to a wo(e)man like me; who covers you through a Holy mystery.
….
For I see through a veil of tears, even still,
my blessings
in you,
on you,
and through you.
My blessings abides With you,
even still, in your trek through the Night
Towards the light.
I see a new day coming into the Night; these blessings be mine.
Peace and blessings, Mama Sandra
The Hush House, Detroit, MI
“State of the Schools” Potluck
“The Recess Ends” in The Huffington Post
“It’s our journey, but it is America’s story,” says Austin Chu, the older of two brothers who drove across the country last year to create a video documentary of the recession. Their project may remind us of some of the famous images that grew out of the Great Depression, photographs such as the “Migrant Mother” series by Dorothea Lange in the 1930s.
Join us as we celebrate the artistic work of our students from Southwest Detroit as they perform everything from ballet to breakdance in our 10th Annual Southwest Dance Showcase.
June 5 2009 @ 6pm
d e t r o i t s c h o o l o f a r t s
123 Selden Street, Detroit, MI 4820 1
Tickets:
(incl admission to concert @ 7pm)
$50 Per Individual
$75 Per Couple
For More Info:
313.841.4765
47 Years Ago in Detroit: Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Delivers First “I Have a Dream” Speech
We turn now to another historic march down Woodward Avenue in Detroit. It was June 23rd, 1963, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led a civil rights march of thousands and delivered a speech with what would become his most famous words: “I have a dream.” The speech came two months before the historic March on Washington. We play an excerpt of the speech and talk to Grace Lee Boggs, who helped organize the march. Click here for video.
5th Grand Peaceful March for Immigration Reform
Saturday May 1st 2010
March with us in Southwest Detroit
Patton Park to Clark Park
MEET AT: 10 A.M. on W. Vernor & Woodmere(48209)
RALLY: Clark Park at 12:00 Noon
Participate in this National Action: New York City, Baltimore MD, Boston MA, Detroit Mi, Chicago IL, Los Angeles CA, Raleigh, NC, Madison WI.
STOP RAIDS & DEPORTATIONS
THAT BREAK UP FAMILIES!
“Separating children from their parents is a blatant & savage Human Rights Violation”
March in defense of Human Rights for Immigrant Workers & their families
Join Latinos Unidos, We need you!
Close inhumane detention centers for Immigrant Families!
APROVE the “Dream Act” – Legalization for immigrant university students
Down with the US- Mexico “Border Wall”
We Demand Immigration Reform – President Barack Obama was elected to the presidency with 70% of the Latino Vote. Mr. Obama promised that if elected, he would approve a pro-Immigrant Immigration Reform in 2009. The current situation is not adequate for immigrant families and the needs of our economy. Immediate Legalization for all !
STOP Home Foreclosures, Evictions & Utility Shutoffs; Pass Michigan Senate Bill No.29
Keeping Promises in the first 100 days
“We can’t wait 20 years from now to pass immigration reform!We can’t wait 10 years from now to do it!We need to do it bythe end of my first term as President of the United States of America!And I will make it a top priority in my first year as President.”
President Barack Obama, Campaign Speech.
A Food Revolution in Milwaukee
Will Allen started a food revolution in creating new urban farmers across the country. State of the Re:Union explores one of those farms in Milwaukee called Sweet Water Organics. Check out their incredible process that utilizes aquaponics and hydroponics, as well as their philosophy on taking another step to fighting the phenomena known as food deserts.
by R. L’Heureux Lewis
Detroit: The city that represents the prospects and failures of American industry.The city that is the punch line of a million jokes. The city that is Blacker than nearly any other in this country. Detroit is under intense scrutiny as of late and the flashing lights of attention may have served to take the life of seven year old Aiyana Jones as a TV crew filmed a home-raid by the Detroit SWAT.
I’ve never spent time in Detroit, but I’ve seen an awful lot of images of the city in the last several years. And those images have been pretty awful, offering a version of the place defined by abandonment and decline. “Ruins porn,” as it’s been called, undermines even hopeful tales of creative renewal.
Bing + Bobb x Skillman & Kresge Foundations = Bad News for Detroiters
by Yusef Shakur
Dave Bing’s decision to “downsize” the City of Detroit is a direct result of him being out of touch with the city he was elected to be the Mayor of. The sad reality is that he was elected as Mayor of Detroit based on the mere notion that he was going to brings jobs to Detroit—a city that is in desperate needs of jobs. Since being elected Mayor, the only things he has brought to the City of Detroit have been hiring more police, bullying the unions, cutting jobs and cutting the city’s bus routes. His decision to cut the bus routes demonstrates his lack of interconnection with the majority of people of Detroit, and the act of desperation of a Mayor that is desperately trying to prove himself at the expense of the people of Detroit. Everybody and their mama knows that over 50% of Detroiters depend heavily on the bus system to get back and forth through the City of Detroit and other neighboring cities. Instead of donating a portion of his salary to hire more police, which hasn’t had an impact on reducing crime in Detroit, that money could be used to keeping those bus routes running that served the needs of Detroiters going to work, school and other places. If he actually stayed in the City of Detroit before he decided to run for Mayor, and actually interacted with the people in a meaningful way, he would have known that. Before he was even elected as Mayor of Detroit, his wife announced that she had no intention of moving to Detroit unless he won the Mayoral race. That speaks volumes about what the Bing family thought about Detroit.
In this whole conversation about “downsizing” Detroit, I realized that Dave Bing is not intelligent enough to make this decision by himself. This has been clearly evident in the un-conditional support he is receiving from corporate/ private institutions. Reported in the Detroit News, March 18 paper front page: “The Kresge Foundation confirmed Wednesday it is paying the undisclosed salary for Toni Griffin… she is expected to begin this month under an unusual arrangement.” Dave Bing is in bed with these private/corporate institutions to serve their interests and not the interests of the people who elected him. When he announced the whole “downsizing” agenda, he never clearly articulated what that means to Detroiters because it is obvious he doesn’t know himself. Even in his “State of the City Address” he still failed to clarify what “downsizing” Detroit actually means. Is destroying abandoned buildings and houses “downsizing” Detroit? That is the new language he used in his “State of the City Address.” Any intelligent person knows that “downsizing” means just that; “DOWNSIZING!” Words are powerful because each word has a meaning to it that can impact our lives, negatively or positively. When the decision to “downsize” Detroit was announced by Mayor Bing, it developed fear and panic among Detroiters. As Detroiters, we are already surviving in chaotic conditions, and what sense does it make for the supposed leader of Detroit to present an idea that would create more chaos? I strongly believe Detroiters have no problem with “TOUGH DECISIONS,” but we do have problems with “LYING AND DUMB DECISIONS.” The decision to “downsize” Detroit didn’t include a conversation with native Detroiters but, again, only with private/corporate institutions, and those who are of the privileged, and they have a vision of Detroit that they feel has to be imposed upon Detroiters. That right there tells any intelligent human being that they don’t have our best interests at heart.
There are neighborhoods in Detroit that resemble war torn countries, and people in those neighborhoods that are surviving in Third World conditions – or as Professor Carl S. Taylor at Michigan State University educates; urban cities have been reduced to Third World Cities. At the height of the “Big 3” (Ford, GM and Chrysler) the industry helped to develop a thriving middle class in the City of Detroit, but with the fall of the “Big 3” and the introduction of heroin in the 70s and crack in the 80s, that thriving middle class of Detroit began to slowly evaporate. The “Big 3” was eventually replaced with drug enterprises such as “Y.B.I.,” “Pony Down,” “Chamber Brothers,” “Best Friend,” “Curry Boys” and many others. That once proud middle classed in Detroit has been reduced to the poor class and the poor class has been reduced to scavengers. The capitalist economic system killed the “Big 3” a long time ago because it is a system that thrives on sucking the blood out of its prey, and then it turns on itself. Any system that is pro-individual can not be good for the whole, because it makes its living off of exploiting the whole (the ruling class thrives on exploiting the middle class and the middle class thrives on exploiting the poor class and poor class thrive off exploiting each other). Then you have the bastard version of capitalism, which is the street life (selling drugs, gangs, robbing, prostitution and etc) that has sucked the life out of the neighborhoods, which has ultimately reduced thriving neighborhoods into deplorable ‘hoods.
Dave Bing and his (crime) partner Robert Bobb are nothing but knee-grow puppets that are being manipulated by private and corporate foundations/institutions, such as the Skillman Foundation and Kresge Foundation. Recent decisions by Dave Bing to “downsize” Detroit and Robert Bobb to close over 40 more schools in Detroit are both heavily influenced by the Kresge and Skillman Foundation, with the latter playing on both sides of the fence through their Good Schools & Good Neighborhood initiatives, by openly selecting certain schools and neighborhoods in Detroit that they are hand picking to invest money in. Through their nickel-slick initiatives they have truly fooled the people by supposedly investing money in certain schools and neighborhoods, while openly denying support to other schools and neighborhoods that are deteriorating. The truth of the matter, Detroit Public Schools, and Detroit as a whole, have suffered from the games Skillman, Kresge and many other Foundations, as well as private corporations, that have played with the lives of Detroiters and particularly the lives of our children.
