President Charles Pugh opened the meeting asking how many people lived in the area and how many people opposed the deal. It was clear both through show of hands and subsequent speeches that east side residents overwhelmingly opposed the deal.

Mike Score, president of Hantz Farms/Woodlands, made a brief opening presentation. He said that if the sale was approved, “isolated, dangerous structures would be removed, brush cleared, and there will be a well managed landscape.” He said people living in the area would have an opportunity to purchase adjacent lands from Hantz Farms/Woodlands and that no one would be forced to move. He also said that within two years they would tear down 50 structures and plant 15,000 trees. Grass would be mowed every three weeks.

Mr. Score also said he had worked with a community group, Lower East Side Action Plan  (LEAP) and made a commitment to “nurture entrepreneurship, recruit people in the area for job openings, provide excellent property management, and to work intentionally with others to foster greenbelts and other development.”

People raised very specific questions about the proposal. Professional architects and city planners scoffed at the development agreement, calling it  “a public relations piece, not a serious plan.”  People pointed out there were no environmental or community impact study.

Others raised questions of fairness. People told of their how they had been thwarted by city bureaucracy. Others pointed out they had paid much more than Mr. Hantz was offering for land. Council member Jo Ann Watson called up a member of the administration to affirm that no assessment of the land had even been done.

Thanks to John Hantz, Detroit has the opportunity to point toward another path of development. It is the path that has already begun, fostering local self-sufficient neighborhoods that restore community while rebuilding our city. This vision, rooted in the steady, often unseen work of neighborhood people, is the best hope for our future and that of the planet.

A Learning Journey in Detroit

By Rich Feldman

From October 25 – 29 I had the honor and pleasure of conducting “A Learning Journey” with visitors from around the country and the world.  The journey was initiated and joined by Meg Wheatley, author of the best selling Leadership and Modern Science (1999) and recently of So Far From Home, a book dedicated to “warriors for the human spirit in today’s life-destroying world. “

Our journey included meetings with (among others) Church of the Messiah pastor Barry Randolph; New Work & Culture inventor Frithjof Bergmann, Boggs Educational Collective’s Julia Putman, Catherine Ferguson Academy’s Asenath Andrews, Allied Media Conference’s Jenny Lee, Peace Zones’ Ron Scott,  Feedom Freedom Growers’ Wayne and Myrtle Curtis. We spent time at the 5 E Gallery and visited Youth Nation and the TAP project in Southwest Detroit.

On our final morning, we planted a tree in front of the Boggs Center and read the poem:  “We are the Children of Martin and Malcolm / Our right, our duty to shake the world with a new dream.”  Mama Sandra Simmons from Hush House shared some words and prayers as we ended this historic learning journey

Since then I have received many emails, poems, videos, slides shows and expressions from the visitors who now see Detroit differently and are in the process of re-examining their ideas about Change and Revolution.

For example, two New Yorkers emailed,  “We would like to continue conversations and would value a shared electronic discussion rather than individual emails that we have to manage.  What does it mean to re-imagine work, education, community safety, democracy and revolution?”

From another visitor: “I wanted to meet Mrs. Boggs and tell her how much her work and Mr.Boggs’ work has meant to me since I began reading their writings in the 1980s. “

And another: “The Journey was an amazing experience and inspirational!!   I was very excited to see the solidarity culture and economy being built by ordinary people. To see this regenerated my own sense of commitment and hope.  One thing I struggled with though, given the multiracial nature of the participants, was wondering the extent to which people (participants) see the beauty of black people, which motivated me to ask the question I posed to Mrs. Boggs:  ”How is the humanism of sustainable activism different than color-blind humanism?”  I asked this question because some time I thought that some of the participants reduced humanism to abstract individuals.  What makes us human is that we are historical, cultural and political beings. Part of anti-black racism was to deny this–that  European and European Americans are the only ones that are historical, cultural and political beings.   Sometime I felt (and having personal conversations with participants who sometime felt uncomfortable) that some participants approached black people as a problem and not a people with problems.  The former (black people as a problem) assumes that others need to “fix” black people.

“I was very impressed with the urban agriculture projects and the efforts to create a local food system–one question I asked during one of the sessions:  “Are  there efforts to foster different ‘food cultures?”  My thinking is that food is important to the development of healthy human social relations (within and between different groups of people)–in other words, the eating of food is essential for creating solidarity cultures, for creating and maintaining human relationships of solidarity.  So it is both in the producing and consuming of food that relationships are made and continued. “

A young Turkish filmmaker and poet, Filiz, wrote a poem on the train. It begins

“Detroit/Seven/Broken-open

My heart is broken-open

because there’s nowhere to hide.

The city surrounds me,

whispers softly

“look”,

“listen”.

I look in the face of brutality

and broken wings of human spirit.

I have no questions left,

why and how fled my vocabulary.

I hear children singing:

justice, they say,

“we want justice, it is time.”

I listen, I look

at windows and doors

that once were there.

In this house,

Aiyana Mo’nay Stanley-Jones

was shot in her sleep.

She was eight.”

someone corrects,

“no, she was  s e v e n“

when the police shattered

her dreams.

She was seven,

sleeping next to her grandmother.”

what happened.

to us,

brothers, sisters.

I surrender my eyes, my ears

I want to cry –

I want to cry a million tears…

“My children are singing

again,

we are harvesting peace

from our pain”

I look, I listen.

My heart cracks wide open.”

A New Dream

By Grace Lee Boggs

January 20th, 2013

At this time on the clock of the planet, of the world,  our country and  our city, I cannot get out of my mind  The Second Coming, the famous  “Things fall apart” poem  written by William Butler Yeats  nearly one hundred years ago –1919 in  the wake of the First World War and the 1917 Russian Revolution.

The Second Coming

        Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction,
While the worst
Are full of passionate intensity

By contrast, in the U.S.A. today, and especially in Detroit, we are shaking the world with a new dream.  This is because

- Detroit’s devastation by deindustrialization has provided us with the Space and Place to begin anew.

- We are bringing the Country back into the City,  growing our own food instead of worsening global warming by trucking  it in from distant factory  farms.

- We are making a radical revolution of values, a cultural  revolution as profound as the transition from Agriculture to Industry 500 years ago.

- With passionate conviction we are Re-Imagining Work and Education.

- Our goal is to create MLK’s Beloved Communities!

A New Mode of Digital Production

By Grace Lee Boggs

March 3rd, 2013

In his February 12 State of the Union address, President Obama referred, almost in passing, to the potential in 3D printing to revolutionize the way we make almost everything.

The following week, on February 21, the Home section of the New York Times featured a fascinating article about “A Factory on your Kitchen Counter.”

In this period of double digit joblessness, I hope that these two references to a new mode of digital production will encourage every concerned citizen to begin exploring how to implement it in our workplaces and communities.

Implementing digital production in our communities at this time on the clock of the world can be as profound and far-reaching as the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture 11,000 years ago and from agriculture industry four hundred years ago.

In his best-selling book, The Third Wave Alvin Toffler views a digital mode of production as the basis of a “prosumer economy” because it makes possible local production in small, medium and large quantities as needed.

A prosumer economy provides a local, consumer/community-initiated and consumer/community-controlled alternative to the globalized  production which in the last few decades has been impoverishing and devastating our communities and cities while expanding and enriching corporations like Walmart.

To begin our understanding and exploration of digital production we need to distinguish between “additive“ and “subtractive” manufacturing.  Wikipedia explains the distinction:

“Additive manufacturing or 3D printing is a process of making a 3 dimensional solid object of virtually any shape from a digital model.”  It differs from today’s  manufacturing process which is mostly subtractive, i.e. relies on the removal of material by methods such as cutting or drilling.

Additive production is known as Digital Fabrication because it turns data into things.

In his article “How to make almost everything” in the Nov.-Dec. 2012 issue of Foreign  Affairs, Neil Gershenfeld defines Digital Fabrication as “the ability to turn data into things and things into data.” He writes:

“A new digital revolution is coming, this time in fabrication. It draws on the same insights that led to the earlier digitizations of communication and computation, but now what is being programmed is the physical world rather than the virtual one. Digital fabrication will allow individuals to design and produce tangible objects on demand, wherever and whenever they need them. Widespread access to these technologies will challenge traditional models of business, aid, and education….. Many years of research remain to complete this vision, but the revolution is already well under way.”

Frithjof Bergmann, University of Michigan Emeritus Professor, New Work theorist and community catalyst, has been helping rural African women to manufacture dry compost toilets and to build homes in one day by using digital fabrication.

In Detroit Blair Evans is engaging young people in digital fabrication with Incite Focus. One of Evans’ uncles was the late Rev. Albert Cleage aka Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman, founder of the Shrine of the Black Madonna and of the Black Christian Nationalist Movement/BCN.

A New Vision for A New America – By James Boggs

A Call for Black Leadership

“All of us gathered here today are confronted with a very awesome challenge. We face the
life and death question of creating a new kind of black leadership for our period, a leadership­
different from that which’ we had in the past. ” – James Boggs, 1983

A Road Map for Women’s Leadership

By Aljosie Aldrich Knight, National Council of Elders

March 10th, 2013

Fay Bellamy Powell, one of the South’s most amazing lifelong organizers for human rights, justice and social change, won’t be around to celebrate International Women’s Day this year. On January 4, 2013, she succumbed to cancer in Atlanta, Georgia.

On February 22 hundreds of people gathered in the auditorium of the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History in Atlanta to celebrate her life and legacy.

Fay’s life is a road map for young and old, searching for inspiration, clarity, and direction.
Growing up in the small town of Clairton, PA. not far from Pittsburgh, Fay suffered the discrimination and racism experienced by all African Americans, but in 1955, when she was 17,  the brutal murder of 14 year-old Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi, transformed her consciousness.  Just being concerned with her own life lost its flavor. Then, in 1963, when Fay heard of the four little girls killed in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, she knew, she said, that “play time was over.”

Searching for the “baddest” Civil Rights organization, Fay joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and was assigned to Selma, Alabama, to run the field office. With top notch skills acquired in business school, she became “the glue of the field operation.”  Between the demonstrations held every other day and under dangerous, hostile conditions, she wrote press releases, worked with national and international press, coordinated logistics, documented operations and participated in the second Selma to Montgomery March.

In 1965, with co-worker Silas Norman she went to Tuskegee, Alabama, to talk to Malcolm X and ask him to come to Selma to speak.  There is a photo of her sitting next to Malcolm in the pulpit of Brown Chapel in Selma.

In her essay in Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women of  SNCC, she writes  how proud she was that Malcolm complimented the work SNCC was doing and said that he wanted to work with SNCC.  Three weeks later he was assassinated in New York City.
After joining the national staff of SNCC in Atlanta, Fay started a newsletter, The African American, to enhance communication and unity between office staff and field staff. She pressed SNCC to open travel opportunities to rank and file staff.  Her own travel opportunities included the USSR, Europe, and Central Asia.  During these trips, meeting with local people and learning more about liberation struggles, she grew in international consciousness.

Elected to SNCC’s Coordinating Committee and Executive Committee, Fay strongly supported black power, African liberation struggles, Palestinian Independence, and protested against the War in Vietnam.  Her co-workers, James Forman and Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) are publicly recognized but nobody worked harder than Fay Bellamy Powell.  After long work days, she volunteered nights in the law office of SNCC attorney, Howard Moore, Jr. In a letter read at the celebration of her life, Moore said that he would not have been able to handle the high volume of legal cases without Fay’s skilled typing and transcribing work.

Like most women, Fay Bellamy Powell, did not operate on just one front.  She co-founded WRFG Radio Free Georgia (www.wrfg.org), a station dedicated to progressive information.  Her show, “Inside Out”, remained on the air for 26 years.  The program combined jazz, news, social commentary, and interviews.  An initial focus on prison issues gained her a following with inmates at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.  Her strong, loving, intelligent, socially conscious, no nonsense qualities made her a mentor to many young women who are now community organizers and activists.  She also developed her artistic and entrepreneurial capacities by converting some of her landscape photographs into greeting cards which she printed or mounted as wall art and sold to an appreciative audience.

Fay was my cherished friend, talented co-worker at the Institute of the Black World, a fierce worker for social justice and exemplar of female leadership.

International Women’s Day is an opportunity to recall the life and legacy of leaders for these times.  It is a day to gather our daughters and granddaughters as well as our sons and grandsons to read about the lives and legacies of women leaders.  It is a day to talk with them about the children of Selma, Alabama who were the backbone of the Selma Movement, to read about Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Wangari Maathai (Unbowed: a Memoir, 2007), Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor (My Beloved World, 2013) and 97 year-old philosophic activist Grace Lee Boggs (Living for Change: An Autobiography, 1998).  Turn off the televisions and other electronic devices.  Spend time together talking about women leaders in your community or your family.

I plan to share stories about “Ma B”, my mother, Mamie Aldrich Baker, a self-appointed community leader during my childhood in Salisbury, NC.

I will remind my children and grandchildren that we are the leaders we have been waiting for.

A Summer 2012 Update by Tai Amri

A Youth Farmer’s Graduation Ceremony

By Grace Lee Boggs

October 28th, 2012

The Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership recently hosted a ceremony to award certificates to  seven young people, ages 11 to 18, who successfully completed the Feedom Freedom Growers (FFG) 2012 youth farm mentorship program.

Over the summer the students worked with FFG Myrtle and Wayne Curtis and other mentors on a variety of projects which developed their skills and also nurtured friendships and a strong sense of community.

They planted, watched over and harvested fruits and vegetables. Then they used these crops to prepare healthy meals. They thought about what they were cooking and eating, and encouraged other young people to become involved in and understand the process of bringing healthy food to our community.

(Myrtle Thompson and friends of Feedom Freedom Growers)

They also worked with Yusef Shakur to prepare and serve the meal at the  Urban Network’s schoolbag giveaway at the beginning of the school year.

Over the summer the students were challenged to explore the many aspects of becoming informed activists and effective change agents. They  learned how to share their knowledge in interviews. Under the direction of Linda Campbell, they called members of Congress to speak against proposed Farm Bill cuts to SNAP, reminding the politicians that in a democracy the most important voice is the voice of the people. One young woman traveled to Arizona to participate in an anti-bullying conference and emphasize the importance of nonviolent conflict resolution. Another became involved with Detroit Summer.

During the ceremony, a 11 year-old girl shared her poem, passionately expressing how SHE was going to be the change in the world. Her poem captured the rich history of Detroit and spoke confidently of the place she has claimed for herself as a visionary for Detroit’s future.

Everyone at the ceremony, which included the families and friends of graduates, was amazed and impressed by the level of leadership the youth projected. From planting the seeds to serving the harvested food in delicious, wholesome dishes, the youth demonstrated that they had learned the cycle of growing food to sustain healthy communities.

Myrtle called our attention to the critical thinking skills and relationships of trust and respect they had acquired by a slow and often tedious process which included using visuals and books. Elder brother Aziz expressed his appreciation to the FFG community for carrying out the dream of the late Gerald Hairston, who founded the Gardening Angels, an urban gardening project for Detroit elders.

Looking at the faces of these amazing young people, it was clear to me that they understood that this ceremony was not an end but the prelude to something new and exciting.  It was easy to see that they are determined to live their lives creatively and responsibly. Their journey as youth farmers stands as a model to Detroit and the world. We can be assured that a new Detroit is being cultivated and is safe in the capable hands of these young people.

It was a great honor and pleasure to be part of this ceremony. Educators could learn a lot from the FFG curriculum, which prepares young people to become the kind of citizens that every community needs.

April is MLK’s Month

By Grace Lee Boggs

April 14th, 2013

Since the 1990s Dr. Martin Luther King‘s birthday in mid-January has been a national holiday.

But for me April will always be  MLK’s month because it is not only “the cruelest month,” (as T.S.Eliot put it in his 1922 poem The Wasteland).  It is also one of the most challenging.

April is the month of the Crucifixion. But it is also the month of the Resurrection.

MLK was killed in April 1968. A year earlier, in his April 1967 “Time to Break the Silence”  speech, he called his own country, the United States, “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world,” and shook the world with a new dream.

In his August 1963 March on Washington speech, MLK had only dreamed of black and white children holding hands.  But in April 1967 he dreamed of a “Radical Revolution of Values, “not only against racism but against materialism and militarism, and of Beloved Communities based on persons and relationships instead of things.

In Detroit over the last few decades, MLK’s dream of beloved communities has been becoming more than a dream. As our city has been devastated by deindustrialization, neighbors have begun to look out for one another, to care for abandoned houses, to exchange services (time-banking).

The imposition of Emergency Financial Manager Kevyn Orr by Michigan Governor Snyder has provided the opportunity and incentive for these neighborhood groups to begin viewing themselves as units of grassroots self-government.

In his recent book Revolution Detroit: Strategies for Urban Reinvention, Detroit Free Press columnist John Gallagher calls this new assuming of responsibility Hyperlocalism, A new model for services:

“One way we can improve municipal governance is to break off pieces of municipal government and send those tasks either ‘upstream’ (as in the regional transportation authorities that operate city-and-suburban transit systems in many metro areas) or ‘downstream’ to neighborhood-level groups that can handle them better. And perhaps no downstream group shows the way better than University Circle Inc.

“The district takes its name not only from the universities that call it home but also from a traffic circle in the heart of it all. Located four miles east of downtown Cleveland, University Circle grew from the late 19th-century onward from a small settlement into a world-class assemblage of education, health care and arts institutions.

“A dense concentration of Eds and Meds and Arts like this proves a boon to almost any city that enjoys it; look no farther than Detroit’s Midtown district to see how anchors employ thousands of smart, well-paid professionals who like to eat, shop, live and play in a walkable urban environment. University Circle Inc. itself grew from a philanthropic effort in 1950 into a quest to knit together the 34 different institutions in the district through better urban planning. That led to adoption in the late ’50s of the University Circle Master Plan, which, in broad terms, envisioned enhancing the parks and other public spaces while developing available land with a prudent eye toward the overall good of the district.

“This master plan set a goal to ‘establish a central organization to administer the plan and give it some real authority.’ That recommendation gave birth to the University Circle Development Foundation, which quickly formed a land bank to buy and hold available land until one or another institution needed it for expansion.

“Other services soon followed: police, parking, shuttle buses, architectural design review, landscaping of common areas. In 1970, the UCDF was reorganized as University Circle Inc. and charged by its directors to explore stronger relationships with surrounding neighborhoods, some of which were among the poorest in Ohio. By the 1970s, UCI was helping to found schools for Cleveland schoolchildren; by the ’90s, it was morphing from a passive holder for the district’s excess land to a promoter, developer and catalyst for historic renovation and construction of commercial and residential properties.

“To me, the most striking illustration of how groups like UCI operate as what I might call ‘quasi-municipal entities’ came the day Chris Ronayne drove me around the district during a late 2011 visit. As Ronayne pointed out, the streets we drove on — the responsibility for which still rests with Cleveland’s city government — showed the most wear and tear, the pavement pitted, chipped or potholed in places, while everything else — maintained by UCI and its crews — presented a neat, trim, even immaculate appearance.

“Curb to curb on the streets, the realm of the underfunded municipal government, the urban environment might look rutted or uneven; but UCI, under contract with the city, kept everything else looking like a postcard image. ‘Why? Because if we didn’t do it, nobody would do it. That’s the truth in this town,’ Ronayne said.

“That’s the truth in so many towns. Perhaps the time has come to stop looking at groups like UCI as a backstop for weak or nonexistent city services and more as a model for a new way of governing urban places. These hyper-local, government-like bodies might be combined with regional entities — some of which may not even exist yet — to provide flexible, efficient delivery of services.

“The new construct is less federal-state-local and more neighborhood-regional-global. infrastructure…”

Art as Activism

By Professor Marilyn Zimmerman and Barbara L. Jones

During the week after President Obama’s historic re-election, Wayne State University’s Urbanology: Art as Activism class visited Grace Lee Boggs at the Boggs Center.

Our class, taught by Zimmerman and offered in the Department of Art and Art History,  has been using Grace’s book, The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the 21st Century in lieu of a standard textbook.  We have conscientiously gone through the Study Circle Guide for TNAR  to explore how art can become an organizing force to create the beloved community in Detroit.

After we introduced ourselves, Grace asked  “Are you excited about the election results?” When we all raised our hands,  she asked us what we were going to say to our families regarding the election at Thanksgiving gatherings.

At this point several people described the discomfort and silence that political discussion usually creates in holiday gatherings when family members and friends are so anxious to get along that they avoid discussing politics.

Our dialogue with Grace included discussing the de-industrialization of Detroit and how many people viewed the loss of factories and manufacturing as the demise of the city.
Grace gave the group critical nuggets to ponder, process and put into action regarding our responsibilities as artists/activists in the community when she said. “De-industrialization is not the end of everything but the opportunity to begin something new. Detroit’s vacant lots have provided the place and the space to bring the country back into the city and to create a whole new way of living and working together as a self-reliant community.”

From Grace’s book and our visit with her, our class learned that the role of the artist is not to bring light to light but to bring it to darkness. It is to seize opportunities to go outside one’s comfort zones and boundaries and move into uncomfortable spaces not to confront but to stretch people.

As Grace put it: “A revolution begins not with critical mass but with critical connections. What is important is shifting  the conversation from the election to what we can do for our communities as agents of change. We are revolutionary solutionaries. We are actually a privileged generation with the ability to create a completely new society and to solve the problems of our planet.”

Myrtle Thompson from Feedom Freedom Growers joined the discussion and shared her experiences as a “revolutionary solutionary” who is creating an urban community garden. She is a spiritual warrior; one who sees herself breaking down the stereotypes and myths behind Detroit’s present urban reality.

WSU student Todd Davis, said, “The Art as Activism class at Wayne State and reading Grace’s book have changed my life. I’m inspired to push hard to find the next paradigm in how we look at urban art as a catalyst for change.  What I see are  groups of like-minded people talking amongst themselves. What I feel needs to be done is breaking  down the stereotypes and myths behind Detroit’s present urban reality. I think there is beauty in Grace and the urban farmers.  I think there also is empathy, humanity and common ground to be found in stories that transcend the dividing lines of race and space and change the paradigm.”

Towards the end of the conversation we agreed that there are benefits from an increased dialogue with the neighborhoods that artists wish to serve and with long term activists like Myrtle Thompson.  It is important to clarify and support their work and to have continuing feedback, to make critical challenges and calls to action to artists, especially as they increasingly move into social practices.
The class concluded, “To be an agent of change is to be the trailblazer in the transition of change and to constantly confront the upheaval of opposition one may receive pertaining to the process. We are inspired by Grace’s story.  We have garnered that being passionate regarding the changes that you want to see and/or be, you must stay focused, be open to listening to those with not only similar but differing views and opinions,  Grace was extremely inspiring to our class as we learned that persistence, passion and patience are key to becoming a revolutionary.”

Asking Detroit Works

By Shea Howell

January 27th, 2013

In the last days of his first term, President Barack Obama held a press conference. He spoke about the violence that has become a normal part of children’s lives. He said protecting our children should be our highest priority, the way we will be judged as a people. “It is our responsibility to care for them,” he said. “To shield them from harm. To give them the tools they need to grow up and do everything that they are capable of doing, not just to pursue their own dreams, but to help build this country.”

This kind of thinking is critical as we face the future. It is sadly lacking in much of our public life, especially here in Detroit. Nowhere is the absence clearer than when you attempt to figure out what the newly unveiled Detroit Works plan actually means.

