These were drawn by participants in Research for the Revolution at the US Social Forum, in conjunction with the People's Atlas project.  Click on the images for links to the full sized maps.

Sankofa, go back and get it.  This West African symbol, encourages people to reflect upon their past and bring back knowledge or wisdom to their future.

We gathered in Detroit, Michigan to exchange ideas, embody a movement, and show each other and the rest of the country that another United States is possible.

A child of the 1980s, subdivisions, and shopping malls, to me, Detroit was a “city of the past.”  Home to the auto industry, part of the rust belt, and labor movements.  Everything I knew about Detroit I learned in middle school history class.  The Detroit of my more recent memory was a sad city of empty buildings and unemployment, government scandals and closing schools.  After being fortunate enough to attend the USSF 2010, I now know Detroit a little differently.

Detroit sang me a love song.  The city hosted us graciously, the people were friendly, strong and full of hope.  Detroit plays an important role in the history of the United States, but more importantly, Detroit may hold the key to our future.  I hope that other USSF participants were able to soak in some of the knowledge, culture, and love that I found in Detroit and that, like me, they brought it back with them.  Detroit’s city motto is, “Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus.”  Translated it means, “We Hope for Better Things; It Shall Rise from the Ash.”

Sankofa, go back and get it.  Thank you Detroit.

Here is recorded audio from the Juvenile Justice People's Movement Assembly, along with the text of the resolution that came out of this assembly.

JUVENILE JUSTICE USSF 2010 PMA RESOLUTION

Current Conditions
The Juvenile Justice system de-humanizes and isolates youth and their families.
The juvenile justice system is not interested in rehabilitating youth; there is intentionality in denying youth and their families’ rights and dignity. Juvenile Justice law is growing more punitive, criminalizing more behavior and growing in its race, class, gender and sexuality bias. Extreme personal, spiritual and financial hardship resulting from engagement with the Juvenile Justice System and its collaboration with schools and ICE is destructive to all of our communities’ future.

Current Opportunities
This is a moment to train and empower youth and families to lead advocacy and engage in the political process. The state of crises within Juvenile Justice creates the opportunity to work with unusual allies to change the system, including schools, police, and people of other races. Huge opportunities are present to organize around current legislation on local and national level especially the Youth PROMISE Act, the Juvenile Justice Detention and Prevention Act (JJDPA) re-authorization and SB 399 the Fair Sentencing Act. Key fights also include the right to education and against zero tolerance policies. Simultaneously opportunities exist to re-direct funds from jails, detention and law enforcement and into alternative programs, schools, jobs for youth (even youth who have a record) and to implement restorative justice policies in our schools. It is central to get our stories out to truthfully document the impacts of the system and show what alternatives are working.

Commitments to Action
We are all committed to supporting a National Week of Action for Juvenile Justice Dec 3rd – 6th 2010. During the National Week of Action Community Justice Network for Youth members commit to doing a collective action in Washington D.C. on Dec 6th. Community Voices Heard will do an action (WADC) in NYC, Tunica Teens in Action will do an action in Tunica, MS, FAVY will do a Don’t Throw Away the Key action on Dec. 8th and Gateways will host a local action. The Community Justice Network for Youth will integrate directly effected youth and families into the planning of the National Week of Action. The Center for Media Justice commits to helping to create messaging and media tools support the National Week of Action. We will all utilize social media to share, coordinate and inspire us in these actions. 


 

Below is an excerpt from The City of Hope Statement:Another World is Possible/Another Education is Necessary drafted during the US Social Forum.  Please take a moment to read the full pdf document here.  

Possible Steps, Campaigns, and Connections:

1. This is our city/this is our education. Imagine the creation of vast, messy, democratic community assemblies that are organized explicitlyto draw on the wisdom of everyone to rethink and renew curriculum and teaching, and the meaning and location of school…

2. The “Septima Clark Teacher Corps.” Imagine a massive initiative to bring parents and unemployed folks into the schools as aids and teacher candidates, and to bring school people into communities as peers and colleagues…

3. Peer restorative justice. Imagine building in every school and every community a movement to end the criminalization of youth, and to open creative spaces for moral reflection and positive action, redemption
and recovery, whenever someone has made a mistake or wronged the community…

4. Take the profit out of education. Imagine a giant upheaval to put an end to privatizing the public space…

5. Re-think and redesign assessment. Imagine groups of parents, teachers, and students fighting to end valorizing test scores as a proxy for either intelligence, worth, or achievement, and moving away from high-stakes, sort-and-punish approaches, toward authentic assessment…

6. Toward equity and simple justice. Imagine a popular drive to end to segregation based on race, class, ability, status, or background in terms of access and funding…

7. Demilitarize our schools. Imagine drawing a bright line between military training and recruitment, and education as a human right…

8. “No Excuses.” Imagine a community focus on reclaiming “accountability” and “standards” as they apply to every
institution and entity, not teachers alone or students in isolation—after all, high asthma rates, health disparities, poverty, access to guns, militarization, consumerism as an ideology (and more) cannot sensibly be laid at the feet of teachers; they are the responsibility of all, especially the wealthy and the powerful…

9. Connect the dots, reframe the debates. Each of these possible campaigns and initiatives has the potential to unleash enormous popular power to re-imagine, re-frame, and rebuild education from the bottom up. Whatever we initiate, whatever we take up and organize around, let’s remember to connect the dots, to see the links and unite the issues.
Our program for this moment is straight-forward: build Freedom Schools and Freedom School thinking in every classroom, school, community, or public space within your reach. We look to the Freedom School tradition for inspiration and attitude, sustenance and stance, and as an orientation toward launch. In essence this program is oriented toward action and designed to contribute to building a new movement and a transformed education toward the creation of a new society.

(Originally posted at Propositions Press)

The second part of my early summer research travels consisted of just under a week spent in Detroit. There I joined eleven of my Compass colleagues, living together in a rented house, sharing food and space. We timed our days in the city to coincide with the week of the United States Social Forum.