Dave Bing and Robert Bobb’s decisions to “downsize” Detroit and close 40 more schools reflects the corrupt mountain-leadership that has crippled Detroit. Neither one of these gentlemen have ever taken the time to engage Detroiters, besides talking down to Detroiters, because again their strings are being pulled by private/corporate foundations/institutions. The majority of Detroiters voted to approve a $500.5 million proposal, where that money was supposed to be used to re-build or renovate many of the schools that have since been selected to be closed. Right after the approval of this proposal, many people and different groups began jockeying around Robert Bobb, trying to get their hands on some of that money. Just recently Robert Bobb awarded close to a million dollar contract to Detroit Parent Network, which is also fund by Skillman Foundation. During this whole process Dave Bing has openly shared his desire to take control of DPS and have it run by his (crime) partner Robert Bobb. The actions of these two gentlemen clearly demonstrate that they don’t have the best interest of Detroit in mind. They both have been talking out the side of their necks. Mr. Bing has not brought one job to the City of Detroit for Detroiters, which was his claim to fame in his rise to the Mayor office. Mr. Bobb has brought nothing but more confusion to DPS, and has looked out for nobody but himself and his homies. The crazy thing is, after Detroiters voted yes on the approval of the 500.5 million proposal, Robert Bobb is now asking for an additional 700 million!
The actions of these knee-grow puppets are not what is disturbing to me, but the lack of out cry by so-call religious, political and community leaders of the actions of these knee-grow puppets. Many of the so-called religious, political and community leaders are in bed with Bing and Bobb. Just recently here in Detroit, many of the well known religious leaders spoke out loudly and proudly against strip clubs in Detroit, but these same religious leaders have remained silent on the issues of “downsizing” Detroit and closing “40 more schools” in Detroit. If these decisions are implemented by Bing and Bobb, they will have a far greater negative impact on Detroit’s children and families than the strip clubs. The majority of the new City Council members are in bed with Bing and Bobb as well.
The imported and oppressive decisions by Bing and Bobb have left the people of Detroit dazed and confused. We have to pick ourselves up, and begin to organize ourselves—each and every one of us. We can’t embody the every man for himself attitude, because if Bing relocates one neighborhood, it impacts all of us and if Bobb close one more school, it impacts all of us.
We have to stand together, organize around one heart beat
and speak with one voice.
That is our strength, anything less than that is playing into our weaknesses. We can’t keep approaching Bing and Bobb from a position of weakness because all they are going to do is keep disrespecting us. Power only respects power, and a powerless people become powerful once they realize that they have nothing to loose. We must take our destiny into our hands by boycotting Bing and Bobb. The question is how can we boycott Bing and Bobb? Our oppressive circumstances bind us all together as it did the citizens of Montgomery, Alabama during the bus boycott in 1955. Just think of what could happen if all city workers stop working for the city and if all DSP students stopped going to school? That would demand Bing and Bobb’s attention with a national audience watching. As long as Bing and Bobb feel that they don’t need input from Detroiters, they will continue to make decisions about Detroiters without the input of Detroiters. I know choices like this call for a lot of sacrifices, but just know that sacrifices are necessary. If we are not willing to sacrifice for ourselves, trust and believe Bing and Bobb will sacrifice us.
With a clear overstanding of the shit-uaiton we are up against, it has become clearer that EMIENT DOMAIN in Detroit is nothing but GENTRIFICATION to Detroiters, and urban renewal is nothing but BLACK PEOPLE REMOVAL – in a city that is 85% Black! War has been declared on us by our enemies, and with our backs against the walls we have to fight back as a unified body of Detroiters fighting for Dignity and Democracy.
Change Unchanging: A Special Gathering and Poetry Reading
Tulani Rose and Edna White invite you to attend Change Unchanging: A Special Gathering and Poetry Reading to celebrate and honor the legacy of Yale Njoma Miller with select readings from his book, Change Unchanging: the Collected Verses of Yale Miller.
Yale Miller was a dedicated community leader, activist, and family man whose dream was to provide the world a community of healthy families who lived in peaceful support of each other’s needs.
Featured Guest Artists include: Gloria House, Millard, Willie Williams, Aurora Harris, Freeway, Jessica Care Moore, Kefentse Bandele, and more.
**The event will occur at the Spiral Collective (4201 Cass Ave.) from 3-5pm.
Coalition strives for proper policing – Detroit Free Press
Ron Scott wasn’t happy.
He sat at the Detroit Police Commission meeting, listening to a lengthy presentation about the status of video recording equipment in city police cars. He patiently waited for the public comment period.
Commentary: Social Forum show Michigan’s possibilities
Detroit is a dangerous city. It is filled with vacant lots, abandoned houses, derelict factories and empty warehouses. We are helpless “victims” of the economy, of racism, of poverty. Or so the story is told again and again.
Creating Sustainability Through Nature: Intro to Permaculture
Tuesday, July 21
6:30 – 9:30 pm
Michigan LeagueVandenberg Room
911 N. University Ave.Ann Arbor MI 48109 •
Ample parking nearby
Info: clairemaitre@comcast.net or (248) 613-8803
Wednesday, July 22
6:30 – 9:30 pm
Marygrove College (Liberal Arts Building)
8425 McNichols Road Detroit, MI 48221
Info: angela@detroitevolution.com or (313) 316-1411
Thursday, July 23
6:30 – 9:30 pm
Flint Farmers’ Market – downstairs
420 East Boulevard Drive Flint, MI
Info: hollylub@umflint.edu or (810) 767-7184
Friday, July 24
6:30 – 9:30 pm
EMU School of Business201 Owen Room
300 W. Michigan Ave.
Ypsilanti, MI 48197
Info: ashley@growinghope.net or (734) 786-8401
Creation and Destruction in Detroit
DCOH June Meeting: “Peace Zones For Life”
Detroit City of Hope Monthly Meeting, June 16
Work/Business Meeting begins at 6:30
Tuesday: June 16 @ 7:00 Conversation on Peace Zones for Life
3061 Field Street
Detroit, Michigan 48214
Please join us for our June meeting. The focus of the meeting will be a follow-up discussion from the tremendous gathering and march on May 21 which called for Justice For Robert Mitchell and emphasized the need to build bridges and Create a Detroit-Warren Peace Zone for Life. Yusef Shakur, who spoke about the importance of “putting the neighbor back into the hood” and the need to transform ourselves and our communities into peace zones for life, will join Ron Scott (Coalition Against Police Brutality) and members of Robert Mitchell’s family. How can Detroit City of Hope support the creation of Peace Zones in our city and change the conversation between our city and our suburbs?
Tuesday: June 16th @ 6:30 pm
Before our discussion on “Creating Peace Zones for Life” we will have a 30 minute work meeting to discuss some of the following:
The Website, the DCOH Announcement Newsletter, suggestions for sharing the positive activities, work and events in our city, expanding the web/the network, Brochure, Map, Yellow Pages, Broadsheet, the upcoming AMC in July.
Please join us and invite a friend to this monthly conversation and work meeting.
We look forward to friends and activists from Detroit, Macomb, Oakland and Wayne County.
If you have any questions,
Please call 313-923-0797
DCOH Meeting
DCOH MEETING
April 15, 2009
6:30PM
Description: The growing response by Detroit’s communities and the growing energy, and activism by citizens across our city and region is blossoming with the coming of spring. The recent visit by the National Planning Committee of the US Social Forum provided tremendous opportunity for discussion as plans develop to bring 10,000 to 20,000 people to Detroit in 2010. From the Cobo Hall debate, to the mayoral election, to the foreclosures and the continued crisis facing students, parents and teachers in our schools, we see a tremendous increase in the creativity as we work to create a new Detroit and region based upon the need to re-imagine, re-define and rebuild our city and communities form the ground up. On a daily basis we read about the work and dedication of individuals and organizations to protest, resist and create alternatives and networks capture the attention of the media and the imagination of people across our country. While most talk of restructuring the industry and restructuring wall street, we are working to re-imagine and transform ourselves and our institutions. Detroit City of Hope is a network committed to alternatives.
Join with us on our journey. Join with us as we create the ways to celebrate the work in Detroit and engage in creating the forms of conversation, networking and dialogue that encourages us all to listen to each other and the voices of our neighbors, friends & coworkers.
This April DCOH meeting will be an opportunity to discuss:
Education: What is the alternative to continued closing of schools? What is the difference between reforming our schools and creating a new concept and practice of education in our city? Please read the article:
Beyond Pipelines-To-Prison Schools by Grace Lee Boggs (Michigan Citizen)
www.boggsblog.com (scroll down)
Celebrating and Engaging with Detroit City of Hope Activists: What are people and organizations doing in our city to respond to the economic, political, spiritual and cultural collapse? What is our contribution to this growing movement that continues to capture the imagination of the national media and the world?can
Please check out these articles:
Detroit Free Press: http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200990328050 Neighbors talk trash at rally to end dumping in Detroit.
Time Magazine: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1887864,00.html
Along with the above discussions, we explore the ways to expand and advance the website, www.dcoh.org , discuss a possible broadsheet for distribution, possible community forums, and we welcome your ideas as we take steps moving from despair to hope.
We hope you can join us on Wednesday, April 15th at 6;30 pm.
