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The Church .^>i»" ^,- publication. questioned its and urban mission reuse for during the f machine age. ; required Now it faces X' the challenge Permission of preaching •<*T. DFMS. / good news as H B rf^S capital flees i Church Ut the infra-

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of deteriorates and people Archives suffer. ^W 2020. > Copyright IN THIS ISSU —^ Challenging Death A Mother'i i: '.ove New Constructs n In Praise of The Witness work through the question of the Ordination Adding to the church calendar with a of Women. In both cases the time was unanimous vote in both Houses, the name of SOMETIME DURING the last few years of properly spent. Jonathan Daniels, an Episcopal Seminarian my active episcopate I discovered The Wit- So too, was this Convention properly killed in a 1965 Civil Rights struggle in ness. spent. Even if the only conclusion was that Alabama; marked how far the church has I've been glad ever since. some decision has got to be made. Indeed, it come on issues of racism. Twenty-five years I'm especially glad since reading the last is feasible that the next three years may ago, the Bishops of NH and Alabama would issue from Ambler (July/August). Many provide a breakthrough. not have been united, yet in Phoenix '91, things provoke that gladness. Ms. Erdey fails to appreciate a possible they co-sponsored this resolution from the First --1 served on the Executive Council connectedness between Racism, Sexism and states where Jonathan was born and died. for six years and became a friend and Heterosexism. To me, all three are merely This is not the 60s. We have made some admirer of Jan Pierce. It was nice to see how facets of the same "Sexual Dysfunction." progress. For 1991, General Convention much Sue "favors" her in her person as well We are not a more important issue; we are faithfully addressed who we are as a multi- as in her sense of justice. just the easiest issue to defeat. The Gay issue racial church. I rejoice! publication. Second — the Marler article about the would never have gotten to the table had not Mary Eunice Oliver family could, as the author suggests become and the issues of Racism and Sexism preceded it. San Diego, California a guide for planning for each parish and John Kavanaugh diocese in the church. Powerful stuff there! reuse Detroit, Michigan Third — the General Convention Round- Issues of Age and Gender for up is better than anything I've seen and IN HER ARTICLE in the June issue, Pam certainly reflects what I was sensing and SUSAN ERDEY'S '91 General Convention Darling addressed "Sexism, Racism and required seeing. I thought you were a mite too gentle report (Witness, July/August) questioned lack Phoenix." However, one "ism" that she did with the Bishops. We were so narcissistic we of a powerful anti-racism witness as had not address is "age-ism." I was one of four almost forgot our purpose for being in been expected. Some may agree with her aspirants in the Diocese of Washington to be Phoenix. We need to be glad about being evaluation but I do not. As one having spent rejected because we were deemed "too old." Permission Anglican instead of trying to compromise all my life's ministry in the struggle for justice The age range of the four was 48-54. The the time with those in the Church for whom transforming racism/sexism, I was awed and rationale was that there has been an influx of

DFMS. being Anglican filled with hope. It was electrifying to have second-career people into the seminaries in / is much less im- heard the beloved voice of Martin Luther the past ten years or so, and now the Church portant than King, Jr. booming over the church gathered is "stuck" with an aging clergy which is put- Church being politically for the opening service. The racial audit and ting an added burden on the Pension Fund. triumphant. the resolution naming our "institutional racism We were also told that the Church needs inside our church and in society" and seek- "fresh, young leaders." One member of the I could write Episcopal ing to "become a church without racism Screening Committee told me that at my more — it was a the committed to end racism in the world" were age, I should want to "just kick back and

