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.

Calling All Restorative Justice Practitioners in Michigan!

Join other Restorative Justice practitioners and enthusiasts throughout the state to discover what others are doing, forge connections, share ideas, cross-pollinate, and ultimately to explore how we might further promote and expand the use of Restorative Justice across our great state.

Michigan Restorative Justice Gathering
March 12, 2011, 10 am – 4 pm
St. Peter’s Episcopal Church
1950 Trumbull Ave (at Michigan)
Detroit, MI 48216

Come join us! There is no cost to attend – simply bring yourself, a bag lunch, and preferably a snack to share. Please forward this invitation to any and all who do Restorative Justice work in Michigan.

To register to attend, please complete the registration form at: http://snipurl.com/michiganrestorativejusticegathering

Can Sugar Law Center Stop the Financial Manager?

Detroit’s Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice , representing 28 citizens from across the state of Michigan, sued the state of Michigan in June, challenging the new Emergency Manager law. At the time, not very many folks were aware of the new law or thought it had much to do with Detroit. How times have changed.

In August, Gov. Snyder made an extraordinary request of the Michigan Supreme Court–to bypass normal procedures, remove the case form the Ingham County Circuit Court and have the high court take up the challenge to Public Act 4 immediately.

In September, the center responded:

“The emergency manager law was passed hastily, without input from all stakeholders, and its substance reflects a mentality that values fast action over a fair process or effective policy that would help our cities to recover,” said Tova Perlmutter, Executive Director of the Sugar Law Center. “Unfortunately, the Governor’s request appears to reflect a similar attitude and a fundamental mistrust of the state’s established judicial system.”

Earlier this month, we talked with Perlmutter about where things stand.

Celebrate Ten Years of Freedom with Yusef Shakur

The Lakeshore Economic Coalition will be sponsoring a celebration both of Yusef Shakur’s 10 years home since his release from prison and the tremendous work he’s done at the grassroots, as well as the triumphs and struggles of all formerly incarcerated people. This event will revolve around the idea of second-chances, which is so often denied men and women who have been incarcerated. Also to be celebrated at this event is Yusef Shakur’s February 15th birthday! There will be give aways (books, awards, and more!), plenty of food and live entertainment, and a keynote presentation from Police Chief Ralph Godbee. Reggie Reg Davis will be hosting this exciting event.

Saturday, February 26th from 3-6pm

Lakeshore Building (7310 Woodward @ the Blvd., 4th floor)

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.

Then, he let loose.

Click here for full article.

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.

Click here for full article.

Community Group Challenges Funders Network Support for Detroit Works and Emergency Financial Managers

For Immediate Release

March 21, 2011 Contact: Shea Howell 313-282-7669 and Ronald Scott 313-399-7345

Community Group Challenges Funders Network Support for Detroit Works and Emergency Financial Managers

Members of the community based Detroiters for Dignity and Democracy were threatened with security this afternoon while distributing an open letter to the Funders Network annual meeting.

The open letter welcomed the Network to the city and asked them “to explore the divisive, anti-democratic thrust of the foundations leading the effort to reconfigure Detroit.”

Pointing to the one slanted information provided by the conference website about efforts to reconfigure Detroit, the group stated, “the foundations behind the Detroit Works and reform of the school system…lack legitimacy and authenticity. They have demonstrated a distrust of democracy and profound disrespect for the lives and hopes of people within our communities.”

While attempting to distribute the attached open letter members were challenged by Linda Smith who represented herself as responsible for the conference and insisted that people leave immediately.

“It saddens me that people are so unwilling to engage in civil dialogue about such important issues,” said Shea Howell of Detroiters for Dignity and Democracy. “But it doesn’t surprise me. One of the issues we raise is the very unwillingness of the foundations to listen to community perspectives.”

Community Profile: Yusef Shakur – WDET

From Feb 24, 2011

This weekend, several community organizers and City of Detroit officials are expected to attend a party honoring former gang member Yusef Shakur. It’s been ten years since Shakur was released from prison and started his efforts to improve his community. WDET’s Rob St. Mary has this profile.

Click for profile

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

D-Town Farm with Will Allen – October 30th

Subject: Learn hoophouse technology at D-Town Farm with Will Allen, noted urban farmer and founder of Growing

On Saturday, October 30 and Sunday, October 31, 2010, Will Allen, a McArthur Fellow and founder of Growing Power, Inc of Milwaukee, will return to Detroit to share his knowledge and expertise on hoop house technology.

A two-day workshop experience, this event will include construction of a 30′ x 96′ hoophouse at D-Town Farm and a lecture by Mr. Allen on hoophouse technology. Participants will be able to learn alongside Will Allen, a noted teacher and trainer in urban agricultural methods, and walk away prepared to build their own hoophouse for year-round food production. D-Town Farm is one of Growing Power’s eight Regional Outreach Training Centers in the U.S., and provides periodic lectures, workshops and hands-on training experiences in urban agriculture and food security.

Activities on Saturday, October 30 will begin at 9:00am and conclude at 6:00pm, with a lecture and powerpoint presentation by Mr. Allen at 12:00pm. Activities on Sunday, October 31 will begin at 9:00am and conclude at 2:00pm. Lunch on both days is included with the cost of registration. Participants are encouraged to wear work clothes (and bring a battery operated drill if they have one). The 30′ x 96′ hoophouse that will be constructed as part of this workshop will be built from a hoophouse kit, which will simplify the construction process for do-it-yourself’ers who plan to use what they learn during the workshop to build their own hoophouse.

Registration is now OPEN! The deadline for advanced registration is Wednesday, October 27, 2010. Advance registration is only $60.00 per person for this two-day workshop and learning experience and includes lunch for both days. Registrations received after October 27 are $75.00 per person. Payments can be made in person or by mail at 3800 Puritan, Detroit, MI 48238. Registration via Paypal will be available shortly.

If you’d like to register in person, the DBCFSN offices are open Mondays 9am-4pm and Tuesdays-Fridays 9am-6pm. Please make checks and money orders payable to Detroit Black Community Food Security Network or DBCFSN.