The US Social Forum is part of the worldwide Social Forum process. Some from our group had attended the World Social Forum in Caracas, in Nairobi, and the European Social Forum in Paris. Other friends and wider collaborators of ours attended the first US Social Forum in Atlanta three years ago. I’d found their reports intriguing. Once some of us learned that the 2010 event would be held in Detroit, we were set on being there.

But right then, at least for me and I think all of us, came the question, what does it mean, “to attend,” “to participate in,” “to witness” a complex event like the Social Forum? We each had to answer that question for ourselves, and also as a group. An important consideration was our aim to find ways to further understand, engage in, and contribute to the ongoing work of social change happening in Detroit, beyond the Social Forum. And finally, this whole effort also exists in the context of our larger work of situating radical cultural work in the greater Midwest.

Indeed the Forum proved to be a multi-faceted event that no single person could possibly experience in full. There were many components, beginning with the opening march, continuing with hundreds of workshops and sessions, the daily schedule of plenaries, the work brigades, the demonstrations, the parties, the tours, and so on. Added to this extensive menu of goings on were the great many unofficial events, hang-outs, performances, and social spaces that welled up from the true grassroots. Even expecting it to be this way, the actual experience was a bit overwhelming just the same.

One from our crew, Brian Holmes, had described Paris during the European Social Forum as a city that was remade by activists for the duration of the Forum, extending the spirit of the Social Forum process—ie, that Another World Is Possible—far beyond the confines of the official Forum site. This approach to what creative activists could do during the Forum informed our plans. Since some of us had been working on meeting and forming relationships with Detroit activists over the past year, putting energy into some kind of self-initiated production out in the neighborhoods of Detroit seemed like a contribution we could make that might be out of reach for visiting activists less familiar with the city, and without the relationships with people operating locally.

That is the backdrop to the decisions I made for my week. My experience, which overlapped greatly with and depended on the group experience, but was different from every other individual experience, could be divided into three elements. Each part resulted in its own narrative of labor, decision-making, research, experimentation, and outcome.

They were

1)    The housing. The process of finding a suitable house for short term rental in a city not our own was an involved experience requiring a good deal of cooperation, outreach, and planning. The actual experience of living with eleven comrades for a week in a big house, plus at least nine or more who joined, was a joyful test of how we could get along and know each other at a greater level of closeness. Also, the location was terrific. Robert Taylor, our on-the-ground scout really set us up well. We were in Highland Park, on a side street between Woodward and John R, just a little ways south of Henry Ford’s first factory, and a short bike ride from D*Flux. It was good to learn a little bit about Highland Park, including the embattled public utility situation there.

2)    The participation in the official Social Forum program. For us this meant registering as an organization and offering a two-hour workshop, and that involved another process of discussion, writing, and workshopping

(at Mess Hall in Chicago and at the Beneath the University conference in Minneapolis) over several months. Though persons from our group attended other USSF sessions and official events, for me the participation in the official program was limited to  helping with our session, walking in the opening march, and volunteering with one of the work brigades

3)    Creating a free event and temporary social space in Detroit, away from the downtown USSF site. This event, which became known as Drift and Surge, took the form of a cookout under a large tent designed and loaned to us by the progressive architect Adrian Blackwell. Though this event also took some amount of foresight and planning, especially in terms of arranging the loan and delivery (the tent is quite large, needing about four people to easily lift it when folded up), the particulars of the event simply could not be determined until we were actually assembled in Detroit. For one thing, we had to find an appropriate space to hold the event, and then go through the process of setting up the tent, which was not exactly a straightforward task. And then making determinations about guesstimating attendance, getting the word out, buying the food, etc.

To record a sense of the mosaic-like experience of the week, then, I can specify the following highlights from the above three.

Thanks to the early arriving crew, by the time I arrived along with six others several days later on Sunday night, the house had been transformed into a home environment. Over the course of the next six days, it became ever more our space. Everybody arrived with more food, drink, kitchen gear, and simple comforts, adding to the temporary furnishings. Upon leaving for the conference site or other activity around the city, we all knew we had some place to come back to, where there would be food, comfort, and familiar company. This made a huge difference; we weren’t staying in a hotel, we weren’t scattered across town on borrowed couches, and we weren’t camping out in a tent city. If only for two weeks, we had our home, together. The absence of internet service added to the social life of the home. People left the experience with a shared desire to find a reason to do it again, whether in Detroit or elsewhere. Also, we now know for a fact that there is plenty of cheap real estate in cities like Detroit, and undoubtedly throughout the Midwest. Get a group together, find a reason to engage with a place you don’t live, find a willing landlord, and make a temporary home.

 

The opening march was great.

The innumerable groups on display—many of them announcing on signs and shirts from where they came, the wholly heterogenous assemblage, the creative noisemaking, and the perfect weather added up to a stellar event.

It was qualitatively unlike any American political march I have seen or participated in. The celebratory vibe prevailed, over the anger and sense of powerlessness that usually dominates American political marches. The only downer was the ending. The march petered out at Cobo Hall. Marchers were were not given any clear direction toward the opening plenary, and there were no places toward which the considerable momentum and spirit could channeled. There was some confusion and a “Oh, I guess it’s over” kind of feeling. We made it to the large indoor hall for the opening ceremonies, but the cavernous, dark, and echo-ey space killed the raucous, roiling celebration of the march.

I was somewhat ambivalent about our session, Cartography with Your Feet. I saw the purpose in having some official conference presence, and I liked our session description, but really, what can you do in two hours? For me (though not others in the group) it was about supporting the Forum, and not so much about expecting an amazing experience. Still, there was at least one terrifically gratifying episode from the session. It was delivered by a young woman named Nicki (?) who had just graduated from college, and who in the last couple of years had become connected to the local organic and sustainable food production activity around southern Wisconsin. She stepped up to share her story (to a roomful of strangers, how confident is that?) of getting acquainted with a radical Midwest and feeling connected to a place at a profound level for the first time in her life, having come out for college from the East Coast. She presented some images from her recent trip to the Midwest Renewable Energy Fair, and also spoke of having been positively moved by our Call to Farms book, which she somehow found online. That, too, was a pleasant surprise. Nicki’s enthusiasm was an inspiration. 

