Detroit has a rich history of citizen research that contributes to the strength and vitality of our movements toward justice. In the early days of the urban agricultural movement, people explored innovative methods of soil testing and remediation. Often these efforts combined scientific practices with a systematic gathering of community knowledge.

Calling all visionaries, changemakers, and revolutionaries as we offer many opportunities to gather with us in the coming weeks in the spirit of groundbreaking events that transpired 60 years ago.

1963 was a pivotal year in bending the long ark toward freedom and justice. It is a year that gave new voice to our longings for democracy. And it was a year where the violence to protect white supremacy was without restraint. Among many moments in 1963 also came Malcolm X’s speech, “Message to the Grassroots”. The speech was delivered on November 10, 1963, at the Northern Negro Grass Roots Leadership Conference, which was held at King Solomon Baptist Church here in Detroit.

Join us as we will host folks nationally and internationally to listen to this monumental speech, followed by conversation and reflection.

As we begin a new legislative season, we encourage all Detroiters to read our City Charter. It is a document that expresses the deepest aspirations of our people and provides a standard for judging the effectiveness our public policies.

The Preamble of the Charter makes clear that the aim of government is to address “the needs of all citizens” and affirm “our commitment to the development and welfare of our youth, our most precious treasures; instituting programs, services and activities addressing the needs of our community; fostering an environment and government structure whereby sound public policy objectives and decisions reflect citizen participation and collective desires; pledging that all our officials, elected and appointed, will be held accountable to fulfill the intent of this Charter and hold sacred the public trust.”

This week the state of Georgia took drastic steps to send a message to those who object to police violence. Using the unique RICO laws of the state, and what appears to be the same grand jury that indicted President Trump, the republican governor and attorney general are attempting to confuse and intimidate people who are organizing for justice.

There is no question that this action is also intended to de-legitimize the efforts of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Her RICO indictment of former President Donald Trump brings the most cogent and forceful charges documenting a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election.

On the last day of August, the Board of Police Commissioners met to discuss the promotion of 60 officers. By the authority of the city Charter, the BOPC has the final word on such decisions. The meeting took place within the context of growing public scrutiny about the functioning of the Board. Last month investigative reports revealed that two staff members on administrative leave were being paid, even though their positions had been filled by others. The board is under multiple investigations, and one of the commissioners has requested intervention by the federal Department of Justice, alleging corruption.

This week marks the 60th Anniversary of the March on Washington. The energy and determination focused that day has improved the lives of millions of people. Voting, housing, education, employment, health care, and participation in public life were all pushed in a positive, more just direction. It is regarded as one of the most important moments in the advancement of American democracy.

The power structure in the US is going back to old, dangerous, and deadly strategies to silence the voices calling into question the use of US military power, weapons for Ukraine, hostility toward China, support for Israel, and the efforts to increase a military presence in Africa.

Porsha Woodruff is the third victim of police use of facial recognition technologies in Detroit. Like Mr. Robert Williams, her arrest last January was at her home in front of her children, by a team of six police officers. On what should have been a normal day preparing her two daughters for school, police arrested her, took her to the Detroit Detention Center, held her for 11 hours, and seemed oblivious to the fact that she was 8 months pregnant, having contractions and panic attacks. After being released with a $100,000 bond, she went straight to the hospital to be treated for dehydration and to ensure that her baby was stabilized.

In an unprecedented move to encourage public conversation, top medical journals published an urgent call for the elimination of nuclear weapons. The editorial, published in several journals simultaneously, begins by referring to the Doomsday Clock. At the beginning of this year, its hands were moved forward to 90 seconds to midnight. The editorial also refers to the statement by UN Secretary-General António Guterres nearly a year ago that the world is now in “a time of nuclear danger not seen since the height of the Cold War.”

In the ongoing national debate about the role of police in our communities, Detroit was an early leader in developing methods to increase transparency and accountability. With the emergence of Black liberation struggles in the late 1950s and the increase in militarized police responses, Detroit, along with other major cities such as Los Angeles, Oakland, Chicago, and Kansas City established strong mechanisms for community control. These early efforts included measures to ensure public participation in the selection of the chief of police, oversight in the development of policies, and in the discipline of officers who violated citizen rights.