Please call Ebony Roberts at (313) 345-3663 for questions or to register in person.

GROWING POWER is a national non-profit organization and land trust supporting people from diverse backgrounds, and the environments in which they live, by helping to provide equal access to healthy, high-quality, safe and affordable food for people in all communities.

DETROIT BLACK COMMUNITY FOOD SECURITY NETWORK is a non-profit, grassroots organization whose aim is to build self-reliance, food security and justice in Detroit’s Black community by influencing public policy, engaging in urban agriculture, promoting healthy eating, encouraging co-operative buying, and directing youth towards careers in food-related fields.

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

Detroit 2 Dakar Cabaret

Detroit artists use city’s blight as their canvas

By Mike Householder

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.

“That’s what it’s all about,” he said.

———

On the Net:

Heidelberg Project: http://www.heidelberg.org

House 365 blog: http://house365.wordpress.com

Ice House blog: http://icehousedetroit.blogspot.com

Detroit City of Hope on Flypmedia

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

Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality – Kwanzaa Celebration

Detroit community gardens grow optimism

Plots thicken as youth groups, nuns, grow fresh food, brighten neighborhoods

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.

Click here for article.

Detroit Community Organizers ‘Re-Imagine’ Work

“Anyone watching the American economy might question what it means to have job security 2011. In Detroit this week, a group of national community organizers will be taking the question to the extreme as they ponder: What does it mean to work? The traditional answer—get a job and keep it—is suddenly beyond the reach of so many Americans, that the very definition of work must be re-imagined; say organizers of the Reimagining Work conference.” – Read the rest of the article here.

Detroit Entrepreneurs Opt to Look Up

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.

Click here to read more

Detroit on Flypmedia

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.

Click to read more

Detroit Summer Website Up

Check out the new website for Detroit Summer Website: with Democracy Now interviews with Jon and Invincible.

For a media treat about “Another Detroit is Happening” call: 888-317-8418, Multi- Media Mural Project. The story is told. Don’t miss the next tour.

Detroit to Dakar Events

Wednesday, December 29, 2010 from 8:00 to 12:00pm: D2D African Cabaret and dinner (BYOB) at The Family Therapy Center: 17500 Northland Park Court, Southfield, MI 48075. Only $15.00 admission -adults only.

D2D is an initiative of Africa-focused organizations from around the U.S to promote issues related to Africaand the African Diaspora. D2D coordinated its activities toward enhanced participation at the U.S. Social Forum in Detroitthis past June, while also making strategic links towards the World Social Forum in Dakar, Senegalin early 2011. (HYPERLINK http://sites.google.com/site/detroittodakar/ and blog: http://detroit2dakar.blogspot.com/)

D2D is showing the parallels of the economic downturn across the U.S.and Africa by making strategic links between these two cities, Detroitand Dakar, and helping us move toward global concepts for solutions.

These events are a wonderful opportunity to witness the Detroitgrassroots community in action. Your support will help fund the travel expenses of the Detroit Delegation, who will travel to Dakar, Senegalin February 2011 for the World Social Forum to continue this work.

Please join for three nights of delicious food, fun, creativity, collaboration, music, performances, and thought-provoking commentary. There will be great raffle prizes at the cabaret. You won’t want to miss it.

All events are open to the public, admission for the movie/dinner and cabaret is only $15.00. The funds from dinners and admission go directly to support the travel expenses of the Detroitdelegation of D2D.

Detroit was the fastest-growing city in the world. It’s also the fastest to dissapear-

Video from The Guardian.

Detroit’s Matrix Theatre and Justin Dart Puppet at Chicago’s Disailiity Pride Parade.

The Chicago Temple’s Dixon Chapel was packed for the July 23 open mic the night before the seventh annual Chicago Disability Pride Parade, and the food at the back of the room was just crumbs by the time Eli Clare got up to the microphone. His was the last performance of the night, and people were excited to hear him speak. When he introduced one of his poems, “How to Talk to a New Lover About Cerebral Palsy,” the audience laughed. “I know that I’m home when people laugh,” said Clare, a writer and speaker who was born with CP. When he shares the poem with more able-bodied audiences, he said, they just look sad.

Click for full article

Detroit, Community Resilience, and the American Dream

By Milicent Johnson from Shareable.net

When I told my friends and family I would be traveling to Detroit to write about community resilience, I got the same reaction from everyone: Silence. Then, slowly, as if not to offend me, people would look at me very seriously and say “Be very careful–you never hear anything good about Detroit. Remember, you’re a woman, you have more to lose from an attack than just your wallet.” Frequently the conversation would trail to the murder rate or economic devastation and that “desperate times make people do crazy things.” My surprise at this reaction was compounded by the fact that those words weren’t just coming from my parents, they were coming from born and bred city folks who know that the greatest cities always get a bad rap from people who have never been there.

Click for full article.

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.

Click here for article

East People’s Festival – Calling All Artists!

Greetings!

We would like to invite you and fellow artists you know across the city of Detroit to participate in the Eastside Peoples Festival Saturday, June 11, 2011 from 10am – 3pm.

This invitation is especially to artists who have or make available audio CD’s or DVD’s of their performance work that can be sold (all performing and spoken word artists, as well as digital media artists), and to artists with work to sell in the textile arts, mechanical arts, and graphic arts (painters, printscreeners, and apparel/printmakers).

We are a group of community focused organizations and interfaith congregations who have planned this festival to celebrate all that is good and positive about the Eastside community, and build our relationships with one another.

If you choose to participate, you will have the following for FREE:

**One-half of an 8′ table to display and offer your art for sale for FREE.

**An opportunity to perform at the festival for FREE

FREE food and drink.

**If you would like to be added to the performance schedule, we can talk with you about that also. We need to confirm your attendance/participation, as well as the time you will arrive and leave the festival.

Please contact Carmen Rembert, Iroquois Christ Lutheran Church, at either rembertcrew@yahoo.com, or (313) 921-2667. You may leave a message at the church and someone will contact you.