 I joined a work brigade for two mornings. The people in the brigades were different but the work site was the same, the garden project at Calimera Park on the northeast side, just off of Seven Mile. The garden is a large vegetable plot initiated by a nearby Afrocentric school, Nsoroma Institute with help from the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network. Right next to the cultivated land is an art work by Magma Glacier and Kevin Beasley called Memory Field. This earthwork sculpture will operate as a functional rain catcher, with water drained and collected in a buried cistern next to the garden. It is a brilliant collaboration between artists, students, educators, and food activists.

The reality is, both the art work and the garden are in-progress. The garden is in its first season and needs the help of many hands. Upon first sight, the garden seemed like an overwhelming project, certainly for the two people trying to see it through the summer. On both days we were very happy to provide labor.

But the lasting lesson from the work brigade was, in fact, the way the shared labor became a medium for social interaction. Especially on the first morning, when the participants came together from very different starting points, social and geographical locations. There were housing and welfare activists from Harlem, a mother and young daughter from Ann Arbor, a roving crustie who’d biked up from Cincinnati, the artist Laurie Palmer. Unlike much of the conference activity, which tended to channel people toward their pre-exisiting interests, here our worlds collided in the shared work before us. Laurie, myself, and an elder from Harlem named Ann who came with a big group from Community Voices Heard, worked for two hours together as a weeding team. We talked about where we came from, why we came, what kinds of activities we’re doing. We talked about Obama, the national political situation, compared situations in different home states. We talked about gardening and where our food systems are taking us. We laughed, sympathized with each other, and got a lot of weeding done, for which the brigade directors were extremely grateful.

This three person crew, with dirty hands and sweaty brows, stays in my memory as the real social forum, the time and space of sharing and learning from each other. Baba Moudou and Fabayo from the DBCFSN led the session, starting and finishing with circles of reflection. The whole thing was invested with a kind of reverence and honor, which is exactly the attitude we need to have in relation to the earth out of which all our food comes.   

The best experience worth commenting on here was the Drift and Surge event. After successfully rehearsing the tent set-up (during which we were unsure enough to call Adrian for advice, and were exhorted by him to “be creative!”), identifying an appropriate site, coming up with some sort of rough concept, making and passing out flyers, composing a menu, and shopping at Costco, we had an event to roll out on Friday night, the last night of the USSF. Matthias Regan of Compass and CAFF went to town on a personal screenprinting mission, printing up hundreds of small flags, which he then strung together as streamer lines for decorating the tent. This provided a much-needed element of visually festivity and a graphic identity. Check it out!

 

We invited everyone we knew in town, on short notice. We invited the people who were living or hanging out near the site. With the site being unfamiliar to many of those visiting Detroit and some distance from the conference, and with no rsvp, we had no idea how many people would show up. It was all a big experiment, calculated to be sure, but with enough variables to make predictions of outcome difficult. But the basics were in place for a positive event: free food, a comfortable and visually appealing space, a sense of security and welcome. That was the primary purpose: to offer a small thank you to the city of Detroit, for all we’ve gained from our visits, by staging a free social and meal event to which all would be welcome.

The site, chosen for both its symbolic significance and its actual open lawn-like character, was a big grassy lot across the street from the historic King Solomon Missionary Baptist Church, where Martin and Malcolm had both preached, and around the corner from the Hush House. In street parlance the neighborhood is known as Zone 8, one of the toughest parts of a very tough city. Some from our group tracked down the property caretaker, Sam, and the pastor of the church, explained as best we could what we hoped to do, and were granted permission.

The evening turned into another real social forum. Sam loaned us a second grill, and then helped take a turn cooking. Visiting activists from different parts of the country, many friends and collaborators, and neighborhood people all joined in, making for an unusually mixed assemblage. A group of USSF attendees visiting from California happened upon the tent while being led on a walking tour of Zone 8 by local activist and author Yusef Shakur. A group of the 16 Beaver radi-cats dropped in.

We ran out of food and drink and had to make a store run. A neighbor, Mike (and Sam’s brother), who lives literally a hundred feet from the site, said to me, “Look at all this. We’ve got black, white, brown…everyone. Why can’t we have this all the time??” Rashaun Harris, and activist who is part of the Hush House staff, came by. Later on he led a group on an impromptu tour of the Hush House gardens and then into the house itself. Mike helped with some unscripted commentary about the local neighborhood that only one who had lived there for decades would know. For all of us who were lucky enough to take part, the short journey to the Hush House went way beyond a tour and become something of a shared moment of understanding. Without getting into the details, I can say simply that the sharing of information left the realm of the programmed and rose to the plane of the transformative.

 

The lesson taken from Drift and Surge: that with adequate and competent planning and groundwork, a social space with room for the unscripted episode can be opened up. If the instigatory group comes in with enough of a presence, and yet takes care to keep the interpretation of the event somewhat open (ie, this was not instantly identifiable as an “activist” or “political” event), then the chances are good that the resulting event is positive. The appreciation expressed by many in attendance confirmed the worthiness of producing these kinds of spaces in the (conventionally considered) marginal neighborhoods. Was it an organizing event? Did it advance some sort of agenda or get a political message out? No. But without the simple experiences of shared time and space, broad-based movements will never be built in segregated societies. Also, this was a statement against the instrumentalist tendencies found in activist spheres and subcultures. We opened a space, invited people in, and then what happened after that was up to all of us. To paraphrase E.P. Thompson, unpredictability is in many ways the essence of democracy.

