LIVING FOR CHANGE
Seize The Time
By Grace Lee Boggs
Michigan Citizen, May 19, 2009
Last week, at the “Economic Meltdown” Town Hall meeting in Cobo Hall sponsored by The Nation magazine, I said I was concerned that speakers were trying to restore the dehumanizing, deskilling Jobs of industrial society, instead of seizing this time of capitalist and planetary meltdown to imagine and begin creating new more human ways of working and living with one another.
That’s what we are doing at the Boggs Center.
Wednesday evening, May 13, for example, my old friend, octogenarian Vincent Harding, conducted a “fishbowl” conversation with seven youngsters, while we oldsters marveled at his gift for encouraging young people to voice their hopes and aspirations, and then giving them a sense of the commitment and “tenacity” needed by movement builders by telling them stories of SNCC volunteers in the 1960s.
In 1967 Vincent wrote the first draft of King’s historic anti-Vietnam war speech calling for a radical revolution of values. Ten years ago he and his wife, the late Rosemarie Freeney-Harding, founded the Veterans of Hope project to preserve the stories of Freedom Fighters from the 1960s. Since 911 he wears a ‘WAR IS TERORISM” button. His MLK: the Inconvenient Hero is an eye-opener. (Richard Levey brought copies for “fishbowl” participants).
Another movement-building discussion took place at the May 19 DCOH (Detroit-City of Hope) meeting on urban agriculture and community-building, ably and cheerfully chaired by Mike Wimberly, director of the Hope District, a few blocks from the Boggs Center, where 170 fruit trees were planted last year.
As I listened to Ashley Atkinson (Greening of Detroit), Patrick Crouch (Earthworks), black liberation activist Malik Yakini, teacher Greg Willerer, and beekeeper Rick Wieske, I thought of how delighted the late Gerald Hairston would be with the growth of the urban ag movement since the early 90s–when he connected the “Gardening Angels, a loose network of African American elders, with Detroit Summer urban youth to “rebuild, redefine and respirit Detroit from the ground up.”
Ashley reported that there are now more than 700 community gardens in Detroit. Gardeners hold quarterly potlucks to build the network. All over the city there are cluster centers where they share information on resources and how to preserve/market their produce. These clusters provide a space for new grassroots leaders to emerge.
Greg described how he is supplementing his income by marketing the produce from his garden and greenhouse to local businesses.
Patrick explained that Earthworks was originally created to supply produce for the Capuchin Soup Kitchen where the poor, homeless, ex-prisoners and addicted come every day for a hot meal. Now it is becoming a community-building program that strives not only to meet the material needs of the marginalized but develops their self-reliance, trust and concern for social justice. It does this by engaging them in activities to improve the food security or ability of all community residents to obtain safe, culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet,
After Patrick appeared on the May 14 aljazeera English edition “Fault Lines.”a viewer in Kenya contacted him to say that he wants to start a similar program in East Africa!
Malik Yakini chairs the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBFSN) which operates a two acre farm in the city. He also owns the Black Star Community Bookstore and is Executive Director of Nsoroma Institute. Reminding us that May 19 would be Malcolm’s 84th birthday, Malik said that his interest in food security was only one aspect of his overall goal of empowering blacks, who are the majority in Detroit but are mainly food consumers rather than producers and distributors. Malik is trying to persuade the Detroit City Council to sponsor an urban ag program that would engage Detroiters in cultivating the 70,000+ vacant lots in our city.
“We can’t free ourselves until we feed ourselves.” That is the message the National Black Farmers Association brought when they held their 1998 convention in Detroit. Slowly but surely, this is taking place.
Moreover, just as young people went South in the 60s to join the civil rights movement, a new generation is coming to Detroit in the “aughts” to pioneer in building a 21st century sustainable city.
We/they are “seizing the time.”
THINKING FOR OURSELVES
Memories in Small Towns
By Shea Howell
Michigan Citizen, May 26, 2009
This Memorial Day I was in a small town in Maine. It has a year round population of a little over 2000. Few tourists or summer people have come to town yet.
I decided to go to the local holiday parade. It was exactly what you would expect. The police squad car led off, followed by four WWII veterans who formed the color guard. There was an assortment of fire trucks, old cars from the 1930s, a few kids on decorated bicycles, and both the high school and elementary school marching bands. Rounding out the parade was the local volunteer ambulance service.
Some marchers carried balloons, handing them out to almost every child with an outstretched arm.
In the middle was something I didn’t expect. About twenty men and women dressed in black, some wearing t-shirts that said Veterans Against War, carrying banners,. Each banner stretched nearly the width of the street and had about 300 identical flags on each side. Under each flag was the name of a man or woman who had lost their lives in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There were about 15 banners in all, introduced by a large sign that tallied the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Today that number is nearly 5000 in Iraq and more than 600 in Afghanistan.
