Ideas cannot be changed through argument. We are not seeking to discover new ideas but rather to create new attitudes in ourselves and others with regard to ideas.
— James Boggs
Detroit Summer
A social justice focused youth collective
Detroit Summer was founded in 1992 by James Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs. We are an intergenerational, grassroots, multicultural youth collective based at The Boggs Center in Detroit, Michigan, with the goal to empower young people to improve their communities and stand up for what they believe in. Over the past three decades, Detroit Summer has impacted the lives of thousands of individuals.
History
Teens and volunteers are involved in numerous activities including urban gardening, public art projects, digital media creation, social justice direct action projects, youth networking, making music, writing poetry, and creating critical connections with the community.
Focus
Mission
The mission of Detroit Summer is to redefine, rebuild, and respirit the city of Detroit from the ground up.
According to professor of geography, Rachael Baker, "What is arguably Grace Lee Boggs' most lasting contribution to critical engagement with racialization and property relations is the work Grace carried out with her husband Jimmy in the Detroit Summer program; an initiative that gave Grace’s pedagogy life and an urban scale of influence that continues to live on in the urban fabric of civic activism in Detroit today.