When longtime Detroit activist Grace Lee Boggs started the Detroit Summer program in 1992, her vision was of a multi-generational collective sharing ideas and efforts to rebuild the community. She knew the work would be slow -- one empty lot, one potluck, one garden at a time.
But in a passage from her new book,
The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the 21st Century, Boggs says she rejected the more typical (and large-scale) frameworks of a left-wing organization or sizable nonprofit, noting, "the system continues to function because neither carries the potential to transform society."
Excerpt:
" ... our hope was that Detroit Summer would bring about a new vision and
model of community activism -- one that was particularly responsive to the
new challenges posed by the conditions of life and struggle in the
postindustrial city. We did not feel this could be accomplished if
control of our activities was ceded to the dictates of government or the
private sector, even though this meant that we would be working on a
small scale. However, by working on this scale, we could pay much closer
and greater attention to the relationships we were building among
ourselves and with communities in Detroit and beyond.
Read more
here.
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