Boggs Center
3061 Field Street.
Detroit, Mi 48214 Start Time: 15:00 Date: 2009-04-15
Houses with dreary urban facades covered in polka dots. A traveling dollhouse made from the remnants of abandoned homes. A dilapidated residence covered in ice.
Artists across the Detroit area are using the city’s blight as their canvas, transforming abandoned homes into high-concept projects to draw attention to the homelessness, poverty and urban decay plaguing Detroit. They hope the ongoing experiment will shed some creatively inspired light on what Detroit was, is and could be again.
The work harks back to two decades ago when Tyree Guyton transformed a deteriorating Detroit neighborhood into a colorful, outdoor polka-dot art gallery.
Guyton rescued stuffed animals, sneakers and shopping carts from alleys and street corners and gave them a permanent home on the trees, houses and vacant lots of Heidelberg Street. But unlike Guyton’s project, this latest wave of social art isn’t centered on a single section of the city, and it comes at a time when the problems are just as dire, if not more so: Detroit has tens of thousands of abandoned structures, a budget deficit of at least $300 million and an unemployment rate two to three times that of the national average.
“It’s amazing to see now the work that (Guyton) started 23 years ago kind of taking on shape and form in many different ways with many different people in this city,” said Jenenne Whitfield, executive director of the Heidelberg Project.
Famous examples of social art include Spencer Tunick’s photos depicting thousands of nude subjects at locations around the world, and Nek Chand’s “Rock Garden,” a vast sculpture garden in India. But the trend is magnified in Detroit because so many artists are zeroing in on the same subject matter and displaying their creations in high-profile ways.
Clinton Snider is one of those who saw artistic possibilities in Detroit’s misfortune. The suburban Bloomfield Township resident typically expresses himself through painting. But these days, he’s becoming known as the guy who built a miniature house from the remnants of abandoned homes.
Snider’s creation — called House 365 — is touring the area with each “deedholder” hosting the little (about 5 feet tall) wood-framed house for a month at a time. It’s currently booked into the middle of next year.
The house, which some mistake for a dollhouse, has become “a symbol for Detroit culture and how much abandonment there is,” said Snider, who initially envisioned moving the house every day of the year, hence the name.
Marisa Gaggino, owner of The Heritage Co. II Architectural Artifacts, says she’s honored to host Snider’s artwork, in part because it symbolizes what she says is the “shocking” economic divide between Detroit and neighboring Oakland County, which houses her business and some of the most affluent communities in the U.S.
Gaggino acknowledges, though, that not all who visit her Royal Oak store grasp the meaning behind the miniature house that sits outside just beyond the entrance.
“The first people that looked at it came in and wanted to know how much it was,” she said. “They thought it would be great to put in their backyard and have it as a playhouse for their little girl.”
Richard Gage, who owns a Detroit-area architectural sculpture studio and helped foster the House 365 project, says Snider’s work elicits many different reactions.
“A lot of people think it’s talking exclusively about the current economic situation in Detroit. That’s a big percentage of it, but that’s not the only thing,” Gage said. “Other people have talked about an opportunity for renewal. I had one guy call who was really excited about it but mad that we didn’t do it on a big house.”
It’s unlikely those who see the project planned by New York-based photographer Gregory Holm and architect Matthew Radune will mistake it for anything beyond what it is. They are going to freeze an abandoned home in Detroit this winter, encasing it in ice.
Their goal is to draw attention to the widespread foreclosure problem in the region. They call it Ice House Detroit.
In the spring, crews will salvage what building materials can be reused and demolish the home. The lot will be donated, probably for a community garden.
Other examples of Detroit’s growing social art movement include a series of crumbling Detroit houses painted bright orange; the exterior of a building along one of the city’s main drags covered in mirror shards and striking colors; and a couple who bought a rundown home for a song and are recruiting artists from around the world to buy foreclosed houses in the neighborhood and rebuild.
Even as social art becomes more common around Detroit, Guyton still is as passionate about his work on Heidelberg Street as he’s ever been.
On a recent weekday, with nary a soul around, he was in his element, listening to the radio and working on his latest creations. Guyton spent some time painting an abstract piece, then wandered about, searching for pieces of junk he could transform into art. He settled on a rusted-out car hood and took his paint brush to it.
A minivan pulled up, and its occupants stopped to ask Guyton about Heidelberg and what it all means.
As the vehicle pulled away, Guyton smiled, pleased to know his life’s work still is provoking curiosity.
Look at this real and poignant portrait of detroit from flypmedia.
Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality
Title: Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality Location: The Arc Building (51 W Hancock) Description: Mother\’s Day celebration (and special birthday celebration for Ron Scott!)
Start Time: 18:00 Date: 2009-05-10 End Time: 21:00
Myrtle Thompson stood in the middle of her enormous garden on Manistique on Detroit’s east side as close to 200 tourists milled up and down the rows of squash, potatoes, tomatoes, cabbage, strawberries and soon-to-be very large pumpkins.
As “ooohs” and “ahhhs” could be heard over the hum of cicadas, Thompson’s proud smile said it all. Two years ago, these were four vacant lots strewn with garbage, abandoned cars and overgrown trees.
New York Times
By SUSAN SAULNY
Published: January 9, 2010
DETROIT — With $6,000 and some Hollywood-style spunk, four friends opened this city’s only independent foreign movie house three months ago in an abandoned school auditorium on an unlighted stretch of the Cass Corridor near downtown.
The people of Detroit are beginning to imagine a new life for their near-dead city.
By James R. Gaines (text) and Chris Bravo (video) (www.flypmedia.com)
No American city ever rose so fast-from a trading post to the hub of
global industry within a few decades-or fell so far. The last
comparable collapse in the Americas came with the end of Mayan
civilization, a thousand years ago.
Large swaths of Detroit seem to have been hit by a neutron bomb.
Sometimes a building will look entirely normal, even beautiful, until
you come close enough to see that weeds and treelets-a species of
Chinese plant that somehow got loose there-are growing out of its
glassless windows. Some people call it “the ghetto palm,” others “the
tree of heaven.”
The old Packard plant, built in 1906, stands as the ultimate ruins of a
city and the idea that built it. On a cold sunny Sunday morning, a
longtime UAW member named Rich Feldman stood in front of it and said,
“I bring people here to see the pain and the hurt that are present in
our city. It’s a breaking point, a way of saying we can never go back
again. These 40 long-abandoned buildings represent a standard of living
for working-class Americans beyond anything that anyone could have ever
imagined, and it is gone.”
Feldman has been watching the collapse of his city for the last 20
years, during which officials have issued ten times more demolition
permits than building permits. He has also seen something else.
*MICHIGAN’S PHOENIX*
Rising up from the ashes! Rising up from the ashes!
It’s the title and refrain of a hip-hop CD documenting Detroit’s
dropout population. That includes almost three quarters of all black
students in the city.
Detroit is a gold mine for leaden statistics like that one: it’s the
poorest big city in the U.S., with about a third of its residents
living below the poverty line. There were 394 murders, 341 rapes and
6,575 robberies in the city last year, and almost 20,000 cars were
stolen.
That is the Detroit story everybody knows. Feldman will tell you that
another one is being written.
That CD, for example: it was made by Detroit kids, in a program called
the Live Arts Media Project. Many of those kids were dropouts.
Refusing to surrender to poverty and crime, Detroit is witnessing new
community development programs that take aim at root causes and try to
grow a new economy from the ground up. Many of these are independent of
the government. All over town, people are opening stores and markets,
starting businesses and small factories in their basements.
Urban gardens are springing up on the vacant lots. When people are hungry,
the new gardens and their gardeners feed them.
Artists have remade whole blocks of ruined houses into a lively,
tale-telling urban landscape, while hundreds of independent record
labels incubate in bedrooms and garages that have been wired for
high-speed Internet.
There is a live poetry reading somewhere in town virtually every night of
the week.
*ONE SMALL STEP FOR A MAN…*
The collapse of Detroit parallels what is happening elsewhere in
America. What happens next will depends on who comes by-or comes back,
or stays around-to fix it.
“My American dream,” Feldman says, “is one that makes a strong
distinction between the standard of living, which folks once thought
was the answer to all concerns, and quality of life-the dignity of the
lives of people.”
On the following pages are some of the people who are trying to make a new
Detroit-and they believe, a new America.
*Food: From urban rust to verdant green*
*With its 139 square miles, Detroit has one of America’s largest
urban footprints. In 1950, that land held 2 million citizens, today
there are less than half that. This fact, combined with homelessness,
joblessness and falling incomes among working people, makes a
compelling argument for urban agriculture and local businesses built
around local food. Detroit has a lot of that already, and more is on
the way.*
*Detroit Black Community Food Security Network:* The Detroit Black
Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN) was formed to create new jobs
and support a new economy with the production of local food-and to keep
the profits in Detroit’s black community.
*EarthWorks Urban Farm:* EarthWorks Urban Farm, an outgrowth of
the Capuchin monks’ soup kitchen, now includes an apiary, kids’ classes
and a mobile market.
*The Arts: Imagining a new conversation*
*Above ground, Detroit’s symphony, museum, opera and theater are
still thriving. Just a little deeper, down in the grassroots, there is
a profusion of new growth-from hundreds of independent music labels and
a vibrant new generation of performance poets to a new theatrical and
visual vocabulary of the urban landscape. Detroit’s artists are
inventing ways to make the city itself a work of art. *
*
The Heidelberg Project:* Named for its street, the work of
artist Tyree Guyton has brought to light to what was among Detroit’s
most benighted neighborhoods.