On Friday, June 18th I biked into Detroit from Chicago with a group of 20 other cyclist. By Saturday I began to locate my volunteer activity during my stay in Detroit. Robin, a Chicago organizer who had been in Detroit for over a month, had ideas of where to fit me in. We arranged to meet Marcia, the Detroit organizer of the tent city at the park on Woodward at Temple Streets. When I arrived there were cars in the parks spaces on both sides of Temple. I parked my bike and waited. One by one cars drove off the lots. But the foot traffic of individuals from the neighborhood continued to use the park and the alley as a shortcut. New condos lined Woodward street heading into downtown Detroit.  

When Marcia and Robin arrived they provided a little context to the neighborhood and park. The park, adjacent to the Vietnam Veteran's Center, was gifted to the Veterans over 30 years ago. The city reneged on the promise and is currently leasing the space as a parking lot for cars during ball games. The Vets have been struggling to get the city to hold true to their word for years now. The point of housing travelers (bikers and youth) would help create a vision of the parks as a space for community, not cars. The parks had one large tree which provided lots of shade, and a handful of young spindly trees scattered about. As a result of the cars or just neglect there were many dirt-bald areas and uneven spaces in the park. That afternoon and all of the next day we cleared the grounds, mulched the bald spaces, pruned trees, painted signs, measured tent spaces, installed outdoor showers, put up fencing and barred off the alleys in attempt to transform the park into a temporary space to house over 200 people from June 21 - June 26.

On Monday night the first wave of about 17 bikers rolled in from Buffalo, NY. They were met by us, the organizers and the security team called Threat Management. The security team members, with names like Alpha, Bravo and Delta wore fatigues, black gloves, and utility belts. Their image was jarring to my senses and to the self described anarchist bikers on the first day. The Detroit organizers had thought and debated long and hard about the issue of security and we as volunteers supported the choices made. Not withstanding their names, the security people were Detroit residents, very nice and could help orient the camp residence to their temporary home. At least that is the way I sometimes told it.

In the first few hours of gating off the area, volunteers and security alike had to escort people who were used to walking through the park off the grounds. That was particularly hard. It was clear that the temporary presence of the campers had interrupted the natural flow of the area. 

Over the next couple of days scores more bikers, youth and USSF participants slept at the campsite. Many Detroit residents and USSF participants came by and inquired about the site. Who is staying here? For how long? Are there any spaces left? Who manages the site  How are showers taken? How are individual personal property secured? What’s with the SWAT looking security people roaming the perimeters? Some visitors asked to walk around the site and that was ok with us. Non-residents guests were permitted on the grounds before 10p daily. After this time, only individuals with the blue gray wrist-band were allowed on the grounds.

Despite the Tornado warning and heavy rainfall that had us evacuate the site for shelter in the Vet center, the tent city went on without incident. On the last two afternoons of the Social Forum the campsite became a serene, idyllic resting place. Exhausted from workshops and touring around the city, the ballooning center tents provided shelter from the sun. Many residents and organizers took naps, read books and generally used the space to rest between workshops and night-time activities.

We just e-mailed out evaluations to all camp-site participants and are eager to learn from this experience.

Friend of AREA Kristen Cox collected a photo essay documenting some of the amazing communities and sites in Detroit. Check out the collection here.

Heidelberg House

Flowers at the Eastern Market

Mom poet Sunni Patterson

Grand Central Station

AREA advisors and coordinators Robin Hewlett and Frank Edwards presented on a panel organized by the Team Colors collective on Friday at the US Social Forum.  We asked folks in the workshop to respond to a brief question about the impact of the forum on their communities *.  Here are their responses, presented uncritically:

 

What is your Name (Optional)? No response

Where are you from? Puerto Rico.  University of P. Rico.  Puerto Rican Social Forum

What is one concrete outcome of the social forum that you anticipate for your community? To get solidarity and support in knowledge and action for the II Puerto Rican Social Forum.

 

What is your Name (Optional)? Marilee

Where are you from? Sedition Books Collective, Houston, Texas

What is one concrete outcome of the social forum that you anticipate for your community?  I plan to share notes from workshops to further community organizing and outreach.  for example, ideas from "To Care Is to Struggle" should enhance discussions in our radical womyn's group.  Notes from "Climate Justice" workshops will be passed on to the Rising Tide representative.

 

What is your Name (Optional)? No response

Where are you from?  I've been traveling and moving around for a while, but I recently moved to Portland, OR.  I came to the mid-west to visit family and friends and am currently here in Detroit with some folks who came here from Columbus, Ohio.

What is one concrete outcome of the social forum that you anticipate for your community? I've rededicated myself to only working on issues pertaining to food, water, housing, and communication.  I've been operating on the premise of doing internal work as a way to make the world better because I can only change myself.  However, I do have the power to create space where others can question reality and possible better themselves.

 

What is your Name (Optional)? Tina

Where are you from? Denver

What is one concrete outcome of the social forum that you anticipate for your community?  Detroit is the best place to learn how we will survive and thrive in the post-industrial age.  Proven ideas on organizing among the homeless and otherwise dispossessed.

 

What is your Name (Optional)? No response

Where are you from? Detroit, MI

What is one concrete outcome of the social forum that you anticipate for your community?  Detroit downtown-midtown feels really different with an extra 15-20000 people here - I think the modelling of a more populated city is really important.

 

What is your Name (Optional)? Shala

Where are you from? Seattle/Olympia, WA

What is one concrete outcome of the social forum that you anticipate for your community? Opening up vacant buildings in downtown Oly for the countless human beings that need shelter in our area.  Developing more of a collaborative while movement between/amongst the dozens of activist organizations.  At the same time I think my hometowns are pretty well off & I would like to find an underprivileged underserved area/people & bring my experiences to them

 

* The Social Forum is and was a complex and diverse space, and these reponses should not be interpreted as representing the full range of communities that participated in the gathering.

