Just about all the major news to hit Michigan this week involves women in an important way.
First, the news of the passing, at age 100, of Grace Lee Boggs. Second, also out of Detroit, an important new initiative led by black women to fund the processing of thousands of archived rape evidence kits, languishing in storage for years. Third, the announcement of a new environmental action campaign led by Debbie Stabenow, the senior senator from Michigan, against the Canadian plan to create a nuclear waste storage plant on the shore of Lake Huron. Fourth, the announcement by former MI Governor Jennifer Granholm that she has joined the 90 for 90 voter registration drive seeking to make a positive impact in Virginia and beyond.
Grace Lee Boggs, Applied Philosopher and Radical Activist Extraordinaire, Dies at the Age of 100
If you are not already familiar with the writings and activism of Dr. Boggs (holder of a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Bryn Mawr in 1940), I encourage you strongly to remedy that omission. Here are excerpts from and links to a few tributes that have poured in since her death:
Grace Lee Boggs, Human Rights Advocate for 7 Decades, Dies at 100 (New York Times) Grace Lee Boggs, one of the nation’s oldest human rights activists, who waged a war of inspiration for civil rights, labor, feminism, the environment and other causes for seven decades with an unflagging faith that revolutionary justice was just around the corner, died on Monday at her home in Detroit. ...Born to Chinese immigrants, Ms. Boggs was an author and philosopher who planted gardens on vacant lots, founded community organizations and political movements, marched against racism, lectured widely on human rights and wrote books on her evolving vision of a revolution in America.
Her odyssey took her from the streets of Chicago as a tenant organizer in the 1940s to arcane academic debates about the nature of communism, from the confrontational tactics of Malcolm X and the Black Power movement to the nonviolent strategies of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and finally to her own manifesto for change — based not on political and economic upheavals but on community organizing and resurgent moral values.
Remembering Legendary Detroit Activist Grace Lee Boggs (1915-2015) (Democracy Now!) INCLUDES FOUR EXTENSIVE VIDEO INTERVIEWS Democracy Now! has learned the longtime Detroit activist and philosopher Grace Lee Boggs died this morning at the age of 100. "She left this life as she lived it: surrounded by books, politics, people and ideas," said her friends and caretakers Shea Howell and Alice Jennings [both of whom are also wonderful, indefatigable activists in their own right].Grace Lee Boggs was involved with the civil rights, black power, labor, environmental justice and feminist movements over the past seven decades. ... In 1992, she co-founded the Detroit Summer youth program to rebuild and renew her city.
Grace Lee Boggs died today at 100. These are 5 quotes to remind you how amazing she was. (Upworthy) The globally respected Detroit-based activist and philosopher wasn't just special because she was a legendary leader in the 1960s Black Power movement as a Chinese American woman.And it's not just because she was still fiercely loving and supporting young people through her award-winning youth program in Detroit at the age of 100.
And it's not just because she refused to be put into an "cause" box, seamlessly using her voice for education reform, anti-racism, environmentalism, urban revitalization, and countless other issues that she saw as all undeniably connected.
Nope. Grace's greatest contribution to those of us who care about making the world a better place is that she was, above all, a thinker. She didn't believe in mindlessly doing in the name of good. She knew that we had to think deeply and critically about the world around us. Her deep commitment to the role of philosophy in social change led her to ideas that didn't just help wage political campaigns or fights — they helped people live better, richer lives.
[Check this out: #GraceLeeTaughtMe where you'll find some fine testimonials about her impact and influence. Maybe you can add your own....]
Krista Tippett of OnBeing interviewed Grace Lee in 2011, and a link to that interview is here.Perhaps the most convenient vehicle for learning the most about the work and life of Grace Lee Boggs, apart from reading her own writings, is the 2014 documentary, American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs. It was screened on PBS as part of its POV series, and is again available to stream at that site until November 3, 2015.
Along with the streaming link, there are several other good sources of information provided by PBS/POV, including a list of Grace Lee Boggs' writings, many of which were collaborations with her husband, Jimmy Boggs, also a life-long radical activist. These books include:
Boggs, Grace Lee. Living for Change: An Autobiography. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. Boggs, Grace Lee, with Scott Kurashige. The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism For the 21st Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. Boggs, James. The American Revolution: Pages From a Negro Worker's Notebook. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1963. Boggs, James, and Grace Lee Boggs. Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974. Ward, Stephen M., ed. Pages from a Black Radical's Notebook: A James Boggs Reader. Detroit: Wayne State University Press,2011. To give credit where it is due, I would like to send you to the website for the film, which was produced and directed by Grace Lee (yes, there is a story behind the names).The premiere of the film also gave rise to some fine reportage last year about Boggs' life work, including this profile in The Root: How Did a Chinese-American Woman Become a Black Power Activist? Similarly, The Root also has a good obituary about her, covering her decades of commitment to radical black activism: The Life of Grace Lee Boggs, a Leader in the Black Power Movement From the article:
It is no longer popular to talk about Marxism or communism or even socialism. (No one but those who run Fox News is afraid of anyone calling for black nationalism, because white people in power now know that that impulse is easily quelled with the right concessions.) It is considered nostalgic to talk about revolution. That term itself has been redefined—reduced, really—to continual, gradual change punctuated by occasional, radical upsurges, à la Black Lives Matter.Grace Lee Boggs represented those who were behind, under, in front of, over and around the discussion and occasional attempt at revolution in mid-20th-century America. Her joining the realm of the ancestors—hers and ours—at the close of her century of writing, organizing and thinking signals, yet again, the tension between the old and the new: the search for new ideas and new strategies and tactics for the purpose of implementing old freedom dreams. [see original for links]
Edited to add this obituary posted yesterday: Another excellent obituary, this one from someone (Barbara Ransby, a superb scholar, historian and activist in her own right) who knew her personally and enjoyed her mentorship and friendship for years: The (R)evolutionary Vision and Contagious Optimism of Grace Lee Boggs (In These Times) She often wore a t-shirt that read “(r)evolution.” It suggested that we are all evolving as people as we fight, build and envision revolution. Grace was a visionary and a doer. She could look at a trash-strewn field and imagine a garden. And then, she would work to transform it. She could look at Detroit’s broken down buildings and imagine new possibilities.And she could look at all of us, her friends, comrades and fellow travelers of various stripes, flawed and fragmented, and she could imagine us as a whole. She could meet a scruffy little kid with no skills, no hope and no place to go, and imagine that he or she would become a poet, a revolutionary or brilliant scientist. This was the lens through which Grace saw the world and her optimism was contagious.
Those who knew Grace Lee Boggs in person are sorry that she has died, but grateful for her long life, well-lived, leaving a legacy that could last for the next hundred years and more.THANK YOU to those who wrote and commented in two other Daily Kos diaries about Grace Lee Boggs within the past two days: Grace Lee Boggs Passes Away (by apeshi) and Cartoon: Grace Lee Boggs (by keefknight).
Please join me after the orange group hug for more Michigan news.