While providing a wealth of good ideas, important facts, and innovative strategies, it gives us no direction for making choices between competing interests. Some of this is because the effort to engage citizens and organizations in developing the plan produced multiple strategies, sometimes at odds with one another.

But there is a deeper problem that rests both on how this project was conceived and how it was paid for. The primary understanding of the city that undergirds the plan was that the city is shrinking. It has too few people to maintain itself. Although there are many references to our assets, ingenuity, and creativity, the dominant thread is that Detroit was once 2-million. Now we have to figure out how the few of us left will deal with a place larger than its people.

There is no real sense in the plan that Detroit is poised on the cusp of a dramatic shifting of global trends, moving from the old industrial epoch to something very new. In this transformational moment, we have the opportunity to conceive anew the role of cities, of urban life, and modes of production. For the first time in perhaps eons, we do not have to shape our cities for mass, industrial production. Rather we can ask, “What kind of city best protects and develops our children?” What kind of city will help them “grow up and do everything that they are capable of doing, not just to pursue their own dreams but to help build this country?”

If we take this question seriously, it leads us down a very different path when we face choices of what to create, what to repair, what to reinvent, what to carry to the future, and what to leave behind.

It is precisely the question that the young women of the Catherine Ferguson Academy have been asking themselves. Under the leadership of their visionary principal, Asenath Andrews, and the imagination of Blair Evans, who rescued the school from closing, these young women are beginning an intentional village on the west side. Over the next year, they will build a village to raise themselves and their children, creating new forms of work, new methods of providing food and culture, new ways of making energy and decisions. It will be joined on the east side by a Creative Community, also created by young people from the ground up, providing a space for the development of their imaginations as they tackle the multitude of questions in the building of a community.

These two projects stand in contrast to corporate driven development. They begin with a recognition that the questions we ask are more important than the technical knowledge we bring to bear.

The words of President Obama remind us that our responsibility is to not just to rebuild our city, but to reimagine it as a place where all of our children will learn, grow, and be able to contribute to the creation of new ways of living with one another and our earth.

Belle Isle Fantasy

By Shea Howell

February 17th, 2013

The effort by the State to take over Belle Isle is not likely to fade away. Instead, the mainstream media (msm) is using this situation to redouble its efforts to denigrate and distort the opposition to state-foundation-corporate driven development.

After the City Council refused to consider the offer by the state to lease the island, Governor Snyder said he was pulling the deal off the table. The central question pushed in the media was, “How could a cash strapped city justify turning down the generous state offer of $6 million to run the park? “

This question was followed with a flurry of outrage by the msm directed at the Council and at the citizens who spoke out against the proposal.  Among the least substantive and most insulting were the tweets turned into an article by Detroit Free Press writers Stephen Henderson and Nancy Kaffer. Under the title “The most outrageous things said about the Belle Isle deal during public comments,” Henderson could not contain his disdain for people. He clearly has no sense of the deep oppositional currents in the city.  Kaffer posted, “THIS is why rational people need to come to council meetings.” The implication is that opposition must be “irrational.”

Later the duo described the opposition as “paranoid outbursts” and “wild theories about the state wanting to snatch the island from Detroiters.” John Carlisle provided a fashion commentary titled, “City Council’s regular speakers put on a good show.” Rather than listing arguments, he chose to comment on speakers’ dress. He labeled folks “notorious regulars, activists and eccentrics” seeking to “draw attention,” and “air their pet complaints” so that “many discussions are driven off the rails by wild statements.”

Chief among the  “wild statements” is the conviction “that the city of Detroit is under assault by outsiders who want to seize its jewels and disenfranchise its residents.” To many of us, this is not wild, but an accurate summation of where we are.

However, the attack on citizens becomes repeated in national news coverage. Mark Binnelli wrote in New York Times that, “the council, under pressure from a vocal minority suspicious of “outsiders” looting Detroit’s few remaining assets, postponed a long-planned vote on the Belle Isle proposal.”

At least Binnelli had the sense to follow this with the recognition that there is good reason to fear schemes for development.  He notes, ”Belle Isle was recently at the center of a different moneymaking scheme. A group of wealthy libertarians suggested that private investors buy the island from the city for the nice, round, Dr. Evil-ish sum of $1 billion and transform it into an independent, self-governing territory.”  This plan, reported seriously in the msm, sounds suspiciously like a scheme from a group of wealthy outsiders.

But Detroiters don’t need to look at billionaire fantasies to understand that public assets find their way into state control, without any guarantee for continued public benefit. The experiences of Cobo Hall, the Detroit Zoo, and our public schools, support the notion that outsiders want to run the city for their own benefit.

It is not unfounded paranoia to say we are disenfranchised. We are. We are living with a consent agreement no one wanted; the threat of an emergency manager, whose idea was rejected by the voters; with the firing of Krystal Crittendon, whose stand was supported during the last election; and with a school board attacked by the Attorney General for having the audacity to take up its elected role.

And if that dose of reality isn’t enough, we have the example of Benton Harbor. There, one of the first acts of Emergency Manager Joe Harris was to give part of the city park to developers, for a private golf course.

Our mainstream media should try reporting what people say and why they say it. Perhaps then they would understand the difference between fantasy and reality.

Bellwether for Detroit

By Shea Howell

March 3rd, 2013

In the controversy over the financial future of Detroit, uncertainty seems to be the most oft repeated term. This uncertainty is attributed to the fact that no other major American city has faced the same kinds of structural problems confronting Detroit. From loss of population, abandonment of capital, to nearly half the property owners’ delinquency on taxes, we have little money to support essential services. Additionally, we are burdened with long standing debt and an array of tax breaks that were long ago granted in hopes of spurring never to happen developments.

Almost everyone agrees we need to do some things very differently. But hardly anyone agrees on what those things should be. However, it should be clear that almost no one in the city of Detroit thinks an Emergency Manager or the State legislature have answers to our problems. More than 80% of the city voted against emergency manager legislation. The majority voted to uphold the right and responsibility of the Corporate Counsel to challenge the legality of the Consent Agreement.

Many of us have been calling for the development of a Participatory Budgeting process that would broaden and strengthen the democratic practices of the city. These practices are widely used throughout central and south America and, increasingly in US cities from Los Angeles to Brooklyn.

Further, it should be obvious that emergency managers have not achieved any of the results promised. They are profoundly undemocratic as well as ineffectual. We, in Detroit have the experience of the state take over of our school system for all but 3 of the last 14 years. No one thinks that is going well.

But perhaps the most important parallel for us to consider is our sister city of Benton Harbor. It is our bellwether. On the western shore of the state, Benton Harbor mirrors Detroit. It is a predominantly African American city surrounded by wealthier, whiter neighbors in St. Joseph. The major industrial employer, Whirlpool, pulled out long ago.

This January, Joe Harris resigned as EM in Benton Harbor. Harris, originally appointed in 2010 by Gov. Jennifer Granholm, was continued under Governor Snyder. His arrogant, dictatorial, and high-handed approach to the city earned it the title of “Ground Zero in American Politics.” Jesse Jackson called it the new Selma. Harris, put on graphic display the failures of a manager freed from civic restraints of any kind. His first act under expanded powers was to eliminate the power of elected officials. The New York Times offered this assessment:
“Having neutered the city’s elected officials (“I am the mayor and the commission, and I don’t need them”), fired the city’s finance director (“I’d been told she was incompetent, but she really didn’t have a clue”) and city manager (“He was smart and articulate, but he just wasn’t doing anything that I couldn’t do”), Harris, a former accounting professor, is pretty much single-handedly running Benton Harbor.”

This disdain for democracy was coupled with an assault on public resources. He fired most of the people on the Planning Commission, replacing them with hand picked associates. Shortly thereafter, Jean Klock Park was turned over to private developers to provide more holes for a golf course.

Harris consolidated city services, including introducing new  “quick response vehicles.” These are little pickup trucks that the NYT explained were “outfitted with fire-retardant-foam-releasing contraptions that require a lot less money and manpower to operate than traditional fire trucks.”

He imposed a special tax assessment on the city after voters rejected a mileage.

Evidence is mounting that Emergency Managers do not work. They are profoundly anti-democratic and diminish a city with their efforts. For all the talk of realism in Lansing, they are the ones refusing to think critically about what we need to do.

Beyond Debates

By Shea Howell

October 28th, 2012

Within a few days, many of us will cast our ballots for the next President of the United States. We will also face a host of state and local candidates. In most places in Michigan six main statewide initiatives will be accompanied by local ballot questions.

This should signal a vigorous public life. But many of us recognize there is something very wrong going on in our country.

How is it possible that a man as gifted, thoughtful, and insightful as President Obama can be leaving the electorate uninspired? How is it possible that in spite of three presidential debates, one vice presidential debate, and hours of talk shows and commentary this campaign rings hollow, failing to ignite passions or confidence in our future?

Most astonishingly, in one 90-minute debate, President Obama went from a comfortable lead to an ever-tightening race.

Certainly the media does come in for its fair share of the blame. The mainstream media coverage is portraying the election like a reality TV show giving the impression we are voting someone on or off the island. The most probing questions have been posed by comedian Jon Stewart asking President Obama if he still thought foreign policy could be conducted in accord with American values.

At a time when we the people face serious issues neither the candidates nor the media seem able to provide in depth considerations of the state of our world, our country, and our futures.

Neither candidate has addressed the depth of the economic challenges we face. Both argue that they will protect the middle class. In the first debate, President Obama actually allowed Mitt Romney to position himself as the champion of the middle class, promising 12 million jobs, lower taxes, a green economy, and unparalleled growth.

Obama talked about taxing the rich (a little), restoring green manufacturing, and a modest role for government spending on infrastructure and education.

Neither candidate talked about the stark truth. The middle class life styles they want to protect are made possible by tremendous exploitation of other people and other places. We have gone to war for oil and have refused to look critically at our oil dependent, throw away culture. We will not even discuss the atrocities we are committing to protect this way of life. Every day drones and teams of trained assassins create further instability and hatred in a world we continue to abuse.

Additionally both candidates promise jobs without helping people understand the nature of work itself has changed dramatically. Increasing manufacturing jobs, green or otherwise, will never again lead to large scale, mass employment.

The processes of production of coal, steel, cars, and basic industries no longer require masses of people. One machine now does the work of 100 miners. Robots forge steel and assemble, paint, and aid in the design of automobiles.

Debating on superficial differences, neither candidate has helped us think about what many of us feel in our bones. The world is in the midst of a great transformation, a great turning. This transformation is as far-reaching as the shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture or from agriculture to industry. It is the kind of change that human beings have only experienced a few times in our long evolution to this moment.

President Obama could again ignite the passions and hope of many of us if he would use this campaign to help us think about what this moment in history really means.

In the 2008 campaign, President Obama captured many of us by acknowledging that he represented more than himself. He stood as the inheritor of the sweep of history toward greater equality. He has the opportunity still to help us understand we are in the midst of an extraordinary historical moment, one that will not lend itself to simple solutions or glib rehearsed lines in a debate.

Beyond Detroit Works

By Shea Howell

January 20th, 2013

This week Detroit Works released its framework for the redevelopment of the city.  The project began two years ago amidst a contentious series of town meetings following Mayor Bing’s pronouncement that he intended to “shrink the city” and relocate people. The mounting public criticism of the effort forced a major rethinking of the approach. Highly paid consultants were quietly shifted into the background and Dan Pitera of the University of Detroit-Mercy School of Architecture was given a larger role in guiding the process.

He and his team have produced a remarkable document that reflects Pitera’s long standing commitment to the city, his experience in imaginative, asset based development, and willingness to listen to the community.

In 2001 Pitera was part of the team that created the Adamah Project. Adamah projected a 3000 acre urban agricultural community on the East Side. It grew out of organic relationships with University of Detroit architects, community activists and organizations that had been turning vacant lots into gardens, creating public art, exploring new ideas of education, health, and public safety. Adamah garnered international attention and played a central role in the formation of Kyoung Park’s International Institute for Urban Ecology (ICUE), bringing people from around the world to learn from the grassroots redevelopment of Detroit. Adamah helped move urban agriculture from a utopian idea to a viable strategy for urban redevelopment.

Pitera was also a central figure in the Community Development Advocates of Detroit (CDAD). Just prior to the launch of Detroit Works, CDAD produced a strategic framework for redevelopment, emphasizing community based planning. The framework was especially important because of its typology of neighborhoods, ranging from the restoration of wilderness areas to densely populated urban hubs.

The strengths of Adamah and CDAD echo throughout the newly released Detroit Future City framework. This is the first plan to acknowledge that a declining population can be an asset, opening up new possibilities for greener, more ecologically sound ways of urban living. It provides a framework for thinking about our communities beginning with their strengths rather than emphasizing our problems. It gives a varied texture to the kinds of neighborhood life we can and are creating. It is filled with hard data to pinpoint areas that require new, careful rethinking.

The plan provides much for all of us to build upon. It reflects a tremendous amount of work, talent, and vision for which we should be grateful.

At the same time, there are critical questions raised by this plan that we as a city must address.

All of the charts, maps, data, drawings, and images do not address the central question of for whom will the city be transformed? Whose interests will be given priority in the inevitable conflicts inherent in this or any plan for redevelopment?

The recent betrayal of the people by the Mayor and 5 members of the City Council over the Hantz Farms/Woodlands controversy does not bode well for the implementation of this plan. There, as in so many other cases, individual gain was given precedent over public good.

The failure to create a public, open process of community deliberation will haunt us. While the Future City Framework had thousands of individual contacts and small group meetings, it was not a process that engaged citizens with one another. As a result, the debate over whose interests are to be protected and fostered will work itself out in a piecemeal fashion, diminishing the possibility of creating a strong consensus for the overall plan.

The framework builds on the concrete dimensions of the moment, but lacks the historical sense that Detroit is in the forefront of a movement from the old, industrial paradigm to new, ways of sustainable living. This new paradigm is emerging every day as those first cast off by industrial society are reimaging how to live. This transformation requires a vibrant civic conversation about principles and values that the corporate-government-foundation complex continues to evade.

Born Female, Still Evolving

By Grace Lee Boggs

February 17th, 2013

As we approach March 8 and Women’s International Day, I’ve been thinking about how my understanding of Feminism has evolved over the years.

I was born female to Chinese immigrant parents above my father’s Chinese American restaurant in Providence, R.I.  My mother did not know how to read or write because there were no schools for females in her little Chinese village.  When I cried, the Chinese waiters used to say, “Leave her on the hillside to die. She’s only a girl baby.”

So I realized at an early that huge changes in women’s rights and lives are necessary in our world.

That is why as a teenager, after reading Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, Women and Economics, I decided I was a feminist.  What I meant mainly was that I would never become dependent on a man for my livelihood.

I didn’t begin to think more deeply about the role of women until ten years later when I became a movement activist in the black community.  That was how and when I learned that the 13-month Montgomery Bus Boycott which launched the civil rights movement had been organized by women.

Within a couple of hours after Rosa Parks’ arrest on Friday afternoon, December 1, 1955 for refusing to give up her seat to a white man,  the Women’s political Council had blanketed the city with 50,000 “Don’t ride the bus” leaflets  and was busy  organizing the boycott.
To keep people off buses, they created  an alternative means of  transportation,  contacting and pooling hundreds of volunteer drivers, mapping out routes to get workers to all parts of the city, following regular bus routes so that workers who “walked along” the streets could be picked up.

It was a model of  Visionary/Solutionary Organizing. On Monday, December 5, the buses were empty.

In recent years, as Detroit has been devastated by deindustrialization and the struggle for a new non-capitalist society has been developing in Detroit, I have discovered that when one society is coming to an end and a new one is emerging,  women play a solutionary/revolutionary role because women’s work, of raising and caring for the home and family is ongoing.

Thus in Detroit today Asenath Andrews has created the Catherine Ferguson Academy, a public high school for pregnant teens.  The Boggs Educational Collective is starting a place-based school.  Time Banking is being organized by Kim Hodge et al.  Ann Heler is pioneering a Free Health Clinic.

On Saturday, March 9. the UAW Women’s Department & the Boggs Center, with other Labor and Community Organizations & Friends are celebrating International Women’s Day at the UAW-GM Center for Human Resources, 200 Walker St.  Save the date.  All  are invited.

Bottom Lines: Week 3 of the Occupation

By Shea Howell

April 14th, 2013

This week the Emergency Financial Manager (EFM) firmed up the foundation of his operation. After reinstating the pay of elected city council members, the EFM announced they were welcome to meet, but he has the final say. All decisions are his alone. A few days later, a consulting firm recommended that the City Council be reduced to part time and cut its staff.

The consulting firm of Conway Mackenzie of Birmingham was paid $4.2 million dollars for its recommendation that would reduce the counsel staff from 115 to 37 and “save” the city $7.4 million in expenses. We the citizens are no doubt to assume that a part time council with virtually no staff will be effective in answering our concerns about lighting, public safety and general civic business. After all, citizens have been assured that the EFM will make sure city services improve.

This is absurd. The point of all of this was for the EFM to provide some political cover for difficult decisions and some protection from the federal lawsuit pointing out the unconstitutionality of this whole scheme. But the EFM also wanted to make clear he is the one paying the bills, so he is in charge. The real bottom line is that the Governor and his cronies control the assets and revenues of the City of Detroit.

In this moment, the decision by the Sierra Club of Michigan, Detroit Chapter, to release its State of the Environment Report is welcome. It is a well-researched, thoughtful document, raising important questions about ecological justice and environmental policies. At a press conference in front of the Detroit Works Project (Detroit Future City)

Executive Director Rhonda Anderson said simply, “We have in the City of Detroit, in the area of 48217 (ZIP Code), River Rouge and Ecorse, the most polluted areas in the state of Michigan.”

As significant as the data in the report is, the context given by the Sierra Club for conducting it is crucial. The Sierra Club raises the question of public integrity. It is offering a clear standard of accountability on the part of non-profit organizations in our city.

In the opening paragraph of the report they acknowledge that Detroit Works (DWP) asked the Sierra Club to collaborate on an Environmental Report. After becoming engaged in the process, the Sierra Club determined three important things. First, they believed that the DWP lacked “genuine community direction and protections.” Second that their “membership includes individuals and organizations that perpetuate environmental injustices,” and, third, the DWP was faced with a significant “conflict of interest.”

While applauding the blue and green emphasis within the Strategic Framework, the Sierra Club pinpoints the core decision of the DWP, to channel resources to some “target areas of the city while neglecting others remains intact and fundamentally contradicts the principles of environmental justice.”

They also conclude that DWP plan “offers nothing toward alleviating existing environmental justice hazards” and that the “continued push of privatization of public lands and resources with respect to land use, air and water quality is also not addressed and remains a concern.”

The clear, forceful introduction of these principles into public debate is essential. The report calls for “Complete and transparent independence from any entities significantly contributing to environmental hazards in the city” and argues that this “is critical if local environmental groups intend to advocate on behalf of the general public.”

The Sierra Club’s bold, clear action is part of the growing effort by Detroiters to not only carve out a new political space, but to clarify the values and responsibilities of all those who claim to speak on behalf of the people.

Building on Wisdom

By Shea Howell

January 13th, 2013

As the Mayor and the City Council begin their new legislative session they have the opportunity to reflect on an unusually active and engaged series of recent public sessions.  It should be abundantly clear that more and more citizens are concerned about the direction the Mayor and Council majority are trying to take the city. Slowly but surely people are organizing to pose a very different alternative set of values for the kind of city we want to become.

These values are rooted in the African American character and movement history of our city. They were fully and often eloquently spoken of in the battle over the Hantz Farms/Woodlands, the efforts to privatize the water department, and to turn over Belle Isle to the State.

The City Council should explore the kinds of values and ideas that would represent a much broader view of development than the one they seem to uphold at the moment. The current view is that the city can no longer impose any publicly responsible policies for development. It will sell land below market value, just so someone else can cut the grass. It will give away tax breaks, just to entice businesses to set up shop, and it will turn over long supported public resources in exchange for basic maintenance. Following this path, pushed by forces that have never had the interests of Detroit at heart, will diminish all of us.

Instead of going blindly down the road being drummed into them as they only alternative, the Council should look at some of the values and policy suggestions that emerged in the course of these recent struggles.

The single most important concern in the community is that development within neighborhoods should protect the people who are living there now. Most people believe that those who have stayed in neighborhoods as others left should be honored and respected. On street after street in Detroit, these are the people who have mowed the lawns of abandoned houses, taken over empty land for gardens and play areas, shoveled snow, and planted flowers. They have organized block clubs, established churches, opened small businesses, and built a home and life that they would like to pass on to their children.

Everyone knows that Detroit, like all major cities, has a history of plowing these neighborhoods under in the name of development. In a recent article in the Detroit Free Press that misrepresents the opposition to Hantz Farms/Woodlands, even the author John Mogk acknowledges this:

“Lower-income African Americans in particular have suffered from these actions taken by leaders seemingly to further the public good. Lofty public goals were behind actions taken by the city’s leaders to build the I-75 corridor and Lafayette Park, which wiped out the center of African-American community life in Detroit.”

Curiously Mogk labels this assessment of an historical reality as “mistrust.” Such a label is only possible if you are writing from the perspective of the developers.

Another framing would be wisdom, based on experience and observation. From Black Bottom to the transformation of the Cass Corridor to Midtown, it is obvious that the current models of development drive people out of neighborhoods they have long lived in and cared for.

So instead of mischaracterizing opposition as” mistrust,” the City Council should enact policies building on the wisdom of the people to protect folks where they are.

For example, as the Council reflects on a differential tax structure for the city, they need to freeze the property taxes of those home-owners effected by development. Second, they need to enact some form of rent control throughout the city.

These are not new or radical ideas. But they are essential if we are to build a city with and for all of our people.

Can Schools Help Create a Post-Capitalist World?

“A traditional curriculum predicated on contemporary ways of thinking about people and the planet offers little guidance for the kinds of challenges and uncertainties that are coming to characterize our everyday lives.”

Download Greg Smith’s essay, Can Schools Help Create a Post-Capitalist World?

Celebrating Dr. King’s Birthday

By Grace Lee Boggs

January 13th, 2013

All over the country schools, churches, universities and other community groups will be celebrating Martin Luther King’s birthday this week in many different ways.

Many, perhaps most, will recall King’s “I have a dream” speech at the 1965  March on Washington.  Some groups will organize community service activities.

Participants will sing “We Shall Overcome” which has become the anthem of the civil rights movement because it proclaims to the world “I am down but not out; I will bend but not break” (as Detroit activist Doc Holbrook put it recently in response to my column on Disasters).

During Ronald Reagon’s administration, Michigan Congressman John Conyers and Motown musician Stevie Wonder led the campaign that won the King holiday. I did not participate because I thought the holiday would draw so much attention to King as a charismatic leader that the role of rank and file activists would be overshadowed.

I was wrong.  Over the years the holiday has focused on King but it has also become a wonderful opportunity for reflection on his ideas and his leadership.  As a result, it is the one holiday on our national calendar that is unlikely to become an excuse for barbequing, fireworks or bargain shopping.

Over the years  I have grown a lot and I believe I have helped others grow by my participation in a number of MLK celebrations , e.g.  at the University of Illinois Urbana; University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University.

That is why, despite my limited mobility, I am going this year to Iowa to speak at
Grinnell College where my old friend, Detroiter Kesho Scott, has taught for years .

I have chosen “What time is it?” for the title of my speech because I believe that we are living at a time when, more than ever, we need to commit ourselves to the radical revolution of values that MLK advocated in his  l967 “Break the Silence” speech.  We need a revolution not only against racism, King said, but against materialism and militarism.  We must replace our thing-oriented society with a person-oriented society.