of damned good signs of grace of a church being trans- enjoy life; leave the hard work to the young- issue! formed. Far more important than the amount sters." Another member, a man in his mid- My best to all of the offering was the launching of The seventies, asked what I thought I had to offer Archives who are staying in Ambler — my best to those Martin Luther King, Jr. Legacy fund, to the Church at my age. in Detroit — keep it up. which the whole Convention could contrib- 2020. Walter C. Righter It's a good thing that George Bush de- ute at the daily morning Eucharist. It has Bishop of Iowa, Retired cided to be President of the United States. BEGUN, and will grow and will make a He's too old to be a priest in the Episcopal difference in the lives of the students this Copyright Church. I WAS DISAPPOINTED with the tone of fund benefits. I contribute joyfully! Beverly Bradley Aiuto Susan Erdey's report on General Conven- The 70th General Convention found new, Silver Spring, Maryland tion (in the July/August issue), "Lots of creative ways to act the church into a new Heat, Not Much Light." The impression way of thinking in greater appreciation of given is that because much of the Conven- the richness of our racial diversity to cele- I WAS STRUCK BY some significant paral- tion focused on Homosexuality it was trivial. brate. Our morning Eucharists were led by lels in Pamela Darling's article: "Sexism, The Episcopal Church spent a number of the full range of colors in God's beautiful Racism and Phoenix" (June 1991) and thoughts conventions over the centuries dealing with family... women and men... using several by Robert Bly in his newest book: Iron John: Black issues when those issues arose due to languages. It was living out our inclusive- A Book About Men. the changing relationship between the Races. ness called into being by The Lord and Robert Bly also illustrates the effects of A number of conventions were needed to stressed by our Presiding Bishops. patriarchal structures in society but specifi- THEWITNESS cally addresses how men perpetuate the many suspect are a part of that movement. I pregnancies are caused by sexual activity — wound passed on by generations of absent, have been convinced since 1977 that that frequently by irresponsible sexual activity. withdrawn fathers. Men react by ascending combination (and who has lacked power One would like to think a Congregational into powerful positions or descending into more in the Church than closet-gays?) was minister would tolerate abstinence as a fool- victimized positions which require women fueling the destructive energy that in my proof and safe method of preventing abor- to be either oppressed or care-givers for view drives so much of that movement. tions and unwanted pregnancies instead of men. Thank you for your important ministry. condemning it as abnormal repression. To We men carry a valuable wound which AnneW. Baker be sure, given the present state of society, can be experienced as a punishment or a gift. Carrizo Springs, Texas birth control is better than complete irre- The men I know who have valued the wound sponsibility on the part of those who engage see themselves as fallible humans in search in sexual acts without concern for intangible of intimacy with self, others and God. There A Voice for Monogamy consequences. is no room for sexism, racism, homophobia DONNA SCHAPER'S "The blessings of As a feminist, I would prefer to see men in a man's search for positive male identity. sexuality" (in the May issue) is the most un- become more unselfish in their sexual atti- publication. I applaud Bishop Browning's efforts to be charitable, narrow-minded, and generally tudes and behavior rather than see women and inclusive and I challenge all men in the offensive essay I have noticed in your maga- free to be as selfish as many men have been. Church to examine our wounds and work zine. As a deeply committed Christian feminist, As a Christian feminist, I am disappointed reuse together to destroy the oppressive systems in an Episcopalian with evangelical roots, I am that publications such as yours give so little for the Church and society. I refuse to pay the insulted by Schaper' s disparagement of those attention to the struggles faced by the major- price for privilege and power any longer. whose experiences and beliefs might differ ity of women whose problems do not make sensational headlines. A very disproportion- required Jake Czarnik-Neimeyer from her own. ate amount of space is given to the subject of Milwaukee, Wisconsin First, many women and some men do not homosexuality, for example, and very little want "inconsequential or recreational sex to the subject of how to maintain a good rather than consequential or procreational Permission Clergy Sex-Exploitation marriage and meet the volunteer demands of sex." The dichotomy is a false one. There the church while seeking to develop one's There can be no authentic and meaning- are many psychological and spiritual conse- talents and career. It is [very difficult] for a DFMS. ful consent between a parishioner seeking quences attached to any expression of sexual / married woman to closet realities such as pastoral care and his/her clergyperson; one intimacy. lack of sleep for 11 straight months with an cannot be pastor and lover at the same time. Secondly, Schaper implies throughout

Church infant, or the large piles of laundry gener- Often, clergy refuse to accept the power that normal enjoyable safe sex means with ated by a family. of their role in the life of one who is seeking whomever consents to it whenever one feels pastoral care. like it. Those who disagree are accused of I have never been convinced by argu- Episcopal There is a great need to teach clergy how "hatred of the body" and "abnormal repres- ments that homosexual behavior is appropri- the to: sion." She apparently does not realize that ate for Christians, nor am I comfortable with of 1. recognize their needs for intimacy many people, including thoughtful non- the ordination of homosexual persons to the 2. get those needs met appropriately in Christians, enjoy sexuality only in faithful ministry. However, I would prefer the ordi- nation — and the writing — of Virginia Mol-

Archives ways that avoid dual relationships with those committed relationships. lenkott, a lesbian with a genuine concern for entrusted to their care. Third, Schaper maintains that normal the problems of women different from her- 2020. Susan Moss young people are sexually active from around self and a serious respect for the Bible, than Minneapolis, Minnesota 12 onwards. Exceptions are labeled as that of Donna Schaper who seems to have no upwardly mobile girls who are damaged by such concern or respect. I wonder whether Copyright their abnormal delay and end up having the change of location and staff will add any Secrecy and Power difficulty in enjoying sex or giving and breadth to the subject matter covered by The AT NEARLY 70 and "semi-retired" I've receiving physical pleasure. I find this in- Witness. The Episcopal Church needs a sulting, considering that I have been in love begun cutting down on subscriptions and good dose of evangelical concern for Scrip- with the same person for 23 years without such. Witness is one I had decided I'd cut - ture and spirituality blended with its own finding my sexual life hampered by the lack not because it isn't good or I'm angry with strong tradition of ritual and symbolism and of previous promiscuous experience. it. It just seemed time, that's all. tolerance. As indicated in the recent inter- But in your June issue I find you've Fourth, Schaper attributes abortion and view with Virginia Mollenkott, much of her touched on the power issue that I have long unwanted pregnancies to repressive behav- thinking has reflected that blend. believed was at the bottom of so much of the ior or hesitancy about using birth control. It reactionary agenda and you have dared to would seem obvious that abortion is caused Anne Ramirez Springfield, PA wonder about the closet homosexuals who by unwanted pregnancies and unwanted October 1991 THE WITNESS Since 1917