This week marked the 10th anniversary of the imposition of bankruptcy on the city of Detroit. The anniversary coincides with the passing of our beloved JoAnn Watson, who vigorously resisted the idea of bankruptcy. She consistently maintained that Detroit did not declare bankruptcy, but that it was imposed upon the people and our elected government by the state legislature and the courts, in service to corporate powers.

Sometimes a loss is too big to hold. It leaves a hole that can never be filled, a wound that will never quite heal. Such is the loss of the Rev. Dr. JoAnn Watson. Her death on Monday July 10, 2023, shocked the city.

Many people in the Detroit area woke up at the start of the holiday week with an Amber Alert on our phones. We were advised that a man had attacked a woman and kidnapped her two-year-old child. Over the next three days, police from Lansing to Detroit launched a coordinated effort to find the man and child. Three days later the body of Wynter Cole Smith was found in an alley on the east side of Detroit. The suspect, Rashad Trice, was arrested after crashing a car during a police chase.

This week the Michigan State legislature passed a series of bills to expand the brownfields development fund under the guise of using public funds to encourage the development of affordable housing.

Michigan’s Transformational Brownfield legislation is a bad idea. Expanding it by attaching it to affordable housing does not make it any better. We need to stop these tax-based policies that consistently take public money away from needed programs and transfer it into the hands of wealthy developers.

After more than three decades of dumping toxic waste into our air, the Detroit trash incinerator stack is finally gone. Its final implosion gave us one last burst of noxious air. The demolition team and people gathered to watch wore masks, and neighbors had been warned. Once again, a quiet Sunday morning would be filled with invisible dangers from the smokestack.

There are many lessons from this whole tragic experience.

People can encourage our state legislature to pass laws that would guarantee safe, affordable, and clean water to everyone. The statewide legislation effort is the result of decades of work guided by values that center water as a human right and a sacred trust. The specific legislative opportunity has been sparked by the work of State Senator Stephanie Chang and reflects the best thinking of literally hundreds of community conversations, citizen and university researchers, and water advocates from across the state.

Three years ago, the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police sparked the largest spontaneous resistance movement in this country. Now, as we enter the fourth summer since the beginning of public protests, we are faced with a resurgence of the white power structure, intent not only on maintaining its hold, but expanding forms of violence, authority, and control.

This collective experience of the potential of movements to create change and the consequent backlash, brings urgent questions to those of us committed to creating a just society. What is the difference between mass mobilization and organizing? What is the relationship between reform and revolution? Does electoral politics matter? How do we build long term community power? What kind of future do we want?

This week Judge David Allen of the Wayne County 3rd Circuit Court gave a mixed decision on the Shotspotter lawsuit against the expansion of the gunshot technology in Detroit. The lawsuit argued that the City Council did not have the authority to approve a $7 million expansion and a $1.5 million extension of existing contracts because the city had not fulfilled its responsibilities under the Community Input over Government Surveillance Ordinance (CIOGSO) during the approval process.

On May 19, 2022, the Detroit Coalition for Police Transparency and Accountability (CPTA) sent a letter to the US Department of Justice, requesting an investigation into the Detroit Police Department’s excessive use of force, including the killings of people. The coalition, formed in the wake of the police murder of Hakim Littleton in July of 2020, requested federal intervention because of an accelerated pattern of brutality and lawlessness by police.

This week I was at Haley Farm for the third intergenerational gathering hosted by the National Council of Elders since 2021. The Council began in 2011 to bring together movement leaders of the 20th Century with those emerging today. The Council says:

“We, of the National Council of Elders, dream of new worlds. We have helped bring to life the movements that have enriched our humanity over the past 70 years. Yet we know that we have a long way to go to create relations based on peace, love, and mutual responsibility. In 2012 we gathered in Greensboro, North Carolina and wrote a “living Declaration” pledging to “be faithful to our own history” and to undertake with younger generations to do “everything in our power” to bring a greater measure of justice, equality, and peace to our country and to our world.”