Thank you, and we look forward to your helping us make this event a success to unify and rebuild our community.

F.O.O.D. (Food Of Our Dreams)

When: Thusday, June 4th from 11:30am-7pm

Locations:

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).

Click for full article

Fresh Food Share Produce Distribution

Friday, September 17, 2010, 12noon-1:30pm
Every 3rd Friday, Year Round
Hannan House – 4750 Woodward Ave., Detroit

Are you interested in eating local produce? Would you like to support Michigan farmers? Would you like to see more fresh, nutritious produce available in your community?

Join the Fresh Food Share Program provided by the Green Ribbon Collaborative. Bushel boxes of fresh vegetables and fruit are distributed every third Friday of the month at Hannan House at 4750 Woodward, Detroit. No age or income restrictions. All shares are pre-ordered through Eastern Market in order to assure low prices. $17 per share, or $10 for a small share.

Pre-orders for September are due at Hannan House by noon on Thursday, September 9th. However, for people paying with Bridgecard, orders must be placed between11am and 12:30pm on Wednesday, September 8th at Hannan. Contact Rachel Jacobsen at 313-833-1300, ext 24 for more information.

From bakery rises a fellowship

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:

Here’s the official web site:

http://sweetwater-organic.com/blog/

And our most recent slide show prepared for Great Lakesk Water Insitute Gathering of Investors and Producers:

From Motown to Growtown: The greening of Detroit

From Grist online magazine -

“Detroiters have an edge to us,” community organizer and urban-agriculture activist Malik Yakini told me. “We were forged in a furnace. You have to have a rough exterior to survive, to not be crushed.”

If he were talking about nearly any other U.S. city, Yakini’s language might sound overblown. In Detroit, it comes across as understatement.

Click to read full article

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!

The day after this article appeared in the Midwest Airline in-flight magazine…

Future City Media Workshops

The Detroit Digital Justice Coalition presents:
Future City Media Workshops

Offering FREE 22 week workshops in:
Audio / Graphics / Video / Web
…Education / Grassroots organizing / Entrepreneurship

OPEN HOUSE INFORMATION SESSION: WEDNESDAY, FEB 16TH, 7-9PM
@ ALLIED MEDIA PROJECTS 4126 THIRD AVE

The Future City Media Workshops are 22 week trainings for Detroiters interested in building a community media economy and an awesome future for Detroit. The workshops will offer advanced training in audio, video, graphics, and web design skills. They will also offer training in digital media education and entrepreneurship. Participants will graduate with the unique skill sets necessary to train other Detroiters in digital media, create their own jobs, foster cooperative forms of community wealth creation, and support media-based community organizing for a better Detroit!

The Detroit Digital Justice Coalition is comprised of people and organizations in Detroit who believe that communication is a fundamental human right. We are securing that right through activities that are grounded in the digital justice principles of: access, participation, common ownership, and healthy communities.

YOU SHOULD APPLY IF YOU:

▲*have some experience in creating digital media.
▲*have some experience in teaching -or- have some small business experience.
▲*are between the ages of 18-80.
▲*are dedicated to creating a community media economy and an awesome future for Detroit.

Space is limited.
If you have any questions, contact: joe @alliedmedia.org
To apply, visit: www.alliedmedia.org/futurecity

ALLIEDMEDIA.ORG
DETROITDJC.ORG
RECOVERY.GOV

Get the buzz – METRO TIMES

Why bees are a sweet addition to city life

BY LARRY GABRIEL

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.

Click here for full article

Grace Lee Boggs Birthday Party

grace_birthday_invite

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.

Read the full article here

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.

Click here for more information.

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 7^th, 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.

Click here to read more.

Heidelberg Project Artist Needs Shoes for “Street Folk” Art Installation

DETROIT (WJBK) – Old shoes, new shoes, unusual shoes, colorful shoes or shoes that mean something — the founder of The Heidelberg Project wants you to put your best foot forward toward a new art project.

Every worn pair of shoes has something to say. Take, for example, footwear worn by a student that came straight from the heart of change in Egypt.

From MyFoxDetroit.com

Heidelberg Project Fundraiser

Click here for PDF download and form.

HFP/HAP Farmers Markets

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.

Click here for full story.

Hip Hop Conference- June 26 – 28

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

After an accident at an auto plant, Gloria Lowe became a visionary, reinventing the way she approaches work and her community. Lowe spoke to producer Zak Rosen. To hear the audio of the story, click HERE.

Gloria Lowe is a community organizer and founder of “We Want Green, Too.” (Photo courtesy of Amanda Le Claire)

I worked in an automotive plant. I understand what it means to not be able to think. What that takes away from a person. Because, it took it away from me. They said just do the job, don’t think about the job.

I could not even give suggestions to building something. I’m the one who’s working there. I could not understand why you felt that I didn’t have valuable input for building this automobile that people like myself would buy. And it seems like such a small thing. But it really isn’t. Not when you’re building something.

I was a final line inspector. My job was to drive the cars outside the plant and park them in a certain area so then transportation would pick them up and load them on the trucks. This particular day, I had driven the car out and was walking back into the building and just as I was up under the automatic door, the bushing fell. The door came down, right on my end.

There was so much pain. Couldn’t sleep. Didn’t eat much. Delayed speech. Problems with my vision. Ringing in my ears. My body would go into contortions. On a lot of medication. The neurologist that I saw told me that I had left side nerve damage from the top of my brain down through my feet.

It took about two, two-and-a-half years for me to come back around. I felt so blessed to have been given an opportunity to live again. But I was told by my doctors that I would never work again, that all of that was complete in my life. I was only 50 years old. I didn’t know what it meant not to work.

I do remember that there was an awakening that happened inside of my soul that when I came up out of this, I no longer had the same concerns. I understood what love was unconditionally because it had been given to me. And all I could do was return it.