Editor Jeanie Wylie-Kellermann Assistant Editor Marianne Arbogast Promotion Manager Marietta Jaeger Layout Artist Maria Catalfio Book Review Editor Bill Wylie-Kellermann Poetry Editor Gloria House Art Section Editors Virginia Maksymowicz and Blaise Tobia

Contributing Editors Barbara C. Harris H. Coleman McGehee Carter Heyward ). Antonio Ramos James Lewis William W. Rankin publication. Manning Marable Walter Wink and Publisher Episcopal Church Publishing Co. reuse for ECPC BOARD OF DIRECTORS Table of Contents

President John H.Burt required Chair William W. Rankin Features Departments Vice-Chair Nan Arrington Peete Standing up to death Secretary William R. MacKaye Letters Treasurer Robert N. Eckersley 8 John Meyer 2 Permission Reginald G. Blaxton Christopher Bugbee Editorial

DFMS. Alice Callaghan SOSAD: / 5 Jeanie Wylie-Kellermann Pamela W. Darling 10 Save Our Sons and Andrew McThenia Daughters Church Douglas E. Theuner Mary West Seiichi Michael Yasutake Poetry 7 The Diego Rivera Mural

Episcopal Christina Pacosz THE WITNESS (ISSN0197-8896) is pub- The Unions: the lished monthly except July/August by The of Episcopal Church Publishing Company. Edi- 12 Motown to Mexico Jane Slaughter torial Office: 1249 Washington Blvd., Suite Short Takes 3115, Detroit, Ml 48226-1868. Telephone 13 Archives (313) 962-2650. THE WITNESS is indexed in Religious and Theological Abstracts and the Smoke and mirrors:

2020. Art and Society American Theological Library Association's 14 a city of hope and 21 Religion Index One Periodicals. University illusion Microfilms International, 300 North Zeeb Manning Marable Copyright Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106, reproduces this publication in microform: microfiche and 16 Book Review mm or 35 mm film. Printed in U.S.A. Copy- 25 Grace Lee Boggs right 1991. SUBSCRIPTIONS: $20 per year, 'Rain your spirit in my $2.50 per copy. Foreign subscriptions add $5 17 heart' Ruth Seymour per year.. Witnesses: CHANGE OF ADDRESS: Please advise of Making over Motown 26 the quick and the dead changes at least 6 weeks in advance. Include Mary West your label from the magazine and send to: 22 James Boggs Subscription Dept., THE WITNESS, 1249 Washington Blvd., Suite 3115, Detroit, Ml Cover credit: Diego Rivera, courtesy of the Detroit Institute of Arts; Barbara Barefield, design. 48226-1868. It is the policy of The Witness to use inclusive language whenever possible.

THE WITNESS that we were related, both coming, at least in part, from Scotch Irish farmers in southwest Pennsylvania. So, it sur- Meeting the Challenge prised us doubly that we each chose in- by Jeanie Wylie-Kellermann dependently to locate in Detroit, in the same neighborhood, for the same rea- number of friends have more of the gaping, mournful giants sons. noted that there is a point on that dot every Detroit neighborhood. I first arrived in Detroit in 1980, the freeway, about 45 min- Bill and I brought the girls home fresh out of graduate school in New utes outside Detroit, where from a vacation in the northern Upper York City. I worked as a staff writer for you begin to wonder whether your house Peninsula recently. We had slept to the the Associated Press and hated it, but I is intact. You see broken glass and a sound of the waves of Lake Michigan fell in love with Detroit. ravaged house. Or worse, the charred and the kids had moved and had their It's a one-industry town, which gives publication. skeleton of what was your home. One being in a shelter of sand. it a raw clarity. People here have known and Close to home, in the whether they are management or labor. dark, a city ambulance They have a sense of what that means. reuse sped by. It braked out- They have stories to tell about the flying for r side our local party store squadrons that founded the United Auto S R and the crew joined the Workers and who lived in friends' ga- required police and t.v. newsre- rages to avoid company killers. porters. Without stop- They knew that the city's streetcar ping, and with only our lines were torn up to create a market for