Grace Lee Boggs and Immanuel Wallerstein in dialogue was by turns breath-taking, challenging, thought-provoking, and inspiring. Here were two thinkers and revolutionaries whose lives in the struggle for a more humane world span more than a hundred years trying together to name the moment, to figure out where we are on the clock of the world and what is to be done. Each believes that ideas matter---that understanding and opposing the ideology and culture of capitalism is critical---that we are living in a dynamic history-in-the-making and that what we do or don't do makes a difference, and that we must struggle in the local and in the present as we connect to the global. Each argued that the world of 2050 will be what we make it.

Living at the expense of the earth and people has brought us to a cross-roads: evolution to a higher order of humanity or complete disaster. But because another world is possible does not mean it is inevitable. And in that uncertainty is both a challenge and a hope.

Vincent Harding brought wisdom, perspective, love and generosity to the education PMA. He argued that we are all citizens of a country that does not yet exist, and that we are all practitioners of an education that does not yet exist. The PMA was powered by imagination and a spirit of generosity.
The day ended with song and dance and tribute to Grace on her 95th birthday. Born in 1915, still opening her eyes, still trying to figure a way forward, still daring to struggle, to re-think, to imagine, and to engage again. She was beaming in the center of the room while people reminisced and re-energized for the struggle ahead.

Details on Bill's latest book: To Teach, the Jouney in Comics

It was truly an honor to be witness to a conversation between Grace Lee Boggs and Immanuel Wallerstein this morning at the Social Forum.  I recorded audio (available for download here), and jotted down a few notes that I'd love to share.  I know I will listen to this conversation again soon, and hope to spend some more time when things are less hectic reflecting on their words and observations.

Grace Lee Boggs: Living at the expense of the earth has brought us to the edge of disaster.  We face evolution to a higher humanity or the devastation and extinction of all life on earth.  Revolution is also evolution.

Immanuel Wallerstein: Historical systems do not go on forever.  The modern world system has entered into strucutral crisis, it's coming to an end.  The system doesn't provide the possibilities in its own terms to work.  Its own terms is an endless accumulation of capital... It's worked brilliantly for a couple of hundred years, but its moved far from eqilibrium and we are in a structural crisis.  Struggles today are not about preserving the present system, but what will replace it.  Every little action on our part helps to determine the end.  We don't know who's going to win the struggle about what replaces the current system.  There's no certainty, but it all depends on us.

Grace Lee Boggs: Resistance to commodification is a human resistance.  All over the world we have resistance developing.  People are resisting the commodification of relationships, the commodification of their communities.  The movement we are engaged in is not only about the transformation of institutions but also about the transformation of ourselves.

Immanuel Wallerstein: To live well is not necessarily to endlessly consume.  This isn't the kind of system that people at Davos want to create.  It doesn't have to be capitalism, it could be worse than capitalism. We have to talk about the consequences of this for organizing.  Everybody has to eat today, not tomorrow.  You can't tell people that they have to wait another 5 years or 10 years or 20 years.  That was a line of the historic anti-systemic movements.  You've got to worry about today, but you can't only worry about today.  The problem is working out a strategy that contains an immediate attempt to meet people's needs and a medium run strategy of changing the system.  People need to have less pain immediately.  That doesn't transform the world, but it meets people's needs.  You've also got to explain to people that we've got a 20 or 30 or 40 year struggle.  There will be some new system, it can be better or it can be worse. 

Detroit: City of Hope

Last night's plenary session "From Detroit to National" at the US Social Forum was truly inspiring. Skillfully facilitate by Adrienne Band Jerome Scott, and interluded with songs from participants in Detroit Summer Youth Program, the evening started off with a panel of social movement elders, featuring General Baker, Ron Scott and Grace Lee Boggs all discussing Detroit's history and legacy. I was so excited for this particular pairing because these are all people I had read about last year in the incredible book Detroit I Do Mind Dying, the most compelling narrative about the historical period of the 1960s and 1970s I have ever read. They each played a key role in the development of not only Black Consciousness in that period but also real struggle, experimentation and institution building. The panel reminded me of "Between Lefts", a piece written for AREA#7 in which Chicago's elder activists all active since the 1950s talked about their work and intergenerational dynamics. I think the most important insights hit on by this generation of activists in Detroit is the analysis of the Black worker being made obsolete and the decision that communities have to make if they are going to accept their family, neighbors becoming irrelevant or if they are going to find a way to make life matter in another way, regardless of people's economic productivity. James Boggs, Grace Lee's late husband, wrote precisely about this subject in the book American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker's Notebook in the early 1960s BEFORE most industrialization had even occurred. Grace Lee concluded her message by reminding the audience that "Detroit is a city of hope, not just a city of poverty and devastation." General Baker concluded "Detroit was never the intellectual center of the movement, it was the practical center of the movement." This was reflected in the concrete work which the rest of the brief panels reflected on. 

 

 

Next there was a group people working with immigrant and American Indian communities in the context of Detroit's increasingly militarized border with Ontario, Canada - Elena Herrada (Centro Obrero), Dawud Walid (CAIR Michigan) and Sharon George (American Indian Health and Family Services). George opened up with an explanation that her "people dont recognize those borders" [between the US and Canada] and are really struggling to get the border patrol to recognize that they have treaties with the US Government that allow them to move freely. Since the "Patriot Act 2" people have had to show passports to cross into Canada and a much harsher and well funded border patrol is in place. Herrada explained this border patrol is patrolling the streets of Detroit much more intensely than before, and encourages us all to not let deportations and raids become normalized. Walid further re-enforced this by referencing the seeming acceptance of Islamaphobia but also reminded the audience that Detroit was the site of the first Mosque in the US and also the birthplace of the Nation of Islam, saying that in Detroit's international context "What goes on in Palestine, Nigeria and Kashmir is a local issue here." This insistence that Detroit is an international city and a border city is hugely important to grasping and thinking through the connection between local work and global issues. 

