*Not seen since the downfall of the ancient Maya...
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/06/23-0
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
TruthDig.com
Another World Is Possible, Another Detroit Is Happening
by Amy Goodman
DETROIT—“I have a dream.” Ask anyone where the Rev. Martin Luther King
Jr. first proclaimed those words, and the response will most likely be
at the March on Washington in August 1963. In fact, he delivered them
two months earlier, on June 23, in Detroit, leading a march down
Woodward Avenue.
King said:
“I have a dream that one day, right down in Georgia and Mississippi and
Alabama, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners
will be able to live together as brothers. ...
“I have a dream this afternoon that my four little children ... will be
judged on the basis of the content of their character, not the color of
their skin.
“I have a dream this afternoon that one day right here in Detroit,
Negroes will be able to buy a house or rent a house anywhere that their
money will carry them and they will be able to get a job.”
Forty-seven years later, thousands of people, of every hue, religion,
class and age, might not have used those words exactly, but they marched
down that same avenue here in Detroit in the same spirit, opening the
U.S. Social Forum.
More than 10,000 citizens, activists and organizers
have come from around the world for four days of workshops, meetings and
marches to strengthen social movements and advance a progressive agenda.
Far larger than any tea party convention, it has gotten very little
mainstream-media coverage.
Not a tightly scripted, staged political
convention, or a multiday music festival, the U.S. Social Forum defines
itself as “an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic
debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of
experiences.” (((That's WHY it gets no mainstream coverage –
there's nothing to write about.)))
It is appropriate that the U.S. Social Forum should be
held here, in this city that has endured the collapse of the auto
industry and the worst of the foreclosure crisis. In Detroit, one is
surrounded, simultaneously, by stark failures of capitalism and by a
populace building an alternative, just and greener future.
Environmental writer Rebecca Solnit says of the decay of Detroit, “the
continent has not seen a transformation like Detroit’s since the last
days of the Maya.” The core of modern Detroit, the automobile industry,
helped facilitate the creation of suburbs that ultimately spelled doom
for vibrant inner cities. Detroit, which had 2 million residents in the
mid-1950s, now has dwindled to around 800,000. Poverty, joblessness,
depopulation and decay have created an almost post-apocalyptic scene here.
Carried within this dystopic, urban disaster, though, are the seeds of
Detroit’s potential rebirth. Legendary Detroit organizer/philosopher
Grace Lee Boggs helped organize the 1963 King march in Detroit. She
turns 95 this week, and will be celebrated here at the U.S. Social
Forum. (((You can see that the Left is full of innovative electricity
because they're so keen to celebrate centenarians.)))
We visited her at her home, which might well become a Detroit
historic site because of the many organizations that were born there.
She has lived in that same house for more than half a century, much of
that time with her husband, the late political activist and autoworker
Jimmy Boggs.
Smiling, she says, “It’s really wonderful that the Social
Forum decided to come to Detroit, because Detroit, which was once the
symbol of miracles of industrialization and then became the symbol of
the devastation of deindustrialization, is now the symbol of a new kind
of society, of people who grow their own food, of people who try and
help each other, to how we begin to think, not so much of getting jobs
and advancing our own fortunes, but how we depend on each other. I mean,
it’s another world that we’re creating here in Detroit.” (((Not bad for 95, ma'am.)))
She reflects on the two delegations of young people attending the USSF
with whom she has already met: “I hope they understand from Detroit that
all of us, each of us, can become a cultural creative. ... We are
creating a new culture. And we’re not doing it because we are such
wonderful people. We’re doing it because we had to, not only to survive
materially, but to survive as human beings.”
From urban gardens to collective businesses to electric cars, Detroit
is beginning to chart an alternative path. As the great Indian writer
Arundhati Roy has said, “Another world is not only possible, she’s on
the way, and, on a quiet day, if you listen very carefully, you can hear
her breathe.”
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
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