Since State of the Re:Union is all about topics featuring people and communities turning broken realities into new beginnings, we thought it befitting to highlight this storyline. If it has a familiarity to it, it might be that the talented producer, Mr. Zak Rosen, spent some time with us at SOTRU as a radio producer. Even though his physical presence is elsewhere, his character still permeates the creative air that we breathe.

Source: KCRW

Now working independently, Zak is producing Work in Progress, a story about a Detroit auto worker who found herself crippled after suffering severe nerve damage from a traumatic head injury she received while on the job. The 50-year-old Gloria Lowe had to re-learn everything, from how to speak, to how to brush her teeth. She literally had to start completely over with just learning how to exist in life and how to be in the world. Doctors informed her that she would never maintain a job again. However, as the human spirit often does, she defied their life sentence and got back to work after two and a half years of recovery. This woman of fortitude did not return back to the auto plant, but rather became one of the leaders of a new movement that is taking shape in Detroit, Michigan. Block by block, the city’s residents are taking back communities that have been written off for some time.

Lowe started an organization, We Want Green, Too,  that is dedicated to training Detroiters in how to reclaim their community. Now Through teaching people how to rebuild the homes that will create neighborhoods, Lowe believes that eventually this can revive her beloved city. She has firsthand knowledge of what it is to come back from a devastating blow. Now, without a whole lot of outside help she is at the she is at the leading edge of a movement that’s taking a stand for Detroit, a kind of DIY urban policy.

Source: KCRW

Work in Progress tells the story of how Gloria Lowe and a small army of dry-wallers, community gardeners, bakers, philosophers and other true-believers are working small miracles all over Detroit. This didactic narrative introduces us to some characters who follow Lowe’s lead in accepting the challenge in reinventing who they are. One such person is Edward Collins, a shift manager at Detroit’s On The Rise Bakery, which offers a culinary arts training program for Detroiters
reclaiming lives derailed by unemployment, crime and substance abuse. Another player on the stage is Grace Lee Boggs,  a 96-year-old philosopher and political activist who has taken a part in almost every major social justice movement over the past 70 years. She still lives and works in Detroit and takes no exception when it comes to participating in this movement. It keeps her young.

While this story has a unique beginning, its ending is starting to find its place in a trending world. SOTRU loves to hear the stories that make up a community of doers dedicated to making change happen through taking the first step of faith.  Everyone loves the stories that invoke the spirit of the Phoenix. We’d love to hear about yours. If you or someone you know have shared in a similar story or experience, we would love to learn about it.

You can watch or find out more about Rosen’s Work in Progress or the We Want Green, Too organization by clicking here.

Photo By: David Coates / The Detroit News

You won’t catch Grace Lee Boggs speaking in empty platitudes or trying to recapture a storied past . . . and that would be such an easy place to default to when talking about Detroit. Detroit, once a model of industry, production and success, well, now, is a shell of its former self where residents depart in droves. Boggs is an activist and author. The term activist is an ever-politicized one that often carries a polarizing connotation. But you can be assured, she is not in it for face time or to push a political agenda, she’s doing what needs to be done for her home city, for her neighborhood and the surrounding neighborhoods.

Al spoke to Grace for our Detroit episode, Motor City Rebound, produced during SOTRU’s research and development year. What really caught my ear and sent the sentiment of, wow, she is different, she’s really in it to better things and she understands human nature was when she said:

“It starts with a few people. Human beings are not like fish, they’re not like a school of fish they don’t all move at the same time. People are not just masses, people have to wake up first before they begin acting.

She speaks in specifics, in solutions, and recognizes that Detroit is simply not going to re-industrialize. Instead she believes that the every day people have to do something to create real change. Where most activists call on government for change, Boggs notes that in Detroit, people are taking matters into their own hands.  She cites resident-driven movements to create real self-sufficiency with products and services that derive from within the community like the urban agricultural movement. “If people can feed themselves, people can free themselves,” Grace cites. She has helped start programs like the Detroit Summer Collective, a training ground for the next generation of citizen activists that explore the most crucial components of a community, like education. Boggs also found the Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership, a nonprofit community center and think tank.