A third panel with Starlet Lee and Andrea Ridges from Detroit Summer Youth Program, Malik Yakini from Black Community Food Security Network and Yusef Shakur from Urban Network all spoke about their work in Detroit as being a model the US and the world can learn from. Yakani spoke of 1,200 community, family and school gardens in the city rising up and becoming a new model for economic independence and autonomy. But he was careful to remind people who are jumping on the food bandwagon that "food justice" cannot happen without social justice and that it cannot be extracted from larger social problems, struggles and most importantly solutions. 

Finally, the MC known as Invincible, Aneb Kgositsile, and Carla Perez of Movement Generation all spoke and reflected about lessons they have learned in their social movement work in Detroit. This final mini-panel did a fantastic job of assessing what people could take from these local experiences in Detroit and what opportunities can arise from crisis. Invisible warned that despite all the great things happening locally, that "They, the predatory planners and politicians, see opportunity in our crisis too as they speculate on our water and land."  Carla Perez insight-fully focused on ecological concerns claiming that what we need to think about now, yesterday and tomorrow is a concept of "Ecological Justice" which is "holistic transformation of the social order that acknowledges connection to our earth home and wants to see all living things thrive."

Kgositsile reflected on her decades of experience to develop a list of her "10 lessons" learned. I couldn't write them all down but some of them in a nutshell were:

-Priorities of struggle arise from aspirations of people you work with

Seek and work with those most severely injured by imperialism

- respect the culture/religion/spiritual work of people we work with

- stay local and indigenous

- stay independent in funding

- protect and secure the children

- allow for human weaknesses (like egotism) but you've got to say something when enough is enough

- done work so hard that you loose your health

- love and protect those who stand with you

- trust that even insurmountable odds can be resisted and eventually overcome

These amazing people gave the audience a real gift of their local knowledge. For me this affirmed the power of doing locally rooted work, and the responsibility to stay focused on that slow, gradual process while also taking the time to reflect for people elsewhere and share lessons learned. Thanks Detroit. I look forward to learning more with you.

Some photos and recorded audio from the ARC09 workshop yesterday at the US Social Forum. 

i spent the afternoon at the excluded worker's congress, a gathering of domestic workers, day laborers, guest workers, workers in warehouses and restaurants, the formerly incarcerated, workfare workers, and more.  'excluded' means that the workers are either technically (as in the case of domestic workers) or functionally (as in the case of temporary workers) excluded from the right to collective bargaining under the National Labor Relations Act.  this people's movement assembly sought to gather these workers and organizations under one banner in order to hear testimonials from workers in these industries, call for solidarity for specific struggles, discuss innovative strategies for organizing, and share experiences from waging local, regional, national, and international campaigns to win rights for workers.

this was a 4.5 hour event, so there are a lot of stories and strategies to share, but i'll relate a few that struck me deeply...

- this was an incredibly well orchestrated gathering. lots of talking--but scheduled tightly. music and performance throughout that kept us engaged. fiery, loud speakers and intense, quiet speakers [okay, this wasn't orchestrated but was nice anyhow].

- i was super impressed by the San Francisco Progressive Workers Alliance, a young organization pushing a major campaign to win a citywide Low-Wage Worker Bill of Rights, amongst other workers rights campaigns.  the kind of organizing they are doing--across Chinese restaurant workers, the unemployed, Filipino domestic workers, queers, Latino day laborers--at the local level, was a powerful presentation of the kind of movement-building work that really excited me. i am looking forward to following their work.

- the Alliance of Guest Workers, an organization of workers who come to the U.S. on work visas, told some stories that shocked the audience... tales of workers having to pay $20,000 to come to the U.S. on the program and promised citizenship, only to be faced with no chance at citizenship, terrible working conditions and what amounts to indentured servitude... of a private security force attempting to carry out a private deportation on a worker who tried to push back against the working conditions... of a strike to win freedom for the detained worker, followed by a march to Washington DC from New Orleans, followed by a week-long hunger strike, all to try to gain the attention of the government.

- the lyrics from a song by Fruit of Labor, from NC:
I am an endangered species / but I sing no victim's song
I am a woman / I am an artist / And I know where my voice belongs

- Jose Oliva of ROC United pointed out that excluded workers are not trying to win inclusion into the status quo, the existing labor movement and its outdated laws, but rather create something fundamentally different that affords workers real power to counterbalance business. this sentiment is evident in the leadership of the organizations of excluded workers: women, people of color, queers. representatives of the disability justice movement, pushing for rights and protections for workers with disabilities, were noticeably absent.

- one of the final speakers was Ashim Roy of the New Independent Trade Union of India, who said that every new trade movement in history was started by excluded workers. this congress may very well be the official christening of the next phase of low wage worker organizing...

and then, the Rude Mechanical Orchestra, NYC's punkier twin to our own Mucca Pazza, swept in through the rear doors, played a jam that got folks to their feet, then exited out the front toward to lead people to the labor march...

Jorge Rivas (Racewire, ColorLines) and Samhita Mukhopadhyay (Feministing) facilitating this US Social Forum 2010 workshop.  Below are some notes and audio recorded from the workshop.

Audio from the session available here (apologies for the disjointed audio, this is raw from the recorder, will try to get edits up soon and will post them here).

twitter hashtag: #ussfrj

I apologize that these notes are a little scattered.  I'll take some time after the forum to bring some ideas together more coherently.

5 things you can do about the Oscar Grant shooting post as policy example.  Cameraphones, videos went viral.  Blogs kept the story in the news and shape and direct coverage.  What separated the Oscar Grant case from other police murders is the video and photo documentation, and strategic efforts by online media to keep the issue alive, and shape the coverage of it.  New media offers the opportunity to react to mainstream media coverage and put voices out that aren't being heard.

How do we connect to aggregator channels?  Feministing is part of The Media Consortium, trying to create a progressive media echochamber.  We can produce all we want, but if no one reads it, it isn't strategic. 

Pitchengine is a free tool to package social media for reporters, and is helpful generator.  Plugs right into social media.  TV producers want to see video clips.  Send it uncensored, they want controversy, under 3minutes.

