Grace Lee Boggs make use of the word "reinvent". I agree we need to focus there. Too often what I see is reaction to whatever the latest manner of exploitation is that has directly affected us. By reacting only to that, we leave the whole corrupt system in place and it will invent a new way to allow for more exploitation.

The 60's is portrayed as some sort of unusual culture, with its own music and its own dress, but most of what made a difference at that time were the quieter actions that were going on, like people rediscovering where food comes from or who their neighbors were. As Krista points out, we are doing that consciously now. Hopefully, aware not only of how food grows, but what the difference is between food as something we nurtured vs food as a commodity.

I've seen this awareness grow in kids in gardens I have helped organize in South Minneapolis and even in my small town.

Bravo Krista! Time Inc. was here for a year -- and this is the story they missed: Detroit becoming....

Full disclosure: I've known Grace since 1993. In fact, I met my wife, Julia, through Detroit Summer, Grace & Jimmy's (r)evolutionary idea to utilize the spirit of young people to revitalize, re-imagine, and re-spirit Detroit. Julia was actually Detroit Summer's first volunteer and is now deep in the process of creating a place-based school in Detroit, the Boggs Educational Center, that will draw on many of the people and principles that came out in today's show.

Ending with Invincible's hip-hop song was also right on.

Let me end with a poem, "Detroit Jesus," I wrote for Grace last summer:

Detroit Jesus
(for Grace Lee Boggs on her 96th birthday)

Time, Inc., buys a house in Detroit
and tries to track him for a year.
But he’s invisible to those looking for a
blue-eyed dude in a white robe
or for a city gone completely to hell.

He is the cinnamon of my son’s skin
with a green thumb and a Tigers cap
and my daughter’s dove-grey eyes.
He prays into Blair’s guitar,
hangs out on Field St.,
bakes bread at Avalon
and plants tomatoes on the East side.
He rides his old-school bike down the heart
of Grand River,
paints a mural in the Corridor,
shoots hoop in the Valley
with priests and pimps and lean young men
trying to jump their way to heaven.

At night,
while the Border Patrol counts cars,
he walks across the water
to Windsor,
grabs a bite to eat,
walks back.

Like Grace,
born in Providence,
he lives so simply,
he could live anywhere:
Dublin, Palestine, Malibu.
But Detroit is his home.
It was here one Sunday
a boy invited him down
off the cross
and into his house
for a glass of Faygo red pop.

That was centuries ago, it seems,
and how far he’s come,
reinventing himself more times than Malcolm.
He’s been to prison,
been to college,
has a tattoo of Mary Magdalene on one arm,
Judas on the other,
and knows every Stevie Wonder song by heart.

He’s Jimmy, he’s Invincible, he’s Eminem.
He’s the girls at Catherine Fergusen
and their babies,
and he’s the deepest part of Kwame
still innocent as a baby.

The incinerator is hell,
but he walks right in,
burns it up with love,
comes out the other side,
walks on.

He can say “Amen” in twelve religions,
believes school is any place
where head and heart and hands
meet,
and wears a gold timepiece around his neck
with no numbers, just a question:
What time is it on the clock of the world?

And every second of every day
he answers that question
with a smile wide as the Ambassador
and a heart as big as Belle Isle,
hugging this city in his arms
and whispering to each soul
words no one else dares to say:
You are Jesus,
this is your Beloved Community,
and the time
on the clock of the world
is Now.

I so appreciated the chance to hear this story about Grace Lee Boggs and others are accomplishing in Detroit. We will be showing a new documentary about Grace Lee Boggs ("American Revolutionary") at our Great Lakes History/Women and Gender Historians of the Midwest in Grand Rapids, Michigan next October. Hearing these stories has inspired me to think about all the possibilities that we can connect to her story.

A whole range of emotions--real joy to hear about the creativity and community building, hope and inspiration. I go away with the question about my own focus and how I can be more imaginative and positive about making change. It is so heart-opening and a wonderful contradiction to the daily onslaught of negativity, hopelessness and narrow thinking. Thank you Krista for continuing to shine light into the darkness.

Thanks for having Grace Lee Boggs on. She is brilliant and thought-provoking.

One of the first, if not the first, community gardens in Detroit was set up by Brother Rick of the Capuchins on Mount Elliot Street, just down the street from Heidelberg Project, both of which would be good stories. The Caps have a member, Father Solanus Casey, is on the path to possible sainthood and a lovely chapel has been built on the block. Solanus used to tick off the other Caps when he gave away all the food in the house to people knocking at the door.

The Heidelberg Project has been defamed and attacked for removal. Why - here is a sample. When a brothel inhabited an abandoned corner house, Tyree Guyton, artist, decorated the house with dozens of dolls hung all over the house. That was only the beginning. It has hit its 25th birthday with an HBO program. (Pic attached may be a different house)

To boot, across the street from the Caps is a cemetery which has been the subject of a locally famous painting of souls rising on All Saints Day.

May your story uncap the hope of Detroit.

Bill Lavery

so inspiring and important. i'm in Los Angeles. another kind of city that embodies the tension between aggressive pursuit of individualism and a burgeoning awareness of sustainability and community. thank you for this incredible story that highlights people of inspiration and accountability to themselves and to the earth.