Grace, who released the book, The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the 21st Century, was recently honored at an event at the First Unitarian Universalist Church in Detroit in early April. It was scheduled to coincide with the 43rd anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. You can read more about the event here.

We Want to Know:

• Have you seen the type of activism Grace Lee Boggs teaches, that is people taking change in their own hands rather than calling on the government, in your community?
• Do you have solutions on how resident-led efforts can solve a problem in your community? What are they?

You can hear Grace Lee Boggs in our episode Detroit – Motor City Rebound.

*Photos By: David Coates of The Detroit News

Photo By: Marlith

Education in America is a multifaceted and passionate debate. But it often feels like the voices that are the loudest don’t have a stake in the fight beyond the political implications of it all. We all know that we are a country in massive amounts of debt and that everyone’s reflex is to throw more money at a problem. It’s true, a lot of these things need more money, but at their very heart, need fundamental fixes. Talk though, is indeed cheap and the problem is full of countless layers and nuances. But if there is any issue worth untangling, it’s education. It’s one of those aspects of society that permeates nearly everything, with ever-growing roots that reach the most important parts of society.

There are some incredible public school alternatives and even other options within the public system. From charter and magnet schools to home school networks, many students have a number of choices that weren’t always available. However, there is still a huge segment of students that for a multitude of reasons, don’t have those options readily available to them. I’m a public school product, and like anything else, some schools were great and some, well, were not so great. But is there any reason that this issue couldn’t be solved with a number of solutions?

I certainly don’t claim to have the answers, but am rather suspicious of the people who offer only one answer and are so willing to dismiss all others.

How do you strike the right balance to reach substantive solutions? Is it possible to empower teachers to use their talents and education to get the most out of crucial curriculum instead of teaching to a test and having to be classroom managers? Is it possible to offer students the high-level math and English they need and still be able to offer programs like music and art or even more focused curriculum targeted towards a specific discipline? Is it possible to have the kind of accountability that tax payers seek without stifling the scholastic process and taking creative choices out of a teacher’s hands?

I’m on the precipice of really seeing the importance of all these things as my daughter is a mere year away from kindergarten. And the only thing that I really know is that it’s imperative to get involved and ask a lot of questions. I want to be involved. I want to know who my daughter’s teachers and principals are and work to get to know the other parents. It feels like a good start, but the true crux of the matter feels enormous and demands wide-scale involvement.

We Want to Know:

• Are schools in your community facing budget cuts and challenges?
• Does your city have a successful public school district? Why or why not?
• What are some things that you’ve seen schools do to counter budget challenges?

This post was inspired by the NPR story “Detroit Public Schools Face ‘Draconian’ Cuts,” a piece that discusses how Detroit’s public school district is facing a $327 million budget deficit and a proposal that could put up to 60 children in a classroom.

From the moment I heard the music and poetry of Blair, I was in love with it and believed in it.  He weaves spoken word poetry, with folk rock, trip-hop and punk. On his MySpace page, he writes, “My dad looked like Chuck Berry, played like Hank Williams. My mom cleaned white folk’s houses. She raised five children. On her own. I inherited all sorts of ghosts from both of them. Sometimes I can fly.” (more…)

A new documentary, The Recess Ends, about people sharing their belief in community, debuts tonight at 8pm EST, 5pm PST on justin.tv, an interactive internet medium.

HuffPo writes about it here…

“It’s our journey, but it is America’s story,” says Austin Chu, the older of two brothers who drove across the country last year to create a video documentary of the recession. Their project may remind us of some of the famous images that grew out of the Great Depression, photographs such as the “Migrant Mother” series by Dorothea Lange in the 1930s.

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