Truer words have rarely been spoken.  Our materialism, or our decision as a new nation to pursue rapid economic growth, was understandable two centuries ago. But it led us to commit the world’s most grievous sin, enslaving black people,  and it has now ended up with global warming and the planetary emergency of hurricanes, wildfires, droughts and the possible extinction of all life on Earth.

Our militarism has not only trapped us in two unwinnable Mideast wars and the probability of another 911 because of our drone murders of countless innocent men, women and children.  It has also encouraged mass violence in our cities and small communities like Newtown, Connecticut.

In the 1960s I was more a supporter of Malcolm than of MLK because I thought that what was involved was only the tactical question of  violence or non-violence.  While I am still a supporter and admirer of Malcolm, I now have a much deeper appreciation of the leadership of King because his holiday has given us so many opportunities to think about the importance of spiritual leadership in revolutionary times.

It is because the King holiday has given me these opportunities to revisit King that I am able to view the American Revolution as a time to grow our souls.

So thank you, John Conyers and Stevie Wonder!!!

Chomsky: Work, Learning, Freedom

By Grace Lee Boggs

January 6th, 2013

I’d like to begin the New Year by thanking Noam Chomsky for his interview by Michael Kasenbacher published by RSN on December 27.

In the interview the 84 year-old Chomsky makes an important philosophic contribution to the building of a new 21st century society by viewing Work and Learning in the context of  of Freedom.  In the process he defines what it means to be a human being  and what it means to be revolutionary at this time on the clock of the world.

I have never met Chomsky.  Nor have I up to now wanted to write about him.

But I was moved by the personal story Chomsky tells in this interview  (of how he lost his freedom as he became part and parcel of the U.S. educational system) and I believe it can play an in important role in the reimagining of Work and Education that is now urgently needed and already going on, especially in Detroit where devastation by industrialization has created the place and space for us to begin The Next American Revolution.

Here are some excerpts from the interview:

“The social system is taking on a form in which finding out what you want to do is less and less of an option because your life is too structured, organized, controlled and disciplined. The US had the first real mass education; it was largely designed to turn independent farmers into disciplined factory workers, and a good deal of education maintains that form.

“A book called The Crisis of Democracy – expresses the concern of liberal intellectuals over what happened in the 60s. it was too democratic, there was a lot of popular activism, young people trying things out, experimentation – it’s called ‘the time of troubles’. The ‘troubles’ are that it civilized the country: that’s where you get civil rights, the women’s movement, environmental concerns, opposition to aggression. And it’s a much more civilized country as a result but that caused a lot of concern because people were getting out of control.

“People are supposed to be passive and apathetic and doing what they’re told by the responsible people who are in control. That’s elite ideology across the political spectrum – from liberals to Leninists, it’s essentially the same ideology: people are too stupid and ignorant to do things by themselves so for their own benefit we have to control them. And that very dominant ideology was breaking down in the 60s. And this commission that put together this book was concerned with trying to induce what they called ‘more moderation in democracy’ – turn people back to passivity and obedience so they don’t put so many constraints on state power and so on.

“In particular they were worried about young people. They were concerned about the institutions responsible for the indoctrination of the young (that’s their phrase), meaning schools, universities, church and so on – they’re not doing their job, [the young are] not being sufficiently indoctrinated. They’re too free to pursue their own initiatives and concerns and you’ve got to control them better…. The idea of freedom is very frightening for those who have some degree of privilege and power and I think that shows up in the education system. And in the workplace…

“Children are naturally curious – they want to know about everything, they want to explore everything but that generally gets knocked out of their heads. They’re put into disciplined structures, things are organized for them to act in certain ways so it tends to get beaten out of you. That’s why school’s boring. School can be exciting. It happens that I went to a Deweyite school until I was about 12. It was an exciting experience, you wanted to be there, you wanted to go. There was no ranking, there were no grades. Things were guided so it wasn’t just do anything you feel like. There was a structure but you were basically encouraged to pursue your own interests and concerns and to work together with others. I basically didn’t know I was a good student until I got to high school. I went to an academic high school in which everybody was ranked and you had to get to college so you had to pass tests. In elementary school I had actually skipped a year but nobody paid much attention to it. The only thing I saw was that I was the smallest kid in the class. But it wasn’t a big thing that anybody paid attention to. High school was totally different – you’ve gotta be first in the class, not second. And that’s a very destructive environment – it drives people into the situation where you really don’t know what you want to do. It happened to me in fact – in high school I kinda lost all interest. When I looked at the college catalogue it was really exciting – lots of courses, great things. But it turned out that the college was like an overgrown high school. After about a year I was going to just drop out …”

Community Concert: Julie Beutel and the Gaia Women of the Great Lakes Basin

Click here to download the flyer: Community Concert

Saturday, October 20, 2012

7:30pm – 9:30pm

Constructing a New Democracy

By Shea Howell

January 6th, 2013

The anti-democratic efforts by the right wing republican legislature in Lansing are putting Michigan in the national spotlight. One national commentator, Jim Hightower, is now referring to our state as “Michiganistan” because of what he called the rule of “iron fist-democracy, rule-of-law, fairness, and the people be damned.”  He described the lame duck session as “dumbfounding, anti-democratic zealotry.” Others talked about the Governor and legislature pulling a “fast-one” by “introducing and then ramming through legislation…designed so it cannot be repealed by popular referendum.”

In the last days of 2012 Governor Snyder signed the new Emergency Manager law, flaunting the clear rejection by voters state -wide of such legislation.

In a remarkable effort at reshaping reality, the Governor issued a statement saying that the new law “demonstrates that we clearly heard, recognized and respected the will of the voters.”  He claimed the new law “builds in local control and options while also ensuring the tools to protect … residents, students and taxpayers.”

The new law includes a $770,000 state appropriation to cover managers’ salaries, a provision that shields it from another statewide vote because spending bills are immune to referendums. Rep. Tim Greimel, D-Auburn Hills, accused Republicans of going to “extreme lengths” with that provision.

Snyder further insults voters by claiming this law is substantially different from that just repealed by referendum because if a review team finds that a financial emergency exists, communities can choose their remedy. The choices are to request an emergency manager, ask for a mediator, apply for bankruptcy, or introduce a reform plan.

The Detroit City Council also rejected the will of the people by a slim 5-4 majority. They supported a massive sale of public land to Hantz Farms/Woodlands after an outpouring of public objections and approved the Miller Canfield agreement demanded by the Governor.

These actions have made it clear that fundamental change is needed in Michigan. At a time when the authority of nation states over the lives of citizens is decreasing around the world, a small group of well-financed right wing ideologues are stripping away all pretense of democratic responsibility. Representative democracy now means representing the interests of a corporate power structure over the will of the majority of citizens. It is providing a legal mechanism for immoral actions, allowing the looting of the public realm and the wholesale transfer of public wealth into private hands.

It is no longer enough to petition against these actions or to protest their implementation. We need to create new political forms that enable us to create new centers of public responsibility.

We are fortunate to be living in a time when many before us have faced similar conditions and found new and imaginative ways to organize for better lives. We should be especially grateful to our brothers and sisters throughout Central and South America who have been expanding ideas of direct democracy. They have much to offer us.

For example, for more than three decades communities have been using Participatory Budgeting to determine local needs and to strengthen democratic processes. Recently New York joined Chicago and Vallejo California in using this process.

Advocates argue that such a process enables communities to improve their quality of life while having a “direct and meaningful say in what government does.” Such a process creates “new spaces for groups to engage with the public in positive and constructive ways.”

This coming year the challenge for us in Michigan and Detroit is to move toward meaningful democracy. Over the last few months we have been developing a new language of policies that can move us closer to more equitable ways of living. Community Benefit Agreements, Land Trusts and Participatory Budgeting are not new ideas, but they are ideas sorely needed in our city and state as we construct a new democracy.

Critical Engagement

By Shea Howell

November 11th, 2012

Once the dust of this election season settles, we in Detroit should prepare ourselves for another onslaught by those determined to reshape our city. The corporate-foundation-government elite have made it clear they have no respect for democratic processes. They will push their agenda to privatize public services and turn public goods into private gain.

There are three key areas we should consider.

Land Use. We should expect Detroit Works to unveil its long term planning strategy for the city before the first of the year. Over this last year, as short term morphed into long term planning, Detroit Works has been vigorously reshaping itself into stories, strategies, and tools. Much of this offers important information for us, but there are larger questions to consider.

Throughout this process, the idea of citizen engagement has been problematic. In this last iteration of the foundation led effort, citizen engagement has emphasized community conversations, telephone town meetings, web connections, and individual interviews. These processes have produced an amazing number of contacts that are carefully tallied.

While these contacts have some value, they raise profoundly difficult questions. What is “citizen engagement?” How does it relate to the public sphere? Who decides? Based on what values?

As it has evolved in Detroit, citizen engagement has diminished public decision-making. This is because these managed engagement processes avoid bringing citizens into direct dialogue and disagreement with one another. The absence of public processes of debate and discussion rob us of the capacity to publicly define and articulate our collective vision for the city. The sum of individual ideas is not the same thing as a collective commitment to a well argued, debated, and discussed vision. Managed engagement has suppressed conversations about values and visions, thus failing to forge a collective sense of where our city is heading.

Further, it has created antagonisms. By establishing a framework of discussion that emphasizes high, low, and medium vacancy rates as the criteria for planning, the project itself sets up false dichotomies. It has set the terms of development in ways that will predict an outcome that will justified some of the worst ideas already advanced by corporate interests: cutting off vital services to some areas, encouraging relocation, emphasizing large scale farming and forests while deemphasizing urban gardens.

Education. The assault on our children will accelerate. We should expect that the state legislature will continue to find ways to gain control of our assets, to diminish the power of teachers, and to encourage money making schemes in the name of better education.  At a time when we need to be developing the creative, imaginative powers of our young people, state authorities are increasing their efforts to control and condition our children.

Public safety.  In spite of the fact that violent crime is actually decreasing, we should expect demands for a greater police-paramilitary presence in our neighborhoods. On November 6, buried in a long article about the decline of crime in our region the Detroit News reported, “The drop in violent crime is mostly reflected in a decline in aggravated assaults, which fell 23 percent in Detroit from 2007 to 2011 and by 18 percent in the region.” Targets for increased police presence will be neighborhoods where young people gather.

In all of these areas Detroiters are developing new ways of thinking about the future. We are reimaging neighborhood life based on lived connections rooted in history and values of sustainable production and consumption, we are reimagining education as a creative process engaging children in redeveloping and respiriting their communities, and we are finding ways to create peaceful relationships based on respect and community wisdom.

These efforts to reimagine our city have grown out of the engagement of people deciding how to control our own lives and resources. These efforts will not be managed away. Rather we need to support and encourage these critical efforts.

Deeper Democracy

Shea Howell

February, 10th, 2013

At a time when the mainstream media is trying to justify the destruction of democratic processes by ridiculing citizens, it is important for us to lift up the many ways people are advancing democratic dialogue. Such an opportunity happened Monday night as the Riverfront East Congregational Initiative (RECI) gathered to talk about land use and economic development. In spite of the cold and snow, more than 60 people met at the Sunday Dinner Company for a lively discussion about the future of our city. It is the kind of gathering that is carving out a new, vibrant democratic space in Detroit where citizens discuss ideas, values, and the possibilities to create new ways of living together.

At tables set for small group conversation, people talked about how the RECI values for development “affect how we talk with our fellow congregants and neighbors about recent issues in our community?”

The values included asking developers:

• How are they being held accountable to the community?
• Do they articulate intentions for community improvements?
• How do they maintain and/or improve quality of life for current residents?
• Are they using community benefit agreements?
• Do they provide opportunities for cooperative ownership to residents?
• Do they collaborate with existing organizations and institutions?

Gail Parks asked for ideas to frame the presentations. The main concern was that of accountability by developers to the community. Carol Jordan introduced the panelists who offered insights about development that reflects respect for the community.

The Reverend Ron Spann, a member of the Advisory Board of the Christian Community Development Association, said that three concepts framed the Evangelical Christian approach to development: Relocation, Reconciliation and Redistribution. He said that Relocation is not about moving people, but about shifting ideas.

Redistribution challenges us to rethink ownership and land value. We all know the statements, “Give a man a fish, he will eat for a day, teach a woman to fish, she will eat for a lifetime.” Missing from this is the critical question, “Who owns the pond?” He argued that faith -based development demanded moving from ownership to stewardship, from seeing land as a private commodity to a shared community trust.

Faith based development means ‘learning to listen, live and love, beginning with what people know.” He said this is the basis for “the moral imagination necessary for religious groups to engage in social action.”

This set the stage for Charity Hicks of the Eastern Michigan Environmental Action Coalition. Ms. Hicks talked about Community Land Trusts as a way to hold land for the benefit of the community, taking speculation out of development. She described 4 trusts operating in Michigan.  Traverse City, Boyne City, Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor provide successful models of citizens establishing Community Trusts to provide for affordable housing and to protect existing residents from accelerating taxes. She explained how this idea, rooted in ancient texts and indigenous practices, fosters community governance and grassroots democracy. “It provides a tool to reimagine the city on principles of stewardship and inclusion,” she said.

Ernie Zackary gave concrete examples of projects that preserve heritage while adapting new methods of energy production, especially geothermal and solar. He contrasted the practice of demolition with the ideas of deconstruction. Mr. Zachary said that the experience of the Cass Corridor should help us understand that “the key to revitalizing an area is preserving what is there and reusing everything we can” as we build anew.

Kris Miranne of Doing Development Differently in Detroit talked about Community Benefit Agreements. Her group is working toward agreements with the international bridge and Henry Ford Health Systems. Such agreements, she says, make clear how everyone is able to benefit from development.

The meeting ended, as it began, with a question. “How can our spiritual community and values influence business and development?”

The mainstream media are desperate to diminish the quality of thinking by ordinary citizens about our city. But the emerging democracy runs far deeper than they know.

RECI is an initiative of the Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion. Information about the Community Learning Series can be found at www.miroundtable.org.

Democracy in Detroit?: Week 6 of the Occupation

By Shea Howell

May 5th, 2013

The questions being raised in Detroit are important for the whole country. Over the last few years we have seen an assault on our shared values, conventions, and civic assumptions unlike anything previously experienced in this country. Except for brief, extreme periods of Marshall Law, declared in emergency situations, no citizens of a city have had their basic rights and responsibilities so perversely violated.

These violations have been done in the name of providing financial security for the city. With each new announcement, it is clear the financial security being created is for corporate, powerful elites to profit from the pain of the people.

The assault on democratic values is so clear that even students in a law school far away notice that “democracy is dead” in Detroit. In a recent article in the Free Press, Adrienne N. Young, follows this pronouncement by arguing that democracy died long before the emergency manager was appointed. Her evidence is the low voter turn out rate in the last mayoral election. She further argues that we should turn the “civic engagement” of protest against the EM and company into efforts at voter registration “to make it less likely any of the “undesired” leaders are re-elected at the state and local level.”

She laments the lack of ideas for civic engagement, saying, “Beneath the cries of “shame” and fury, there must be ideas, there must be innovation if Detroit is to recover. Why not get that same group of people together and write a request to be a neighborhood advisory committee for Orr? Why not look to the school system that only just established universal early childhood education and ask how citizen engagement can enable tutoring, fund-raising, coaching and mentoring programs?

These are good ideas. That is why thousands of Detroiters have been doing them for years. Citizen Advisory Councils are operating in communities across the city, as are neighborhood associations, block clubs and a host of civic groups. We have just completed a vibrant, open and often visionary process of publically writing and approving a new City Charter. More than 7000 people participated directly in public meetings with the Detroit Works Project, and thousands upon thousands more have been engaged in school board in exile meetings, rallies, information gathering sessions, and public conversations about serious issues. Something as mundane as the Library Commission attracts overflow crowds. Tutoring, fundraising, coaching and mentoring happen from the most formal levels involving the previous governor, to the most humble games of basketball fashioned out of makeshift hoops.

The point is not that “democracy is dead in Detroit.” Rather, what is happening in Detroit reveals the inability of representative democracy to preserve and protect the safety, life, liberty and happiness of the majority of the people. The challenge now is to create new forms of public, political relationships.

Ms. Young hints at a core element of this new democracy when she notes that while state intervention in local affairs “feels wrong,” “city-level democracy is not constitutionally guaranteed or protected at the national or state level.” It should be. It is in cities, at the community level, where we make decisions that directly affect our common life.

For nearly 50 years, with the abandonment of Detroit by corporate interests, Detroiters have been experimenting with direct democracy. We have established schools and churches, block clubs, businesses, entertainment centers, museums, innovative educational practices and new institutional relationships.

Now we have the challenge to draw upon this experience to not only resist the assault of the EM and corporate interests, but to establish local self governing councils to create the core of civic life in our neighborhoods. We have much experience to draw upon, not only to restore our own communities, but also to point the way toward new forms of democratic life for everyone.

DETROIT 2013: Making a Way Out of No Way Towards the Next American Revolution

In our quest for humane responses to gentrification, foreclosures, school closures, joblessness, emergency managers, transportation cuts, and police brutality, people are working diligently every day to re-imagine everything from democracy to public safety, education and work. This year, as we commemorate the 50th Anniversaries of Malcolm X’s Message to the Grassroots at the historic King Solomon Church, Dr. King’s march on Woodward in Detroit before over 100,000 people and James Boggs’ epic release of The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker’s Notebook, we invite the world to join us as we come together again this summer to build on the abundant soul growth that we experienced in Detroit last July.

• work towards a deepened understanding of visionary organizing, theoretically, historically and practically.

• lay the groundwork for a national network of “Re-imagining Cities,” each taking on revolution, democracy, education, work, food justice, and public safety in fresh ways which make sense for our respective communities, as we continue our work of restoring the neighbor back to each hood.

• create a “think tank” atmosphere to support each visiting delegation, in order to learn about their own history, contradictions, concepts and practice of visionary organizing.

Detroit Emerging

By Shea Howell

October 30th, 2012

Something very new is happening in Detroit. Largely unseen by the powerful elites who are locked in old ways of thinking, artists, visionaries, social philosophers, entrepreneurs, and new thinkers and doers recognize these new possibilities. The signs of this new emergence are everywhere for those who are willing to look beyond the headlines that blind us. This past weekend was a vivid example of the new ways of living being created in Detroit.

People came from Turkey, Brazil, Canada, the UK, Texas, Ohio, Wisconsin, New York and around the country to immerse themselves in a Learning Journey of Detroit. Under the guidance of Margaret Wheatley and the Boggs Center people spent four days observing with “open hearts and strong backs” the new ways of living evolving in our city. They visited urban gardens growing community along with vegetables, explored the difference between a job and new work in a church basement designed to challenge and develop the creative imagination of children, walked with people creating community relationships of peace and forgiveness and witnessed the creativity of our young people, guided by adults willing to hear, help and heal them toward their future.

Margaret Wheatley framed the Learning Journey. Wheatley is a widely respected author and thinker. Her most recent work, So Far From Home: Lost and Found in Our Brave New World, was published this October.

She writes, “For me personally, this is the most important book I’ve yet written.  It describes how we ended up in this world that no one wants, a harsh, destructive world that’s emerged in spite of our best efforts to change it.  I explore this brave new world using several perspectives, including my experiences in many countries with organizations of all varieties, and the newest of the new sciences, epigenetics and neuroscience. 

After probing deeply into this darkening world, I invite us to consciously choose a new role for ourselves, that of warriors for the human spirit.  (The term ” warrior” is used from the Tibetan tradition of “one who is brave,” brave enough to never use aggression, whose only “weapons” are compassion and insight.)  As warriors for the human spirit, we discover our right work, work that is ours to do no matter what.  We engage wholeheartedly, embody values we cherish, let go of outcomes, and be vigilant with our relationships. We learn how to persevere, to remain focused and confident in service to the issues and people we care about, focused not so much on making a difference as on being a difference.”

Wheatley’s decision to host a Learning Journey in Detroit reflects a lifelong understanding of how real change occurs in our world.  In another recent book, Walk Out Walk On: A Learning Journey Into Communities Daring to Live the Future Now. (2011) coauthored with Deborah Frieze, she describes communities in India, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Greece, Mexico, Brazil, and Ohio.

She says “In each of these places, people walked out of limiting beliefs and assumptions and walked on to create healthy and resilient communities.  These Walk Outs who Walk On use their ingenuity and caring to figure out how to work with what they have to create what they need.  In every case, they challenge our assumptions about what’s possible and provide us with truly hopeful examples of how a shift in beliefs makes it possible to solve seemingly intractable problems.”

Wheatley shares with the Boggs Center the belief that change happens as people work toward a vision of what is possible.

Today, people from all over the globe recognize that Detroit represents something new. They see that in the midst of the dying industrial society, people are drawing upon the deepest resources of memory and imagination to make a way out of no way and create the world anew.

Detroit is Creating a New Model

By Grace Lee Boggs

December 9th, 2012

As a philosopher and political activist who has lived on the east side of Detroit for more than 60 years, I believe the citywide discussion of the possible sale of over 1500 publicly-held parcels of land in my neighborhood offers us a rare opportunity to think anew about what kind of city we need to create for the 21st Century.

One of the most important things to bear in mind is that global warming from industrial production has become increasingly threatening to all life on this planet.  So we cannot afford attempts to restore Henry Ford’s Detroit.  Instead we must recognize that we are living in the midst of a profound shift in how people live, a shift as great as that from a hunting and gathering society to an agricultural one 11,000 years ago and from an agricultural to an industrial one 3-400 years ago.

We in Detroit have the potential to create a new model for urban life, rooted in strong local communities that are self-sufficient, producing food, energy, art and culture in ways that create joy and also develop our human capacities for care and responsibility for the Earth and for each other.

At the beginning of this century more than half the world’s people live in urban environments for the first time in human history. By 2025 China alone is projected to have 200 cities with more than one million people each. The United States has just nine. No one believes the earth can sustain the consumption paths we are on. In fact, if everyone today consumed at the rate of the U.S., we would need 3-5 new planets just to provide the natural resources for such consumption.

As one of the first major industrial cities on the globe, Detroit can now point the way to a new and better future. People from around the world are already looking to our urban agricultural movement as a model.

The key to the success of our urban agriculture is not only local food production. It is a recognition that in the process of growing food to sustain ourselves, we are also growing our communities, rekindling ties among generations, giving our children a sense of process, and creating possibilities for new forms of democracy and local sovereignty to develop.

The effort to sell a large section of public land to a single individual for his own benefit is exactly the wrong direction for our city and its potential. Such a move will begin the process of making land itself more scarce and costly. It reminds me of the efforts of early industrials to enclose the commons in England because they realized that as long as people had access to land, they would not go quietly into the evolving cities to work in the dehumanizing factories of the day.

Detroit has been home to extraordinarily creative solutions to the problems left behind by dying industry. Drawing on the deepest memories of community life in the rural south, African American women and men have been making a way out of no way, turning abandoned lots into productive gardens. We are learning that a city that feeds itself frees itself.

The Hantz proposal for a vast industrially-based monocrop understands none of this. The City Council should reject this proposal and begin to envision how it can support the real work of transforming our city into a global example of ways of living that hold the best promise for our and humanity’s future.

DETROIT: Place and Space to Begin Anew

By Grace Lee Boggs

October 21st, 2012

Last Saturday I spoke  at the 2012 biennial gathering of Kellogg Fellows meeting at the Detroit Westin. This year’s theme was “Resilience, Transformation, Transcendence.” Also on the program was Dr. Regina Benjamin, the U.S. Surgeon General who is a Kellogg Fellow. In my remarks I described how drastically Detroit has changed since I moved to the city 60 years ago.