These men and women were asking us to remember that Memorial Day shouldn’t just be about past wars. It should remind us every day in the year that we are still involved in brutal wars, taking the lives not only of our own people, but bringing destruction and death to people in Iraq and Afghanistan where at least 753,000 people have died since these wars began. The numbers of both military and civilian deaths in Pakistan are unclear. But one thing we know. Both will grow.
Most of these deaths have not occurred under the leadership of President Obama. Still, they have had an impact on him. He has already spoken of the difficulty he faces in sending letters to the loved ones of fallen soldiers. Even before assuming the office of the President, Mr. Obama gathered information about soldiers killed. Since entering the White House, he has been sending personal notes to their families. Early in the year he told NBC News that he considers sending these letters an important duty and added “You realize every decision you make counts.”
This Memorial Day President Obama acknowledged his own lack of military service, saying, “My grandfather served in Patton’s army in World War II; I cannot know what it is like to walk into battle.” He went on, “I’m the father of two young girls, but I can’t imagine what it is like to lose a child. These are things I cannot know. But I do know this: I am humbled to be the commander-in-chief of the finest fighting force in the history of the world.”
These comments have come a long way from the campaign trail when during debates with then Senator Clinton, both candidates seemed to try to prove who was potentially the tougher commander-in-chief.
But President Obama has also come a long way from the promise of peace.
He has yet to ask us to consider how we have come to this moment. Why are we continuing to kill and be killed in order to protect a national way of living that is neither satisfying or sustaining?
Until, in towns all across America, we ask hard questions of ourselves and our leaders, we will continue to carry banners bearing names of our dead, generation after generation.
Grace Lee Boggs was recently awarded a lifetime achievement award by the Progress Michigan Policy Summit at Cobo Center.
Curt Guyette of the Metro Times reports on the event.
Excerpt:
And then came Boggs, who sat in a wheelchair but seemed mentally as spry as ever. An icon of the left, she told the ballroom filled with progressive activists that lasting change has to come from the bottom up, not the top down.
The answer can’t just be throwing more money at the problem, she said. “We need to embrace the concept of citizenship.”
She pointed to the ideas and ideals prevalent in the great social movements of the 1960s as something that should inspire us all, and to the city of Detroit, both as symbol of de-industrialization and a symbol of hope, a place where community gardens and murals continue to spring up next to abandoned factories.
“We are at a turning point,” she said, adding that the crisis that besets us offers “tremendous opportunity.” At the heart of her vision of a transformed society is grass-roots activity.
LIVING FOR CHANGE
To President Obama from MLK
By Grace Lee Boggs
Michigan Citizen, May 19, 2009
Last week I shared a letter written to President Obama in the name of Jimmy and myself by a student in historian Robin Kelley’s class at Duke University. This week, as the Afghanistan war has become Obama’s war, the following letter from another Duke University student in the name of Martin Luther King Jr. is especially timely.
Dear Mr. President,
In these twilight years of my life, as I contemplate my life’s work in the context of this nation’s history and see a black man occupying its highest position, I am tempted to claim that African Americans have indeed entered the Promised Land. However, the American Dream continues to elude Americans. Therefore, this is no time for self-congratulation by any person or group.
In your story each American, black or white, poor or rich, male or female, gay or straight, is offered the right to claim the material and spiritual prosperity of hope. I commend you, Mr. President, for making this reclaiming possible.
Your vision for a renewed America in The Audacity of Hope cautions against an embrace of traditional left or right wing remedies. The cure to a disarrayed American politics is, in your view, not centered around partisan divides but rather acknowledges the value each individual, left or right, brings to the table. Your emphasis on non-partisan unity resonates with me. We need a broad majority of Americans who are re-engaged in the project of nation renewal, and who see their own self-interest as inextricably linked to the interest of others.
Many have expressed apprehension over your inexperience in foreign affairs. I, too, admit to apprehension in regard to our maintaining and fostering positive relations with other nations.
As you know, opposition to the Vietnam War was the platform on which I stood to protest violence and hostile foreign relations. My very public disapproval of that war was based on an aversion to its immorality as well as an understanding of the destructive aftermath of war. The disproportional expense and allocation of funds during war time not only greatly reduces the funding of virtually all economic endeavors in the homeland, but further disadvantages the already economically disadvantaged more than any other socio-economic group.
Further, what does war bring, if not more war and suffering? My hope as a preacher, a man, and a member of the human race, is to eliminate suffering of all people. Non-violence is the only way to eradicate violence, for it provides people with an alternative way to gain commonality and sustain community.
Your opposition to the Iraq War gave me hope that non-violence can still prevail in these challenging times. You explained your opposition to the Iraq War by stating that “…war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequence. Invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, encourage the worst, rather than the best.”
However, you also say that you “[don’t] oppose all wars…I support [the] pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance and would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such a tragedy from happening.”
Your equivocation leads me to believe that you believe war with a time constraint, a capped allocation of funds and ‘determined’ consequences is justifiable war.
