When reflecting upon all that I am grateful for, it would have to include the numerous people who, for me, are extraordinary heroes, mentors, teachers, and healers. These are human beings who are deeply inspiring and courageous, passionate and compassionate, loving and wise. Grace Lee Boggs is certainly among them... Peace & blessings ~ Molly
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20 questions with Grace Lee Boggs
Grace Boggs has been protesting for progressive change in America since 1941, when she became involved in the March on Washington Movement (which pushed for the desegregation of U.S. armed forces). Since then, she has participated in most of the defining social movements of the 20th century—including the labor, environmental, women’s and civil rights movements.
Boggs is the author of Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century (with her husband James Boggs), Women and the Movement to Build a New America and Living for Change: An Autobiography. In 1995, friends and associates of Boggs and her husband founded
In These Times corresponded with Boggs, now 93, and members of the Boggs Center earlier this year.
In 25 words or less, what makes you so special? (Keep in mind that humility, while admirable, is boring.)
I’ll soon be 93 and still have most of my marbles.
What’s the first thing that comes up when your name is Googled?
Philosopher/Activist.
Shamelessly plug a colleague’s project.
On the east side of Detroit, within walking distance of the Boggs Center, 79-year-old Lillie Wimberley and her 45-year-old son, Michael, have created the
Describe your politics.
I believe that at this pivotal time in our country’s history—when the power structure is obviously unable to resolve the twin crises of global wars and global warming, when millions are losing their jobs and homes, when Obama’s call for change is energizing so many young people and independents, and when white workers in Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania are reacting like victims–-we need to be struggling to define and begin making the next American revolution.
The next American revolution will be radically different from the revolutions that have taken place in pre- or non-industrialized countries like Russia, Cuba, China or Vietnam. As citizens of a nation that had achieved its rapid economic growth and prosperity at the expense of African Americans, Native Americans, other people of color, and peoples all over the world, our priority has to be correcting the injustices and backwardness of our relationships with one another, with other countries and with the Earth.
This vision of an American revolution as transformation is the one projected by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his April 4, 1967 anti-Vietnam war speech. Speaking for the weak, the poor, the despairing and the alienated, in our inner cities and in the rice paddies of Vietnam, he was urging us to become a more mature people by making a radical revolution not only against racism but against materialism and militarism. He was challenging us to “rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world.”
King was assassinated before he could devise concrete ways to move us towards this revolution of transformation. Forty years after his assassination, in our Detroit, City of Hope campaign, we are engaged in this “long and beautiful struggle for a new world”––not because of King’s influence (we identified more with Malcolm)––but because we have learned through our own experience that just changing the color of those in political power was not enough to stem the devastation of our city resulting from de-industrialization.
Our campaign involves rebuilding, redefining and re-spiriting Detroit from the ground up: growing food on abandoned lots, reinventing education to include children in community-building, creating co-operatives to produce local goods for local needs, developing Peace Zones to transform our relationships with one another in our homes and on our streets, replacing punitive justice with Restorative Justice programs to keep non-violent offenders in our communities and out of prisons that not only misspend billions much needed for roads and schools but turn minor offenders into hardened criminals.
Despite the huge differences in local conditions, our Detroit-City of Hope campaign has more in common with the struggles of the Zapatistas in Chiapas than with the 1917 Russian Revolution because it involves a paradigm shift in the concept of revolution.
This paradigm shift requires viewing revolution not as a single event but as an extended process. It involves all of us, from many different walks of life, ethnicities, national origins, sexual orientations, faiths and generations. At the same time, based on our experiences in Detroit, I see the Millennial generation, born in the 1980s, playing a pivotal role because their aptitude with the new communications technology empowers them to be remarkably self-inventive and multi-tasking and to connect and reconnect 24/7 with individuals near and far. As Frantz Fanon put it in The Wretched of the Earth: “Each generation, coming out of obscurity, must define its mission and fulfill or betray it.”
For the full interview, please go here: http://www.inthesetimes.com/community/20questions/4060/grace_lee_boggs/
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In order to grapple with the interacting and seemingly intractable questions of today’s society, we need to see ourselves not mainly as victims but as new men and women who, recognizing the sacredness in ourselves and in others, can view love and compassion not as some “sentimental weakness but as the key that somehow unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.” (Martin Luther King) . . . These are the times to grow our souls. Each of us is called upon to embrace the conviction that despite the powers and principalities bent on commodifying all our human relationships, we have the power within us to create the world anew. ~ Grace Lee Boggs