Preparation is crucial when making media to insure you don't spend too much time editing.

Importance of organizing privacy settings on facebook, organizations on twitter.  We have to be strategic about what we make public. 

How do we reframe race and gender in new media?  What are the frames we want to push, how do we build alternative echo chambers? 

Be explicit - name communities, name impacts. If we don't talk about racism or sexism, how do we expect mainstream media to?

Get personal - it has to compelling, telling stories, but we have to connect it to systems and patterns

Find a hook - what's the story? why does it matter? Think about what would make you click on a link.  Put together a hooks calendar, so you can connect your work to holidays, or other news events.  Peg your releases to other news stories. 

Be strategic - are you getting your message across?  what's the most effective way to get the message out?  If you don't need a blog, don't make one.  Recognize what you have the capacity to do, and what supports the work you are doing.  Measure impact, figure out metrics. Use bit.ly, google analytics, hootsuite.  Consistent use is key, you have to build and maintain a presence.  RSS automation - it's ok, but you have to be on there and live as well.

Talking about media planning - work on buidling partnerships, extending reach.  Importance of generating new content, bringing new folks into content production.  If you are misquoted, provides an opportunity to correct or reframe (politely, maintain relationship). 

Make sure multiple platforms (FB/Twitter/Blog) all play nicely together, cross link.  Know your constituents, meet them with what media they consume.       

Our work is controversial, privacy is important, we can become targets.  We have to be really careful with social media and what we share. 

Know when to engage with trolls and comment flame wars, be strategic, don't get into unproductive fights.

Content design is crucial, it's easy to overwhelm.  Hierarchy of information is important.  Designing your writing is important too, you need to hook folks.  Break your text down into skimmable chunks.  Organizers have so much info, how do we make it accessible, break it down into small pieces and make it manageable.  What does your audience absolutely need to know.  Once you get them there, you can give them more.  When thinking about headlines be direct and make it understandable.   

The big lesson with online community - if you build it they will come.  the best way to get traffic is to put info out. 

Key considerations: strategy, consistency, design

From friend of AREA Bill Ayers: 

Woodward Avenue came alive with energy, color, and a joyful noise as thousands and thousands of activists and organizers took to the streets to kick off the US Social Forum on a sparkling afternoon on June 22. A yeasty mix of generations, people's. causes, and movements assembled to demonstrate that another world is indeed possible. I relished the scene, moving from group to group, one minute chanting, "Cops Here, Troops There, US Out of Everywhere," and then singing We Are Not Afraid with an up-tempo marching band. I knew, of course, that the march would end eventually, and still I lingered: our people, our shared  vision, our dreams for a world at peace and in balance, powered by love, joy, and justice. An exquisite moment of teaching and learning with a wide range of terrific people.  

Gretchen Hasse's Photostream

From AREA advisor Beth:

walked in the opening march yesterday with Warehouse Workers for Justice/UE.  it was a pretty incredible to feel the positive energy, both in the march itself and from folks we passed along the way.  the rude mechanical orchestra reminds me how important a beat and brass instruments are to our movement. there was a contingent of marchers in hospital gowns with plastic bare butts sticking out the back of the gown.  signs pinned to their backs read something like "private insurance is like a hospital gown: most likely, you aren't covered." they got a lot of attention from passersby, who were attracted to their playful critique--and i was reminded here how playfulness is sometimes the best way to spark people's curiosity, draw them in. "the job of [a radical] is to make the revolution irresistible..." 

Official USSF set

More from Pidge

Some photos, notes, and audio recording from Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality's workshop on the first day of the Social Forum.  More information about their work is available here and here.  Audio recorded from the workshop is available here, or through the player below.  You can find their vides on youtube here.

During the Aiyana Jones murder,  Granada Productions was filming for the A&E show 'First 48'.  DCAPB has received anonymous calls from the cops that the crew was encouraging the cops to take particularly militaristic steps before Aiyana's death.

 

The organization discussed the murder of Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah, and the infiltration of west side detoit muslim community organization by the FBI.  Imam Luqman was shot 23 times by FBI agents.  The FBI refuses to release information about evidence of raid, and claimed that he was connected to Islamic domestic terrorism.  Law enforcement is becoming more and more repressive.  There is no difference between murder of Imam Luqman and Aiyanna Jones.  International wars lead to construction and labelling of domestic terrorism in US.  In order to justify the massive expense of war and security, they have to identify, prosecute and kill 'terrorists' and militarize the cities and the border. 

 

There is a long history of repression in Detroit. Coming together of DPD, border patrol, state, homeland security, massive policing.  The community has been fighting for a very long time.  Sandra Heinz: "We don't throw the towel in when it comes to our rights.  We fight hard."


Working on community healing and violence reduction.  DCAPB is dealing with the re-establishment of community.  Building community reduces police brutality, destroyed communities can be victimized.  If communities resolve their own issues, the police become irrelevant.  If the police don't have to come in, we resolve police brutality.  Peace Zones for Life  were born out of the death of Robert Mitchell, a young man who died after being tazed by police.  People came out to fight his death to the same degree as Aiyana Jones. 

DCAPB believes that this whole conference is about transforming things from the ground up.  This is a movement period.  The contradictions are so heavy.  What we do on a day to day basis is not hold protests, what we do has an impact on people's survival and fight for transformation. 

We have to embrace young people so they can take our place.  We have to mentor, do know your rights with young people, go to court and work on finding lawyers, and offer support at every level. 

The corporate community runs Detroit's political system.  We're still trying to rise above the many layers of corruption.

How do we build a national movement? 3 ways, USSF is opportunity to connect.  Internet provides opportunity for communication infrastructure.   We need to build networks, connect with each others local struggles.  We need to challenge gang intelligence units.  We can challenge these units, and multi-jurisdictional task forces. We have to share information as do the cops.

Police brutality is police terror, which is a human rights issue.  Ultimately, we need to deal with this at the United Nations.  