A new day

Gloria Lowe prepares for a discussion at the recent “Reimagining Work Conference” in Detroit. (Photo courtesy of Amanda Le Claire)

I’m usually up at 6:30, 7:00 a.m., stop at the Tim Horton’s, always get me one coffee, oftentimes with a bagel. And I do the Michigan turnaround and enter Belle Isle. Belle Isle is the blessing we have in Detroit, an island that is attached to us that separates the United States from Canada. And it’s surrounded by all this beautiful water and boats, which I love. And I go there and I meditate and I think.

I woke up this morning with this thought about language. In the news you hear, ‘the poverty stricken, citizens of Detroit, oh the devastated communities, it’s so desolate and homelessness is everywhere and despair.’ That was enough to make you feel bad. What if it read, ‘the spiritually rich citizens of Detroit, experiencing abandoned homes, have now decided to embrace, with love and hope their communities and rebuild for a future’. That sounds different.

Spiritually it’s said that nothing positive can come out of a negative. If we embrace transformation, I’m not sure that’s true. The ability to recreate is always with us.

The ability to recreate

Gloria Lowe envisions the next step for rebuilding the home she grew up in. (Photo courtesy of Amanda Le Claire)

I’m founder of “We Want Green, Too.” Our mission is to re-educate, retrain and rebuild a 21st century, sustainable Detroit. We are looking to construct various teams in the basic skills: dry walling, painting, floor repair.

Right now we’re working out of shelters and the Detroit Veterans Administration building, a connection we have with homeless vets. We work with young people who are underemployed, people who have overcome their substance abuse, as well as those who have been incarcerated.

We have very good housing stock in the city. And these houses, many of them date back to the early 1900s and late 1800s, it would cost you a fortune to try and build a house today with the same quality of material. So we know that the greenest house is the house that’s already there. All you do is take the time to rebuild it.

Every house in Detroit has a foundation. So where you have people who are challenged, they don’t have jobs. Why not make their jobs restructuring their own communities?

I don’t think that prior to my accident I would have understood the value of working from our hearts through our minds, through our hands. What it does in terms of helping to recreate a humanity that’s been taken away from us.

The work I’m doing now, it’s phenomenal. There’s not a price tag I could hang on it. And I know that ‘cause I’ve been on the other side.

Gloria Lowe instructs her apprentice, Travis Rushon. (Photo courtesy of Amanda Le Claire)

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.

Invincible on The Story on American Public Media

The Story on American Public Media interviews Invincible about her song and video for Ropes. This is a must listen.

Is William Martinez not our Brother?

20 years of the Prison Creative Arts Project

Join University of Michigan professor and Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP) founder Buzz Alexander and Detroit artists and activists for an evening of story telling and community dialogue bearing witness to the human costs of mass incarceration in Michigan.

Responding panel:

Ron Scott, Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality
Natalie Holbrook, American Friends Service Committee Criminal Justice Program
Mary Heinen, Prison Creative Arts Project
Ana Lyra Sis, Community Artist and PCAP Participant

Thursday, December 9th at 7:00pm
Leopold’s Books

The Park Shelton
15 E Kirby St.
Detroit MI, 48202

Www.leopoldsbooks.com

313-875-4677

Prisons are an invisible, but dominant, part of American society: the United States incarcerates more people than any other nation in the world, with 25 percent of the world’s prisoners currently held within its borders. Is William Martinez Not Our Brother? describes the Prison Creative Arts Project and its work giving incarcerated individuals an opportunity to participate in the arts, enabling them to withstand and often overcome the conditions and culture of prison, the policies of an incarcerating state, and the consequences of mass incarceration.

For more information contact Amit Weitzer at amit.weitzer@gmail.com or visit www.leopoldsbook.com

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.

jackdetroit.com The Urban Farming Imperative By Julian Toles

http://www.jackdetroit.com/post/9666849175/the-urban-farming-imperative

SEPTEMBER 1, 2011
The Urban Farming Imperative
By Julian Toles

10:30 a.m., September 19, 2010: The day’s presenters were 20 minutes late. My classmates weren’t sure why, our instructor offered no explanation. Frankly, we didn’t care.
Silent rejoice swelled through the lecture hall, since, well, class didn’t start on time, which gave everyone extra time to update Facebook statuses, and cram for impending exams.
There we were. Sitting. Anticipating arrival by two of Detroit’s leading innovators, handpicked by Professor Scott Kurashige, educator by profession, activist by passion. The course, American Culture 301, or “Detroit History,” approached urban issues through a uniquely vivid prism, entailing firsthand engagement with city leaders and landmarks.
It also required (surprise surprise) pre-readings. These texts, drably filtered and emotionless, still, somehow, left within us a residue of interest for the topic of the day: (more…)

Join with the Boggs Center and Celebrate Grace’s 95th Birthday at the USSF

Click here for PDF download.

July 31, 2011The passing of a great Poet from Detroit – BLAIR.

Come celebrate the life of our beloved Blair this Sunday, July 31, 2011.

We want to give Blair back some of the love and life he gave to all of us. We are going to send him off with a 2nd Line Jazz funeral and we invite you to come mourn and celebrate.

1pm: Please gather on the corner of Cass and MLK/Mack. We will march down Cass to the Unitarian Universalist Church (UU)/Cass Corridor Commons at 4605 Cass on the corner of Forest. Percussion instruments are welcome to join in this march.
2pm: Life Celebration at the UU church/Cass Corridor Commons
3pm: We will 2nd Line March back out into the street and let Detroit hear us celebrate.
3:30pm: Community Potluck at Memorial Hall at the UU/Cass Corridor Commons. Please bring a dish. (To find out what is still needed for the potluck give Priscilla a call at 313-492-0000)
4pm Open Mic and Film Screenings ongoing

* David Blair Memorial Fund*
Donations are still needed. please give what you can and spread the word. Donations can be made at www.dBlair.org

* New Jersey Memorial Services*

A date has not been set for the New Jersey service. As soon as information is available it will be posted.

* You Can Send Condolences and mail donations to*

To the Family of David Blair 100 Swartswood Rd / APt 136/ Newton, NJ 07860

To the Detroit Family 812 Blaine St / Detroit, MI / 48202

We lost one of the areas most profound artists the other day. Probably a victim of the oppressive summer heat, the young and talented poet and songwriter, BLAIR, left our midst without notice at 43 years old. Way too young to die, Blair was prepared to contribute to our lives much more relevant cultural work that we all needed.

