People are marking the 50th anniversary of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, usually called the Kerner Report, after the Illinois Governor who chaired the effort. President Lyndon Johnson appointed the commission on July 28, 1967 while the rebellion was still raging on the streets of Detroit. The commission was charged with answering three basic questions about the uprisings that had been raging across America. Johnson asked, “What happened? Why did it happen? What can be done to keep it from happening again?”

This week the students, teachers, and support staff of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida will resume classes. They will find ways to move forward in a place infused with memories of violence, fear, and pain. And they will continue to show a deep commitment to organizing people against school shootings. They are planning a March on Washington “to demand that their lives and safety become a priority and that we end this epidemic of mass school shootings.” Schools and communities around the country are planning walkouts and marches in solidarity. 

This week a group of us from the Boggs Center attended the North Dakota Study Group’s (NDSG) 46th annual gathering. The NDSG is a loose collective of progressive educators, artists, activists, authors, teachers, and students who “come together annually to engage in an ongoing seminar on democratic possibilities in the U.S. and world education.” Its members have persistently and consistently pressed for deepening democratic theory and practice in education and in our communities.

Betsy DeVos has completed her first year as the head of the Department of Education. Some have argued that she has been ineffective in carrying out her right-wing agenda. Some take comfort in her foolish public statements; arguing for guns in school in case a bear wanders in, comparing schools to taxicabs and food trucks, and claiming Margaret Thatcher as her idol.

Members of the Michigan State Legislature have learned nothing from the poisoning of Flint. This week the legislature is considering handing over the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to corporate polluters by passing three new bills currently under consideration. Together these bills are an environmental disaster that would put all of us at greater risk.

This week, Governor Rick Snyder gave his 8th and final State of the State address. It was filled with relentless positive comments. Snyder emphasized population growth, reduced unemployment rates, a strong automobile industry, and gains in personal income. “We’re headed back in a positive fashion,” Snyder said. “The State has enjoyed a tremendous recovery and now we’re accelerating this comeback into the future.”

Last week Detroit received the news that it did not make it on to the short list of cities being considered for the new Amazon headquarters. A total of 238 cities pitched their virtues to Amazon in the hope of becoming the new home of Amazon’s second corporate center.

Amazon is the fourth largest company in the world and is planning on investing $5 billion in the expansion. It asked cities to apply for consideration and said they were interested in education and skills of the workforce, transit and the built environment, and the livability of their communities. It also asked for a list of the tax incentive programs each municipality would offer.

The celebration of the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. comes in the midst of a moment of national disgrace. It is not only that the words of the current administration are cruel, hateful, and dangerous. It is also that its policies are. The brutality of a dying empire is seeping into all of our relationships, poisoning us.

It is easy to think democracy has been restored to Michigan. The faces of Emergency Managers no longer loom out at us in the daily news. Kevyn Orr has disappeared from Detroit. He is now a partner in charge of Jones Day’s Washington D.C. office.

Darnell Earley is gone from Flint and Detroit. Although in early February he is expected to return to view as he is likely to be charged with involuntary manslaughter for his role in the poisoning of Flint water.

The turning of the year is a time for reflection and recommitment.

Many of us are glad to see 2017 end. As the new year arrives we find ourselves drawing on fragile signs that longings for peace and justice persist, emerging in the resistance to acts of inhumanity that mark those in authority. Throughout the country, people are recreating ways of living together based on values that hold the promise of protecting life and restoring health to our communities and the earth.