In 1953 it was a city of two million. The Chrysler plant where Jimmy worked employed 17,000 workers. If you threw a stone up in the air in our neighborhood the chances were that it would hit a Chrysler worker on the way down.

Two years later, because of Hi-Tech and decentralization, that same plant employed only 2000 workers. If you threw a stone up in the air, the chances were that it would land on a vacant lot.

Most people view vacant lots only as blight, full of dead cats, used tires,  discarded mattresses.  But during the war Detroit had become a city of  African  Americans who, like Jimmy, had been born and raised in the Jim Crow South and had survived by “making a way out of no way.”

These “country” folk re-imagined the vacant lots  as abundance rather than abandonment; as an opportunity to grow food for the community and in the process give “quick fix city kids” a different sense of time.

This Re-Imagining of Detroit’s vacant lots by Detroit’s African-Americans was the turning point.  It gave birth to the urban agricultural movement.

As a result, in Detroit today we are in the process of Re-Imagining everything: Work, Education, Food, Community Safety, what it means to be self-determining, what it means to be human.

We are taking advantage of the deindustrialization and devastation of our city to begin anew. We are in the process of making the next American Revolution.

Disasters Can Be Liberating

By Grace Lee Boggs

December 23rd, 2012

As the climate crisis worsens, and more people and places in the world are devastated  by hurricanes, droughts and other weather catastrophes, we need more discussion on the role that disaster can play in bringing about social transformation.

Many progressives have accepted Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine narrative that disasters provide opportunities for right wing forces to take over (“disaster capitalism”). But it has been rejected as “disempowering” by anti-nuke activist and writer Rebecca Solnit in her fascinating book A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster.

Solnit believes that disasters provide the opportunity for people to grow spiritually.

“Although disasters are terrible, tragic, grievous and not to be desired, they provide an extraordinary window into social desire and possibility and what manifests there matters elsewhere in ordinary times and in other extraordinary times.”

In other words, disasters provide opportunities for Visionary Organizing.

Thus, touring Detroit in 2007, Solnit not only noted our devastation by deindustrialization but was so impressed by our community gardens that she ended her Harper’s Magazine article ‘Detroit Arcadia” with this observation: “Detroit is where change is most urgent and therefore most viable. The rest of us will get there later, when necessity drives us too, and by that time Detroit may be the shining example we can look to, the post- industrial green city that was once the steel-gray capital of Fordist manufacturing.”(Boggs Center website).

This week, as we say goodbye to 2012 and welcome  2013, I am happy to report that New York City‘s devastation by Hurricane Sandy birthed URBAN UPRISING! “a two day gathering of architects, activists, urban designers and planners from around the country to re-imagine the city for the next hundred years, a call for engaged citizens to confront key challenges of the 21st century: environmental, economic, social and political. Participants from more than 80 civic organizations across the city were invited to collaborate in working groups to develop strategic action plans to radically alter the way a city works, and who it serves.

“Day two sessions were at The New School where we were welcomed by Miguel Robles-Duràn, Director of the Design and Urban Ecologies program at Parsons. First panelist, Rachel LaForest of The Right to the City Alliance, asked the audience to break out of the mindset of choosing goals based on what was winnable and introduced the notion of transformative demands like Housing for People, Not Profit.

“Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning Peter Marcuse challenged attendees to imagine a real occupation of Wall Street where the stock exchange hosted general assemblies and the high rises that now house banking enterprises instead housed the homeless. He offered as inspiration a vision of a society where people work without pay and life’s necessities were accepted as inalienable rights and guaranteed to every citizen.

“Matt  Birkhold, who co-founded Growing Roots with Amaka Okechukwu, took jabs at the crowd and poked fun at himself for insistently fighting to prevent cuts to the budgets of institutions that we all know are failing, giving little thought to how we might instead begin reinventing them. Nancy Romer offered a slide presentation that played like a science fiction thriller, evidencing, through graphic representation of the rise in obesity, the attack on the American public through the corporate food system. Ruth Wilson Gilmore closed the session with a matter-of-fact, yet shockingly accurate geography lesson that expanded New York City beyond the five boroughs to include our incarcerated population in correctional facilities across the state, immigrant detainees and migrant workers.

“Urban Uprising attendees were offered a menu of discussion groups. We had just two hours to come to agreement about how to work together, come up with clear definitions and then ‘design’ our public space. During our orientation, someone burst into the room to announce that, although they wouldn’t be participating in our particular break, it was imperative we include ‘sacred space’ as part of our vision….There were occasional interruptions and a few late walk-ins, but we managed to get to work pretty quickly and the tone remained light and very respectful.

“After lunch the individual working groups were merged into pairs. This was done to remind all of the participants that these issues are interconnected and to encourage thinking across area of interest. Arts & Culture was matched with Criminal Justice; the Public Space working group was merged with Just Communities which created space to continue investigating the question of who has access to public space and how it equates to social justice.”

Detroit ‘s devastation by deindustrialization created the space for urban agriculture.
NYC’s  devastation by Hurricane Sandy  birthed URBAN UPRISING!  Read the story here.

First they came for Detroit and Youngstown! – by Rich Feldman

We should fight for our lives, be in the streets but we need to look in the mirror.

This is the realignment of the empire and we need to ask ourselves about the consciousness and transformation that evolves when we refuse to look in the mirror and when we make this a narrow struggle of labor versus capital.

Without a vision for America and without a global perspective, we cannot and will not move beyond a self-interest group or in our old language from class protecting ourselves to a class leading the way
for all. We need to move from a self-interest group to become local and global citizens.

First they came for Detroit, Gary, Flint, south Chicago, Youngstown in the 1980s! Then they came for Michigan and now they are coming for America!

Who is the they? They are the right wing ideologues. They hate unions. They are the multinational
corporations and banks. They are those who live off the backs of others and scorch the earth’s natural resources.

Who are we?
Are we 5% of the world’s population using 25% of the world’s resources?
Did we work overtime while others were laid off?
Did we live at the shopping malls and on credit cards and did we never ask the question: What is enough?
Did we believe it would never happen to us?

I am always reminded of the question often asked by my coworkers in my plant. Why do you spend so much time talking about how bad things are and so little time on the possibilities for the future or what we need to do?

Revolutionist need to spend 90% talking about what is to be done rather than answering the question: why we are in the crisis or how bad it is!

In 2008, We need to ask: How shall we think? What can we do? How will we change? And while we engage in building for the future, we can and will let our voices be heard.

Our hope comes from expressing our anger, envisioning the future and creating alternatives. It begins with looking in the mirror and acting.

Hantz Oppurtunity

Shea Howell

December 9th, 2012

Hantz Farms drive to take over nearly 2000 publically owned lots on the East Side is an opportunity to think very differently about how we approach land use. We urge the City Council to put in place productive, visionary principles, policies, and practices to guide this and all future efforts at development.

There are some things everyone agrees upon. First, Detroit neighborhoods suffer from neglect. Public policies and private developers have focused their efforts downtown. On those rare occasions when developments moved into smaller communities, long-term residents were evicted, driven out, or displaced. This history fuels much of the opposition to Hantz. It is not a distant history. It is a pattern repeating itself today in the Cass Corridor as it transforms to Midtown, in Corktown, parts of southwest Detroit, and the east side.

Second, this is the largest single land deal the city has ever considered. It will be a massive property transfer of public land to a private developer.

Third, citizens of Detroit have a fierce determination to have a say in the policies that shape our collective future. From the first ill-fated Detroit Works public meeting where over 1000 citizens unexpectedly turned out, through the 82% vote rejecting Emergency Managers, to the more than 300 people outside City Council chambers at the end of November demanding a public hearing on Hantz plans, Detroiters want a collective, engaged, broadly based, participatory process for determining the direction of our city. They are becoming increasing less tolerant of representative bodies that bow to corporate interests. Many recognize that corporate-foundation managed engagement processes are no substitute for serious democratic decision making.

Against this background, the Detroit City Council has been struggling to fulfill its responsibilities. In spite of the relentless criticism by the mainstream media and corporate elite, Council has been consistently sensitive to public processes. Their refusal to turn Belle Isle over to state management was recognition of their role as guardians of public trust.

Council should bring a similar skepticism to bear on the Hantz Farms deal. Instead of jumping into a massive land sale, we encourage the Council to put in place policies and practices that will move neighborhood developments onto positive, principled and productive frameworks.

The council should develop Community Benefit Polices requiring that all developers commit to Community Benefit Agreements (CBA) and to produce Community Impact Reports. These processes have been widely adopted by other cities and could go a long way in answering concerns about the most vulnerable among us. These processes would build on the authentic democratic process emerging in our city.

A CBA is more than an agreement between Hantz Farm and the Lower Eastside Action Plan (LEAP) group. While I have respect for LEAP’s work, they have been little more than a cheerleading organization for Hantz. They have not questioned the purpose or process of the scheme. Their letter of support to the Council says they believe Hantz’s mission “is to help people achieve their life dreams, and to build more sustainable communities.” How do they reconcile this with the comment that Hantz’s main objective is to create scarcity? How to they account for Hantz’s refusal to meet with opposition community groups to find common ground?

A true CBA would explore question like how Hantz intends to handle the demolition of 115 structures. At a conservative estimate of $8000 per structure, this will cost $920,000. Where will this money come from? Where will it go? What is the cost-benefit analysis of the tax credits Hantz is counting on for doing this demolition?

A CBA could mandate that 75% of the demolition be handled by Detroit firms. It could demand 50% of those be non-profit and faith based groups.

The City Council should seize this opportunity to create new processes that could benefit the whole community, not just the dreams of a single individual.

Hantz Questions

By Shea Howell

November 26th, 2012

John Hantz is pressuring the City Council to sell nearly 2000 vacant lots on the East side to him. Last week, in spite of an informal agreement that this deal would be put on hold until the Detroit Agricultural Policy was in place, Rob Anderson, the Director of the city’s Planning and Development Department urged the council committee to approve the deal. The council’s Planning and Economic Development Committee, chaired by Councilwoman Saunteel Jenkins, declined approval awaiting more specifics. Mike Score, President of Hantz Farms told the committee he would work with the planning staff to have a planning agreement for their approval before this week’s session.

And that is the core of the problem. At best, this committee will have a day to review a planning agreement that will cover the largest single land sale in the history of the city. This deal is 3 times as large as the Poletown debacle. It holds implications for the residents of the area and has persistently been weak on specifics. As Councilman Kenyatta commented at the hearing, “No one thinks this deal is so Hantz can cut the grass on vacant lots.”

Councilman Cockrel noted that the deal raised basic questions of fairness. Why should John Hantz be given rapid approval for land purchases at this moment? Why are others not given an equal opportunity? As Councilman Cockrel pointed out, the Recovery Park Project, an equally ambitious program, has been put on hold. What is the rush on this deal? Will it make the Recovery Park effort more difficult? What will be the impact on the growing urban garden movement? What will be the impact on residents?

These questions seem worth pursuing. But they also raise some fundamental issues for the Council to consider about its own responsibilities. First, much of the contentiousness around Hantz Farms and other development efforts would be moderated if the Council, as a matter of course, required Community Benefit Agreements (CBA’s). In the early 1990’s activists influenced by environmental justice saw these agreements as a way to offer a broader vision for urban reconstruction and to ensure that residents get permanent improvements in the quality of their lives. Beginning in Los Angeles, the CBA movement has spread to several other cities including Pittsburg, San Diego, Syracuse and Atlanta.

By bringing together a broad based community coalition to work with developers and city officials in an inclusive, transparent, and accountable process, the CBA has proven to be a tool that enables development to reflect deeper community values to the benefit of those often left out or victimized by such efforts in the past.

The Planning and Economic Development Committee is aware of these practices. At the same meeting with Hantz, they requested that Henry Ford Health Systems provide such an agreement with the residents of the area affected by a proposed development plan there. The Council is also aware of the efforts by developers to turn this process into a sham by creating their own sponsored citizen advisory groups. Councilwoman Jenkins sharply questioned representatives of HFHS as to why they wanted to create their own citizens advisory council instead of dealing with the coalition of organizations already well established in the area affected by the proposed expansion.

Additionally, the City Council should consider establishing a policy that protects the tax structure of long term and elder residents in areas affected by sale of city lands. At a minimum, taxes on residents and elders should be fixed at current rates, with predictable small increments over time. This would enable people to stay in their homes, rather than be taxed out as land values increase.

The one specific purpose stated by Hantz for this land grab is to create scarcity. This has predictable effects that bring about the most inequitable and unfair results of development schemes. We, and our City Council can do better than this.

Help Tawana Go Support Her Son Tyree in DC

Tyree Williams has been selected as 1 of 4 high school students in the Country to debate at the Smithsonian Institute in DC for Policy Debate the week of April 17th, and of course his super proud mom, Tawana Petty who attends nearly everything, wants to be there front and center. However, due to recent car expenses, health expenses, etc., she cannot afford the trip to support him.

Please help Tawana to go support her son in Washington, DC.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-tawana-support-her-son-in-dc/x/1835488

Honoring Malcolm in the 21st Century

By Grace Lee Boggs

May 12th, 2013

Over the May 18-19 weekend the Detroit Museum of African American History (MAAH ) will be celebrating the 88th birthday of Malcolm X who was born May 19, 1925 and killed February 21, 1965.

On Saturday the film Make it Plain will be shown, and my old friend University of Massachusetts Professor Bill Strickland will be speaking.

Sunday afternoon I will speak briefly about why honoring Malcolm in the 21st century has become so important.

Most people associate Malcolm with violence. But Malcolm’s unique power came not from physical weapons but from his courage and skill in speaking  the truths that empower us to go beyond viewing ourselves as victims. He was always challenging us to look in the mirror and accept responsibility for our pain and suffering instead of looking for others to blame.

Thus, after the assassination of President Kennedy in November 1963, Malcolm said “The chickens have come home to roost.”

Malcolm’s comment involved only seven words but those seven words  were dangerous because they called upon us, the American people, to recognize and take responsibility for the terrorism that people all over the world have been experiencing as a result of our government’s foreign policies.

In fact, Malcolm’s few words were so dangerous that Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad suspended him for uttering them, fearful that they would bring the wrath of the authorities down on the organization.

In the 21st century, since 911, we have been living in fear of terrorists, without acknowledging that (as Noam Chomsky put it recently) the U.S. is the world’s top terrorist state.

Honoring Malcolm in the 21st century is also important because it is in this century that the American Dream has died, challenging us to create a new dream.  This challenge was one of Malcolm‘s most important contributions. I can still see people at his meetings squirming with discomfort as he chided us for our continuing dependence on status quo institutions instead of creating our own.

If Malcolm were alive today, I am confident that he would be warning us against trying to discover Muslim connections for the Boston Marathon bombing suspects.

He would be urging us instead to acknowledge that we are enjoying our comforts and conveniences at the expense of people all over the world and that the chickens have come home to roost.

If we do not listen to Malcolm and keep looking for “others”  to blame, we will be creating a nightmare for ourselves, giving up our inalienable right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness in defense of a terrorist state.

In Detroit especially I believe Malcolm would be challenging us to go beyond protesting the Emergency Financial Manager and suggesting that we encourage grassroots neighborhood organizations to form a Council to govern the city.

We/they are already beginning to create a new post-industrial society:

• Creating community safety by looking out for each other.

• Growing our own food.

• Using new methods of local, small-scale production (such as 3-D printing) to produce our own clothing, housing, transportation, etc.

• Creating community-based schools to educate our children.

• Practicing restorative justice with neighborhood offenders.

Forming a Council to govern ourselves is the next step!

How one woman is re-imagining the possibilities of living, working, and building a sustainable Detroit

In Detroit, Joblessness Spurs Reinventions of Concept of Work

By Olga Bonfiglio

It was a serendipitous weekend of soul-searching, collaboration, information sharing and problem solving as activists “occupied” Detroit, one of the world’s most de-industrialized cities, to re-imagine “work” and ways it can reinvigorate local communities.

Over 300 participants from around the country converged on the Focus: Hope facility October 28-30 to address the nation’s accelerating decline of the jobs-based industrial economy, where over 14 million Americans are unemployed and another 9.3 million hold “involuntary part-time” jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“We never anticipated Occupy Wall Street or the Arab Spring when we planned this conference,” said Richard Feldman, from the Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership. “Nevertheless, we are here to show the world that Detroit is the place where we can imagine what the 21st century can look like.”

Activists in Detroit have been preparing for change long before this year’s revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests in the Middle East, Europe and Occupy Wall Street. Neighborhood leaders were among the first to promote urban gardens, and they started re-visioning the concept of “work” two decades ago when it became obvious that globalization was taking a toll on jobs.

Read the entire article here.

It’s Not all About the Benjamin’s, Baby

from Huffington Post Detroit

by Blair Nosan, Oren Goldenberg, Eitan Sussman, Amit Weitzer, Miriam Liebman, Dana Applebaum, and Zak Rosen.

Since Toby Barlow’s post, “‘Detroit,’ Meet Detroit,” followed by Rabbi Jason Miller’s subsequent response, there has been much discussion about both pieces, and what it means to talk about Detroit productively.

Looking Back

We are not writing to argue over who is a ‘real’ Detroiter and who is not, nor who is and is not going to save Detroit. We are more interested in unpacking our region’s history with a critical eye. We do this not to bring up bitter memories, or to point fingers, but because as young people raised in West Bloomfield, Farmington Hills, Huntington Woods, and Ann Arbor, now living in Detroit, we’ve come to believe that the way we understand and relate to our history very much informs our perspectives on Detroit’s present and future.

Rabbi Miller’s piece calls attention to pivotal chapters in Detroit’s history that have created many disparities between individual perspectives. Coleman Young’s mayoral reign and the uprising of July 1967 are both frequently cited as the cause for the metro region’s segregation. But these events do not stand apart from history. They sprang from the indelible and deep wound institutionalized racism had on the city’s Black population.

In the instance of the ’67 uprising, the clashing started when Detroit police officers raided an after-hours unlicensed club, where a party celebrating the return of Black Vietnam veterans was taking place. The uprising was, in many ways, a counteraction against the brutal Detroit police force, who many considered to be an occupying army at the time, committing countless acts of brutality. It was, according to many people we’ve met and respect, a moment of righteous indignation. While the riots were, for many Detroiters, a fearful moment in history, to others, the events that occurred during the summer of 1967 were in fact a rebellion.

And though Coleman Young drew hard lines between the city and the suburbs, it serves us well to recall that it wasn’t the mayor of Detroit who built a physical wall along 8 Mile. It was a developer in the 1940s who wanted to build homes for white families but skirt the federal government’s reluctance to back mortgages in the neighborhoods with too many homes owned by Blacks. The Young administration didn’t institute the racist lending guidelines that made it all but impossible for Blacks to secure a mortgage on a home in the suburbs — it was the same Federal Housing Administration that allowed for the building of a six-foot high wall to separate Black and white neighborhoods so that perceived integration did not drag down market rates.

When we fail to honestly discuss the multitude of histories that led us to the present, it becomes difficult to understand why Detroit is the way it is. That’s why we’re inspired and excited about the region’s recently initiated Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a process that aims “to examine the context, causes and consequences of structural and institutional racism in the region. By understanding and coming to terms with the forces generating the patterns of racial privilege and oppression that hold us all back, we can create a more just, equal and prosperous future for all.”

Looking Forward

Development in Detroit is experiencing another “renaissance,” and Rabbi Miller’s piece calls our attention to two very different visions of Detroit’s future. While the Truth and Reconciliation Commission strives to create a more just and equal future through cross-cultural dialogue and truth telling, Rabbi Miller represents another common sentiment — that bringing more people, and thus, more dollars to the city will lead to Detroit’s “rebirth.” Yet, it is clear to us that the city never died, nor did disinvestment alone create the city’s problems, and thus money alone cannot fix them.

Development centered on wealth creation has led to housing incentives and marketing campaigns aimed at bringing the young “creative class” to Detroit. As long-time residents are losing their homes, wealthy donors and anchor institutions are subsidizing rent for newcomers. When we value new individuals and institutions over long-time residents and small businesses, we deepen the socio-economic and racial gaps that have long divided us. Additionally, we miss an incredible opportunity to realize the mutual benefits of collectively growing a city on principles of justice and stewardship, and to prioritize community knowledge over financially backed power.

Yes, the city needs money, a bigger tax base, and a diverse population. However, when money isn’t explicitly tied to the public good, we’re not really talking about renaissance. A true renaissance would be moving in a new direction, as a city and a region, and learning finally to value all voices, from West Grand Boulevard to West Bloomfield, and acknowledging that we need to grow our relationships with each other as much as we need to grow our financial base. While wealthy suburbanites may be buying buildings downtown and funding state-of-the-art education facilities, public libraries are closing and public service workers are being laid off in droves.

Metro-Detroiters of all stripes need to acknowledge that having a stake in our region means more than spurring economic growth. It requires learning and unlearning all the ways we’ve all built walls around the city, and around ourselves. And furthermore, it means, acknowledging and celebrating the amazing, creative, and effective work that’s been taking place in neighborhoods across the city for many years. Throughout the city, Detroiters old and young are busy growing a local, sustainable food system, nurturing a new education paradigm, and creating social enterprises that build community and capital. These are the projects that inspire us to live and work in Detroit.

Just Because the Shoe Fits Doesn’t Mean We Have to Put it Onn

By Frank Joyce

February 3rd, 2013

Are you in the precariat?  Probably. Most of us are.  Or will be.

What is the precariat?  It is the condition of being in a precarious relationship to employment.

In other words, you have only a part time job.  Or no job.  Or three jobs. Or you have a job,  but you are way overqualified.  Why?  Because you took out loans to get the degree you were told you needed, but your chosen field isn’t hiring.  Or maybe your friend just got laid off and you didn’t.  But you live in fear and dread because you know you could easily be next.

In his brilliant book The Precariat, British author Guy Standing connects the dots that show just how vulnerable workers have become in recent decades. This is a book that makes one light bulb after another go off in understanding why and how being in the precariat is the new normal all over the world.

The Precariat illustrates how even those who have a relatively stable J.O.B—one that provides you with a W-2 form and at least some benefits—are still in a high risk situation.  That’s because the voracious growth of even more precarious sectors of the global economy puts your wages, your working conditions, your health and your retirement at grave risk.

With the overwhelming majority of the workforce now in the precariat, the danger is that resentments between workers will grow. Racial and ethnic tensions intensify, hostility toward immigrants becomes a potent social and political force, and antagonism toward unionized or other workers perceived as somehow privileged increases.

Indeed, understanding the extraordinary growth of the precariat goes a long way toward illuminating the decline of unions.  When all workers are “expendable” employers gain the upper hand in bargaining and in resisting union growth. Hence we see the decades long pattern of falling wages, multi-tier wages, the growing percentage of “temporary” workers, shrinking pensions, higher costs for health care and the erosion of the previous protections that come with seniority.

As the economic power of employers grows so does their political power.  So, at the same time that employment is becoming precarious, so are social benefits that once served as “shock absorbers” for the built in limits of the J.O.B. System.

And if employers want to make a once strong union state like Michigan a right-to-work-for-less-state or abolish collective bargaining rights for public sector workers as in Indiana and Wisconsin—they have the capacity to do so.  Even when unions win a fight here and there, the larger trend toward insecure employment grows unabated.