Unique, courageous and talented are words that decribe this young singer/guitarist who chose the route of Œfolk¹ music when it wasn¹t the typical choice for an African American at this particular time in history. He began performing with the likes of legendary Josh White Jr. and Robert B. Jones, artists that knew the powerful impact music can make in our society. He did many things, uncategorizable and daring, a renaissance man for sure.

I was deeply moved by his love poem about Detroit that he recited recently at the Grace Boggs Dinner. We worked together a few times over the years, but I wish I knew him more personally, I had intended to get to that point some day. There are many fans who are deeply saddened. I¹m sorry if you didn¹t know this person. He was a jewel. I¹m sure you¹ll hear much more about this sweet and gentle poet, a searcher for truth, a lover of life, who left us much too early.

In the meantime, please check out his website and help spread the name of this true people¹s artist.

Bill Meyer

http://www.seriousartists.com/blair.html
Detroit, While I Was Away
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54opPO7svK4

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

Kwanzaa time

Please join Mack Alive in celebrating Kwanzaa this year! Pastor Skip Wachsmann of Genesis Lutheran Church will be honored on the second day of Kwanzaa – Kujichagulia (Self-determination), Monday, December 27, 2010, 7 p.m. at Saunders Memorial AME Church – 3542 Pennsylvania (Corner of Mack Ave).

LAMP 2010 Media Project

Join LAMP in celebrating the 2010 media project. Saturday October 16 at the CCNDC Community Center 3535 Cass ave enter through the back. From 11am- 5pm

The main event is the tour of our murals, see how we created them and see how they’re a true multimedia project. We have limited space so to reserve a space email info@detroitsummer.org with who and how many people. please be at location by 11:45 tour departs at noon

If you can’t join us for the tour then come by afterward at 2:00pm where we’ll have food, an auction for prints of the murals, a presentation of the program with the organizations and people we partnered with, and live performances.

The best part is this event is free! and donations are always accepted.

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

Hampton Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/53911892@N00/3549015374/

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?”

Finally, here is a link to a recent article by Shea Howell of the Michigan Citizen on the downsizing plan.

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

Letter: Find ways for neighborhoods and homeless to live together

From Detroit Free Press

On Oct. 6, one Corktown resident viciously attacked another. This crime was heinous, with horrific details that invoke the images of James Byrd and other hate crimes, and the assailant’s rage was directed toward a homeless person (“The showdown in Corktown; Strain between its residents, homeless hits breaking point,” Jan. 31).

Click for full article.

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.

Click for full article.

Looking for real justice

By Bill Wylie-Kellermann

PUBLISHED: DECEMBER 8, 2010

Last Friday, Steve DiPonio, a resident of Detroit’s Corktown neighborhood, pleaded not guilty in Wayne County Circuit Court to felony charges related to the October beating of a homeless man, Charles Duncan, also of Corktown.

Read here for full article from Metro times.

Lost Count: A Love Story

Mapping the Strait

Mapping the Strait.

A great website that “stems from my interest in Detroit and fascination with using maps and diagrams to explore and explain complex issues.”

Matrix/EMEAC need volunteers!

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

May 28 Mothers’ Memorial Day March

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

MLK Celebration – January 14th

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.

Click here for full article

People’s Movement Assembly

Peoples Festival – An East Side Declaration of Love and Hope

Peoples Festival - East_Side June 11, 2011

Welcome all Nurturing Paths

Peoples Festival – An East Side Declaration of Love and Hope

Posted: 02 Jun 2011 06:55 AM PDT

Peoples Festival – An East Side Declaration of Love and Hope

An East Side Declaration of Love and Hope
June 11, 2011 10 am to 3 pm

Gathering at Mack East Grand Boulevard

Come and Join the Voices of Hope:

Celebration, Work and Commitment

GenesisHOPE – Detroit City of Hope Peace Zones for Life -Feedom Freedom Growers – Earthworks Sunday Dinner Company – We Want Green Too – Riverfront East Congregational Initiative and Choir – Sierra Club – On the Rise Bakery – Urban Network Book Store – Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion – Gleaners – Georgia Street Community Gardens – Allied Media Projects – The Boggs Center and many more!

Free Food, Games, Giveaways, Information, Fun!

Bring your friends, invite your community, let’s share our ideas!

Contact: Church of the Messiah — 313-567-1158

Riverfront Initiative — Carmen 313- 974-4826

Poster and quote from Tina, niece of James Boggs

Reimagine Work. Reimagine Life

By Frank Joyce

For the last 200 years virtually all of humanity has been dominated by an inhumane economy. That economy goes by many names. Fritjhoff Bergman calls it the JOBS system. For our purposes here this weekend I think that term is extremely helpful.

Tomorrow, just before lunch, we will hear from Fritjhoff via video. We will discuss together his inspiring insights into the past, the present and the future.

Starting tonight, we accelerate our journey along a road that is leading to a new kind of economy. As we reimagine work we reimagine life. We reimagine what it means to be a human being.

We visualize an economy that reaches for a better balance between human and earth, parent and child, the entire spectrum of female to male, neighbor to neighbor and community to community.

Tonight, that image looks like a messed up jigsaw puzzle. A few of its pieces inter-lock quite nicely. Others are scattered about the table, waiting to be fit. But most are missing altogether.

As we perform our labors of love from now through Sunday—as we do our work together over the next 48 hours—we will make the picture clearer. We will make some new pieces and join some others together.

Of course, we will come nowhere close to finishing the job. What we are about takes hard work, patience and time.

Hundreds of years ago, people came slowly to realize that the earth revolved around the sun, not the other way around. The authorities of that time insisted that Copernicus was wrong. They punished Galileo severely.

It took courage and struggle before the new truth took root.

So too with the belief that the world was round, not flat. After all, does it not look flat?

Oftentimes, new ideas are not so easy to grasp. Ultimately though—new truth prevails. So it will be for us.