How do we prioritize leadership of most affected communities?  Bring organizers from communities of color to come in and build organization.  You have to organize for yourself, self-determination is central.   

 

AREA friend Gretchen Hasse posted some photos on Facebook from a tour of Detroit led by Yusef Shakur,  a community organizer, tour leader, book store owner and author.

Here are some quick notes and reflections from a “Online Infrastructure for Organizing Against the PIC” at the Allied Media Conference yesterday.  Very exciting workshop led by Keith Deblasio from AdvoCare, Silky Shah and Wil Coley from Detention Watch Network and Paul Wright from Prison Legal News.  Folks from Critical Resistance facilitated this brainstorming and problem solving workshop.  I was specifically thinking about my work with the The Illinois Community Justice Project and our efforts to build a wiki based clearinghouse for information on incarceration, detention, and policing in Illinois, so my notes probably reflect the concerns I've got for that project.

The discussion centered around themes of reach and impact, content generation and online community building, and infrastructure needs.  Below are my fairly raw notes from the session.  My apologies if they aren't particularly useful or coherent as presented. Folks from Thousand Kites have committed to distributing information about and implementing some of these strategies.

Content
We need to be Taking already existing activity and turn it into content.  Listserv traffic can become content.  Group conversation is content.  Creating content in offline spaces, like letter writing, poster making, etc, and posting it online.  
How do we make non-digital media digital and address access issues.  Tamms Year Ten has done a good job bringing prisoner's letters online.  Thousand Kites takes it both ways, putting prisoners' voices online, and rebroadcasting them to folks inside, along with responses. Using people’s stories can be isolating and alienating, we have to make sure accountability and reciprocity are built into the process.  
How can visitation be a point of access?  How do we let folks who do have access inside info about available tools, use visitation as an access point for info?  Record, distro live call-ins.

Reach/impact

How do we reach the movable middle?  Community radio can be a central piece to reach multiple generations and rural communities.  Combining this radio piece with community forums can generate new content, reach new folks.  Get it into schools.  Develop into curriculum, critical reflection on media.  Online and live, both and, not either or.  

Infrastructure

Can we link among each other, boost page ranks, build search engine optimization.  

The digital divide is still a huge issue.  Print and radio are still very important, as is building curriculum for teachers.  

Big questions remain.  How do we share skills across organizations?  How do we  increase the signal to noise ratio?  How do we more effectively get our messages out to mainstream media?

Courtesy of Pidgeon

 

 

Led by the Spoke N Heart Collective, 20 cyclists who took off from Chicago 8 days ago rolled into Detroit today to participate in the Allied Media Conference and the US Social Forum (Photo Galleries from the ride available here and here ).  On the last night of group camping, folks jotted down their reflections on the ride, the journey, and what it means to head to the motor city on a bike.

This has been a beautiful experience, one of sharing, support, understanding and joy.  It is a microcosm of how I'd like the world to work.  - Darren

Riding the Road to Detroit, I've found joy, frustration and tremendous beauty.  I've been grateful to share the literal and figurative ups and downs of our bike tour with such amazing people.  - Gilberto

Trip magic is meeting Maurice, who cooks us breakfast omelets and sets up enormous tarps to keep out the rain.  Trip magic is watching Cassius and Mimi tickle each other by the side of the road while we buy strawberries from roadside stands.  Trip magic is creating community within and with everyone we meet along the road.  Trip magic is dance parties, potluck dinners, and dreaming by firelight.  - Nora

The stars.  The beautiful smell of outdoors.  Fresh rain.  Green crisp grassland.  Harriet Tubman.  Love.  The way we talk and care for each other.  The way we meet possibility.  That reminds me of what is possible, what I dream.  - Paris

So I went on this trip because I wanted to see what it was like.  I am so grateful for this opportunity, this experience, these people, this trip.  Thank you. 

I don't think I've ever moved so freely in my life.

I turned 35 on day 5 of this 8 day trip to Detroit for the USSF.  Seeing the Midwest in this up close, intimate proximity is simply spectacular.  The farm houses, the old style barns and the landscapes inspires as we move from the City of Chicago to Metropolitan Detroit.

Everyone has been so incredibly generous and willing to give of themselves on this trip.  Even though I know nothing about bikes, camping, or cooking, I've felt accepted and comfortable with each and every person.  The bike ride home in the pitch black and pounding rain last night when we filled the road and used our combined lights to illuminate the path was a wonderful example of teamwork overcoming mutual obstacles.

Riding into my 30s via a 300 mile bike ride to the USSF in Detroit is probably the most "amazing" way to begin this new beginning.  Pulling a 5 year old child, my nephew, on this bike tour reminds me of resilience, fearless, limitless spirit.  It centers me and allows me to recognize the beauty of the unknown.  The sense of community that has supported a ride with a 5 year old was unforeseen.  For that I am thankful, grateful, and appreciative. 
Magic comes from all those who took the step to make this possible for themselves and trusted spoke n heart to pull everything together accordingly.
Beauty is open fields, clear skies, sunsets, and sunrises not obscured by pollution and buildings.  It is people cheering us on the road to Detroit.
A hello from a stranger encourages me to believe that another world is possible... - Zahra

 

 

Chicago's own Pidgeon took these lovely photos on the first few days of the bike tour from Chicago to Detroit.

 

 

Today, after biking the first 115 miles from Chicago to Detroit, we're taking the day off in Decatur, Michigan.  About 20 folks, led by the Spoke N Heart Collective have been traveling through Northern Indiana and Southwest Michigan, en route to the Allied Media Conference and the US Social Forum.  We've been rained on most days, but are eating incredibly well.  Some of our people harvested some wild onions and nopales for diner last night.  So good.  Here are some photos from the first couple of days.  We'll be posting many more updates through the ride, and once we get to Detroit, from the AMC and the USSF. 

 If you are interested in contributing, please send an email to AREAChicago(at)gmail(dot)com