*A Theater of Experience: *Director Aku Kadogo, a Detroit native
who returned after a long career abroad, teaches her drama students at
Wayne State University how to draw from the legacy of African-American
culture.
*
The Poem is the City: *Like others in Detroit’s vibrant new poetry scene,
Will Copeland finds
his inspiration in the movement toward a new Detroit and a new urban
America.
*Beyond school: The textbook is life*
*In a city where the black dropout rate is almost 75 percent, the
need for new approaches is obvious. Several organizations, including
Detroit Summer and the Eastern Michigan Environmental Action Council,
have stepped into the breach with programs that teach kids about media,
entrepreneurship, personal responsibility and the power of community.
Their goal is a new economy and a newly empowered citizenry.*
*Detroit Summer:* Started in the early 1990s, Detroit Summer has
spawned a dozen projects for the city’s youth, including the Live Arts
Media Project (LAMP).
<http://www.flypmedia.com/issues/23/#1/6>*
East Michigan Environmental Action Council:* EMEAC teaches kids how to use
media to support environmental responsibility. The kids use what they’ve
learned as they see fit.
*Community: Hospitals for the soul*
*They are all in the work of community development, but that’s a
fancy phrase for a lot of what they do. A young woman gets out of jail
at 25, after ten years. What is she to make of the rest of her life? A
family is evicted. Where do they go? A mother is addicted to crack with
no husband and 11 children at home. As often as not, the work of
community development is done one life at a time.*
*Hush House:* Part safe house, part think tank, part publisher and
part community center, Hush House is also a museum, a newspaper and an
entrepreneurial collective.
*
Friends of Detroit & Tri-County: *In
a 23,000-foot former meat packing plant, Mike Wimberley houses a
computer school, classes for sewing, a music studio and a licensed
commercial kitchen.
*”The world I grew up in as a radical was a world that thought of
leadership in a very vertical way-leadership and followership. And I
think that the world has changed so much that it’s possible to say, ‘we
are the leaders we’ve been waiting for.’” *
Grace Lee Boggs, the widow of autoworker-revolutionary Jimmy Boggs,
runs the Boggs Center, which cultivates community leaders and is ground
zero for much of the new thinking about Detroit’s future. Now 93, Boggs
is a kind of hero to the reformers of Detroit, and to meet her is to
know why.
Her perspective is far-sighted, backward and forward. “Detroit is the
most striking example of the transition that cities all over the
country are undergoing-from industrial society, which has collapsed or
is sinking very fast, to post-industrial society.”
She sees the same thing happening in Akron and Oakland and Milwaukee
and Buffalo-a transition she calls “as far-reaching as the one from
hunting and gathering 11,000 years ago to agriculture. And from
agriculture to industry 300 years ago.”
A political activist since the 1930s, she has no illusions that this
transition will be easy. But, like her husband, she does not think
progress can depend on help from on high or outside, whether from
President Barack Obama or anybody else.
“We are the leaders we’ve been waiting for,” she says.
Neither Boggs, nor the many other young and old activists who are
trying to remake Detroit, pretend that utopia is at hand. But in the
depths of post-industrial blight, they’re finding reasons for hope.
Who knows what may come of a thing like that?
Detroit Restaurant Workers Finally at Table with Management
By Kari Lydersen
There hasn’t been “a day of regular business” at Andiamo restaurant in Dearborn, Mich., since the Restaurant Opportunity Center started its campaign for fair pay and treatment at the Italian chain about a year ago, says ROC policy director Jose Oliva.
Done right, urban farms can grow healthier communities – from Detroit Free Press
Urban farming in Detroit has to be about more than just generating money. The basic pillars for farming should address the important issues of social equity for Detroit’s citizens, environmental integrity as stewards of the land and economic prosperity that flows through all layers of the community.
11am – across Butzel Family Center (on Kercheval, near Van Dyke
12:30pm – Franklin Wright Settlement (on Charlevoix, near Elmwood)
2pm – neighborhood stops (call if you live in the neighborhood and are interested)
5pm-7pm – Parkston Apts. (at Parker & Agnes)
Fault Lines (Aljazeera) Video on Detroit’s Hope and Future
Food is Life – Michigan Citizen – by Malik Yakini
As we envision what the Detroit of the future will be, food, its production, processing, distribution and consumption must figure prominently in our thinking. Food impacts many other aspects of city planning including economic development, transportation, education, and land and water rights and usage. Good food is essential to the health of our residents and community. It is essential if our children are to demonstrate high academic achievement. The production, processing, and sale of locally produced food has the potential to become an economic engine for Detroit. It is for these and many other reasons that I am proud to introduce “Food is Life,” a weekly column written by members of the Detroit Food Policy Council (DFPC).
If you want to see what love of community looks like, take a stroll down the 400 block of West Willis between Cass and Second.
There, you’ll find a piece of pride that community warriors staked out years ago. These small businesses, which include Avalon Breads, Revolution Books and the gift and bookstores in the Spiral Collective, are evidence that Detroit is a roller coaster, not a race. There are ups and downs, but the village keeps going, sometimes stopping to get new riders, sometimes stopping for repairs, but always going.
It takes a village
The neighborhood calls itself West Willis Village, a collection of green-collar workers, 21st-Century hippies and cultural champions on a block that’s the closest thing to a funky New York Greenwich Village street that you’ll find within 10 miles of City Hall. And they’re having a party.
The block will host a celebration from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday honoring the 12th anniversary of Avalon Breads, which offers customers organic and healthy goodies and great coffee; the resilience of Revolution Books, first resident on the block; and other businesses that include Flo Boutique, Goodwells Natural Food, the Re:View Contemporary Art Gallery, Dell Pryor Gallery, Source Booksellers, Curl Up and Dye, and Tulani Rose, the accessories and well-being gift store. They also are celebrating that Textures by Nefertiti, one of the city’s only styling salons exclusively for locks, has opened its new body, mind and spirit hair spa one block away.
Jackie Victor, co-owner of Avalon with Ann Perrault, remembers the early days.
A Detroit native, she graduated from the University of Michigan in 1988 and moved to the city to support James and Grace Boggs’ campaign to rejuvenate Detroit.
“I said it would be cool to have a bakery in the neighborhood,” said Victor. So she and Perrault moved to northern Michigan and worked for $7 an hour at an artisan bakery owned by a former Coleman Young appointee.
“We did that a whole summer … 1:30a.m. until 9:30 a.m.,” she said.
They met breadheads, local dough aficionados who taught them a thing or two about flavor. They wrote a business plan, got funded by a Buddhist priest and came back to Detroit. Two years later, a guy named Z opened a clothing store called Jambalaya and a village was born. Jambalaya became Flo, the Spiral opened and the block developed a following. A decade later, the block is thriving, and the bakery is committed to permanence.
True urban renewal
“We really had hoped it would be an oasis of healing and compassion in a world that is sorely in need,” Victor said. “That’s our customer service mission statement. It’s not perfect. People are very forgiving of our imperfection and yet people seem to draw a disproportionate amount of inspiration and energy and joy from it.”
It hasn’t always been easy. Victor recalled a time when she and Perrault almost gave up. They were having drinks to discuss closing when a woman walked up and said, ‘Can I just tell you guys something? Do you know that sometimes you guys are the reason I stay in Detroit?’ We said, ‘OK, that’s just crazy … and we scrapped the conversation.
“To see seven new businesses emerge on the block over 12 years, to see hundreds of new residential apartments and townhouses emerge, to see the neighborhood really take on a renewed life, it’s gratifying.”
Avalon — and the other businesses on the block — plan to keep it that way.
“We always pay our employees. We always pay our taxes. That’s our definition of success. It’s a keeper.”
From Godsil in Milwaukee
Sweet Water Organics now has 45,000 tilapia and is selling its first round of yellow perch in an old abandoned “golden thread” factory building in Milwaukee.
Here’s a nice Wisconsin Foodie show on Sweet Water:
Here’s a good Outpost Natural Foods you tube clip:
And our most recent slide show prepared for Great Lakesk Water Insitute Gathering of Investors and Producers:
From our friend Godsil in Milwaukee
Grace Lee Boggs has offered this essay on community scaled manufacturing that will accelerate the Detroit and Milwaukee Renaissance movements as urban artisans and artists marry urban agrarians in iconic factory buildings!
When I was a kid, my mother used to make a big jar of honey and fresh-squeezed lemon juice every winter. The thick, bittersweet concoction was our cough medicine, and we would gladly line up for a spoon of that rather than cod liver oil or castor oil — both of which were also freely passed out among us.
Grace Lee Boggs discusses Detroit’s history and future
This latest video is from the hogpath blog and wraps up an interview series from November of 2008.
Great Lakes Bioneers
Title: Great Lakes Bioneers Description: Tales & Food
**10am-3:30pm (CONTACT GLORIA RIVERA AT GREAT LAKES FOR MORE INFO – river1143@comcast.net) Start Time: 10:00 Date: 2009-04-25 End Time: 15:30
Green Detroit: Why the City Is Ground Zero for the Sustainability Movement
From AlterNet-
Ignore the mainstream media. Detroit is not about architectural ruins. The people are re-imagining their city in fresh and courageous ways and there is a lot to learn from them.