As we go about our daily lives, just as the horizon looks flat, the J-O-B system appears invincible. Every hour of every day, the authorities of our time insist that there is no alternative to the present system.

If we are to survive, they say, each person must have a J-O-B—maybe more than one. Either that or we must attach ourselves to someone who does have a J-O-B. Of necessity, they say, we must therefore have a J-O-B System. And so, we must also accept the power and the domination of those who rule the J-O-B system.

They preach “individual responsibility and self-reliance.” But what they demand is our total dependence.

From the time we are infants, we are taught to please them. Vast and deep systems of ideology, superstition and education are devised to drive the lesson into our minds. We are conditioned to be engulfed in cold-sweat fear at the very idea that we might not get, or worse, might lose a J-O-B.

We should not be surprised then that so many of our brothers and sisters believe with all their hearts that if we can just beg loud enough and urgently enough for JOBS, JOBS, JOBS, surely they will reach into their vaults and their banks and their souls and bless us with more jobs.

Brothers and sisters. Begging is not freedom. Begging is not power. Begging is not democracy. Begging is not love of self, of earth or of humanity.

We have gathered here tonight because in our deeds and our thoughts we have begun to see beyond the J- O-B tyranny.

We see that the emperor is as naked as a jay-bird. Their system is broken. It is lurching from one crisis to the next.

This should not come as all that much of a surprise. Contrary to myth and ideology, capitalism is not a job-creating system.

Do not be misled by recent history. The golden age of US capitalism that lasted from about 1950 until about 1980 was a fluke. The capitalism we have now is the real thing.

In 1945 the United States had decisively won World War II. In the following decades it faced no significant economic rivals or competitors. War production had highly rationalized and advanced manufacturing methods and capacity. Energy and raw materials were cheap.

There was enormous pent up consumer demand. In the 1960’s the civil rights and feminist movements contributed to yet another expansion of purchasing power and consumption.

Back then, thanks to the Bolshevik revolution and the depression, a very different social contract was in place. It tilted toward a more fair distribution of productivity gains than now.

That was then.

By 1980, it had all changed. Productivity had increased so much that the need for labor drastically declined. While not obvious at first, the power of unions was already beginning to fail. So were other elements of a more evenhanded social contract.

The costs of defending the American Empire were beginning to offset the economic benefits of being an empire. Losing the war in Viet Nam is but one example. At the same time, the capacity of other nations to offer labor, machines and markets comparable to or better than the US was exploding.

And so the system adjusted.

Since 1980 the JOBs system has mostly created fake jobs. Jobs for the sake of jobs. Wasteful jobs. Destructive jobs. Dehumanizing jobs.

For starters there is the Gulag of capitalism. In one way, this atrocity may be all we need to know about the degeneration of the system. In an earlier capitalist crisis we got the Works Progress Administration known as the WPA. It used government funds to pay artists and unemployed workers to create murals and symphonies and libraries.

What do we get? Millions of working age adults—mostly people of color—are channeled into the prison-industrial system. More than two million are incarcerated. Millions more are on parole or probation or awaiting trial. It is the J O B of millions more to process them.

Yes, that surely operates to impose racial and social control. But put that aside for a moment. Consider the economics of it.

Have you ever thought about what would happen to the unemployment rate if that system were eliminated? At a minimum there would instantly be five million more unemployed.

Consider the post-1980 education-industrial system. One of the great myths of our time is that unemployment is caused by a lack of education. Well, education itself has become a significant cause of employment. From junior college through graduate school, the education business has exploded. I am showing my age here but I am old enough to remember when education was considered valuable in its own right. Not these days.

Now all you ever hear is that education is the key to getting a J O B.

Really? As with the prison system, keeping people in school does keep them out of the workforce and therefore technically off of the unemployment rolls. At the same time, the growth in secondary school enrollment and the corresponding construction explosion did create some employment.

But here’s the thing. You can look at all kinds of statistics on this. But you don’t need any numbers at all to know that by any measure, the US population is more educated than ever. And yet the unemployment rate is still astronomical. So much for education being somehow the cause of

J O Bs.

Like the education boom, here’s another make-work program: The so-called J O B of millions in the labor force is to fight and supply endless and meaningless wars. Once again funded by taxpayers—not by the exalted private-sector.

So all by itself, has the private sector done anything at all to provide employment? Well, yes, sort of. Up to a point. Women have been brought into the private sector work force in large numbers. Child labor is up too. But wages are driven down to the point that poverty goes up anyway.

Simultaneously, the J-O-B system buys time—and makes some jobs for itself for itself by substituting IOU’s for money. Public debt, credit card debt, student loan debt, housing debt. All of it enslaves us still more.

The truth is, if you took debt out of the economy over the last 30 years, the bankruptcy of both the theory and the practice of the JOB system would have become obvious that much sooner.

Over and over, the J-O-B system propaganda machine tells us that government is the source of all evil. But actions speak louder than words.

In the last 30 years the JOBS System has grown government exponentially. Why? Two reasons. One is so that corporations can get fat government contracts, while claiming that only the private sector creates jobs. The other is that increasing government employment keeps unemployment down. That in turn helps to conceal the fact that the private sector is not creating jobs—even in the so-called “good” times.

Colossal government spending and employment notwithstanding, the vastly undercounted official unemployment rate is still enormous.

And even when there are jobs—many of them add little of true value. Is harnessing vast human skill and creativity at marketing things no one really needs, just to keep the system going, useful work? It is not.

And what is the cost of this system? To our ecosystem? To our dignity? To our potential.

Here in Detroit the decline and bankruptcy of the J-O-B system has been on display with a vengeance for more than 30 years. In many circles it is what we are now famous for.

Fortunately, that is only one side of the story.

It is no accident that we are meeting here in Detroit. For decades now, we have been proving that we can make a new system without the masters of the JOB system universe. A little more each day, we prove that we can make a way out of no way.

We are not alone in seeing that light. All over the world the J-O-B System fog is lifting. As we will hear from Vandana Shiva on Sunday, more and more people are understanding the difference between JOBS and work.

