American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs

On June 29th at 3pm at the DIA, join us for a special FREE public screening of a new documentary by LA-based filmmaker Grace Lee (no relation to Grace Lee Boggs). Participate in a Q&A afterwards with Grace Lee Boggs, in celebration of her 98th birthday!

Peace everyone,

We had an incredible time together last year during Detroit 2012 and now it’s time again to build on what we’ve already started. In addition to celebrating Grace Lee Boggs’ 98th birthday as well as the release of her documentary, we will be coming together again to deepen our discussion and work from last year and we are eager to learn from what you all have been doing in your own communities across the country.

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

Let us come together for our 2nd annual gathering as we:

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

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

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

As capitalism continues towards collapse, and as disenfranchisement rises, it is critical that we continue to work together to create a space which nurtures the growing of our souls this summer in Detroit. What, inside of yourself, would you like to transform? What would you like to make happen in Detroit this summer? In your own community?

Join us: As We Shake the World with a New Dream . . .

Location: Detroit

JUNE 23, 2013 – JUNE 30, 2013

For more info. contact: Boggs Center at 313-923-0797 or Tawana Petty at 313-433-9882 or Visit: www.dcoh.org or www.detroit2012.org

 If you are interested in donating to our efforts, you may do so via: www.boggscenter.org

SAVE THE DATE: “American Revolutionary:
The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs”
June 29, 2013 at the DIA

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Below is a wonderful address Grace Lee Boggs gave at the National Council of Elders Detroit Press Conference:

We’ve launched a new Facebook group to keep the conversation. Please join the group and join the conversation!

Join here.

This piece was written after the Peace Zones and State of the Community discussions during Detroit 2012

Over the past four decades we’ve seen the dismantlement of our schools, neighborhoods and families. Loss of income and lack of commitment from government and the private sector which could have helped change conditions. We have experienced chemical warfare which has left our young people reaching for a community that they have yet to experience. We believe in this time in Detroit’s history that Detroit needs a people’s first mentality. It is now or never! We have to band together to not only protect each other, but to provide for each other, share with each other, feed each other, care for each other and more importantly love each other in these tough times Detroit, but we need efficient and effective action. We need to continue to be proactive in rebuilding and re-spiriting Detroit. We have to change the mindset and the culture of Detroit, because if we don’t, all the money in the world will not help in Detroit’s rebirth. The people of Detroit need a rebirth which will fuel Detroit’s rebirth.

Through this “Declaration of Hope and Love”, we are here to convey to all Detroiters that every life in our community is valuable, every life in our community deserves to be loved, and every life in our community needs to be invested in and by not doing our part we are helping to sustain the underdeveloped behavior that is contributing to the social mayhem in our neighborhoods. We need to develop and create liberated peace zones, which will breed hope amongst the people and instill high expectations within the people to treat each other like human beings and not like animals! We need every human being to join our ranks; white, black, brown and any other color. We need people to overstand that we have to restore the neighbor back to the hood, if not the hood will be the death of all of us. People survive in hoods through underdeveloped behavior, but people live in neighborhoods through love and care. Our greatest resource is our capacity love and care for each other and for our neighbors, which will bridge the gap between hope and desperation. We firmly believe that this is not a time for war, but for peace. It is not a time for acrimony, but for harmony. It is not a time for discord but for direction.

Ron Scott and Yusef Shakur

Silvia Federici is a researcher, activist and educator. She was born and raised in Italy but came to the US in 1967 on a scholarship to study Philosophy at the University of Buffalo. Since then, she has taught at several universities in the US and also at the University of Port Harcourt in Nigeria. She is now Emerita Professor at Hofstra University (Long Island, NY) and lives in Brooklyn.

A veteran feminist activist, Federici’s work is informed by and in dialogue with the many struggles which have animated her career. Since the early 1970s Federici was, along with theorists such as Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James, a founder of the International Feminist Collective and an organizer with the famous Wages for Housework campaign. This movement brought together a global alliance of feminist groups to make a revolutionary challenge at the very hinge of capitalist and patriarchal power by demanding economic sovereignty for women engaged in the elemental labour of social reproduction.

Read the full interview here.

RAW FOOTAGE – Grace Lee Boggs: The Interview from Detroit je t'aime on Vimeo.

The folks over at Change Brings Hope have been writing and sharing photos from their visit to Detroit 2012.

Visit their site below: