LIVING FOR CHANGE

MLK’s Visionary Legacy

By Grace Lee Boggs

Michigan citizen, Feb. 3-9. 2008

I’ve learned a lot from MLK celebrations over the years.

For example, during the 15th annual University of Michigan celebration in 2002 I participated in a “Futuring” conference designed by my old friend, School of Natural Resources and the Environment Professor Bunyan Bryant, to encourage us to dream, as MLK did, of the world we would like to live in. Bunyan believes Hope can be generated by “rehearsing the future.” Through stories, images and role plays, we broaden our consciousness to imagine ideas we might otherwise never consider.

The conference agenda included time for each of us to create our own vision of the future. In 2003 these stories were published in a little book entitled The Future: Images of the 21st century, edited by Bunyan Bryant.

My story was about how life for Detroiters in 2032 had been completely transformed because, inspired by Detroit Summer youth and elders, we were growing our own food and producing goods and services in neighborhood shops and offices. Young people felt needed and were no longer alienated because productive work for the community had been incorporated into the school curriculum.

That vision still motivates my activism in the Detroit-City of Hope campaign.

The next year I was the keynote speaker for the University of Michigan 16th annual MLK symposium. The theme was Gandhi’s iconic statement “We must be the change we wish to see in the world.” To prepare my speech I re-read Gandhi and discovered how much MLK had been influenced not only by Gandhi’s concept of non-violence but by his rejection of unlimited economic growth and western strategies of revolutionary struggle.

The abundance created by unlimited economic growth, Gandhi warned, would make it almost impossible to distinguish between Needs and Wants.

So we would end up enslaved by the temptations of material wealth and luxuries or what we now call “consumerism,”

The struggle for independence, Gandhi also warned, should not be mainly a struggle for state power but should revolve going to people at the grassroots, encouraging them to think for themselves and to create self-reliant local communities based on Work that preserves rather than destroys skills and encourages cooperation rather than competition, and on Education whose goal is building community rather than increasing the status and earning power of the individual.

Last Friday night I participated in the monthly film/speaker series at Marygrove College created by IHM Sisters Kim Redigan and Liz Walters.

Following the reading of MLK’s “Breaking the Silence” speech by poet Karega Ani and introductory remarks by me, we counted down into small groups of eight, to grapple with the questions posed in “The Fierce Agony of Now” Call issued by the Beloved Communities Initiative: Creating Healthy Communities, Sustainable Living, Immigration, Justice (see Michigan Citizen, January 13, 2008 or boggscenter.org)

The reports from the small groups were transformative. For example, most groups proposed that in order to build healthy communities we need to sponsor potlucks, study circles.,urban gardening. We can sit on front porches, talk to our neighbors, and walk and talk in our neighborhoods, Although these activities are simple, they are not easy in today’s world when many of us enter our homes through our garages.

The next day, at a family and community visioning meeting in my own neighborhood, I recalled how friendly we once were with our neighbors, running errands and baby sitting for each other. Now we are more afraid of one another, and especially of young people, than we used to be of wild beasts. How do we recover that sense of community? How do we bring the neighbor back into the ‘hood?

As we brainstormed around these questions, I was reminded of MLK’s bequest to us the night before he was assassinated. Desiring longevity but recognizing that his time was running out, he remained true to his visionary self. “The nation is sick,” he said. “Trouble is in the land. But I know somehow that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”

Email Grace Boggs Center,