One of the reasons we aren’t able to act together is that we don’t yet realize we are together. A big fog machine makes us think we are in trouble because we made bad choices as individuals. The relentless message is that we don’t deserve a decent and secure standard of living, let alone meaningful work.

As Standing makes clear,  it doesn’t have to be this way.  Yes, remaining passive and continuing our descent into the “politics of the inferno” is an option.  But, he says,  we can also decide to recognize our condition and our challenges and fight for a “politics of paradise.”

In Detroit and all around the world, more and more of us precariats are coming together to build a New Work economy that is more fair, more secure, more rewarding and better for our communities.

That is a story for a future column.

Frank Joyce is a lifelong Detroit -based political and labor activist and writer,  A former News Director at WDET and former communications director for the UAW, he contributes weekly to the Land of Hopes and Dreams radio program heard Sunday afternoon from 1-4 PM Eastern time at SiriusXM Channel 127.

Listen to Woman for a Change

By Grace Lee Boggs

March 17th, 2013

Detroit’s international Women’s Day Celebration on Saturday, March 9, at the UAW-GM Center was more moving and revealing than any of the many  IWD celebrations in which I have participated over the years.

Co-hosted by the UAW Women’s Department and the Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership, the celebration  brought together hundreds of women from many different walks of life and generations.

The theme was LISTEN TO WOMEN FOR A CHANGE!

Besides short talks by UAW Vice President Cindy Estrada and myself, it featured a series of workshops which demonstrated that women are the ones needed to give leadership on the many critical issues now facing everyone in our city and country:

-Taking Back Our Households

-Re-imagining Education

-Creating Peace Circles: From War Zones to Peace Zones

-Making a Splash at the Ballot Box

-Money Matters

-What’s Love got to do with it? (HIV)

-Seeing Past Hell and onto Hope

Workshop leaders included Andre A Jackson, Julia Putnam, Conja Wright, Bonnie Smith, Deb Kozol, Stephanie Purvis, Wanda Latham, Rev. Sandra Simmons.

In all the workshops it became clear that women are effective leaders because we/they have ways of communicating, caring, and compromising that are specially needed at this time on the clock of the world.

The celebration concluded with a multi-generational conversation.

The IWD organizers will be meeting Wednesday, March 20, 5 p.m. at Solidarity House , 8000 E. Jefferson, Detroit 48214.

Living by the Clock of the World: Grace Lee Boggs’ Call for Visionary Organizing

Living by the Clock of the World: Grace Lee Boggs’ Call for Visionary Organizing

By: Matthew Birkhold
April 17, 2012

In response to a question regarding advice for young activists, 96 year old movement veteran Grace Lee Boggs recently told Hyphen Magazine that activists should turn our backs on protest organizing because it “leads you more and more to defensive operations” and “Do visionary organizing” because it “gives you the opportunity to encourage the creative capacity in people and it’s very fulfilling.” This quote made its way around facebook, twitter, and tumblr, as fans of Grace reposted it like it was common sense while others thought the quote bordered on conservatism.

READ THE ENTIRE ESSAY AT LEFT TURN

Living for Change in China

By Grace Lee Boggs

December 30th, 2012

The University of Minnesota Press, publisher of Living for Change, has signed an agreement with China Film Press in Beijing to publish a Chinese translation of my autobiography in China and sell it “throughout the world.”

This is exciting news. I was born in the U.S.A. and I was in China only once –for two months in 1984 when I discovered that I was much more American than Chinese.  But I am conscious and proud of my Chinese heritage.

From my mother who never learned to read or write because there were no schools for females in her little village, I learned early on that huge changes are needed in our world.

From my father, who like most overseas Chinese, was a supporter of the 1911 Chinese revolution, I got a sense of the pride that comes with supporting or making revolution.

Also, while I don’t expect my life or book to affect developments in China, I am very conscious of how much our world is being affected by China’s extremely rapid urbanization and industrialization which like our urbanization and industrialization is accelerating global warming and endangering life on Earth.

Meanwhile, I am encouraged by the growing number of militant demonstrations by the Chinese people against pollution.

China has long been known as a place where the world’s dirtiest mines and factories could operate with impunity. Those days may not be over, but a growing environmental movement is beginning to make the most polluting projects much harder to build and operate.
By Grace Lee Boggs

December 30th, 2012

As China becomes increasingly urbanized, its people are also experiencing troubles that resemble ours. For example,  in recent years  there have been a number of attacks outside Chinese schools.  On Friday, December 14, the same day that little school children were massacred in Connecticut, 22 Chinese children were stabbed outside a primary school in a village in Henan province. The main difference is that they were stabbed rather than gunned down with an automatic weapon.

At my age I don’t expect to visit China again. But I’m delighted that my life is being made accessible in China through my autobiography.

MLK Celebration – January 14th

MLK Day in John Deere Country

By Grace Lee Boggs

January 27th, 2013

I flew to Iowa to speak at Grinnell College on MLK Day.  The weather was many degrees below freezing but the reception was warm.

I was scheduled to speak at 4:15 pm Monday.  At 4 people from the community began streaming into the chapel-like auditorium: mostly white women, their eyes shining with anticipation.

On each chair Shea Howell had placed two Boggs Center brochures: “Re-Imagining Revolution“ and “Self-Evident Truths.”  Doc Holbrook had set up a literature table. (We sold all our copies of The Next American Revolution).

At 4:15, when classes ended, people from the community were joined by hundreds of students, so many that they filled the balcony, and many stacks of chairs had to be brought in for the overflow.

I spoke from notes I had made following President Obama’s inaugural address. I said that, although I had not campaigned for MLK Day, I was delighted that it it is our only national holiday that has become a time for reflection and  looking in the mirror instead of pageantry, fireworks, barbecue, football and shopping.

I recalled Martin Luther King’s l967 “Time to break the silence” speech in which he called for a radical revolution of values, not only against racism but against materialism and militarism.

At this time on the clock or world, I said, we are suffering from the militarism of our country, not only in the Middle East and North Africa but on the streets of our cities and even in small towns like Newtown, CT.

All over the world the center is not holding; things are falling apart.  People are hungry for a new dream. The overthrow of dictators has not provided this dream,  and it is not coming from Congress or the White House.

But I feel very fortunate that I come from Detroit where I have lived for 60 years, most of that time in the same house.  When I moved to Detroit in 1953, it was still  the national and international symbol of the miracles of industrialization. Then, as a result of Hi-Tech and globalization, it became the national and international symbol of the devastation of de-industrialization.

But now, as a result of Urban Agriculture, which is bringing the country back into the city, and our Re-imaging Work and Education, we are becoming the national international symbol of a new post-industrial society.

We are creating a new dream that can address  the hunger of people not only in this country but all over the world.  We are reimagining Work. We are reimagining Education. We are creating Community.

Thirty years ago I co-authored, with John Gruchala and Ilaseo Lewis, a little poem:

“We are the children of Martin and Malcolm
Black, white, brown and yellow,
Our right and duty
To shake the world with a new dream.”

This new dream is what is urgently needed at this time on the clock of the world.
This new dream is what we are creating in Detroit.

We are growing our souls at a time when just growing our economy is endangering our planet and all living things, including ourselves.

Monday Movie Nights

New Voices

By Shea Howell

March 17th, 2013

The crisis in Detroit is not economic. It is a crisis in democracy. The contours of this crisis are becoming clearer with each passing day. Last Thursday, Mayor Bing called a press conference to announce that even though he disputed the “facts” of the rationale provided to the Governor to appoint an emergency manager, he would not challenge the findings. He said, “We need to end the drama and infighting and understand that whether we like it or not, an emergency financial manager is coming to Detroit.”

Mainstream media and the elites they represent hailed this statement. Meanwhile those who oppose the appointment of an emergency manager were diminished and demonized. The Detroit Free Press labeled protesters as numbering in the “dozens.” Jack Lessenberry characterized us as irrational children saying, “we can scream and kick our little feet—or we can rationally start preparing to try to work with whomever that emergency manager may be to try to save Detroit. Fighting the inevitable is a waste of time.”

While virtually no one joined the Mayor in his decision to go along to get along, hundreds of people gathered with Councilwoman Joann Watson to stand up for democracy. This meeting kicked off a series of organized efforts to draw public attention to the real issues at stake in the struggles against the Emergency Manager. This is a struggle about the basic right of people to self-determination, to have a right and responsibility to decide our own future, and to have a meaningful and full voice in our government.

Councilwoman Watson began the meeting emphasizing the historic nature of the fight in front of us. She began the meeting talking about the struggles of people to secure the basic rights of citizenship and emphasized the key role Detroit has played in the history of our country as a center for the dignity of labor, for the birth of black power and self determination, and as home to people who have a long history of standing up and speaking out. This struggle against the EM, she said, was like the struggle for basic rights begun more than 50 years ago on the streets of Montgomery, Alabama. With the appoint of an EM in Detroit, 49% of African Americans in the state will not have the right to elect local officials and 75% of all elected African Americans will be disempowered.

Mayoral candidate Krystal Crittendon discussed the challenge to the EM as a question of constitutional rights. She said, “You have a right to democracy.  Even if you only have two pennies, you have a right to elect your officials. Just because you live in an economically depressed region, you do not lose the right to elect people.” She went on to say that this is especially true when “the people who take away that right are the same people who owe us money.”

This meeting was an example of the new democratic forms developing in Detroit. As representative elected bodies are being outlawed by the state, leadership is emerging to create new forms for political discussions and decision-making. Here, people came together to remind one another of our history, to share information and ideas, and to generate strategies for action. People pledged to remember Martin, Malcolm, Rosa Parks, Coleman Young, Maryanne Mahaffey, Erma Henderson and all those who struggled for justice. They pledged to lift up our young people and to educate one another about the real issues we face.

As one minister said, these are times that require us to become “creatively ungovernable,” even as we find new forms to make decisions about our lives and our communities. Detroit is finding new voices that promise to shake the efforts of the old order to hang on to power and privilege. It is a new day.

New Year, New Democracy

By Shea Howell

December 30th, 2012

The coming of the New Year is a time for reflection. We assess the past and project our hopes for the future. For many of us in Michigan, this past year has been one that has sharpened the two different visions for our future.

While much of the country rejected the idea that we would move backward in time, the republican dominated government in Michigan has redoubled its efforts to restore power and privilege to a few.

Governor Rick Snyder and the right wing republican legislature have aggressively adopted policies that come straight out of the Reagan-Bush-Romney vision for America. They want a country where market capitalism runs unfettered over the lives of people and the protection of the planet. They want policies that foster individual greed rather than communities of compassion. They believe that public resources should be used to create private wealth.

At the core of their vision is the belief that a select-elite know better than the majority of the people what should be done. This belief, once scoffed at as an archaic idea belonging to a time of limited understandings, was on full display during the last frantic days of the lame duck legislature in Lansing.

First, it was expressed in the brazen violation of the will of the people to curb the power of the state to impose emergency managers on cities and school districts. The overriding argument against emergency managers was that they were undemocratic, setting aside locally elected officials.

The effort to bring this issue before the public for a vote took unprecedented effort, overcoming almost laughable attempts to invalidate petitions and then to throw up court challenges. Even before the election, Governor Snyder and his group of extreme right wing republicans announced they didn’t much care what the vote was. They had another law waiting in the wings.

The people overturned the emergency manger law, especially in cities that were suffering from them. Within days, the republican dominated legislature reinstated a new emergency manager law. To prevent it from being overturned, they tied it to an appropriation of funds, precluding any future referendum.

A similar process was followed by the so-called “right to work” legislation. Attacking the capacity of unions to collect dues from all who benefit directly from union negotiations, the legislature again invoked an appropriations measure to preclude the right of the people to challenge this act.

Disrespect for the opinions of the people was on display at the Detroit City Council, too. Against a clear and vocal majority of citizens, five council members voted to practically give away almost 2,000 publicly owned lots on the east side to a single individual.

These actions have revealed starkly that legislative bodies do not represent the will of the people. Nor do they protect our interests.

In contrast to this limited view of power and privilege is one that has been slowly emerging as people have been reconstructing life on a human scale. In places long abandoned by corporate greed, neighbors have been coming together to create new community life that fosters local production, creativity, and compassion.

These new communities are rooted in radically democratic processes.  People are coming together to make decisions about the things that effect daily life and the protection of what we hold as the common good. They are developing a sense of shared values and authentic processes for decision-making. In small groups, people are organizing new forms of education, establishing public safety, providing means for healthy food, and celebrating artists who advance our vision of a more just and sustainable future.

Over the next year, those of us envisioning a vibrant democracy necessary for rich community life will have to call upon our deepest resources of memory and imagination. These local, community-based efforts creating new democratic forms are our path to a better future.

On Hantz

Once Again, Korea!

By Professor/Baba Charles Simmons

May 5th, 2013

Since most of the world’s population was not around at the beginning of this conflict, it is important for people everywhere to know the history of this 60-year old struggle between the Western Powers led by the U.S. on one hand, and the peoples of Asia on the other. The U.S. invaded Korea in 1950 in an attempt to stop the Chinese Revolution led by Chairman Mao Tse Tung that had kicked out the Western powers in 1949. The West feared a general independence victory against Western Colonialism throughout Asia that was set in motion in the early part of the 20th century. The U.S. was defeated in its objectives in the mid-1950s especially after Mao Tse Tung sent in Chinese troops on the side of the Korean forces. However, the U.S. still succeeded in dividing the nation politically into North and South, with a major force of U.S. troops, naval and air forces remaining in South Korea under a puppet U.S. government. The same pattern would play out a decade later in Vietnam following the freedom fighters defeat of the French colonialist in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu led by the revolutionary leader, Ho Chi Minh, who said that one of his major mentors was Marcus Garvey who Ho Chi Minh had heard in Harlem during WWI.

The North of Korea became the site of the revolutionaries under Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of the present leader. There was never an armistice nor an official end of the war between the U.S. and Korea although the U.S. withdrew after 3 years of fighting and declared a victory. But if you talk to any U.S. soldiers who were there on the ground they will tell you a totally different story of major U.S. defeat. Some of the African American soldiers remained in Korea and became citizens to avoid returning to the Segregated U.S.A. There have been minor and major escalations of the conflict since the end of the shooting “War,” and Korea, a poor but proud agricultural nation, has maintained its right to its path of socialist development. The U.S. has surrounded the nation with tens of thousands of troops, a naval fleet, the U.S. Air Force, and nuclear weapons scattered throughout the islands and nations of Asia. Wall street is waiting for an opportunity to return and restore ‘democracy and capitalism.” We have a son stationed in the region at the present moment. Many more thousands of young men and women of the U.S. will be the casualties if Wall Street has its way. But no one or any life form on our embattled planet is safe, and all of humanity –rich and poor–will suffer greatly from the fallout if the nuclear weapons begin to fly.

That is the immediate problem for all of us. It was the hope of the colonial powers and the U.S. that the only countries to have the nuclear weapons would be the white nations, including Western Europe, South Africa under the apartheid government and Israel. However, the Chinese broke that rule in 1960 and others followed including India, Pakistan, and North Korea. So the western objective now is to keep any other country outside of Europe from getting the bomb and thereby maintaining U.S. and European supremacy. The U.S. is the only country to have used them. However, the only way to rid the planet of nuclear danger is to require ALL nations to get rid of the nuclear weapons. No one should have them, and the people of planet Earth must struggle for peace and the elimination of all weapons of mass destruction. An immediate goal of neighborhood, city and county governments throughout the U.S. and the World should pass legislation calling for the end of weapons of mass destruction including mines that are crippling the poor people everywhere. Trade unions, universities and Faith organizations should demand the withdrawal of their money from any bank or investment that finances warfare. We must teach our youth everywhere to support peace. Collectively, these actions will force the national governments to act in favor of the people.

Baba/Professor Charles Simmons is co-Founder of the Hush House Black Community Museum and Leadership Training Institute for Human Rights. charles.simmons@emich.edu.

Our Survival is Up to Us

Grace Lee Boggs

December 9th, 2012

This week in Doha, Qatar, on the Persian Gulf, delegates to COP18, the UN Framework on Climate Change, are discussing the urgent need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions if we and our planet are to survive.

OUTSIDE the conference hundreds of Arabs from the newly formed Arab Youth Climate Movement are calling on delegates to take action, getting governments and leaders to submit voluntary pledges for emission mitigation targets and take concrete steps towards a binding future agreement in Doha and a second commitment of Kyoto protocol to start in 2013.

photo by Sue Blaine

INSIDE no targets are being set.

The reality facing the delegates and the world is that global emissions and the global temperature continue to rise.  And unless the average global temperature rise is stabilized at 2 degrees Celsius by 2020 from a 2005 base level, people all over the world face increasingly catastrophic weather, more droughts, more wildfires, more Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy.

The Doha conferees are hoping that governments will take steps to reduce emissions.  China has pledged a considerable reduction. The U.S. also has a greenhouse gas emissions reduction target.  In  January 2010 after the Copenhagen Climate Conference the United States pledged to reduce emissions by 17 percent by 2020, relative to the 2005 baseline.

But we can’t and shouldn’t depend on China or the U.S government.

Instead we should be inspired by the Arab Youth Movement to take accelerated action at the ground level.

In every classroom from kindergarten to graduate school, in every household, every neighborhood, every congregation WE THE PEOPLE  can and must begin taking steps to reduce carbon emissions.

It will mean growing our own food instead of depending on produce shipped from factory farms thousands of miles away.

It will mean producing our needs in neighborhood workshops instead of purchasing them at box stores.

It will mean a lot of walking and biking instead of driving.

It will mean giving up Black Fridays.

In other words, it will mean making the radical revolution of values or the cultural revolution that Dr. King called for in his 1967 “Break the Silence” speech.

All these steps at the ground level are possible and necessary.

We can live more simply so that we and future generations can simply live.

WE CAN DO IT! YES WE CAN!!!

Philosophic Activism, Visionary Organizing

By Grace Lee Boggs

Last week’s conference honoring the 40 year career of University of Michigan Professor Bunyan Bryant was both inspiring and instructive.

In one session after another, former students of many different ages and ethnicities described how Bunyan’s Environmental  Justice leadership  empowered them to struggle for a better environment for all our children.

At the celebratory Friday night dinner, students, colleagues and members of the community rose one after another to toast his contribution to the continuing evolution of ourselves and of the Environmental Justice movement.

At the Conference, an hour before the dinner,  Bunyan made his retirement speech,  titled  “The moral arc of the universe bends towards justice.”   In it he thanked  his colleagues,  former  students and Conference organizer Kevin Merrill, and also emphasized  that, like Dr. King, he is a philosophic activist.

“I want to talk about a concept that I first heard used by Martin Luther King. King was not only an activist; he was a philosopher. He posited that the arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice. In other words, reality shows a preference for truth and justice.

“I want to take this concept of King’s further because it implies a future state that makes it important that we focus on the future.  Also I want to say that the arc of the moral universe bends toward environmental justice.”

“We can ill afford to leave the bending of the arc to chance. To make our communities free of toxins will require more than a reactive approach to justice.”

The Conference and Bunyan’s speech helped me realize that although a lot of people have been praising and paraphrasing Dr. King’s advocacy of the beloved community since his assassination  in 1968, very few have been proactively creating  programs, curricula and activities that enable the beloved community to emerge.

That is what Bunyan has been doing and that is why his career at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and the Environment (SNRE) has been so important.

That is also what the Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership has been doing in Detroit.  That is why Detroit, which was once the national and international symbol of the miracles  of industrialization and then became the national and international symbol of the devastation of deindustrialization, is now becoming the national and international symbol of a post-industrial sustainable society.

Professor Wallerstein: Osama is Dead

“Osama is Dead: What Difference Does This Make?”

Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan on May 2, 2011, Pakistan time. He was killed by U.S. Seals forces in a special operation ordered by the U.S. president. The whole world knows this, and reactions to this event have been extremely diverse. But has this death changed anything anywhere? Does it matter?

The first question that most people are posing is whether this death signals the demise of al-Qaeda. It has become clear for some time that al-Qaeda today is not a single organization but rather a franchise. If Osama directly commanded any group, it was those located in Pakistan and Afghanistan. There are what seem to be autonomous structures calling themselves al-Qaeda in other parts of the world, and notably in Iraq, Yemen, and the Maghreb. These groups have paid symbolic homage to Osama but have made their own operational decisions.

In addition, the actual combative and political power of the various groups seems to have been in decline for some time. The most important reason for this has not been the killing of al-Qaeda leaders by the United States or other governments but the sense among most other Islamist forces that they could achieve more of their aims by more political routes. The killing of Osama may inspire some immediate al-Qaeda attempts at “revenge” but it is not likely that this will do much to slow down the growing irrelevance of al-Qaeda on a world scene.

Will the death of Osama change the situation in either Pakistan or Afghanistan? Pakistan’s government was already shaky before this. There is now public grumbling in both Pakistan and the United States about what did the Pakistani government know and when did it know it. The Pakistani government’s official line is that it knew nothing of Osama’s location for about seven years in a villa next door to their main military academy. And it also claims that it knew nothing in advance about the U.S. raid and deems it to have been an illegitimate infringement of Pakistani sovereignty.

Neither argument is very plausible. Of course it knew where Osama was living, or at least some Pakistani officials knew. How could they not? And of course, the U.S. government knew that Pakistan knew but wasn’t telling them. This was all part of the difficult, ambiguous relationship of the two allies for at least the last ten years. Will Osama’s death change that? I doubt it. The alliance remains mutually necessary.

As to whether the Pakistanis were informed of the pending U.S. raid, it depends on which Pakistanis. Clearly, the U.S. wanted to keep the raid secret from any one in Pakistan who might have interfered with it or alerted Osama. But did no-one know? We have two pieces of contrary information that have come out. The Guardian published a piece after Osama’s death reporting, on the basis of conversations with U.S. and Pakistani officials, that former Pakistan President Musharraf made an agreement with President George W. Bush in 2001, in which Musharraf agreed in advance to a unilateral U.S. raid on Osama whenever it located him, with the provision that the Pakistanis would denounce it publicly afterwards. Musharraf now denies this but who believes him?

There is a piece of even more persuasive evidence. Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, published a story the very day of Osama’s death, citing eye-witnesses that electricity was cut off in the area during the operation – indeed for two hours before it occurred – which could only have been done by some Pakistani agency that knew of the forthcoming raid. The Chinese have at least as good an internal intelligence operation in Pakistan as the United States. So it seems probable that, while some Pakistani agencies were kept in the dark, others coordinated with the United States.

At the U.S. end, some members of Congress are agitated about the fact that the Pakistanis must have known Osama was living in Abbottabad, and wish therefore to cut off, or reduce, financial and military aid to Pakistan. But clearly this would be counter to the maintenance of any U.S. influence in Pakistan, and it is unlikely that any real change in current relations will be made.

As for Afghanistan, it is clear that, for some time, the Taliban have been taking their distance from al-Qaeda and Osama, in order to pursue their own return to power. Osama’s death can only reinforce their position within Afghanistan, and hasten the process by which the United States is being pushed out, something that will make the U.S. military basically very happy. Some in the United States will say that this “victory” permits them to make the necessary political deal with the Taliban. And some who were opposed to U.S. intervention in the first place will say that this proves there is no longer a plausible threat that justifies continuing U.S. presence there. That this scenario is possible can be seen in the anguished outcry among non-Pashtun elements in the north of Afghanistan against drawing either conclusion.