Growing Green in Detroit- Christian Science Monitor
A Rust Belt city discovers the benefits of urban gardening.
Growing Power’s National-International Urban & Small Farm Conference
September 10 – 12th 2010
Come to Milwaukee and help grow the good food revolution. Hosted by Growing Power—a national organization headed by the sustainable urban farmer and MacArthur Fellow Will Allen—this international conference will teach the participant how to plan, develop and grow small farms in urban and rural areas. Learn how you can grow food year-round, no matter what the climate, and how you can build markets for small farms. See how you can play a part in creating a new food system that fosters better health and more closely-knit communities.
Heal Detroit Cleans Up Detroit, Block by Block: “The Takeover”
Group Emphasizes Cooperation over Confrontation
Heal Detroit will launch its second community restoration event:
Heal Detroit Clean-Up Campaign
“The Takeover” Saturday, August 7th, 2010
9:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Palmer Park Community Picnic
3:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Pontchartrain Drive & Seven Mile Road
The clean-up will occur in the following neighborhoods:
Grand River/Greenfield/Fenkell
Southeastern Detroit
Old Westside
Seven Mile/Van Dyke
State Fair/I-75
Seven Mile/Evergreen/Greenfield
Southwest Detroit
Puritan/Martin Park
Brightmoor
Mack/Bewick
Highland Park
Zone 8
“If the city is to change and violence is to abate, we must start from the bottom up,” said organizer Lakeisha Harris. That’s why we as citizens of Detroit are taking the lead to change the physical and cultural atmosphere in our city.”
Following the tragic shootings of 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley Jones and 17-year-old Jerean Blake, and the issuance of a call to a community-wide response to violence by Detroit-based entertainer Al Nuke and organizer Lakeisha Harris, Heal Detroit came together last month to initiate a march that drew more than 500 people who walked from the east and west sides of Seven Mile Road to converge at Palmer Park for a rally focused on peace-making throughout Detroit. The group consists of citizens and numerous community-based organizations. The groups “Urban Network,” “It Takes a Village Y’all,” and “Peace Zones 4 Life,” will serve as co-sponsors for the event.
Heal Detroit invites community organizations and businesses alike throughout the city to the clean-up and picnic. For more information, contact Lakeisha Harris at 313.974.5932.
Healing Through Community
Healing Through Community
An Interview with Yusef Shakur
Adele Nieves
The whole fucking community is in the prison system; everybody knows somebody who’s been locked up. if we think that’s the solution, we’re twisted.
You wrote your book based on your nine-year prison sentence. Tell us how you wound up in the “belly of the beast,” as you put it, and why you decided to write the book. I was convicted of assault with intent to rob. It was my second offense as an adult, and was ignited from the gang culture I was involved in (Zone 8). Some of my homeboys went to a local school and jumped some guys. The police didn’t know the perpetrators, but they knew it was a gang.
The local gang squad investigated the case, and when they looked at the list of gang members, my name was on top of the list. I had a long history with one of the detectives, and one of the people assaulted was his nephew, so all the cards were against me.
Henry Ford Hospital is partnering with Health Alliance Plan to host a series of three Farmers’ Markets this fall. The one-day markets will be on: Monday, August 24; Friday, September 18; and Friday, October 16 all lasting from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. The location will alternate between the Henry Ford Hospital campus and the HAP campus. The August and October markets will be at Henry Ford Hospital and the September market will be at HAP. Participation in all three markets is not required. There is no cost to participate. We are looking for local Detroit vendors (within 100 miles of the city), especially fresh produce farmers Everyone is encouraged to apply; however, we do have some restrictions: no poultry, meat, cheeses, dairy, seafood, eggs, or any other perishable items. Anyone interested should contact: Caitlin Spinweber at cspinwe2@hfhs.org – or – 313.916.5045 by Friday, August 7*(deadline has been extended)*. Space is limited so please respond quickly!
High School for Public Service in East Flatbush plans schoolyard farm to sell fresh produce
From the New York Daily News……
A pea grows in Brooklyn. And eggplant and kale, too.
Students at the High School for Public Service in East Flatbush are building a 10,000-square-foot vegetable farm on the campus’ front lawn.
The school plans to sell its produce in the neighborhood, where fresh greens are hard to find and obesity rates are high.
Justice for Robert Mitchell & Peace Zones for Life
Dear Boggs Board and DCOH friends,
Last evening was an historic event. For the first time in my life, the paradigm shift from protest and opposition to transformation, resistance and alternatives occurred in the presence of 150 to 200 people (many young and most from the community) as people marched from the park to the home where Robert was killed, to 8 mile, into Warren and then returned.
This is my understanding and may not be based upon a larger historical context. I remember marching with We Pros and Save our Sons and Daughter against violence, Down with Dope and Up with Hope in the 1980s. I remember planting tress in front of the homes or at the sites of where people had been killed by violence.
This event has emerged from the “tenacity” and dedication of a group of people struggling against police brutality for more than a decade and came to the conclusion that there was a need to create community and peace zones for life while working for justice in and accountability.
Ron, the coalition, friends and the family of Robert Mitchell did somethign different on this day: May 21, 2009.
The Demands were clear:
Justice for Robert Mitchel
Create a Detroit-Warren Peace Zone for Life
End the use of Tassers
Prosecution the POlice Officers
The tone was set by Ron, Scott, Sandra and Yuseef Shaku (from Hush House) who said: put the neighbor back in the hood, this is about life, ending the anger, becoming and creating community, caring for each other. This was truly about “ending the war on Mack” and also making it clear to the authorities that the communities of Detroit and Warren would take responsibility for creating peace, ending the violence and ending the police brutality. This was about a community saying: “we are responsible to make the change” and we will turn our pain and tragedy into community building ,transformation so our children and young people have a future.
The leadership by the family, Cora Renee Mitchell (mother of Robert) who has worked on her own painful journey and the support of other famileis who have had been victims of police violence or community violence came to support this event. This was a space where voices of life and dedication and hope were heard.
In the process of the march, the chants changed and the paradigm changed.
While some folks chanted:
“No Justice! No Peace” the group also chanted:
What do we want? Justice!
What do we need? Peace!
Peace Zones for Life! Peace Zones for Life!
Put the neighbor back in the hood!–
There were organizations present, NAACP, Lawyers Guild, Green Party, Young Democrats, President of Local 909 (came out on crutches to speak) Rep, from Conyers office, a large group of young people who were playing basketball joined the march. We needed a few more young people to speak or rap or do some spoken. Andrew met a young woman from the community who has been part of City Year. Barbara and Larry were also present. Larry suggested that we make up signs: Justice for Robert Mitchell: Create Detroit Warren Peace Zones for Life Posters: Peace Zone for Life- and place them in the front windows of homes.
As Ron pointed out on an early morning phone call, there was no mention of race (except the BAMN signs) but the fact that folks know in their heart that racism exists, know about the history of Warren Police, this was about Justice that could only come about through ttransforming ourselves, becoming more human, ending the violence, creating different ways and tools for people to care for each other. Robert Mitchell’s mother said: Sop running from the cops, end the B&E’s, let’s take care of each other.
Larry took some great pictures and the DCOH Banner lead the march through the community. To have a banner that says; Detroit City of Hope (we need one that says: Create Peace Zones for Life- added to this historic day.
I was honored and humbled by the mothers, the teens, the young people and the friends that came out for this gathering.
May 19th was Malcom’s birthday and both Malcolm and Martin would be honored to see that we are all works in progress and we all are working to change ourselves, create community and do the hard work necessary to show that Another Detroit is Happening!
Rich Feldman
Latinos Unidos/Unidos de Michigan
Title: Latinos Unidos/Unidos de Michigan Location: W. Vernor & Woodmere Description: 4th Grand Peaceful March in defense of human rights for Immigrant Workers and their families
**meet 10am @ W. Vernor & Woodmere Start Time: 10:00 Date: 2009-05-01
Leadership Development Seminar
Connections for Community Leadership will be sponsoring Leadership Development Seminars this summer Intended for professionals who facilitate leadership programs in their communities. They are not designed for individuals or groups aspiring to become leaders:
June 26th (9am-noon) – “Facilitating Leadership Development in Others”
All seminars will be held at: Hannah Community Center (819 Abbot Rd. East Lansing, MI 48823)
For more information, call 517-333-2580 or visit the web page here.
Legacy of Fred Hampton
Build the People’s Summit: Continue the Legacy of Fred Hampton
Event: People’s Summit Fundraiser/Discussion
Film: “The Murder of Fred Hampton”, 1971 (88 mins.) Recently re-released on DVD
Date: Friday May 29, 7:00-9:00 p.m.
