Last week the Boggs Center hosted two conversations as part of the Black Genius series sponsored by the Michigan Roundtable. These gatherings offered an opportunity to think about our responsibilities at this “time on the clock of the world.”

As some of the coldest temperatures in nearly a century move out of the Midwest, devastation is everywhere. In Detroit the thaw brought over 50 breaks in water mains, flooding streets and closing buildings. Thousands of homes, offices, schools and public facilities face burst pipes and are preparing for what will likely be intense flooding as warm weather brings rain on top of melting snow. Roads are closed as concrete crumbles.

The celebration of Martin Luther King makes it clear how difficult it is for many people in our country to look at the fullness of our history. People in power have a vested interest in turning Dr. King’s life and legacy into a shallow dream of a future where race does not matter.

In the midst of the latest boil water advisory, a group of scholars and community activists released a long awaited report on Water Equity and Security in Detroit’s Water and Sewer District. The report is a thoughtful, well researched, and historically grounded analysis of the current crisis of water insecurity.

Last week the journal Science warned that the oceans are heating up 40 percent faster than estimated by the UN just five years ago. This rapid heating threatens the future of all of us. Most people are aware that each year is getting warmer. The globe’s oceans have been absorbing about 93% of the heat produced by greenhouse gases. This has moderated the temperature rise on land, but is devastating for marine life, water levels, and weather patterns.

As we begin a new year, crises are intensifying. At the same time, our capacity to think clearly, to act boldly, and to envision alternative paths toward a just future are under unprecedented assault.  Concepts and conventions of the past are worn out, no longer providing insight or inspiration.

We have seen the face of fear and fascism. It is tear gas shot at barefoot children in diapers. We cannot look away. We cannot be distracted by the din of disinformation and denial.

Throughout Michigan people are rallying to challenge the Lame Duck actions of the state legislature. Protest, public demonstrations and outright mockery are tactics being deployed against a secure, smug legislative body. Many groups are placing their hopes in the Governor. They are urging us to call Gov. Snyder’s office and ask him to veto these lame-duck bills. I will join this effort, but I hold out little hope that this governor will be moved to reject the full array of bills being jammed through this legislature.

Much of the country was shocked by the announcement that General Motors (GM) is closing five production plants in the U.S. and Canada. Two of the closing are in the Detroit area. The Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant, known as the Poletown plant, after the community leveled to enable its construction, will be closed. So will the Warren Transmission Plant. Other plant scheduled for closure are in Lordstown, Ohio, White Marsh, Maryland, and Oshawa, Ontario. About 14,000 people will be affected directly: 8,000 of them salaried workers, and slightly more than 6000 factory workers. GM will reduce its total workforce by about 15%. GM stock went up by 5 percent when they announced the decision.

The poisoning of the water in Flint Michigan was the direct result of a republican dominated lame duck legislature acting to benefit corporations and abuse democracy. Now the republican dominated lame duck legislature is threatening the waters of the Great Lakes.

This week the National Council of Elders met in Detroit. The Council was formed in 2011 by Vincent Harding and James and Phil Lawson, all veterans of the Black Liberation struggle and close associates of Martin Luther King. The purpose of the Council is “to engage leaders of 20th century civil rights movements to share what they have learned with young leaders of the 21st century and to promote the theory and practice of nonviolence.”

Last week Detroit hosted two major national gatherings that point the way to a much better future. The first was the Black 2 Just Transition Assembly & Training organized by the Eastern Michigan Environmental Action Council. Over 100 activists who have helped forge a new consciousness about our responsibilities to one another and the earth gathered to create a progressive agenda rooted in care for one another and our earth. The second, Facing Race, brought together nearly 3000 activists, artists, intellectuals, and organizers to think together about how to create a world that welcomes, supports, and protects all people. These gatherings reminded me of how important it is to look beyond the manipulations of the White House to understand the deep possibilities of people to fashion a new way forward.

This is a time of accelerating homegrown terrorism. The Massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburg followed closely behind the shooting deaths of two people in a Kroger parking lot in Kentucky. The killer had gone to the store after being unable to enter the First Baptist Church.

Gary Brown, the director of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, recently revealed that the Duggan administration is once again threatening to use water shut offs as a weapon to clear people out of neighborhoods. Brown had scarcely concluded his interview with Bridge Magazine when Food and Water Watch released its first national assessments of water shut offs for non-payment of bills. The report entitled America’s Secret Water Crisis: National Shutoff Survey Reveals Water Affordability Emergency Affecting Millions, is a stark condemnation of the approach Duggan is taking to the water crisis.

Detroit has few friends in Lansing. We have learned over these years of right-wing Republican rule that a favorite trick of those in power is to withhold funds from a city or school district and then declare a financial emergency which their actions have intentionally created. This emergency becomes the justification for imposing an unelected, unaccountable overseer. This single individual supplants all democratic authority and rules in ways that benefit the rich and powerful. This was the bitter lesson of the Detroit Bankruptcy process, the experience of Benton Harbor, Pontiac, and the poisoning of Flint. Emergency managers are bad for democracy, bad for cities, bad for schools, and bad for people who care about fair and equitable decision-making.

This week the Michigan League for Public Policy released a new report on the crisis of education in our state. It identifies the failures of decades of so-called reforms and argues for an honest look at systemic racism embedded in these efforts

The report urges legislators, leaders, and all concerned people to face “the inescapable truth of deep inequities in educational opportunities and outcomes for children based on race, ethnicity, place, and income.”

The push for local and state-wide policies to protect our water is accelerating. This past week saw both a successful student walk-out on count day in Detroit emphasizing the crisis of safe water in the schools and the need for a water affordability plan and a declaration of faith in support of water as a human right by people of faith. On Oct 4th people gathered at the Spirit of Detroit to celebrate over 240 signatures of faith leaders in a call to all people of good will to become stewards of our waters. Faith leaders declared they will continue to organize to stop water shut-offs, get those who have been shut off reinstated, and for a water affordability plan that allows people to pay for water based on their percentage of income.

Detroit young people are taking the lead in challenging the complacency of the Mayor and Superintendent of Schools over the water crisis in our city. Detroit Area Youth Uniting Michigan (DAYUM) are hosting a Freedom School today (October 3rd), urging students to stand up for themselves, younger students, and their community by striking on Count Day. Elders, university professors, and community leaders are invited to join the students to learn and strategize together about how to continue to press for safe, affordable water and an education that encourages critical thinking, creative action, and collective wisdom.

“I love my museum. I’ll be damned before I let you take it away.” That sentence summed up the determination of the nearly two hundred people who gathered at Sacred Heart on September 19 to organize to protect the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History. People want to be sure it remains a place that reflects the heart of the African American community.

It has been 17 years since the attacks on September 11. That was a lifetime ago for the young people entering the military, going to university, or heading to what they hope will be the beginnings of life after high school. Many are preparing to vote. All of them have spent their lives in a country at war. They have known Shock and Awe and a series of promises to end the death and killing. Each promise proved a lie.