So does the killing of Osama at least make a difference in the United States? Well, yes it does. President Obama took a big political risk in conducting the operation, and especially in conducting it by using a Seals force rather than by bombing the residence. Had it gone wrong in any way, he would have been sunk politically. But it didn’t go wrong. And all the Republican arguments that he was a weak leader, especially in military matters, have been undone. This will no doubt help him in the coming elections. But again, as many commentators have been pointing out, this will help him only a bit. The economy is still the big internal issue in U.S. politics. And Obama’s re-election and Democratic prospects in the Congressional elections will be affected most of all by pocketbook issues in 2012.

So, how much difference does Osama’s death make? Not too much.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

Questions Worth Pursuing

By Grace Lee Boggs

October 30th, 2012

Last week Rich Feldman and other Boggs Center board members led 25 visitors from many different countries and U.S. cities on a “Learning Journey” to give them a sense of how Work, Food Production, Education, Community, are being re-imagined and redefined from the ground up in devastated, deindustrialized Detroit.

The journey was initiated by and included best-selling author Meg Wheatley who recently released So far From Home: Lost and found in our Brave New World, a book dedicated to “warriors for the human spirit” In today’s life-destroying world.

It included meetings with, among others, Church of the Messiah pastor Barry Randolph; New Work & Culture inventor Fritzhof Bergman, Boggs Educational Collective’s  Julia Putman, Catherine Ferguson Academy’s Asenath Andrews, Allied Media Conference‘s Jenny Lee, Peace Zones Ron Scott, Feedom Freedom Growers Wayne and Myrtle Curtis .
On the final evening  these questions were among those raised by the visitors:

How independent can we really be from the pursuit of jobs and money and what does that mean for education?

How do I channel anger both for the good of this city and in my own community?

What brought you to Martin Luther King’s writings on non-violence?

What is fundamentally different about being an activist today versus in the past?

How can we let go of and move on from the false promises of industrialism while retaining the values of industrialism, assuming there was something positive about industrialism?

How can we learn to love those that we think hate us?

How will the people in Detroit find common ground to get where you want to go?

How do we avoid marginalizing someone else while we are trying to recreate community?

What have you learned about building leadership around you?

As a young person how do I use the values I have learned about this weekend to choose my work?

How do I do my work and not feel alone?

Here in Detroit it seems one group of leaders and friends has dealt with anger and disappointment and turned it into productivity. Others have not. How do we deal with healing and mental health intervention needed to prepare ourselves for the future?

Since we are from everywhere and living through huge transitions, what supports do we put into place to help one another?

What should happen next?

As we move from the  industrial age to the  information age what will happen to our consumption habits? Will our consumerism evolve?

How is the humanism of a multicultural, multiracial, sustainable activism different from a color blind humanism?

What role if any does the US electoral system play in these changes? What role does non-violence play?

What do you love most about this city ?

What qualities  would you consider essential in a transformational leader?

How do we prevent ourselves from succumbing to command and control as we try to move forward?

How would this weekend be different if it took place in China fifty years from now?  

This movement seems to be driven by values and desire for common ground. Can you talk about the importance of common language in this movement?

How do people justify being consciously cruel to one another?

How do you see empire and nation state structures of governance evolving In the future?

How have you managed to continue to inspire others in the movement?

These questions are worth pursuing.

Race Matters

By Shea Howell

After months of rumors, Mike Duggan entered the race to become Mayor of the City of Detroit. His campaign raises troubling questions.

First, even supportive folks like Stephen Henderson of the Detroit Free Press acknowledge that Mr. Duggan is a “carpetbagger” and fits “the dictionary definition of the opportunistic outsider.” He has barely lived in the city six months and wants to be mayor.

Duggan’s claim to run is that he can turn the city around. He argues that his experience as CEO of the Detroit Medical Center has given him the experience needed to get Detroit out from under state financial oversight. According to a recent interview, he says he will cooperate with unions, protect the police force, and back off of Bing efforts to privatize health and human services. He is critical of Bing’s handling of the lighting department, light rail, and Belle Isle, preferring to keep control in the city.

Further, he says that while parts of downtown are developing, neighborhoods are suffering. He told the Free Press “You’re seeing businesses and young people moving in at a rate that I haven’t seen in the 30 years that I’ve been working in the city. On the other hand, you go into the neighborhoods, and the neighborhoods aren’t seeing any of the benefits of that. And that’s what we’ve got to do: We’ve got to extend those successes into the neighborhoods.”

Much of Mr. Duggan’s criticism of Mayor Bing will find a welcome reception among Detroiters. He is positioning himself as the turn around guy. He says, “I was born in this city. I went to high school in this city. I’ve worked in this city for 30 years. I think I have roots with almost every organization in this city. But if what you’re doing is you’re voting for a mayor who’s lived in the city the longest, that isn’t necessarily going to get you to the person who can execute a financial turnaround.”

So far, Duggan has dodged the issue of race. If he were elected he would be the first white man to hold the office of Mayor since Roman Gribbs in 1974. Duggan says that when he talks about the issues that matter to people, race is irrelevant. He says, “What I’m focused on is we need to get the violence down, get the streetlights on, and get people moving into abandoned homes, not just knocking them down. That’s what I find everyone wants to talk about. And what I find is when you talk about those issues, issues like race melt away.”

And that is precisely the most worrisome thing about Duggan. He seems oblivious to the racial dimensions of his bid. He lacks any reflection on the social and political implications of a middle aged white male making a bid to be the leader of a majority African American city at a time when forces that look a lot like him are threatening the very existence of Detroit.

Race never “melts away.”

Detroit has a long history of supporting principled politicians, regardless of their ethnicity. For years an older white woman, Maryanne Mahaffey, garnered more votes than the elected mayor. People voted for her not only because of her positions, but because she spoke forthrightly about race, class, sexual identity, and a vision of an inclusive city. She constantly used her public office to educate people about social differences and why they mattered. She helped folks move toward a deeper appreciation of one another and our experiences.
To pretend that concern for crime and lighting overshadow the critical need for us to reconcile social difference does us all a disservice. It is not the kind of vision we need from those who claim leadership.

Redefining the American Family

By Grace Lee Boggs

April 21st, 2013

(This article was originally published 20 years ago in The Future: Images for the 21st Century, edited by University of Michigan Professor Bunyan Bryant).

American families today are so unlike those in which human beings have traditionally raised children that it is questionable whether they should be called families at all.

Since the invention of agriculture more than 10,000 years ago, children and young people have been raised in families which included not only parents and siblings but other relatives of all ages.  Within this multi-generational family, growing children developed a sense of their continuity with the past and the future. Naturally and normally they each discovered that their own individual uniqueness was the result of a subtle interplay between ancestral influences and  individual choices and contingencies. Surrounded by a wide variety of adult models on whose conversations they “eavesdropped”, they acquired the ability to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate behaviors.

At the same time, because the agricultural family was an economic production unit, work life and home life were intermingled. Women and children were subordinate, but everyone had a socially necessary role to play. Through the performances of daily chores children developed competence, a sense of responsibility, and self-esteem.

It was only with the coming of the Industrial Revolution and the shifting of work from the field to the factory that family structures and patterns began to change. To go where the jobs were, families had to be mobile. Thus the “extended” family” became the “conjugal family” of parents and children, stripped of relatives, streamlined so that it could serve as a labor pool for expanding industry.

It has taken more than two centuries to complete this change in the United States. Before World War II the great majority of American working people still raised their children in some form of the “extended family”.

Since the end of World War II, however, the American family has been steadily shrinking so that today it has been reduced to the “nuclear family” in all classes, and in the suburbs as well as the city. The automobilization of our society has made it possible for the upwardly mobile to move to the suburbs, leaving behind blacks, the poor and the elderly. Thus nuclear families are housed in one-dimensional neighborhoods segregated by race, class and age.

Instead of being a community of work, the American home has become the bastion of consumption. In single as well as two-parent households, mothers have two jobs. After working all day in the factory, office or hospital, they continue to shoulder the main responsibility for the care of the children and the home. An increasing number of children grow up in single-parent households, and raising of children has been turned over to schools and baby-sitters.

For most children the parents, grandparents, relatives, neighbors, and other caring adults of an earlier period have been replaced by the TV, same-age cliques or gangs, loneliness.

The effects of this erosion of the American family have been catastrophic.  Child abuse by parents has become a national problem. Our country, the most scientifically and medically advanced in the world, is 17th among nations in combating infant mortality. Crime, vandalism, drugs, suicide, and other anti-social and self-destructive behaviors among youth are so widespread that programs to save our sons and daughters have become a growth industry.

Liberals and conservatives are little help to parents trying to survive and to raise their children in a society which is constantly undermining their role. Both add to the cause of inadequacy and powerlessness which parents are already feeling, liberals by claiming that the solution lies in more support from state agencies, conservatives by insisting that responsibility for raising children rests solely with today’s “families” and by implying that parental laxity is the cause of youth errancy.

The weakness in both the liberal and the conservative approaches is their inability to recognize that the crisis of the American family is part and parcel of the disintegration taking place in all our institutions as we come to the end of a civilization that has been ruled by the blind, fanatical, and destructive forces of the market. Our families, like our communities, our cities, and our country, are suffering the consequences of a system which has been miraculously efficient in the production of goods, but devastatingly destructive of all our human relationships.

However, by the same token, we are privileged to be present and to participate in the creation of new families, new communities, and new cities based on more human and more spiritual values. This is our challenge and our opportunity.

To be continued: The American Family: Rebeginnings

Reimagine Education

By Shea Howell

February 24th, 2013

Last week the Roberts Riverwalk Hotel was buzzing. Progressive teachers, professors, students, artists, organizers, and philosophers from around the country came to Detroit to reimagine education.

The talk was of teaching, learning, playing, assessing, laughing, writing, thinking, singing, developing whole people for a new time, citizenship, democracy, creating critical connections, and embracing crisis as opportunity.

The group came in response to a challenge made in 2010 by the Boggs Center. In the introduction to the conference they say, “that transformative education rooted in social justice is not only necessary, but possible.” Inspired by the words of Grace Lee Boggs, “We undertook the challenge of moving the meeting to engage in place-based, social justice-oriented education. And what better location than Detroit, one of America’s most storied cities, uncritically viewed as a struggling wasteland to give up on, a place where some say another future is possible, a land of post-industrial transformation.”

More than a meeting to just talk, the gathering featured active participation as groups worked with eleven community-based learning sites. The purpose of these collaborative activities was so participants would engage with “people working tirelessly to transform communities and education for the twenty-first century.”  By working closely with community groups, the conference hoped to “embrace Grace’s notion that we need to invent ways to prepare young people to be ‘solutionaries’ who are able and willing to participate in wide ranging cultural and economic evolution.”

Conference goers found themselves at Allied Media Project, the Boggs Educational Center, Center For Applied Inclusive Teaching and Learning in Arts and Humanities, Catherine Ferguson Academy, Church of the Messiah, Detroit Community Schools, Earthworks, East Michigan Environmental Action Council, Hope District, and Nsoroma Institute. As one participant reflected about the power of these engagements, they were able to see education “where every child was welcomed for the gifts that they bring.”

The gathering was the 39th annual meeting of the North Dakota Study Group, a network of students, researchers, and teachers who have led the fight against mindless standardize testing and the diminishment of public education. Their numbers included Deborah Meier, a MacArthur genius grant winner who founded East Park Secondary School in East Harlem and the Mission Hill School in Boston; Jay Featherstone, emeritus professor of education at MSU; Jonathan Carlisle, a high school student from Marion, Alabama, Scott Nine, Executive Director of the Institute for Democratic Education in America; John Lockhart, co-chair of the gathering and an assistant professor of education at Pacific University; Cara McCarthy, 4th grade teacher from Dorchester, MA; and Dr. Vincent Harding, close associate of Dr. Martin Luther King and founder of the Veterans of Hope.

The conference opened with a bus tour of the city that emphasized the transformation we are experiencing from the industrial age to a new, more human, sustainable, and ecological future.

Detroiters provided panel discussions about this moment in our city. Scott Kurashige, Professor of history at University of Michigan and member of the Boggs Center, described the dangers we face as the right wing politicians and corporate interests scheme to disenfranchise our city and convert public assets to private wealth. At the same time, he said, people are not only resisting these assaults, but building new, alternative ways of living. This was reinforced by Charity Hicks, who described the “resilience and brilliance” of Detroiters making a way out of no way, creating new forms of education and new systems to produce food as they grow community.

Diane Nucera of the Allied Media Project said, “We believe Media-based community organizing is a process of speaking and listening as a community in order to investigate the problems that shape our realities, imagine other realities and then work together to make them real.”  Our theory of change, she said is to  “CREATE, CONNECT, TRANSFORM.”
Across the country people are creating, connecting and transforming. They recognize that another Detroit is emerging. Unseen by the corporate elite, these transformations are creating a better future for all of us.

You can see highlights of the conference on twitter at #ndsgdetroit.

Reimagine Work. Reimagine Life

Restoring the Commons

By Shea Howell

Corica Jefferson has been lovely doing what women have done for thousands upon thousands of years. She has been raising chickens at her home on the East side of Detroit. She sells their eggs. “It’s how I make my living. I share eggs with my neighbors and the kids come over and feed the hens and rooster. This is my life.  I love being around animals and I love my birds. It’s very therapeutic.”

One day last week this quiet scene was shattered. Animal control officers surrounded her house. “It seemed like 20 people surrounded the place. It was like a drug raid. They said I couldn’t keep the chickens. I would have to get rid of everybody. They said a duck that stays in the backyard was a federal crime. I don’t know what to do. I can’t believe this.”

It seems one of Ms. Jefferson’s neighbors complained to the Health Department, saying she was “keeping a cow” in her yard. She’s not. She does have 3 baby lambs that are helping her keep overgrown areas mowed. “There Jacobs sheep,” she explained, they keep the grass drown and I spoil them with treats, they are humble animals that love you.”

Ms. Jefferson has appealed to the Detroit agricultural community for support. Myrtle Curtis of Feedem Freedom growers said, “The city has really dropped the ball on so many regulations, there must be a way for people to keep their animals.”

At the heart of this controversy are competing ideas about what kind of city we are creating. From the view of the Mayor and the Shrinking of Detroit folks, small agricultural efforts like those that have sustained Ms. Jefferson are considered a nuisance and a potential health risk. They bristle at the idea that cities would contain not only gardens, but animals. They think this way because they have neither a sense of history nor a vision for the future.

For much of human existence, access to common land for gardening and small animal grazing has been crucial to self-sufficiency and self determination. Eco-feminist scholars like Vandana Shiva, Starhawk, Maria Mies and Silvia Federici have carefully demonstrated that the destruction of the commons has been a central force in the development of capital and the establishment of exploitive relationships.

In a recent interview in Politics and Culture, Federici says: “There is a direct relation between the destruction of the social and economic power of women in the “transition to capitalism” and the politics of food in capitalist societies.

“In every part of the world, before the advent of capitalism, women played a major role in agricultural production. They had access to land, the use of its resources and control over the crops they cultivated, all of which guaranteed their autonomy and economic independence from men. In Africa, they had their farming and cropping systems, which were the source of a specific female culture, and they were in charge of the selection of seeds, an operation that was crucial to the prosperity of the community and whose knowledge was transmitted through the generations. The same was true of women’s role in Asia and the Americas. In Europe as well, under the late medieval period, women had land-use rights and the use of the “commons”—woods, ponds, grazing grounds—that were an important source of sustenance.”

The Detroit City Council should act swiftly to grant a waiver to Ms. Jefferson so she can keep her animals. After all they give waivers to the incinerator for pollution and to casinos for neon signs. Surely they can make a space for a woman who is contributing to supporting life.

Then they should ensure urban farming policies give every neighborhood access to a commons. This is a critical step in creating a city that will be self sufficient, cooperative, and caring.

Revolution in 21st Century

By Grace Lee Boggs

April 7th, 2014

The Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership (BCNCL) has issued a new edition of Revolution in the 21st Century (65pp. $5.00).

It was originally published in 2010.

The contents of the 2010 edition were:

Changing Concepts of Revolution

Rediscovering the American Past

Naming the Enemy

Toward a Self-Governing America

Re-affirming Self-Evident Truths

Neighborhood Peace Pledge

Neighborhood Peace Codes

Two new articles have been added to the 2013 edition.

Re-Imagining Work: Another Production is Possible by Richard Feldman 

New Work & New Culture by Barbara Stachowski

As the American revolution continues to gain momentum, BCNCL is hosting an increasing number of movement groups from different parts of the country.

For example, a few weeks ago we enjoyed a visit from Movement Generation, a Justice and Ecology group   rom the Bay area which is traveling to different cities in order to establish connections between local movement organizations.

In New England they will spend time with the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative in the Roxbury-Dorchester neighborhoods of Boston.

MG’s members are mostly people of color.  Carla Maria Perez, a founder, is a community organizer of Native/Latin American heritage who graduated from UC Berkeley in 1999 with a BS in Conservation & Resource Studies with an emphasis on Environmental Racism.

We are hearing from university professors from around the country  that their students  want to become more involved.  A number of professors include both The Next American Revolution and Living for Change in their syllabus.

Professors from local universities who feel the need of their students to connect their studies to the struggle developing in Detroit are also bringing their classes to the Boggs Center.

Rosa Parks and the Visionary Organizers of Montgomery, Alabama

By Grace Lee Boggs

February 10th, 2013

Rosa Parks, “the first lady of civil rights,” and “the mother of the freedom movement,“  was born Rosa Louise McCauley a hundred years ago on February 4, 1913.

Her Centennial was celebrated last week at many events, including the unveiling of a special stamp issued by the U.S. Postal Service.

Most celebrations focused on Rosa’s courage, saying little or nothing about the Montgomery women whose Visionary Organizing of the 13-month Montgomery Bus Boycott launched the civil rights movement.

Their story is told in The Montgomery Bus Boycott
 and the Women Who Started It‬, the memoir of Professor Jo Ann Gibson Robinson, ‬president of the Women’s Political Council (WPC), which had been waiting for the perfect symbol around which to organize a boycott against the racially abusive bus system.‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬
Within two hours of Rosa’s arrest on Friday afternoon, December 1, 1955, the WPC had blanketed the city with 50,000 “Don’t ride the bus” leaflets and was busy organizing the boycott. Special committees were set up, the main one focusing on transportation.
To keep people off buses, an alternative means of  transportation was created.  Hundreds of volunteer cars had to be contacted and pooled, and donations determined through cooperative means. Routes were mapped out to get workers to all parts of the city. Regular bus routes were followed so that workers who “walked along” the streets could be picked up.
The pickup system was so effectively planned that many writers described it as comparable in precision to a military operation.
The women’s organizing was so visionary that “the Montgomery Bus Boycott was more than a movement for civil rights. It was  also a woman’s movement for dignity, respect and bodily integrity.” (Danielle McGuire: At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape and Resistance).
It was also so solutionary that by the fall of 1956 a United States Supreme Court decision declared Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses unconstitutional.

Seeds for Change: Growing Faith, Food and The Future

By Victoria P. Davis
It’s wake up time. Our nation heaves under the weight of complicated, layered crises; wars, a failing economy, economic and racial divides, collapsing infrastructure and urban decay, environmental devastation, soil and air pollution and challenges that affect the source, quality and supply of our foods. The crises are so interrelated and polarizing that it is difficult to know where to begin to affect meaningful change. Perhaps, however, the real challenge involves making a shift in the way we think about change. Should you venture to listen beyond the bitter argumentation inside Washington for example, beyond the deafening rhetoric within city councils and mayoralties, beyond even the overwhelming negativity, fragmentation and divisive national conversations, you will find quite a different scenario unfolding. Critical numbers of people within urban neighborhoods are demonstrating a powerfully creative approach to issues that adversely impact the quality of their lives. The seeds of change are being quietly sown and have already sprouted wondrous roots. At first glance, you may never hear or notice them at work as you drive through the neighborhood. Nevertheless, intergenerational bands of earth warriors, urban farmers, people from diverse backgrounds and cultures are busily engaged in a grass roots movement now comfortably called “The Good Food Revolution”.  And far more than good food is being introduced. (more…)

Selective Sensitivity

By Shea Howell

December 23rd, 2012

This is a sacred time shrouded in sadness. This is usually a season to celebrate family ties and wishes for peace. But the holiday season was disrupted by the senseless massacre of 27 people. Twenty of them were small children.

President Obama mirrored the grief of the nation at these killings. At his press conference, the President identified as a parent, recognizing the painful loss that families face with the death of a child. Later, at a service in Newtown Connecticut he spoke movingly, offering consolation to the community.

“No single law, no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society,” he said. He added, “In the coming weeks I’ll use whatever power this office holds” in an effort “aimed at preventing more tragedies like this.”

“Because what choice do we have?” We can’t accept events like this as routine. Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage? That the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?”

It has been a long time since such public questions have been raised. Yet there is little sign that we as a people are willing to seriously pursue them. We fall quickly into the predictable debates of gun control laws, questions of motive and parenting, of mental illness and disturbed individuals.

But there is a deeper level of violence we continue to ignore.

For most of Adam Lanza’s life, we have been a country at war. We began these wars as an act of revenge, choosing vengeance over justice. We celebrated the obliteration of a city that played no part in the terrorist attack that provoked these responses. We have killed countless women, children, and men in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Libya. We have displayed the bodies of the son’s of our enemy on the hoods of cars, like animal trophies. We have justified the use of unspeakable tortures with legal arguments, unleashing the most sadistic impulses among us.

President Obama continues to justify war. He has celebrated the killing of Osama bin Laden and his right to have a list of enemies, to be killed by any means necessary. He has authorized the use of drone warfare, accepting as realistic politics the killing of those who happen to be nearby.

We, the people, have become so used to this killing, we rarely notice the formal apologies offered to those in Afghanistan and Pakistan when children are killed, wedding parties mistaken for armed attacks, villages destroyed as collateral damage. Such “carnage” is “routine.”

We have become a people of selective sensitivity. We identify with the children of Newton, but not those of Gaza. We understand the pain of parents at the sudden death of a child, but ignore the slow death of the spirit faced by families forced to live on the streets of our cities, amidst fear, hunger, and daily brutality.

If there is one lesson to be learned over this last decade it should be that we cannot commit public violence without private consequences. As long as we choose revenge over reconciliation and celebrate the death of anyone, we contribute to the culture of death.

We have come to accept a culture that claims some human life is more valuable than others. As long as our public life celebrates violence over virtue, those among us who are the least connected and most troubled will find our way to explode without restraint.

President Obama’s call for change is an opportunity for us to take an honest look in the mirror and to acknowledge how much we have to change if we are to become a people of peace.

Speaking Truth

By Shea Howell

February 3rd, 2013

Detroit Works (DW) launched a new format for its public information campaign about its strategic framework for the redevelopment of Detroit. The most recent newsletter says, “We know that Detroit Future City is an extensive document, so we would like to highlight smaller sections of the framework to make it easier for you to become familiar with the different strategies.” They begin by highlighting neighborhoods, and invite people to a series of “Road Shows” that they will coordinate throughout the city.

This effort to get people to carefully read the document is welcome. To assist in the dialogue, we offer some things for you to consider as you read it or participate in meetings. By way of illustration, we will explore the section on City Systems.

As we have explained in earlier articles, one of the deficiencies of the Detroit Works Project was the inability to answer basic questions about in whose interests the city will be reshaped. The implication from the Detroit Works team is that we do not have to choose among competing values or mutually exclusive alternatives.

There is some truth in this position. We would all benefit from the improvement in air and water quality, from more green space and an emphasis on healthy modes of transportation like bicycling and walking.