Location: 5920 Second Avenue at Antoinette, Near WSU in Detroit Suggested
Donation: $5
Fred Hampton, a young leader of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party, electrified the African American and progressive movement in Chicago during 1968-69. He formed an alliance of street gangs along with organizations from the Puerto Rican, Chicano, student and working class white communities in the Chicago area in order to fight against repression and for food, free health care, quality education, housing and fundamental social change. His efforts prefigured the Rainbow Coalition of Jesse Jackson during the 1980s. Hampton’s legacy as a young revolutionary organizer portends much for the challenges facing the people of the United States today amid the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Brief background on film:
In The Murder Of Fred Hampton, currently in re-release on DVD, director Mike Gray and the Chicago Film Group Collective chronicle the brief but extraordinary life of 21 year old Hampton, executed as he slept on December 4th, 1969, along with other Panthers during a brutal home invasion by a special unit of Chicago police tied to the State Attorney’s office. Despite an elaborate cover-up by police insisting that that they fired 99 bullets and left Hampton’s brains splattered across his mattress in ’self-defense,’ movement lawyers, as documented in this devastating film, proved otherwise. This people’s investigation challenging at the same time Nixon Administration repression and Cointelpro, resulted in the indictment of several Chicago police, the State Attorney for Northern Illinois, and his assistants. The Murder Of Fred Hampton illuminates the magnetic fervor, militant eloquence, and sheer infectious ideological energy of ‘living high on the people,’ that Chairman Fred embodied, much like Malcolm. And it was that threat to the state and the status quo, a combination of political rage transcending fear and the passionate pursuit of broad popular unity against social and economic injustice, that invoked Hampton’s valiant iconic immortality and also abrupt victimhood. Rendering The Murder Of Fred Hampton a visual and oral blueprint of cautionary wisdom and mass inspiration.
Letter from Tom Pedroni
Dear Tom, ( Thomas Sugrue )
I very much enjoyed your presentation yesterday morning at the WSU Law School, and have previously learned much from you both through Origins of the Urban Crisis and your edited book The New Suburban History.
I am a professor and researcher of urban educational policy sociology at Oakland University, and am presently researching the “post-welfarist educational policy complex” of metropolitan Detroit. My first book, Market Movements: African American Involvement in School Voucher Reform (Routledge) won the 2009 American Educational Studies Association Critic’s Choice Award.
To cut to the chase, I am deeply worried about the implications of Detroit’s planned “downsizing” for Detroit’s most vulnerable residents. (As well the downsizing of neighborhoods includes the closing and consolidation of many Detroit Public Schools buildings.) Once more, the city’s “revitalization” involves the forced relocation of the city’s least powerful mostly black residents. The neighborhoods slated for clear-cutting are those in the city’s non-Downtown interior, and these neighborhoods greatly overlap those characterized as most lucrative for realty development by a recent (2006) realty study commissioned by the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation. My sense is that realty interests desire the removal of “undesirable” people (and their homes and businesses) so that new development can be optimized, and is not about the efficient redistribution of city services in the interest of city residents. This pattern is all too familiar to anyone who has lived in Detroit and/or is familiar with your work, and portends the misery of relocation coupled with more broken promises.
I’m also worried about New Detroit’s partnership with CEOs and regional political leadership around this issue. New Detroit is ostensibly one of the more progressive philanthropic organizations in the area. However recently it has allied itself closely with Business Leaders for Michigan (formerly Detroit Renaissance) and other corporate and political leadership through One D in pursuing a business-friendly strategy of concentration of public resources for private sector investment enhancement. In the realm of education, New Detroit has joined an educational agenda of Broad Foundation Fellow Robert Bobb focused on the development of more charter schools, merit pay for teachers, more outsourcing of vital school services to private contractors, and the implementation of high stakes test-driven curricula– the very types of curricula that do not cultivate critical thinking for effective citizenship and the addressing of community problems.
The vast majority of Detroit residents have not been consulted about either the plans for forced relocation or the school closings.
Here is the question I wanted to ask you at the end of your talk yesterday.
“To what degree do you think the current proposals for downsizing detroit and closing 45 more schools is motivated by social justice and good governance considerations, and to what extent do you think it is motivated by the usual interests– real estate development and its desire to clear the land of undesirables?”
I am also attaching the realty study I mentioned above, with the areas identified as most lucrative for realty investment pictured on page 8 of the pdf.
best, tom
Life salvaged in lockup – from Detroit News
Incarcerated father, prostitute mom led criminal to become author, community leader
In 1992 at the age of 19, Yusef Shakur was a full-fledged product of the gang- and crack-infested Detroit neighborhood known on the street as Zone 8. He was also starting a prison sentence of five to 15 years for assault with intent to commit robbery.
Matrix is working with EMEAC to have our own Detroit All Species Parade at the River Days Festival downtown Detroit.
On June 12th and 17th, from 10am-4pm, Matrix will need all the help we can get to help students from all parts of Detroit to create amazing animal puppets for their own little parade. We will need help from creating, to cutting, to cleaning. And if you are afraid of not having
enough crafty skills, it is fine, we can accommodate everyone.
It will be a workshop in which everyone is welcome. The more volunteers the merrier! I hope you may come and maybe bring a
friend! RSVP to Laura Pereze at: 313-967-0999
Midwest Fair Climate Summit
Dear Friends,
You are cordially invited to join with community leaders from the Midwest for a day-long Fair Climate Summit in Southfield, MI on Thursday, June 25, 2009.
At this summit entitled ‘From Katrina to Copenhagen: Promoting a Fair Climate Agenda’, participants will develop a shared understanding of what fair climate and just transitions are in the Midwest as well as identify areas of collaboration. The summit will bring together diverse communities from throughout the Midwest to inform each other of the work we are doing and identify ways that we may collaborate. Additionally, while our federal policy makers debate climate legislation in Washington DC, and international delegates shape a new international climate change agreement to be signed in Copenhagen, Denmark in December of this year, we will identify ways that we can come together to influence these the national and international policies.
This summit will be held at the Southfield Westin. For more information about the location please visit http://www.starwoodhotels.com/westin/property/overview/index.html?propertyID=1038.
If you would like your organization to be added as co-sponsor, please send your logo to Nia Robinson (niaerobinson@gmail.com). Travel scholarships are available for the event. Please contact Zach Baker (bakerz@nwf.org) or Eleanor Blomstrom eleanor@wedo.org for more information regarding this event or travel scholarships.
We are also working to plan a Toxic Tour the afternoon of Wednesday, June 24 and a Meet and Greet Reception the evening of June 24. Stay tuned for more details and we encourage you to arrange travel so that you can be a part of these events as well.
Sincerely,
Midwest Summit Host Committee
The Heat and Warmth Fund
Environmental Law and Policy Center
Michigan Environmental Council
Plains Justice
Institute for Community Resource Development
Oxfam America
Global Exchange
Sierra Club Environmental Justice Program
National Wildlife Federation
Women’s Environment and Development Organization
Opening Remarks from USSF
Welcome to the second US Social Forum. Welcome to Detroit. We’re trying to do a lot here. We have bold visions, short pockets, and a long historical context. The changes we have seen in this city would frighten a hardened soldier and wisen a grandmother who looks with open eyes. Walk the streets of Detroit and folks are deeply conversant with the reality of living in a post-industrial economy. Talk to the activists and organizers of our city and you’ll meet folks who look beyond mere racial representation. Having a Black council member, mayor, or even a president is only an asset if there is a communal agenda, a recognition of our shared well-being to push them towards. We’ll stand up to geniuses, cuss out politicians and CEOs, demand accountability of foundations here in Detroit.
Accountability to what? Even though it has yet to be fully spelt out, we hold visions of community well-being beyond the short-term profits of capitalism. Even the well-meaning non profit industrial complex must bow down to our potent mix of church mothers, hood veterans, imams, poet-MC’s, water warriors, urban gardeners. Even when corporate media attacks the Social Forum as a foreign “invasion of protesters” it only shows our media savvy community that we must develop our own system of messaging to reach and teach our folks.
We take nothing for granted in this Social Forum process—communications, water, food, housing, electricity– nothing. In Detroit, everything we have comes from the development of relationships and the progression of struggle. Our entire infrastructure of being must be negotiated, viewed critically and politically. And we’re pouring our souls into this processing, offering everything we can into hosting this forum. This can’t be a sacrifice offering, this must be a ressurection process. Let by the political poise and logistical dedication of Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, East Michigan Environmental Action Council, SE Michigan Jobs with Justice, and Centro Obrero de Detroit we formed numerous local organizing committees to prepare to host thousands of comrades and ground this Forum in the realities of the D.
Hosting this Forum has been a blessing. It is not just a commitment to an ideology but a development of trust. The ability to step up and fill the gaps, to rise to the occaision when you are needed is today’s test of our organizing. From the ecological nightmares of the Gulf Coast to the gross injustices that keep young souls confined in ghettos, our movement must show that we don’t just have proposed solutions and lofty ideals but we have organized ourselves to fill those gaps and recreate our communities and society.
This poem shows how Detroit’s struggles over the necessities of survival are at the same time a struggle for what kind of society we live in. This poem “Respiration” is a story about air pollution and the burning of trash, yes. But beyond this it is a call to arms for us to build a society where no segment of society is dumped upon, where noone bears an undue burden, where the necessities of life can’t be signed, sold, or bartered away.