Work is intrinsic to humans. Life today is quite different than it was one year ago, 100 years ago, 1,000 years ago and 10,000 years ago. Without work, that would not be true.

One of the advantages of being a grandfather is being able to see my grandson Nathan do his work. To me it’s obvious. Watching Nathan, who is now just ever a year old, growing his body, mind and skills is proof that work is at the very core of our DNA.

And all around us, can we not see that there is so much work to be done? There are children and adults to be taught. Sick people to be helped. Prisons to be emptied. Rivers to be cleaned. Houses to be rescued and new ones to be built.

There are new systems of energy to be discovered. New ways to resolve human conflict to be devised. Songs to be sung. Poems to be written. Baseball games to be played.

Truth be told, the J-O-B system has admittedly done all these things. Even today it does many of them well. Let us appreciate what we are given by the human evolution that brings us to this point.

We humans have paradigm shifting opportunities today because the JOBS system has given us new axes and wheels and needles and steam engines. We call them smart phones and the Internet and solar power and neuroscience and 3-D printers and quantum physics. We truly do possess vast new knowledge and new ideas.

But now, like the feudal system that came before the capitalist system, the machine that organizes those things is worn out. It is like a car with too many miles to be worth fixing. It has run its course.

It cannot succeed because we are already way past the capacity of our eco-system to sustain it. Freedom and democracy and the planet are being destroyed faster than life is getting better. Capitalist growth is not the solution. It is the problem. It is like cancer.

But we can unearth the cure. We can be the cure. Medicine is already being tested in women’s new work in India. You can find it in Feedom farms and Peace Zones for Life, the Urban Network Bookstore, the Catherine Ferguson Academy and at Happy Frog dot com.

In teeny, tiny but important ways, we are already building the new food system, the new education system, the new manufacturing system and the new political system.

The new way has begun to reveal itself in Cairo and Tunisia, Greece and Madrid. A piece of it is on display on the dirt surround by the towers of Wall Street.

It is in the Evergreen Laundry in Cleveland, in the pages of Yes! Magazine and AlterNet.org. You can join it on Sirius radio 127 every Sunday afternoon on the Land of Hopes and Dreams radio program. It is at the Damon Keith Center at the Wayne State Law School and right here at Focus Hope.

It is at Hush House, Avalon International Breads and on Heidelberg street in Detroit. It is in the work of We Want Green Too and the Allied Media Conference.

Yes, it is young. It is fragile. It is flawed. But it is here.

What is most exciting about all these seedlings and more is this:

We are learning ever more urgently that to make a new system, we must become better.

Only better humans can make a better system. And by definition, a better system is the one that helps makes us better humans.

If I were to reduce my lifetime of political action and political thought to one thing it is this: Just now. Just in the last year really, I have had an epiphany of sorts.

I have come to understand the true meaning of a slogan that I have heard all my life. The slogan is “BE THE CHANGE.”

Historically, to be a revolutionary has meant spending a lot of time figuring out what other people should do and then mobilizing the power to force them to do it. Perhaps the best known version of this is the idea of revolution as replacing the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie with the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Thanks to the work of Grace Boggs, Michael Hardt, Antoni Negri, Vandana Shiva, Dr. Claudio Naranjo and many others we now see a different paradigm. Making a revolution is not just about changing others. It is not just about changing THE SYSTEM. It is about changing ourselves. It is about practicing what we are preaching.

We cannot build an economy based on love without building a culture of love. The Jobs System rests on a philosophy of competition driven greed and selfishness. Our system is based on the practice of cooperation and sharing. This weekend, we each have an extraordinary opportunity to Be the Change.

Is that possible? Of course it is. All of our lives we have been told that we cannot overcome human nature.

Sisters and brothers—that is no more true than the idea that the earth is flat or that the sun revolves around us.

Human nature is what we decide to make it. That is the true miracle of our existence.

My own nature is different today than it was yesterday and a year ago and beyond. So is yours.

More than once, it has been my good fortune to have glimpsed human nature at its best. I have been in the embrace of the beloved community in Detroit and Selma and Hanoi and more than a few jail cells.

I have felt its warmth and its grace. (Yes, Grace you can take that personally.) I know it is real.

I see the beloved community in this room right now.

So do you. Turn and look around. Accept the feeling that comes to you.

Now just imagine how we will be together in the hours, days and years ahead.

Requiem for Ford?

by Ronn Scott

I remember a particular day in 1984. It was a cold, bleak winter day, and I was heading downtown to do a sound check at Ford Auditorium for a video shoot I was doing. The sounds of the holiday were upon us.

In preparation for a concert was the famous community choir headed by the late Donald Vail. The group, “Donald Vail and the Choraleers,” was a precursor to the modern gospel choirs that would place Detroit at the pinnacle of gospel music in the world

From The Detroit News: http://apps.detnews.com/apps/blogs/politicsblog/index.php?blogid=16880#ixzz16XblIOKJ

Resurrection City, Sojourners Magazine

Auto idolatry and casino economics have left Detroit tottering on the brink. What will it take for Motown to rise again?
by Bill Wylie-Kellermann

Kitty-corner from my church, St. Peter’s Episcopal, stand the remains of Detroit’s old Tiger Stadium. A new ballpark named after a bank-part of the run at the casino economy-is located in the new sports and entertainment district closer to downtown.

Robert L. & Louise Miller Memorial Lecture

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

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 Steve Barman Show Episode 3

The third episode of The Steve Barman Show, Detroit’s first and only DIY talk show, was filmed January 23 at the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit. The episode features host Steve Barman’s interview with professor and Michigan Citizen columnist Shea Howell about the “right-sizing” of Detroit, as well as his interview with multimedia artist Mary Beth Carolan about cooking with powertools. The episode closes with an interview with musical guest Woodman and a performance of their song, “Let It Go.”

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.

Detroiters for Dignity and Democracy
www.boggscenter.org or call 313.923.0797

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.”