There is also a major problem in this approach. Early in the section on City Systems the DW team introduces the idea of “Reconciling and Replenishing.” Revamping our aging infrastructures are not just matters of “efficiency,” they say, but “it is a matter of just for all.” To emphasize this the report notes that these aging systems, “harm health as well as pocketbooks. In particular air pollution form industry and car exhaust have contributed to high rates of asthma and other respiratory diseases, especially among children.”

Later they specifically look at the impact of poor air quality, saying
“Detroiters have among the highest rates of asthma and related respiratory diseases nationally. African Americans and the poor are disproportionately affected due to the legacy of racially charged policies that targeted these communities as receivers of new highways, incinerators and industrial activity.”

Suggested strategic actions do not match these strong statements of the problems we face. This is because the document does not tackle any of the major private-corporate interests who have been so keen on diminishing our public services and public ownership of utilities and municipal responsibilities.

So, for example, in the Implementation Actions section for waste management we find these 3 items:

1. Reduce waste through citizen education and working with the packaging industry,

2.develop targeted and city wide curbside recycling programs, and

3. Ensure the incinerator emissions remain at or below US EPA standards and international best practices.

In other words, in spite of all of the claims of reinventing our city, this plan does not even entertain the possibility of closing the Detroit Incinerator. The closing of this incinerator would arguably be the single most important recommendation the DW could have made to immediately improve the quality of air we all breath.

The Incinerator has been the object of an international law suit to shut it down, innumerable citizens protests, at least two recent City Council resolutions attempting to stop city waste from being burned in it, and when those failed, a resolution to hire an attorney to seek an injunction against its continued use.

Why does this incinerator continue? One reason, according to Miller Canfield Attorneys who represent the incinerator is that it needs the city’s garbage in order to provide the steam it needs to meet the contracts it now has with the city to provide steam heat and power. We are putting lead into the air our children breath in the name of providing heat for their schools.

Redesigning our city requires more than ideas. It requires speaking the full truth to power.

State of Seige

By Shea Howell

Detroit is under siege. Slowly but surely the right wing forces in the state are tightening their grip. Whatever the outcome of negotiations among the Mayor, City Council and the State over the next few weeks, it is clear that Lansing politicians intend to run the city.

They intend to eliminate the political power of Detroit residents. They intend to transfer public resources into private hands. They intend to destroy unions. They intend for their consultant friends and contributors to make money in the process.

Most Detroiters know that the use of the emergency financial manager law has nothing to do with concern for the financial health of the city. It is a legalized power grab to disempower citizens and take public resources.

People in Lansing and around the state rub their hands with glee as they claim the financial crisis of Detroit is proof we are incapable of running our own city. They refuse to look at the structural problems they have helped create, or to acknowledge their debt to the city. Nor have they acknowledged that Emergency Managers have yet to solve any of the problems that justified their creation.

In a recent article in the New York Times, David Firestone, removed from the Detroit bashing of Lansing, observed, “Muscling the city aside would clearly be undemocratic, and it is not even clear how effective it would be. The state took over Detroit’s schools in 2009, and has little to show for it yet except for more closed schools and a continuing exodus of students and teachers.”

Firestone concluded the article noting, “The solution may be in the suburbs that have siphoned off Detroit’s money and jobs and talent for decades. A true emergency manager, as many people here have suggested, would have the power to begin merging the tax base of the city with that of suburban counties in hopes of saving the region.”

Any Consent Agreement that does not include the power tax the surrounding suburbs is a sham.

We need to support every effort to challenge this law. We need to encourage the Mayor and the Council to insist on their authority to make decisions. If the state is unwilling to protect the elected officials, we encourage the city to declare bankruptcy. Such a process would not be pleasant, but over the last few years, the court system has proven more sensitive to the democratic right of the citizens of the city than has Lansing.

The thoughts of putting Detroit in its place and getting their hands on all of our assets are blinding the powers in Lansing to the very real rage that is smoldering in the city. As they narrow the political space that Detroiters have to redress our grievances, to come together to resolve our problems and to discuss our own future, the right wing forces in Lansing are pushing people toward more and more desperate measures.

This assault on our basic rights and dignity is especially evident to Detroiters who are engaging in real democratic actions all over the city. As Wayne Curtis of Feedem Freedom Growers said this weekend in New York City at the Left Forum, “Growing our gardens is about making decisions that matter. It is a process that challenges our marginalization and gives us control over our lives.” All across Detroit, people are recreating a new kind of direct democracy, making decisions about planting gardens, protecting parks, running churches, establishing peace zones, creating activities for children, supporting elders, and finding ways to recreate communities ties.

Lansing is playing a dangerous, losing game. Most Detroiters know that the world is changing, challenging those who abuse people and use power for their own gain. The long, deep struggle to control our own lives on principles that value ourselves and one another will not be taken over or given up.

The 8th Annual Great Lakes Bioneers Detroit Conference

Click here to download the flyer: The 8th Annual Great Lakes Bioneers Detroit Conference

October 19 – 21, 2012

Connect, Collaborate and Celebrate!

Speakers and workshops on sustainability and eco-justice movements.

“Growing Resilient Communities”

Learn more and register at: www.GLBD.org

The Future: Part 2

By Grace Lee Boggs

April 28th, 2013

(This article was originally published 20 years ago in The Future: Images for the 21st Century, edited by University of Michigan Professor Bunyan Bryant).  Read Part 1 here.

“Rebeginnings”

The American family must be redeñned. reinvented, and re­created because today’s nuclear families are caricatures of what families have been and can be. The family is still the best place to prepare the next generation for life.  But to fulfill this role, families need to become multi-generational communities of work. This transformation cannot take place separate and apart from the transformation of our communities, our cities, and our schools.

“Communities of Work”

In order for our families to become communities of work, our cities must move towards greater economic self-reliance. That means we must rid ourselves of the myth that there is something sacred about large-scale production for the national and international markets. Actually, our experiences since World War II have been teaching us that production for the national and international markets makes it much easier for multinational corporations to eliminate the jobs of millions of workers and to turn cities like Detroit into wastelands. Moreover, large-scale production promotes consumerism, which is one of the chief causes for the decline in the American family. Because it is based on a huge separation between production and consumption, large-scale production turns both producers and consumers into faceless masses who are alienated from one another and are at the mercy of the market and the mass media.

To increase economic self-reliance, our cities need to move toward import substitution. Instead of importing food and goods, we need to create small local enterprises which produce food, goods, and services for local consumption. Instead of destroying the skills of workers as large-scale industry does, these enterprises would combine craftsmanship with the new technologies that would make possible flexible consumers.

Families can play a critical role in this movement toward local self-reliance by creating community gardens, greenhouses and workshops. They can come together to plant a community garden, to rehabilitate a house for a community center, to produce T-shirts for community organizations and activities, to repair appliances, and to organize community recycling centers and garage and yard sales which can develop into neighborhood stores. By creating a closer relationship between families and the work process, we can involve children in productive activities that develop responsibility and self-esteem.

“Living this Equality”

According to Betty Friedan, the mother of the modern women’s movement, we are now in the second ‘stage of the struggle for equality between men and women.

“The first stage was just having access, breaking through the simple barriers of sex discrimination to get access to training and opportunity in all of the work outside the home. We have done that significantly.” The second stage is “living this equality.”

In this stage there “has to be a profound restructuring of both work and home. In the past, work-the preparation for professions, the lines of advancement, the very hours-was structured in terms of the lives of men who had wives to take care of their other life. And home was structured in terms of the 24-hour service of a full-time housewife-mother. The great majority of women are now working outside the home, as much from sheer necessity as from new opportunity, and they are working for most of their lives. Most women and most families can’t afford to have women go home again, but the implication is that this is your own personal problem, and it’s all because the feminists are giving you ambitions for careers that have gonen you into this predicament.”

Integrating work with the home and community creates a basis for mothers and fathers to “live this equality” by spending more time at home with their children and less time working in factories and offices. Men especially need this involvement with the life process. One of the chief reasons why young Black males are an “endangered species” today is that they have become so removed from the lives of those whom they helped to create.

For this integration of family and work to succeed, work outside the home will also have to be restructured so that men and women can work flex-time and part-time.

More Family, Not Less

The overwhelming majority of Americans who today live in cities and suburbs cannot be expected to go back to the farms where parents, siblings, relatives, and grandparents lived in the same household or nearby. But we do not have to accept the frightening and dangerous isolation of today’s families. Whether we live in the city or the suburbs, we can consciously choose to live close to our parents and friends so that children grow up knowing their grandparents; we can choose to live within walking or biking distance of concerned adults, instead of being dependent upon cars or phones for such contacts. When we rent, buy, or build in a neighborhood, we can consciously choose one with a diversified and intergenerational cross-section of the population, consisting of persons of all ages and at all stages of the life families, larger families with older children, retired and working olderpersons and couples, singles, people with a wide variety of skills, occupations,and life styles-so that children will have many different adult role models.

Together with our neighbors we can organize block parties, youth block clubs, community parks and other projects so that we do not simply live next to one another but are naturally and normally developing a common interest and concern for the children of the neighborhood. To prepare children to become self-governing citizens, we can participate in ongoing struggles and activities to decide policy for our community, our city, and our country.

One of the fears we have inherited from communities of the past is that they will be narrow-minded and parochial. To safeguard against this danger, parents can consciously choose to live in ethnically diverse communities where their children, while learning the richness of their-own cultural heritage, are also exposed to the cultures of other groups. Conscious that their children are growing up in a period of rapid change, parents can welcome neighbors who, like Socrates, do not tell young people what to think or how to live but encourage them to think for themselves. And recognizing that our market economy is producing growing numbers of the homeless and hungry, parents can consciously create ways and means for our children to relate compassionately to those less fortunate so that they are not perceived as “the other.”

Communities of this diversity and common concern can be created through the conscious choice made by millions of individuals and families as to where to settle and how to live together as neighbors. Those who want to make a deeper commitment can organize cooperatives or intentional communities with common areas (central house, backyards, gardens, workshops, etc.). In the past these intentional communities usually had to be established in remote rural areas. But as more vacant lots and abandoned houses become available for “rehabbing” in cities like Detroit, there are increasing opportunities to organize Urban Cooperative/Enterprise communities or what is known as “Co-Housing.” The important thing is not that communities all be alike but that as we decide where and how to live, we think of our homes and neighborhoods as human settlements rather than as labor reservoirs or markets for industry.

Transforming our Schools

To redefine and reinvent our families we will also have to redefine and re-invent our schools. In the past it was assumed that families had responsibility for raising children, instilling in them common sense and values, while the role of the schools was to provide cognitive or academic skills. Conservatives still argue for this sharp division of roles. On the other hand, as more parents have been forced to work outside the home, they have come to depend upon the schools not only to baby-sit their children, but to teach them “sense.” As a result, there is a growing tension between teachers and parents. Teachers complain that children do not come to school prepared to learn, while parents complain that teachers do not educate their children.

The American school system is structured for the advancement of the upwardly mobile individual, and thus reinforce the individualism that Bronfenbrenner says is one of the chief causes for the decline of the family. As long as American industry was expanding, this system worked pretty well. A small minority went on to college and got the diplomas that enabled them to get good jobs and escape from the community. Those who dropped out of high school got jobs in the plant, which enabled them to marry and raise families. But in today’s de-industriaiized cities there are no decent paying jobs for the more than 40% who drop out of school; so men father children but don’t get married.

And school dropouts take out their frustration and anger in acts of vandalism and violence that create fear and devastation within the community. Thus we urgently need to restructure our schools so that they are no longer institutions to promote individual advancement out of the community. Instead, they should serve the building of the community and the all-around development of the individual. The core of the school curriculum should be the economic and social development of the community, with teachers, administrators, students, and citizens working together to achieve this goal. In this process children will learn through practice, which has always been the best way to learn. While they are absorbing the values of socìal responsibility naturally and normally, they will be stimulated to learn skills and acquire information in order to solve real problems.

Instead of simply being fed information from secondary sources, young people will be involved in solving the problems of their neighborhoods, communities, and cities; solutions that will require value judgments as well as factual knowledge and skills. Working collectively or in groups rather than as individuals competing with one another, they will also discover that multiple answers are possible, and that discovery will reinforce the importance of living in a pluralistic and constantly changing society.

For example, how can we renovate rather than demolish homes to combat the low-cost housing shortage that has created the growing homeless population? How can we grow our food in neighborhood gardens and greenhouses so that it doesn’t have to be adulterated with preservatives as a result of being transported thousands of miles? How can we conserve energy in our homes and school buildings and recycle what we do and do not use in our homes and schools?­ How can we serve nutritious and environmentally friendly food in the school cafeteria? How can we utilize the natural resources of our region, e.g., the sand which is so abundant in Michigan, to manufacture storm windows, and other glass products for solar heating?

Schools restructured along these lines will require cooperation and mutual respect between teachers who know and are concerned about the community and members of the community who are concerned with the development of children. Children who grapple with such questions in school will be prepared to strengthen their families, their communities, and their cities as “communities of work.”

It is not going to be easy to create a new relationship between our schools and our communities. The old relationship has lasted so long and has been accepted so uncritically that change will require intensive dialogue, time, and experimentation. Fortunately the growing movement toward “Choice” and decentralized administration of schools provides the challenge for local communities to undertake experiments. Change in this direction is especially urgent for schools in the inner city. Unless the community becomes the core of the curriculum of inner-city schools, these schools will continue to be abandoned by those parents most interested in the education of their children.

Conclusion

These “rebeginnings” may appear utopian at this time. However, in the next thirty years-as we are confronted with the continuing erosion of our families, our communities, our schools, and our cities, as permanent unemployment becomes a reality for the tens of millions who are no longer needed by American hi-tech and multinational corporations, as environmental considerations cry out for more conservationist and human-scale lifestyles, and as the bankrupt budgets of city, state and federal governments continue to cut back on social programs-necessity will force more and more Americans to move toward reinventing and redefining our families, our communities,  cities, and our schools along these or similar lines.

The New Agtivist: Edith Floyd is making a Detroit urban farm, empty lot by empty lot

Edith Floyd is the real deal. With little in the way of funding or organizational infrastructure, she runs Growing Joy Community Garden on the northeast side of Detroit. Not many folks bother to venture out to her neighborhood, but Edith has been inspiring me for years. I caught up with her on a cold, rainy November afternoon. While we talked in the dining room, her husband Henry watched their grandkids.

Read the entire interview with Ms. Edith at Grist.org

The Viet Nam War and the U.S.A. of Amnesia

By Frank Joyce

March 24th, 2013

Forty years ago, on January 27, 1973, the United States  officially stopped carrying out direct military attacks against Viet Nam.  That phase of the war ended with the signing of the Paris Peace Accords.  Henry Kissinger and Viet Nam’s Le Duc Tho subsequently won the Nobel Peace prize for negotiating the agreement.

In Viet Nam the anniversary was a very big deal. I know because  I was part of a delegation of Americans and other anti-war activists from around the world invited to participate in events commemorating the Paris Peace accords.  An official ceremony in Hanoi was carried live on national TV.  Deep gratitude was expressed to the U.S. civilians and soldiers who resisted the war.

The Vietnamese government wants young people to better understand the war and its place in Viet Nam’s past, present and future.  They think it’s especially important because 80 percent of the population has been born since the war ended.

Many young Americans were also born since the Viet Nam war ended. But the number of stories in the US media about the Paris Peace Accords anniversary was Zero. That’s not really surprising because we really are the United States of Amnesia. It all goes back to slavery.

The United States is exceptional. Never before did a spanking new nation birth its economy and its government on capitalist slavery and genocidal policies toward the indigenous people.  The consequences of that birth “defect” are very much with us today.  One of them is that we are loathe to recognize how much the consequences are with us today.

The fact of slavery required a rationalization for slavery.  When that ended,  the fact of Jim Crow segregation required the moral justification of the Jim Crow system.  And so it goes.  Such moral excuses require a lot of mental gymnastics.

Given what we are beginning to learn about neuroscience,  we can understand that rationalizing slavery (and genocide) form neural paths that become part of the collective DNA of our citizenry.  Avoidance, denial, and hypocrisy are essential components of the process. Those thought habits get passed from generation to generation.

Given that the USA has yet to come to terms with slavery we have avoided many, many other issues as well.  It’s what we do.  So we also have yet to process our decades long 20th century brutality in Viet Nam, Cambodia and Laos.  Instead we just moved on to apply similar thinking and actions to Grenada, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Africa and Iran.

It becomes almost inevitable that we make the same mistakes over and over again in trying to force other nations to bend to our will and “way of life.” It also means that we fail to connect the viciousness we visit on other countries with the brutality that characterizes our own culture.

Does anyone seriously think we can control gun violence at home when we commit massive gun violence every day in countries all over the world?  Or that “PTSD”  homicides,  suicides and domestic violence are not “blowback” (chickens come home to roost) from foreign aggression?  Of course ,we elevate a distorted view of the second amendment which was originally passed for purposes of slave control to a preeminent position in the U.S. constitution.

There is,  fortunately, another side to this story.  The history and traditions of our nation also include an abolitionist movement.  Whites died in the struggle to end Jim Crow segregation in the South.  African Americans and whites died in opposing U.S. wars against Viet Nam,  Laos and Cambodia.  And the anti-war movement did make a difference in bringing that war to an end more quickly than would otherwise have been the case.

In observing the end of the U.S. war, the Vietnamese made very clear that they see both sides of the picture. They know the reality so brilliantly described in the recently published book by Nick Turse,  Kill Everything That Moves.  Those atrocities  were daily reality to the Vietnamese (and the Laotians and Cambodians).

As Chris Hedges says in his recent review:  “Case after case in his book makes it painfully clear that soldiers and Marines deliberately maimed, abused, beat, tortured, raped, wounded or killed hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians, including children, with impunity. Troops engaged in routine acts of sadistic violence usually associated with demented Nazi concentration camp guards.

“The few incidents of wanton killing in Vietnam—and this is also true for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—that did become public, such as My Lai, were dismissed as an aberration, the result of a few soldiers or Marines gone bad. But, as Turse makes clear, such massacres were and are, in our current imperial adventures, commonplace. The slaughters “were the inevitable outcome of deliberate policies, dictated at the highest levels of the military,” he writes. They were carried out because the dominant tactic of the war, as conceived by our politicians and generals, was centered on the concept of “overkill.” And when troops on the ground could not kill fast enough, the gunships, helicopters, fighter jets and bombers came to their assistance. The U.S. Air Force contributed to the demented quest for “overkill”—eradicating so many of the enemy that recuperation was theoretically impossible—by dropping the equivalent of 640 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs on Vietnam, most actually falling on the south where our purported Vietnamese allies resided. And planes didn’t just drop bombs. They unloaded more than 70 million tons of herbicidal agents, 3 million white phosphorus rockets—white phosphorous will burn its way entirely through a body—and an estimated 400,000 tons of jellied incendiary napalm.”

Yes, the Vietnamese know that reality and its ongoing consequences including continuing birth defects from Agent Orange and unexploded U.S. bombs that still kill and maim.  But they also know and celebrate the contributions of the anti-war movement  that helped shorten the war.

Here in the U.S. the government and the mainstream media see neither. The sooner we truly appreciate what we did in Viet Nam,  the sooner we will make real headway at dealing with injustice and violence here at home.

Time Banks – Your Time Has Come!

“Everybody has skills.  Everybody has skills.  Period.”

Like a lot of places, the folks in Portland, Maine don’t have the cash to get all the goods and services they need, so they are taking an old-school approach to help their friends and neighbors get through these tough times. NBC’s Ron Mott reports.

Check out this recent NBC story on Time Banks.

Meanwhile, the MI Alliance of TimeBanks reports that “there are now eight active TimeBanks and at least six more in exploration stage across the state.”

TNAR on Michael Eric Dyson

”Grace Lee Boggs is one of the most interesting and well-known civil and human rights advocates of our time. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, the Detroit resident married an African-American autoworker, James Boggs, and was deeply involved with women’s rights and civil rights movements. She’s the author of several books, including her latest, The Next American Revolution: A Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century. Boggs—still as spry and sharp as ever at the age of 95—and the book’s co-author, Dr. Scott Kurashige, discuss the book and what they feel is needed today in the fight for justice.”

You can listen live on WDET 101.9 FM at around 1:15 PM or listen to the recording right here.

Toward Beloved Communities

By Shea Howell

March 24, 2013

The appointment of Kevyn Orr as the Emergency Manager of Detroit is a sad day for democracy. There is a growing understanding that the financial crisis justifying this move was manufactured by the withholding of state funds, the drive to protect the $474 millions paid to banks, and the desire to wrest control of the city away from its people and put it into the hands of the corporate elite. Further, we know that nowhere in the state have emergency managers solved any structural problems. Nor have they improved services. They have sold off city assets, shifted common responsibilities for public health, safety, and the general good into private hands for windfall profits. They have set aside contracts for immediate services and compacts made across generations.

Emergency managers violate the will of the people. In Detroit, the EM assumes power over the objections of the City Council and a broad array of civic leaders and organizations. The appointment has sparked widespread protest and civil disobedience that will no doubt continue as citizens seek to express their righteous anger at this assault on democratic rights. Today nearly half of all African Americans cannot vote to control their local government and 75% of African American elected officials have been removed from power. There is a rising cry for federal intervention to stop the EM.

The anguish of this moment is beyond words. It forces us to look deeply into our own history to find ways to remind one another of the kind of future we wish for ourselves and our children.

For many of us this moment evokes the struggle for civil rights in Montgomery in 1955.  Central to that struggle was the belief that we could create a new, Beloved Community, reflecting radical love and respect for one another.

What does radical love look like now? How do we move toward the creation of a loving community, rooted in principles of respect, dignity, and a drive to create sustainable, joyful ways of living?

Many of us have known for a long time that representative democracy would never move us toward this kind of loving community. There is too much money to be made, too many deals to be cut, and too many egos to protect. We cannot vote our way to a new future.

But we can create it. As the EM moves into the corridors of city hall, we need to deepen our relationships on the corners and sidewalks in our neighborhoods, block clubs and places of worship. We need to create opportunities to educate one another, to share ideas, strategies, and tactics for improving our daily life in the places where we live, walk, work, and pray.

We need to remember that the bus boycott grew out of a community of people that had long practiced democratic actions without any right to vote. They built churches, colleges, hospitals, schools, businesses, civic associations, and recreational centers. They developed strategies to call upon the U.S. government to live up to its highest ideals.

This history can guide us as we develop new democratic forms to create real participatory power, flowing from people making our own decisions about how we will live.

Regardless of the EM, the City Council should hold regular public meeting so citizens can openly discuss the impact of the decisions being made by the EM, share information, and strategies. The Council should follow the lead of our School Board in Exile, using such forums to insist upon transparency and accountability.

Regardless of the EM, civic organizations and places of faith should establish citizens councils to assume public responsibilities for improving neighborhood life and meeting the basic needs of people.

Regardless of the EM, citizens should organize in ways that will bring our new City Charter to life, emphasizing the creation of district leadership out of our efforts to take care of one another.

The only solution to this assault on our city is for each of us to take responsibility for recreating community life, based on respect for one another and the earth that sustains us.

In loving community, we can build a new democracy that cannot be stolen.

Towards a Restorative Justice in Detroit

By Marcia Lee

March 31st, 2013

For the past four years Forbes magazine has ranked Detroit as the most violent city in the nation.  Some might argue that this is  because we are a city without much financial capital and/or because there are too many guns on the street.  Although there is truth in both these statements , I believe, as my colleague Henry McClendon likes to say, “The problem is not that we have a violence problem in Detroit; it’s  that we have a relationship problem.”