Tell me, Mr. President, what war justifies the human cost, the indeterminable amount of lives affected for the worse? What war justifies the slaughtering of another human being for the sake of retaliation and ‘protection’? The answer is, simply, none.
Thus I must say that your willingness to go to war [depending on its particulars], makes me question the basis of your initial position on the Iraq War. Most citizens see non-violence as a dangerous weakness that would threaten the nation’s security. You state that “the security environment we face today is fundamentally different from one that
existed years ago…the advent of nuclear weapons and mutual assured destruction.” Non-violence remains the only option due, in a roundabout way, to the destructiveness of nuclear power.War does not foster positive foreign relations; it never has and never will. If you fail to understand this, you will falter.
THINKING FOR OURSELVES
Changing Command
By Shea Howell
Michigan Citizen, May 19, 2009
This week President Obama gave the commencement address to the students, faculty, and staff at Notre Dame, searching for common ground in the abortion debate. It was vivid reminder that the President offers the promise of bringing new insights into old arguments. As he often notes, he was a mere child when the issues, collectively called the culture wars, first polarized the country.
However, while his distance from the beginnings of these battles gives Obama a certain freedom, it also limits his understanding of some hard-earned truths. One lesson many of us learned in Viet Nam was that generals lie. They lie about the reasons for war, they lie about the results of battles, they exaggerate accomplishments, cover up crimes, and pay little attention to civilian deaths. They lie to Presidents, to the press and to the people.
That is why all of us should be very concerned that this week President Obama changed the general in command in Afghanistan with the announcement by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates that General David D. McKiernan had resigned and been replaced by Lt. General Stanley A. McChrystal, a veteran Special Operations commander.
McChrystal is currently the director of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, but from 2006 to August 2008 he was the forward commander of the secretive Joint Special Operations Command, responsible for capturing or killing high-level leaders of the al-Qaeda in Iraq. Most of his resume is considered too secret to be shared with us.
What we do know is not good. First, there is the mission of Special Operations Forces in which he has spent his career. These people are the assassins. They operate outside all law. Now they are implicated in running camps subjecting prisoners to brutal, dehumanizing treatment.
Human Rights Watch special investigator Marc Garlasco, a former Pentagon intelligence officer, recently issued a report “No Blood, No Foul,” covering the period 2003-2004 describing abuse of prisoners at a camp near Baghdad where McChrystal was frequently seen in his role as commander of US Joint Special Operations there. The report, based on the testimony of soldiers, raises questions about McChrystal’s responsibilities.
Whatever his role in this horrid chapter of our history, it is absolutely clear that he was part of the attempted cover up of the death of Pat Tillman in 2004. When Army Ranger Tillman was killed by friendly fire, the Pentagon seized the opportunity to turn the former NFL player into a war hero. The aim was not only to increase sympathy for the war, but to deflect attention away from the photos being released of abuses of detainees in Abu Ghraib. Tillman’s family, friends and the public were all told a lie about how he had died racing up a hill into enemy fire.
The story told to Tillman’s family never added up. After five years, six investigations and two congressional hearings, it is still not clear exactly how Tillman died or why his death was turned into a public relations stunt. Now the commander who assisted in manufacturing these lies and actually approved the Silver Star for Tillman is about to take control of all our troops in Afghanistan.
In the long list of bad decisions that the U.S. government has made around the globe, the most disastrous and deadly are linked to the kinds of operations that General McChrystal specializes in. From our hand in the 1953 coup in Iran that overthrew the democratically elected Mohammad Mosaddeq in favor of the Shah, to today’s devastation of the people in the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan, these operations ultimately take us down a road toward greater disaster.
Common ground with black operations is not the place our President should stand.
Common humanity requires a different kind of wisdom.
Excerpt:
The embrace by any society of permanent war is a parasite that devours the heart and soul of a nation. Permanent war extinguishes liberal, democratic movements. It turns culture into nationalist cant. It degrades and corrupts education and the media, and wrecks the economy. The liberal, democratic forces, tasked with maintaining an open society, become impotent. The collapse of liberalism, whether in imperial Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire or Weimar Germany, ushers in an age of moral nihilism. This moral nihilism comes is many colors and hues. It rants and thunders in a variety of slogans, languages and ideologies. It can manifest itself in fascist salutes, communist show trials or Christian crusades. It is, at its core, all the same. It is the crude, terrifying tirade of mediocrities who find their identities and power in the perpetuation of permanent war.
Paul Hawken’s speech at the 2007 Bioneers Conference on the worlds largest movement, the hundreds of thousands of grassroots organizations that address social and environmental justice.
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STORE
NOW AVAILABLE AT THE BOGGS CENTER STORERevolution & Evolution in the Twentieth Century (2008 edition)
Living for Change (Signed by Grace Lee Boggs)
Conversations in Maine: Exploring Our Nations Future
Let's Talk About Malcolm & Martin
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