Time Magazine: A Response

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 21^st 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

Tyree Guyton in Switzerland

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

War Zones to Peace Zones

What Does Urban Street Life Look Like?

The Bustle of Urban Street

The bustle of urban streets and other public spaces in the city is sometimes refereed to, quite poetically, as a great pedestrian ballet. And if this is true, it can be logically assumed that, while policy and planning choreograph parts of this ballet, each individual person moving through the city takes part in its choreography by making their own independent choices. People go to parks and plazas and promenades for so many reasons: to eat, to play, to run, to chat, to meet, to dance, to stroll. And by doing so, each person becomes an artist, taking part in the endless urban ballet. Simply to use the city, to exist within it, is a work of art. It’s a lovely idea, no?
The Heidelberg Project is a very concrete visual manifestation of this ballet. It teaches the disenfranchised and the isolated how to shape the world around them into something beautiful. In a way, it is the most public kind of public place: the kind where the planned social infrastructure failed, and the people moved in, did what they do, and created something really useful.

http://www.urbanophile.com/2011/03/29/conscious-urbanism-the-heidelberg-project-by-brendan-crain/

When Detroit Says ‘Eat Local,’ It Really Means It

From The Atlantic…

The bed of watercress beneath chef Andy Hollyday’s barbecued pork belly? Local. The ruby-hued crabapple jelly made by the Detroit Zymology Guild? That too. And the pectin for the preserves, the sorrel in Brother Nature Produce’s salad, the scarlet beets and crisp dilly beans hand-pickled by Suddenly Sauer. In fact, the food offered by Detroit’s hottest restaurateurs and food vendors at Home Slice, a recent benefit for Detroit’s contemporary art museum, could probably have been found any food-conscious event in the country. But—this being Detroit—there was a unique twist: For the Motor City’s food vanguard, “local” isn’t measured in miles, but in city blocks.

Click here to read more

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

· March: Economics, Work, Unions: Creating Locally Sustainable Economics

· 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.

Rich Feldman- (ruaw@aol.com)
Shea Howell- howell@oakland.edu
Boggs Center: 313-923-0797

Saturday, May 15, 2009 7:00 pm
Boggs Center

WHY A SINGLE, STRUGGLING, PARTIALLY EMPLOYED, BARELY MOBILE, BLACK MOTHER OF A TEENAGE SON HAS YET TO “OCCUPY”…

by Tawana Honeycomb Petty on Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 2:08pm

Maybe it’s the perceived preoccupation with the power struggle between the “the knows” and the “know nots”… Or, the cyber preoccupation with who owns the best title of this movement on the rise and why… Or could it be that the mere thought of laying my head on the concrete in the middle of the park during the cold of night, further compromising my already violated existence with no measurable goal in sight is just too much for a mother to bear. Maybe it’s the knowledge that should I lose my newly acquired “part-time” job because I telephoned into work in order to line the streets to prove that I support those who are unemployed and TRULY suffering, that it’s unlikely that I could actually call on many of the “occupied organizers” to financially support my child and I. Maybe, it’s those things and more but no matter the reason why I have personally chosen not to catch the bus downtown everyday for a superficial show of solidarity, overstand that I am not a minority in my opinion.

I don’t speak any of this with malice or ill will but with conviction. For all intensive purposes, I don’t have a pot to piss in. I live with relatives, my car that I still pay a car note on is down, I take a nearly 2 hour bus ride into the City everyday to work part-time. I have a child who although he is performing well academically in school, cannot participate in any of the after school activities many of his high school friends participate in because we are heavily reliant upon others right now. My credit is destroyed, I own no assets, I am struggling and I am raising a man! I am as “occupied” as one can get.

Now please, do not misconstrue this note as a letter of self-pity because it is quite the opposite. This is a plea for the organizers to dig a little deeper. Dig beyond the titles, dig beyond the history, dig beyond the personal opinions and reach into your deepest level of humanity. Speak from your souls, march from your souls, organize from your souls. Only then can you truly reach the masses. If this battle is going to be fought solely on the premise of who became poor first or who has the right to struggle, then you will leave out the majority because most of us have been brainwashed. Most of us were given an inch and we thought we had made it. Most of us weren’t taught our history in our schools and neither were our parents so we are still learning through trial and error. You can not hold a person accountable for sheer ignorance. We are hungry, we are dying, we are oppressed and until we can reach one accord, we may as well open up to any page in the history books and change the names…

If this is truly going to be a movement of the people, start talking to the people and stop talking at them. You can’t tell a person who is functionally illiterate and oppressed on the highest level that they should join your movement without showing them how their sacrifice is going to feed their family tomorrow.

Start listening to the people, all people… I BEG OF YOU ALL… I’m looking for freedom from oppression, not a politically correct newer version of it. I hope you all can help.

P.S. if you read this note and you somehow feel that I’ve spoken out of turn, then you are the person(s) I’m making my plea to.

With much love and respect,

#occupiedout

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Detroit’s Matrix Theatre and Justin Dart Puppet at Chicago’s Disailiity Pride Parade.

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By Milicent Johnson from Shareable.net

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Friday, September 17, 2010, 12noon-1:30pm Every 3rd Friday, Year Round Hannan House – 4750 Woodward Ave., Detroit

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Grace Lee Boggs Birthday Party

Grace Lee Boggs discusses Detroit’s history and future

Great Lakes Bioneers

Green Detroit: Why the City Is Ground Zero for the Sustainability Movement

Green Screen 2010

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Growing Power’s National-International Urban & Small Farm Conference

September 10 – 12th 2010

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Heal Detroit Clean-Up Campaign

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HFP/HAP Farmers Markets

Michigan Restorative Justice Gathering
March 12, 2011, 10 am – 4 pm
St. Peter’s Episcopal Church
1950 Trumbull Ave (at Michigan)
Detroit, MI 48216

April 15, 2009
6:30PM

Friday, September 17, 2010, 12noon-1:30pm
Every 3rd Friday, Year Round
Hannan House – 4750 Woodward Ave., Detroit

Thursday, December 9th at 7:00pm
Leopold’s Books