LIVING FOR CHANGE

A New Kind of Community Organizing

By Grace Lee Boggs

Michigan Citizen, July 5-11, 2009

I am often asked to explain the difference between yesterday's Alinsky-type protest organizing and the kind of Community Organizing we need in this period when our cities are dying and life on our planet is threatened by global warming.

To help clarify the difference, I recommend "The City Belongs to All of Us," a paper written by former Iowa Cities organizer Phillip Cryan as part of his internship with On the Commons and The Grassroots Policy Project in California. read more

It’s Our Time Newsletter: 2009

A Holistic View on Health, Politics, and Culture

March 2009 Vol. 1 No.1

Financial Stress and our Health

by K. Tutashinda, DC

Overview

The present time poses many challenges for the people of America and world. People are worried about their incomes, jobs, careers, homes, and health. Many are worried about things their family has not had to worry about for several generations, like food, clothing, utilities, and homelessness.

America is being forced to experience (in a less severe fashion) what many inthe third world of Africa, Asia and Latin America go through day in and dayout. read more

Beloved Communities: Growing our Souls is an initiative begun in 2004 to identify, explore and form a network of communities committed to and practicing the profound pursuit of justice, racial inclusivity, democratic governance, health and wholeness, and social / individual transformation. It is informed by the 1965-68 visionary thinking of Martin Luther King Jr., combined with indigenous cosmology and social ethics. This initiative is guided by a steering committee of Grace Lee Boggs, Shea Howell, Nelson Johnson, John Maguire, Kathy Sanchez, Shirley Strong.

Justice for Robert Mitchell & Peace Zones for Life

   May 22, 2009 7:32 AM

   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.

more photos

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An American Icon Looks in the Mirror

By Scott Kurashige

Michigan Citizen, Jan.11-17, 2009

Gran Torino is a film everyone should see and discuss. Clint Eastwood, who has said this will be his last acting role, has been called a leading contender for best actor. It's hard to imagine the film without him at its center because so much of its meaning is tied to his status as an American icon.

The ads of a scowling Eastwood holding a rifle appeal to fans of Dirty Harry. In that 1971 film Eastwood played a cop who used brute force to restore order in a manner paralleling the Nixon-era crackdown on urban rebellion.

Gran Torino, however, is about the frailty and reflection of a Dirty Harry-like character in his old age. The film's central message is that it's time for us to think openly and honestly about the costs and limits of American power. read more

Coming Soon   

James Boggs' 1963  American Revolution:

Pages from a Black Workers Notebook 

  with these new Introductions; 

 Thinking and Acting Dialectically by Grace Lee Boggs

 "Nobody Knows Better than Me" by Sharon (Shea) Howell

  The Power of Ideas   by Carl Edwards

 We are all “Works in Progress” by Larry Sparks

 Call to Detroit Summer by Julia Pointer-Putnam

 "The Outsiders" Practicing Transformation by Jeanette Lee

 The Next American Revolution by Rich Feldman

 By Starhawk 

 On Thursday, President Obama made his speech to the Arab world in Cairo, a speech that did what he does so well, expressing  contradictions and nuances in clear, simple poetic language that calls on everyone to be better than we are.

My first reaction, reading it, was “This speech makes us all safer, and does a better job of it than a thousand drone attacks or military forays.” By so clearly expressing respect for Islam, and knowledge of its history and contributions, he drains extremist venom of its potency. read more

Flyer

Tuesday,

May 12, 2009  6:30 p.m

Civil Rights Leader

“Fannie Lou Hamer, Martin Luther King and Obama's Other Ancestors”

Presented by Co-sponsored by: African and African American Studies Program, UM-Dearborn Department of Communication and Journalism, Oakland University Center for the Study of Religion and Society, UM-Dearborn Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership, Detroit

A reception and refreshments will follow the talk. Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Checkout new Detroit City of Hope Website                 www.dcoh.com/ THINKING FOR OURSELVES Doublespeak of Peace By Shea Howell Michigan Citizen, July 5-11, 2009 One week after General Stanley McChrystal announced he would sharply restrict the use of air strikes because they are undermining the American mission, U.S. drones killed 80 people in South Waziristan, a Taliban stronghold inside Pakistan. This attack included not only a first strike by drones, but a second one aimed at killing all those who came to the aid of the original victims. The final blow, a few days later, was against people participating in a funeral procession for friends and relatives killed in the earlier attack. read more A Celebration of Life and Home Going for Weusi Olusola