Organizational Meeting Detroit Ambassadors of Hope
Sunday May 23 @ 2pm
Boggs Center
Sunday May 23 @ 2pmBoggs CenterThe upcoming Allied Media Conference and United States Social Forum are opportunities for us to show that another world is already happening in Detroit. We need your help in lifting up our city so that out of town guests and media will leave these gatherings with a deeper sense of the kind of transformational politics emerging throughout Detroit.
Being an Ambassador of Detroit City of Hope is one way for us to have a focused impact on these two conferences.
We are asking you to volunteer to spend a few hours at either of the conference making yourself available as an Ambassador for our city. To do this, we are asking you wear a specially designed T-Shirt for at least some part of the time you participate in the AMC/USSF.
In addition, we are asking for your help in supporting the DCOH and the Boggs Center in a variety of responsibilities. We need people willing to:
Work on tours of the city
Meet and Greet out of town guests, including former Detroit Summer Volunteers, film makers and members of our national and international network.
Provide housing and transportation for out of town guests
Help with literature tables
Help organize and greet people at Grace’s 95th Birthday celebration at Cobo Hall
Provide transportation to and from conferences
Hand out leaflets and flyers
Prepare media packets and materials
Assist in organizing and selling T-Shirts, literature, etc.
Any time that you can donate is welcome.
Please join us Sunday May 23 @ 2 pm at the Boggs Center, 3061 Field Street for a brief organizational meeting.
Please email Barb at bstachowski@mac.com by May 20 to let her know if you will be attending. Please indicate T-shirt size as well.
Oya Amakisi Discusses US Social Forum
Pastors blast plans to ‘destroy’ Detroit neighborhoods, schools and hospitals
Pastors and community organizers gathered at Greater Mt. Tabor Baptist Church on Detroit’s impoverished near-westside April 17. They demanded a halt to the destruction of city neighborhoods, schools, and hospitals providing care for the poor. They said not only politicians but Wall Street banks and corporations are carrying out what one speaker likened to the “shock and awe” bombing of Baghdad by the U.S. in 2003.
Title: Robert L. & Louise Miller Memorial Lecture Location: Community Arts Auditorium Wayne State University Link out: Click here Description: The fund invites a nationally recognized figure to deliver a major address on matters of urgent public concern. Dozens of distinguished activists from the areas of politics, civil rights and urban development have made presentations. These include journalist Ed Gordon, professors Lani Guinier and Christopher Edley, and Eddie Edwards, former director of the Joint Center for Politics.
Ms. Chideya will discuss the ways in which Barack Obama\’s election as the 44th U.S. president has influenced the public discourse. She will help the audience look at divergences in the way millennial and older voters tend to view racial identity and politics. She also will explore America\’s transformation into a majority minority nation and what that means for our democracy and for views of racial identity and politics.
3 p.m.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Community Arts Auditorium
Wayne State University
Free and open to the public
Parking will be available in Parking Structure #1, located at the corner of Cass Avenue and Palmer Street. Visit campusmap.wayne.edu for additional information.
To RSVP, visit specialevents.wayne.edu/millender
or call (313) 577- 3030 Start Time: 15:00 Date: 2009-02-19
Ron Scott & Peace Zones For Life
Sacred Singing/Drumming Circle Summer Solstice
SACRED SINGING/DRUMMING CIRCLE
SUMMER SOLSTICE
SATURDAY JUNE 20 7:30 – 10:00 PM
Come to sing/chant/drum/listen/talk/laugh/pray/reflect/ cry/breathe/ join with others who think; care; dream; and know we are all one (or maybe need to be reminded).
Weather permitting we’ll sit around the campfire outside.
Not a potluck, but feel free to bring a snack to share if you want.
NO CHARGE. (But please leave a small donation for tea, firewood, etc.)
*At the home of Julie Beutel (313) 884-9861
4985 Gateshead, Detroit, 48236
**DIRECTIONS
- I-94 to Moross exit
- Moross SE toward Lake St. Clair ~1 mile to Mack
- Right onto Mack; three blocks to Gateshead
- right, 5 houses to 4985
Parking on both sides of street.
Saving Banksy
Recently a graffiti piece by world renowned artist Bansky was discovered at the old Packard Plant. The folks at 555 gallery took steps to restore it. Here it is chronicled by Detroit Funk.
Self-Publishing for Self-Determination
This is our city!
People are resisting the assault on our city. Detroiters are standing up against the schemes of Mayor Bing, Emergency Financial Manager Bobb and powerful foundations who are plotting to take our land, close our schools, sell our last public hospital, destroy whole neighborhoods and are putting everything they can think of up for sale.
Behind closed doors they are making plans that will affect our city and our children for generations to come. They refuse to share their plans in open forums, refuse to support the elected school board and challenged court orders questioning their powers. The private foundations supporting this secrecy are not accountable to any one, using their money to dictate winning and losing neighborhoods.
We are outraged by this assault on our city and on democracy. We know there is a better way. Across Detroit, long abandoned neighborhoods are coming to life with gardens, art projects and new businesses. Schools are resisting the effort to turn our children into mindless test takers, creating imaginative life affirming programs supporting community growth. We are restoring community ties, turning war zones to peace zones for life.
These activities have caught the attention of national and international media, telling the story of a new Detroit resurgence. These activities have also attracted the attention of those who see another opportunity to make money by shifting public resources into private hands. This is our city. These are our children. No one has a right to determine our future without us.
We demand
An immediate halt to school closings.
Open meetings in community centers, churches, civic organizations and block clubs to discuss the future of our city.
No use of eminent domain to take land for private use.
Full disclosure of foundation board members economic interests in our city.
Join us to
Turn all our schools into neighborhood resource centers, where young people develop their minds, hearts and imagination solving the problems facing our communities.
Maintain open land for small community gardens.
Turn vacant houses into neighborhood resources.
Reconnect generational ties through public art, urban gardens, community restoration projects.
Support
The right of Detroiters to make our own decisions about our future.
Innovative schools transforming education in service to our communities.
The imagination of teachers, activists, small businesses, urban farmers, artists and young people who are already rebuilding Detroit from the ground up.
An Open Letter to Time Inc.: On the occasion of the first article reflecting your yearlong commitment in Detroit.
By Shea Howell
I just read Daniel Okrent’s article “Detroit: the Death—and Possible Life—of a Great City.” If this is your best effort, you might as well sell the house and move back to New York. The article offers nothing new and is a recycling of stories already told. Moreover, it continues to perpetuate the myths that Detroit’s ills are because of myopic auto companies, self-interested unions, riots and racial tensions. While there are measures of truth in these images, they are caricatures of the people and events you chronicle. You don’t need to be in Detroit to drag up these tired images and superficial views.
For example, to characterize Coleman Young as a “black politician who cared more about retribution than about resurrection” or as someone who spent most of his time “insulting suburban political leasers and alienating most of the city’s remaining white residents,” is simply not true. Nor is your tying of the decline of Detroit’s population to the uprising in 1967. These are the tales told by some suburbanites to frighten their children away from the city. They are not be supported by any historical analysis of the Young administration or the decline of city and they miss the real issue. Young believed that the rebuilding of Detroit rested on the return of some single new industry or development. He was not alone in this. This belief was shared by most other mayors around the country and encouraged by federal and state policies. From the building of the Ren Cen to the opening of Casino’s, Young and subsequent administrations, like Okrent, were looking for the simple solution.
The story of Detroit’s decline, and its great gift to those of us who live here, is that as the epitome of American industry in the last century, we are the first to have to deal fundamentally with deindustrialization and all that entails.
Okrent makes much of his early memories of the city and uses them to legitimize his current perceptions, but he has done little to provide a matured understanding of the people of this city, who are nearly invisible in his account. Instead he looks to worn out ideas, arguing for “regional government,” “moving occupants,” and positioning us as one of the “cheapest” labor markets encouraged by the government to produce “hydrogen” autos. Urban farming, where Detroit leads the nation, gets one short sentence. Green belts get a clause, and the possibility of creating a new definition of city already in the making gets no mention at all.
The tragedy of this piece is that so many other journalists have done better. In addition to our own local papers that have chronicled much of the imaginative redevelopment in the city, Rebecca Solnit writing in Harpers presented a compelling picture of the new agricultural movement forming a basis for a new economy in “Detroit Arcadia.” Flypmedia.com did a wonderfully imaginative presentation of the emerging trends in the city in its “Breath of Hope.” Even Al Jazeera had a stronger picture of the possibilities of what cities can become in the 21st century, as they are turn toward local economic structures. Last week a former UM student, Diana Flora, writing in the Michigan Daly captured more of the city’s reality in her “Viewpoint: Two sides of the same Detroit” than Okrent.
Okrent has much to offer in both his capturing of the devastation of the city as a slow Katrina and his recognition that the rebuilding of Detroit is tied to the redefinition of America. But he and subsequent journalists in your series need to shed a lot of baggage to recognize that Detroit is not just a bombed out city. While you are busy thinking of us as Baghdad, and consulting that bureau for how to approach our city, many see much stronger parallels with Chiapas and the rising movements of the global south. If you’re not willing to explore something new, spare us the effort.
