The Boggs Blog

  LFC    Everyone’s Talking about Detroit   By  Grace Lee Boggs   1/31-2/4, 2012                Frithjof Bergmann, philosopher and community catalyst for HiTech Self- Providing (HTSP) work,  just emailed us from  Europe that “ Everyone’ s talking  about Detroit.”                 YES Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical [...]

Thinking for ourselves Foundations punishing power By Shea Howell Feb 4-11, 2012 Foundations wield enormous power in defining problems and determining solutions. In Detroit, as in much of the country, this is especially clear in the education of our children. Gates, Walmart and Broad have been directing educational policies, with little or no public accountability. [...]

LFC Gingrich’s Victory in South Carolina By Grace Lee Boggs Last Saturday’s rout of Mitt Romney by Newt Gingrich in the South Carolina Republican primary is a warning that we are at a critical and very dangerous point in our history . In the states where Republican primaries have taken place, the Republican base is [...]

Thinking for ourselves Accounting for foundations By Shea Howell January 24, 2012 Foundations are playing an increasingly influential role in public life. They are using their enormous power to determine what they think are public problems and how these problems should be solved. While they often demand clear objectives and quantifiable results from the non-profit [...]

LFC Visionary Organizing in Detroit By Grace Lee Boggs Jan. 14-21, 2012 Last Saturday’s celebration of Dr. King’s birthday at the Church of the Messiah in Detroit was an instructive example of visionary organizing by members and friends of the Boggs Center. In planning the program we recognized that finding a job is now the [...]

This week’s LFC Celebrating Dr. King’s birthday in 2012 By Grace Lee Boggs Jan. 7-14, 2012 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Born on January 15, 1929, he was only 39 years old.  To honor King’ life Detroit Congressman John Conyers and Massachusetts Senator Edward Brooke promptly introduced a bill [...]

Thinking for Ourselves Lessons from Marathon? By Shea Howell The refusal of the corporate elite and foundations to acknowledge the failure of Detroit Works is reaching laughable proportions. Last week, Stephen Henderson of the Detroit Free Press and American Black Journal on PBS hosted a show touting the Marathon Petroleum Company’s effort to buy out [...]

Thinking for ourselves Foundations of public good By Shea Howell January 3, 2012 The Occupy Wall Street movement has opened up the conversation about the control the 1% have over public policy. While we all know that much of this control comes through good old-fashioned campaign contributions and high priced lobbyists, the role of foundations [...]

LFC for the January 1 , 2012 issue 2011 – A YEAR TO REMEMBER By Grace Lee Boggs 12-31-2011 – January 7, 2012 2011 opened with the Arab Spring when the people of North Africa decolonized themselves, thrilling the world with their nonviolent gatherings, ousting the dictators the United States has supported to secure its [...]