There was a time when we did not go to the police to solve problems in our communities. Instead we would gather with the people in our communities, with our cousins and elders. Together we would solve conflicts in our communities.

There was a time when the focus was on listening to what people said had happened and working with the people who had been impacted to resolve the problem instead of forced separation and punishment.  There was a time when elders guided younger generations and younger generations worked with elders to maintain the community.

Now is a good time to work not only to resolve conflicts after they occur, but to create spaces for healthy relationships that will mean fewer conflicts.  Now is a good time to recall older practices, to build relationships with our neighbors, and to rediscover creative and community-guided solutions.  Now is a time to share our stories and learn from each others’ wisdom.

This is the focus of restorative justice: working with people in our/their own communities to bring healing to the people who have been harmed by violence and conflict.  We work on healing wounds and holding people accountable for their actions.

In line with this vision and in response to horrible violence, the Detroit Area Restorative Justice Center and Corktown Restorative Justice Network were born.

Over the past couple of years small groups have been meeting to envision how to work together to create peace zones in our city.  We now have an office in the Hive Space at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church.

We host trainings on Introduction to Peacemaking Circles and a Speakers Series on alternating months.  The office is currently open on Tuesdays if people want to drop in to talk through a conflict or set up an appointment.  With the Corktown group, our focus is on supporting people who live in Corktown, but we are also happy to work with people or organizations in other areas to support them in resolving conflicts.

On April 27th, from 9am-4pm , we will be hosting a gathering for Restorative Justice practitioners to come together to learn from each other and create a vision of how to make Detroit into the Restorative Justice City in the United States.  Grace Lee Boggs will begin the day for us by sharing her vision.

If you have questions about the Restorative Justice work happening in Detroit or want to become involved, please contact us at detroitrestorativejustice@gmail.com.

Together we can make this vision come to life, one relationship at a time.

United Against EM

By Shea Howell

March 10th, 2013

If Governor Snyder had any sense, he would find a way to back off from the decision to appoint an emergency manager for the city of Detroit. This is a manufactured financial emergency, created to justify seizing control of the city’s assets, breaking the power of democratic constituents, and blunting the newly revised Detroit City Charter. It is based on bogus figures.

If Governor Snyder was concerned about Detroit, he would pay attention to what the people have said at every opportunity. We do not want a state takeover. We do not want public assets turned over for private gain. We do not want to destroy the city for short term financial fixes. We do not believe Lansing has the interests of the people of Detroit in mind. We want the state to live up to its financial obligations to the city. We want the state to respect local home rule and the sovereignty of cities.

Virtually no one in the city thinks an emergency manager is a good idea. In the last election, 82% of the people voted against this law. Only the mainstream media, who flanked Governor Snyder during the announcement of his plan, have endorsed this effort.

Detroit Congressional representative Gary Peters echoed the core objections of citizens. Emergency managers are undemocratic. They do not solve the problems of any city. In a forceful statement challenging the decision, Congressmen Peters said, “I fundamentally disagree with taking measures that disenfranchise the families I represent in Detroit. Having represented the City of Pontiac for years, I’ve seen the kind of damage that can occur when emergency managers sacrifice opportunities for long-term growth in order to achieve short-term budgetary goals. In practice, emergency managers in Michigan have consistently failed to address the systemic problems plaguing older urban areas like Detroit.”

Every candidate for Mayor has rejected the idea. Here are their central concerns, in alphabetical order.

Tom Barrow said, “I am sickened by Michigan’s Governor talk about my city and my people as if Detroit is the human dump of the state, as if real Detroiters are incapable of running our own city. “  In the spirit of Frederick Douglass, Barrow said, “I call upon my fellow Detroiters, activists and citizens alike, to let’s meet to plan our actions to combat this abrogation of democracy.  It may require civil disobedience in the name of all Americans who love freedom and democracy; it may require us to choose economic targets to boycott; strategic locations to disrupt; facilities to protect symbolically, and a plan of communication to our nation to show our outrage.”

Almost immediately following the report from the financial review team, Krystal Crittendon issued a detailed analysis, citing specific “omissions and inaccuracies.” She demonstrated how the debt numbers were inflated and there was no mention of money owed the city by businesses or by the state. She followed this analysis with an appeal to the Mayor and City Council to appeal the governor’s findings. She said, “Detroit should join other cities around the state in fighting for economic and political sovereignty.”

Mike Duggan objected because he does not believe emergency managers can attract the kind of people necessary to create long-term financial stability. He thinks short-term decision-making could lead to “terrible” mistakes.

Lisa Howze, a former state legislator and a CPA, also offered a detailed analysis of the accounting failures. She indicted the failure of the State to live up to its responsibilities under the Consent Agreement to assist in local tax collection and the refusal of the state legislature to pass laws forcing businesses to collect local taxes.

Benny Napoleon said that this decision was the “antithesis of democracy” and he thought the “numbers may be skewed.”

From the pragmatic to the philosophical, Detroiters are uniting in their commitment to creating a new, living democracy in the city.

We Are Not Ghosts

WE ARE NOT GHOSTS! Rebuilding Detroit from the Bottom up – preview from Mark Dworkin on Vimeo.

Fifty years ago Detroit was booming, with two million hard working people living the American Dream. Then the auto industry fell on hard times and so did Detroit. Most people moved away.

Whole neighborhoods turned into wastelands. But some have a vision for a new Detroit, as a
human scaled city for a post industrial world. And they are starting to make it real. As spoken
word artist Jessica Care Moore puts it, “Somebody’s gotta tell them, that we are not ghosts, that we are in this city and we are alive!”

Many who stayed in Detroit envision a new kind of city for the post industrial era, and they are remaking themselves and their city from the ground up – with street art and the spoken word, with urban gardens and place based schools, with new local businesses, with block clubs and neighborhood groups to reduce violence.

Longtime Detroit activist and philosopher, Grace Lee Boggs, is one inspiration for many of
these efforts. “When crises happen, people not only try to solve them materially, of course they do. But they also recognize that something more fundamental is involved. Someone looks at a vacant lot and says, ‘I’m going to grow food on that.’ Somebody says, ‘we have to talk to our neighbors more, we have to bring the neighbor back into the hood.’ That is a profoundly philosophical approach.”

Industrial Detroit flourished in the mid 20th century, as the Great Migration brought tens of
thousands of African Americans and poor whites to Detroit to work in the auto industry. Says
civil rights lawyer Alice Jennings, “For many years it was truly the promised land, because
people could come here and they could have a job….We lived on a street with trees, nice homes, they were small homes, working class homes.” After decades of white flight, now Detroit is 80% African American, and many Detroiters still own their own homes.

“We got a chance to know our neighbors and to build life long friendships,” comments Kim
Sherrobi of the Birwood neighborhood, “The foreclosure crisis hit us pretty hard, and we’re still trying to come together and figure out solutions to live with the situation that we’re in. It’s not easy, but it’s definitely do-able and we’re going to make the best of it.”

In the 140 square miles of Detroit there is not one full service supermarket. “You have this
food desert and that’s a really terrible thing,” according to Greg Willerer, who grows vegetables on empty lots and sells them at the Eastern Market, “but it also opens up the possibility for some really amazing solutions.” “We have vast amounts of land that other cities simply don’t have,”.says Malik Yakini of the Detroit Food Policy Council, “and so we have this opportunity to grow massive amounts of food.” Yakini works with the D-town community farm that harvests several acres of vegetables and fruit in the city’s largest park.

Greening of Detroit trains home gardeners and provides seeds, tools, and starts, “everything you need to be a successful home gardener,” says director Rebecca Salminen Witt. At first the goal was just to increase the supply of fresh healthy food in the city. But local gardens also enlist the energy of young people and draw communities together, according to the organizer of one community garden, Myrtle Thompson Curtis.

New community based businesses are revitalizing Detroit, like flowers poking up through
cracks in the concrete. “We just wanted a way to make a living and make a difference,” says
Jackie Victor who helped to start Avalon, an organic bakery that has inspired 15 other new local businesses in a once blighted commercial neighborhood. Parent and teacher run schools promote place based education where students and community join forces to make things better. And Peace Zones for Life works to reduce violence and monitor police.

“I think the 20th century is a century of expanding materialism, of expanding conflicts, of
expanding consumerism. And we’re only beginning to understand that in the course of all of this expansion, we have lost our souls. And this is a great opportunity to begin to see how much we have been damaged by our affluence, how much in our pursuit of affluence we have exploited the earth, exploited other peoples, damaged ourselves.” Grace Lee Boggs

In We Are Not Ghosts, we see Detroiters remaking themselves and their city, with vision and
spirit not usually included in mass media reports that focus only on the city’s problems. “So
don’t write eulogies for Detroit,” says spoken word artist Jessica Care Moore, “no uninspired
folk song of gloom. Some of us are coming home to show the world, how we make the planet
move.”

About the producers:
Seasoned filmmakers Mark Dworkin and Melissa Young produced the film. Other recent films include Good Food, broadcast nationally on PBS in 2010, Setting the Stage, featured at the 2011 United Nations Association Film Festival, and now in production, Shift Change: Putting Democracy to Work.

Review:
In the voices, work and imagination of Detroiters a new world is taking shape. People are
remaking their city based on new concepts of sustainable, loving connections with one another and our earth. We Are Not Ghosts opens up a new way of thinking about Detroit and the possibilities we all have to make a better world. – Sharon Howell, Professor of Communication, Oakland University, columnist, Michigan Citizen

Please see http://www.movingimages.org/page22.html
Photos available upon request: Melissa@movingimages.org

We’re the Leaders We’re Looking For

By Grace Lee Boggs

November 26th, 2012

Obama‘s re-election is a challenge to us.

In his first term he did not make the profound changes his supporters hoped for. But he was re-elected because he did enough to bring into being a new demographic.

On November 6, he won 93 percent of black, 73 percent of Asian, and 71 percent of Hispanic/Latino voters. He also won 60 percent of those aged 18-29. These voters represent the future of our country.

His re-election also marginalized the Republican Party which may never recover.

The main lesson we need to draw from Obama’s first term is that we can’t look to him to make the profound changes urgently needed at this time on the clock of the world.

That is because these changes can’t be made in or from the White House. They require profound changes in us, the American people.

WE THE PEOPLE are the ones who must and can make these changes.

WE THE PEOPLE are the ones who can  and must begin living more simply to slow down global warming and prevent more Katrinas, Irenes,  Sandys, wildfires, floods, melting icecaps, droughts.

WE THE PEOPLE are the ones who must make the radical revolution of values not only against racism but also against materialism and militarism that Dr. King called for in his 1967 “Break the Silence” speech.

WE THE PEOPLE are the ones who must begin Redefining and Re-Imagining Work, Education, Community.

 “We are the children of Martin and Malcolm,
   Black. brown, yellow, white.
   Our right, our duty
   To shake the world with a new dream.”

WE ARE THE LEADERS WE’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR!

Week 1 of the Occupation: Life, Liberty and Happiness

By Shea Howell

March 31st, 2013

As Kevyn Orr assumes civil powers in Detroit, the mainstream media has launched a campaign to tell us all how glad we should be that such a fine person now has charge of everything. They have shared a “glimpse” of his personal life, detailed facts about his career, and generously overlooked embarrassing tax questions or potential conflicts of interest. They have assured us that he wants to extend “a sincere olive branch and an opportunity for us to work together.”

They have also taken a curious turn in their arguments for why we should all welcome the loss of our democratic rights. It seems we will now have safe streets, with the street lights Stephen Henderson has so longed for back on, and wonderful city services.

In one of the most curious guest editorials I have ever read, former city council woman Shelia Cockrel argued that “Voting is a fundamental right, of course, but isn’t the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness of equal importance?” Professor John Patrick Leary offers a critical analysis of this position concluding, “Cockrel’s retail approach to democracy is also a misunderstanding of how rights work: in a truly democratic society, it’s not life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness, best two out of three, but all of them, together, of equal importance. You can’t lose one without degrading the others. To rationalize otherwise means that this sort of liberalism is really as bankrupt as the city is about to be.”

This idea of swapping democracy for city services is revealing both for the shallowness of the understanding of fundamental rights and for what is dropped out of the justification for the EFM. The financial rationale is no longer being advanced. Rather it appears as a given background statement of fact labeled “the budget crisis” or “financial emergency.” This is usually followed by the oft -repeated figures of a $327 million deficit and long term debt of $14 billion.

The fact that many analysts question the financial justification for the appointment of an EFM is overlooked.

No one disputes that Detroit, like other cities around the globe, faces serious structural challenges. But many of us do dispute that this crisis constitutes an emergency justifying the loss of local, democratic, self -determination. Tom Barrow recently noted,  “Detroit has not missed a single bond payment, interest payment, or payroll.”

Shifting the argument from finances to city services allows those who support the EFM to obscure the State’s role in creating this financial crisis. It is important to remember that since 1998 Detroit’s annual revenue sharing has plunged 46 percent to $181.6 million projected for the current fiscal year from $333.9 million.

Further, it obscures the role of Wall Street bankers. A recent article in Businessweek reported, “The only winners in the financial crisis that brought Detroit to the brink of state takeover are Wall Street bankers who reaped more than $474 million from a city too poor to keep street lights working.”

It also deflects attention away from the shifting mood in Lansing, where republican lawmakers are talking about releasing money to Detroit. Republican representatives John Walsh, Jase Bolger and Randy Richardville are reported open to financial support for the city.

This new openness in Lansing, as well as the philanthropic and law enforcement collaboratives announced by the Mayor, underscore the central element of this takeover.

It is not about improving the quality of life for Detroiters. It is about power and control. The pursuit of life, liberty and happiness will not come from an EFM whose job is to privatize our city. It depends on what we can create in our own communities.

Week Two of the Occupation: At The Crossroads

By Shea Howell

April 7th, 2013

Governor Snyder has stepped up his campaign to convince people that the appointment of an Emergency Financial Manager in Detroit is a good thing. He has released a series of You Tube clips including comments by former City Council member Sheila Cockrel, various “young professionals,” and Rev. Jerome Warfield, Chairman of the Board of Police Commissioners. All echo the same theme that city services from lighting to police protection are in disarray. As Rev. Warfield claims Detroit is “beyond a crossroads.”

The mainstream media uncritically picks up the theme, finding Detroiters who will speak in support of the manager, or diminish those who oppose his appointment. Most recently Rochelle Riley, of the Detroit Free Press, talked about city wide district elections and quoted extensively from Bishop Edgar Vann, pastor of Second Ebenezer Church. Vann says: “The anti-EFM people are going to be running their own slate of candidates,” he said. “So with all the attention media are giving them, all you have to do is get a bullhorn and stand on a box. You don’t want (the ballot) full of bottom-feeders and somebody who’s a block club president who maybe can’t even read and write.”

Such forcefully crude sentiments are critical to Snyder’s efforts to lull people into acceptance of the Emergency Financial Manager. He is hoping to link discontent with services to the idea that the EFM will improve life in the city. He is hoping we will forget only 5% of the city voted for him and 82% voted against an EFM.

Nowhere in the state has an Emergency Financial Manager improved city services or made the streets safe. Flint, enduring an emergency manager for years, now has the highest murder rate in the nation. Benton Harbor, stripped of public assets by Joe Harris, its former EFM, ranks among the top Michigan cities in violent crimes. Pontiac has outsourced vital police and fire protection. Highland Park gave up streetlights all together. Flint is considering charging people for the water used to put out fires. The idea that by cutting budgets, public services will improve flies in the face of all logic and common sense. Spending less on city services will not get us more, no matter how many police cars are donated to the city.

This notion of spending less to get more comes from the right wing republican philosophy that all public services would be “better” if they were run by private enterprises. Schools, police, fire, blight reduction, prisons, road maintenance and sanitation services are all thought to be better run though the magic of the market place.

Our experience across the state now proves otherwise. Privatized public responsibilities lead to poor services. Public goods are sacrificed for private profits. We have watched schools close as class sizes increase, seen fire trucks replaced with pick up trucks, and found deals made behind closed doors to benefit those entrusted with unlimited authority.

There is another philosophic tradition in our country we can draw upon. This second week of Occupation in Detroit coincides with the 46th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Time to Break the Silence” speech delivered April 4th, 1967 at Riverside Church in New York. In this speech Dr. King not only spoke against the war in Vietnam, but called for a radical revolution in values against the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism. He called upon all of us to find the ways toward the creation of beloved community as the only alternative to the violence threatens all of us.

His call, to deepen our ties to one another, to care more deeply and consciously for the most vulnerable among us, to assume responsibilities for developing a future based on the protection of people rather than the pursuit of things, marks the real crossroads we face today.

What Kind of City?

By Shea Howell

November 27, 2012

What kind of city will Detroit become? That is the fundamental question underlying the struggles swirling through the City Council chambers. It is the question that has been brewing, sometimes boiling over, in public opposition to much of the direction dictated by the State, the foundation-government elite, and the Mayor.

In the last session of the City Council, this question burst out into the open. Most people in the city were heartened by the refusal of Council to be bullied into a questionable contract with Miller Canfield, the dismantling of the water department, and the wholesale transfer of vast amounts of land to John Hantz. The council raised thoughtful questions about conflicts of interest, the privatization of an essential public service, and the absence of specific agreements around land use. These questions fall under the responsibilities of the Council to protect the interests of the city. The hundreds of people who packed the council chambers and gathered outside the doors wanting to speak demonstrated the intensity of opposition to these issues.

Our mainstream media had pushed for yes votes on all these issues. They went apoplectic when the Council rejected them. This media response shows they are clueless about the nature of the struggle unfolding in our city. Most of their commentary aimed at painting the City Council and Corporate Counsel Krystal Crittendon as chronic naysayers. Their absence of analysis was covered over with vitriolic name-calling. In one short posting Nolan Finley called the council “puppets,” “dolts,” “worst elected body in America,” a “pack of pipsqueaks,” “who stuff their campaign accounts,” “don’t give a damn about poor people.” and folks who “preen and prattle,” while obstructing everything. This rant offered no analysis and ended with yet another plea for Governor Snyder to get an emergency manager law to put all these obstructionists “on the sidelines.” From the liberal side of the media, Jack Lessenberry did no better. He referred to the Council as “petulant two-year-olds” who “repeatedly reject proposals clearly in the best interests and those of the people who live there.” Actually Jack, most of the people who live here welcomed these no votes.

They are votes that said we do not want a city run by back room deals. We do not want a city where public resources necessary to sustain life become sources of profit. We do not want a city where public lands become scarce and privately controlled by a single individual. We do not want a city where development is pursued at any cost, without regard to the most vulnerable among us.

In saying “no” to the directions dictated by the corporate interests, at least some in the City Council reflect a different vision for our city. That vision has been growing slowly and surely in our neighborhoods for years. It is the vision that recognizes that Detroit offers the opportunity to create a new kind of city, capable of developing self-sustaining ways of life rooted in local production of what we need to survive and thrive. It is a vision of a city that embodies values of common access to the land and water; education that encourages creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving; and values art and craft as essential. It is a city where people struggle to make the decisions that determine their future.

This vision, emerging in many small places, is beginning to coalesce into a broader understanding of what Detroit can become.

The corporate elite sense that it is not the particular policies that are being rejected. It is their vision of a whiter, wealthier, privatized playground that is being challenged. If they could get their emotions under control, they might see that the city emerging, in spite of them, is one they too would value.

What Matters: Week 7 of the Occupation

By Shea Howell

May 12th, 2013

Sometimes the earth slows you down. It is planting time in Detroit. There is a rhythm and focus brought by the turning of the seasons. At long last the weariness of winter is falling away. Soil must be prepared. Soon seedlings will find their way into the thousands of urban garden and small backyard plots that have made Detroit a global leader in urban agriculture.

Such moments of slowing down and finding focus are much needed in the whirlwind of changes sweeping through our city.

Outrageous assaults, double-dealing, and double speaking have become ordinary. They are having a cumulative effect. It seems we are living in an upside down reality. The man charged with saving the city is selling it off. He sees nothing wrong with $10 million contracts for out of town consults while laying off city workers. Yet another Emergency Manager of the schools is looking for the door, having closed schools, created chaos, and claimed hollow victories while leveraging a loan for the state created district that was to show us how education should be efficiently run. Formerly progressive leaders tell us democracy is over rated. We should be happy with street lights. Detroit’s version of the 1% are buying up large pieces of downtown and staging wholesale evictions. And regional authorities give more money for buses to the wealthy suburbs and less to Detroit. Virtually every arena of common life is under assault.

In the midst of this, it is important that we slow down and focus on the depth of the changes we are facing. The privatization of public life, the turning of every basic need into a profit center, and the grab to control land, water, and people are global trends. These are the desperate efforts of the dying industrial order to protect the power and privileges wrenched from the last 5 centuries of empire building. And they are coming to and end. As surely as the seasons change, the ways of life defined by industrial might and military force are ending.

We are in the midst of a global shift from industrialism to a yet undefined future. This shift is as great as that from hunting and gathering to agriculture, or from agriculture to industrial life. Such transformations happen rarely in the human experience, giving us little guidance from previous generations.

That is one of the reasons why Detroit matters so much. Because we were central to industrial development, its collapse was too painful to ignore. We were forced to rethink what our city could become. If not a home for people who work in factories, what will we be? What is the purpose of a city? How do we do the work that needs to be done, when the jobs have disappeared?

We are fortunate to be faced with these questions in a city defined by the African American experience. It is this experience that serves as the touchstone for how we have respond to these changes and challenges. Our elders saw vacant lots not only as abandonment, but as possibility. They remembered communities, often in the south, that survived and thrived through difficult economic times by raising their own food, sharing what they had, and making a way out of no way. They called on the deepest values of collective care to fashion new ways of living that are rekindling our ties to the earth, to one another, and to the possibility of a new kind of city based on cooperation, local production, and care for one another.

The future of Detroit is unfolding, but not in the corridors of a dying power structure. It is emerging slowly, sometimes painfully, as people come together to make lives of meaning. This transformation has deep roots that endure through the changing seasons.

Woman’s Leadership in India

By Grace Lee Boggs

February 24th, 2013

In my last column I called attention to the solutionary/revolutionary role that women play when one society is coming to an end and a new one is emerging because women’s work of raising and caring for home and family is ongoing.  It never stops and it doesn’t count the hours.

This is what is happening in India today, according to an article by Frances Moore Lappe  who spoke with members of the Deccan Development Society network of 5,000 women farmers in 70 Indian villages who are ending hunger by growing organic, diverse food crops, at the same time creating new lives of courage, dignity, and inclusion.

When Lappe asked them what it was like 20 years ago, they replied:
“We were so poor that in the rainy season our hut floors would turn to mud and we had to pile up branches to sleep on. We were always hungry. We depended on government ration cards. Sometimes the big landowner would pay us for a job with some grains and that would be the only food for our children. We were so poor we had only one sari—not even a second one to change into when we bathe.

“My husband was a gambler, he was not ever here. I lived on sorghum and broken rice. Our life was dictated by bigger people. We had to suffer, even if they beat us. It was a dark time.”

“Then we started meeting, talking. Every week now, at nine in the evening our sanghams [groups of women] come together and make decisions together. We tell each other our problems. If someone was abused, all of us go together to confront him. And now if there is a conflict in our village, they call on us. Through the sanghams, we’ve reclaimed the land. We don’t use any chemicals. We grow as many as 25 crops on an acre or two.”

The movement has grown exponentially because the women film their activities to spread the word to a largely illiterate population.