Rich Feldman: A Response To Time
I just read Danny Okrent’s article in Time Magazine. I am disappointed at how little Danny has been able to reflect on his own history to provide any new insights into his home town. Danny was raised in Detroit, went to UM in the 1960s, and became a nationally known writer. I was raised in Brooklyn, went to UM in the 1960s and have engaged with Detroit for more than 30 years, much of that time in an assembly plant, learned from and listened to people on both sides of 8 mile. I spent 20 years on the line and ten years as an elected Union Official. Since 1970 when 30 of my activist friends from Ann Arbor moved to Detroit, many of us have been involved in community and social movement activity. When I moved to Detroit in the 1960s, I was looking for a return of the union power of the 1930’s, Danny Okrent seems now in 2010 to be looking for signs of 1960s solution. He is 40 years out of date. The abandonment of Detroit is about much more than the structural economic crisis brought on by a one industry town surrounded by racist policies and attitudes. Detroit represents the end of the industrial epoch in human history and requires deep and new thinking and imagination to re-define, re-spirit and re-build our city from the ground up.
Danny missed the significance of Detroit’s great transformation. While on the surface it is about the auto industry, it is really the end of the economic American Dream and the birth of a 21 century American dream based upon local sustainable economics and community building. The crisis of Detroit wasn’t only about pursuing wrong strategies, it was a fundamental failure to recognize that for the first time in human history, people will not be needed in our country to produce and make goods. The new stage of technology, starting with automation, the rise of the global market and global sourcing, the rising global urbanization would create world wide permanent unemployment. In 1963, James Boggs wrote about the rise of the “outsiders” and “the permanent underclass” that would no longer be part of the success of the economic American Dream. Detroit is now faced with the questions of what are people for, if not to be cogs in mass production? What is the reason for cities? How and why should they be sustained?
Today 2 million people live in prisons in our country. Detroit, Rockford, Youngstown, Bessemer have been left behind almost 30 years. These people, deemed expendable by our society are, like the problems of Detroit, often hidden from view, but telling the tale of a deep transformation in our society.
The auto industry defined Detroit and America. Through it we have seen the slow transformation of most Americans from producers of goods and services to consumers. In this transformation, we lost more than the auto industry. As a people we came to value things more than people, profits more than communities. What was good for GM became the standard by which we judged what was good for America, and if it meant destroying whole communities quickly as in Poletown (something Danny doesn’t even mention) or through vast unemployment through automation and plant closings, no one objected.
It was this transformation to a “thing oriented society” that compelled Martin Luther King Jr. to talk about a radical revolution in values and the struggle against racism, materialism and militarism.
Danny defines the crisis in economic and mechanical terms. He gives your readers no sense of the spirit of the people and the dreams of dignity motivated both the Labor Movement of the 1930s and the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements that shaped Detroit .
Danny is looking for economic answers and sees Detroit in economic terms. He holds onto the belief that the past will return and the middle class will be rebuilt, only greener. He cannot image the future except in terms of an economic standard of living. My own experience in the plant, working every day with folks trading lives for dollars and overtime, living on credit cards, believing that “a job was the answer” to all our problems has given me a much deeper understanding of today’s crisis. Simplistic formulations of the self interest of labor, the bad decisions of management miss the challenge we all face to develop new ways of living that are sustainable, that develop local capacities and that encourage civic life.
Continued concerns about growing violence, totally failed educational systems, discussing and working for insurance reform rather than working to create healthy communities, continuing to rely on food sold in party stores or gas stations and a leadership with no vision are not the result of the auto industry failing, or the politicians and leaders not creating good strategies, but the failure to see Detroit as the canary in our country.
While Time seems to be missing it, many others are not. Next summer 30,000 people are coming to Detroit in June 2010 as part of the US Social Forum. The call for this historic gathering is: Another World is Possible!, Another US is Necessary! and Another Detroit is Happening! Most of these people, struggling with similar challenges as those we face in Detroit, see the city as a source of hope emerging at the grass roots as individuals and organizations create food security, new schools committed to community building, neighborhood based cultural centers and villages, urban gardens and farms with community mobile markets. Artists and activist bringing new life, creating new art forms, and offering visions in music, color and words in every neighborhood and community center across the city.
Danny needs to stop circulating the same old stories and take a look at what is emerging in the cracks of this city. Otherwise, Time will have missed one of the best stories of this new century.
Rich Feldman (richardfeldman60@gmail.com)
James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership
www.boggscenter.org and the Detroit City of Hope (www.dcoh.org).
Toby Barlow, Mark Covington and the reinvention of Detroit
US Social Forum Caravan Discussion
“Greenhouses, Local Projects and National Partnerships”
The Boggs Center & DCOH folks will be hosting their first meeting to discuss the vision, and early plans to partner with Project South and others. One of the goals during the US Social Forum is to build greenhouses with the Hope District and the Hush House.
Where: The Hope District — E Forest & Van Dyke
When: Thursday, June 4th at 5pm
For more information, contact Rich Feldman at 248-225-8037 or ruaw@aol.com
US Social Forum Kickoff
USSF Detroit LOC Banner Party
The USSF DLOC (Detroit Local Organizing Committee) would like to have a presence at the Labor Day Parade on Monday, September 7, 2009. We are reaching out for volunteers to help us paint the banners. You do not have to be an artist to participate. It is a fun activity that brings the community together and offers an opportunity to learn about the United States Social Forum. Everyone is welcomed. Bring family and friends with you. Please share this information with your lists. We would like to do the banners on the Saturdays before Labor Day Parade. More details are forthcoming. If you are interested please contact Oya at amakisi@gmail.com or 313-429-0796.
USSF Detroit Outreach Committee Kick-Off
The USSF Detroit Outreach Committee met and has set up the following schedule for a June 22 Kick-off extravaganza! The June 22 Kick-off will be at the Michigan Welfare Rights building (Central United Methodist Church, 23 E Adams) from 6-9pm. Below are the activities for the event. Please e-mail or call Ahmina Maxey for more information at ahmina@emeac.org or 248-245-6645.
6 pm – Arrivals, there is music and art to entertain
6:30 pm – Press Conference
6:45 pm – Orientation about the USSF with new PowerPoint (presented by the Outreach Commitee, question and answer)
7:10 pm – Food and mingling
8:00 pm – More live music (and maybe even dancing!)
Vincent Harding at UM-Dearborn
Title: Vincent Harding at UM-Dearborn Location: Social Science Building, Rm. 1500 (4901 Evergreen Rd. Dearborn, MI) Description: - Vincent Harding will be presenting, “Fannie Lou Hamer, Martin Luther King and Obama’s Other Ancestors” Start Time: 18:30 Date: 2009-05-12
Where do we go from here? Boggs Center Monthly Discussions
Friday Evening May 15, 2009
7:00 pm
For the past 6 months, we have been gathering for monthly conversations at the Boggs Center. We invite you to evaluate, criticism and reflections as we as plan for future discussions, or more systematic study. During these movement times, we initiated these monthly conversations because it is critical to struggle around theory, vision and ideas as well as our ongoing practice. There is a two sided struggle, internal and external.
· April: Changing Concepts of Revolution, Changing Concepts of Socialism
· February: Looking in the Mirror: Grand Torino, Bacivitch article
· January: RETC, 2008 Introduction (Grace Lee Boggs)
· December: Milani Article: From Opposition to Alternatives
Join us on Friday Evening, May 15, 2009 at 7:00 pm at the Boggs Center (3061 Field Street, Detroit, Mi 48214
What did we learn? What do we want to read, study, and discuss?
How can the Boggs Center continue to be space for safe and open dialogue?
Refreshments; bring finger food or a drink to share .We will gather at 6:30 pm. Please RSVP because space is limited. We will start promptly at 7:00 pm.
From the NY Times – The latest must-go event in this gritty, left-behind city — where D.J.’s flourish among ruins, trespassing in tumbledown buildings is part of a night out, and even garage rock is bare-bones — centers on soup.
Soup, as it’s known, is a monthly gathering, held above the MexicanTown Bakery in southwestern Detroit, where guests pay $5 for a homemade bowlful, salad (locally grown, to be sure) and dessert, and sit at tables made of doors laid over milk crates, listening as compatriots propose projects. Creating a pocket park, organizing an artists directory and devising a surveillance-camera video montage were all on this month’s agenda. The guests vote, and the idea deemed most deserving gets the Soup dollars — a neat little way to wiki-finance creativity. Soup, which started seven months ago, has been growing steadily. The last one, on Sunday, was the largest yet.
Title: Yes Farm Description: - Art show – all mediums accepted!
**7pm-late (CONTACT KT, BLAKE, AND/OR GARRETT FOR MORE INFO – theyesfarm@gmail.com) Start Time: 19:00 Date: 2009-04-25
“It’s our journey, but it is America’s story,” says Austin Chu, the older of two brothers who drove across the country last year to create a video documentary of the recession. Their project may remind us of some of the famous images that grew out of the Great Depression, photographs such as the “Migrant Mother” series by 
Saturday May 1st 2010
Incarcerated father, prostitute mom led criminal to become author, community leader
Pastors and community organizers gathered at Greater Mt. Tabor Baptist Church on Detroit’s impoverished near-westside April 17. They demanded a halt to the destruction of city neighborhoods, schools, and hospitals providing care for the poor. They said not only politicians but Wall Street banks and corporations are carrying out what one speaker likened to the “shock and awe” bombing of Baghdad by the U.S. in 2003.