Permission imaginations informing the automobile — and while they under- us about what was going stood the often brutal mechanics of the on inside, we circled exchangeof labor and materials for capital, DFMS. / around the block to our they also had a love affair with the home — still standing, automobile. It still astounds me when a

Church intact, but seemingly friend casually points out a car on the foreign. freeway and says, "That's a 1956 Chevy We searched our - no, no it's a 1957." Say what? Episcopal hearts, as we always do, There's a lack of pretension about this the for that Dulce Domum

of town. It has been driven by a desire for voice that Kenneth Gra- money and opportunity, a desire unob- hame describes in the scured by the genteel glove (woven at

Archives Wind and The Willows. elite private schools) that veils the fist in We longed for that waft- establishment circles. There is a way that 2020. ing, almost physical, call the straightforward ambitions and lan- of home as we pulled guage of Detroit's residents has anchored sleeping children from the American Dream. From Ford's $5- Copyright the car and wondered day-wage until recently, immigrants from when the random gun the Black south, from Appalachia, from shots, the robberies, the eastern Europe and from the Arab na- Crack-addicted madness tions exchanged their lives for homes might come too close for and possessions, for educations for their sanity — one block being children. Yet, Detroit's auto workers This drawing was published in The Witness in 1931 in an closer than we liked. issue headlined: The Machine Age, Can the Church Meet the never confused their employers with a Challenge? The drawing of a homeless family in the center- One month before Bill fairy godmother; they had an astute ap- city is as powerful an indictment of the post-industrial age and I were married in preciation of who did and who did not nOW as it Was Of the machine age then. credit: Franklin Booth 1984, we discovered give a damn about them and managed to

October 1991 forge a labor movement out of that given every available tax abatement) businesses that can feed neighborhoods. insight. And they paid a price. were highly automated and down- These dreams are not unique to De- The same savvy and realism launched scaled and retained only a fraction of troit. What may be unique is that Detroit the civil rights movement in the 1950s the employees projected. (See page 27.) has no alternative. Unlike New York and and 1960s. Many of the people whose And city residents waited. Washington D.C., it does not have to be names we remember from that struggle Apparently following the wave of preserved because it is an international live in Michigan: Rosa Parks, the survi- corporate closings, the Churches seemed hub. Unlike Minneapolis and Houston, vors of Viola Liuzzo, Walter Bergman to follow suit. The Roman Catholic hier- it does not have a diversified economic (who has been wheelchair bound since archy closed 45 neighborhood churches base. Detroit, in recent years, has be- then) and others. in the late 1980s. The United Methodists come a throw away city. One to which no In the years following World War II moved their conference headquarters from one wants to come. It is surrounded by there were cycles of depression when the downtown Detroit to the suburbs. And phenomenal wealth in its suburbs but the auto industry would slump, but there residents waited. city itself is falling apart. was always a recovery. publication. If it survives, it will do so because So in the early 1980s, there was a Motor City residents learn to rely on and profound confusion and deathly despair As is true in Guatemala, their own skills, imagination and appre-

reuse when it came clear that the auto industry ciation of community. These things of- South Africa, in all places of for was not going to rebound, at least not in fer its only hope. a way that would employ U.S. workers. crisis around the world, we Some are suggesting that Detroit should [See page 12.] use its vacant land to become an agrarian required At that time, Business Week coun- begin to see the faces of center, exporting fruit and vegetables. selled corporate managers that the middle people who can teach us the Even contaminated soil could still pro- class was going to have to pay for the duce ornamental trees. Permission redevelopment of America's corporate things that make for peace. Fifty years ago, the Church was strug- infrastructure and this would require the gling to determine how it might be rele- DFMS.

/ "most massive selling job in history." vant in the machine age. In the 1960s, The selling job kicked into overdrive Detroiters saw Crack move through the Detroit Industrial Mission attempted and union workers found themselves the city, binding their children in addic- Church to carry the Gospel into auto plants. depicted as greedy and over-consuming, tions that far-surpassed the erratic, bloody These evangelists met with labor and as jeopardizing American industry. Con- compulsions of some of their parents. management and at least opened the And they watched children kill one an-

Episcopal cessions became prevalent. Union lead- doors to conversation. other for prestige sneakers and jackets. the ers formed partnerships with the corpo- The Church faces a new challenge of rations. Finally, in 1985, the power of the now. Coleman Young, who was elected spell that seemed to hold the Motor City What the Church does with this fact, Detroit's first Black mayor and who deadlocked in despair, began to wane. Archives how people of faith view Detroit and integrated the previously brutal police The mothers of children murdered in what they do with the resources at hand, Detroit and the mothers of the children 2020. department, climbed in bed with the has everything to do, as Manning Marable corporate planners. If he had a choice, who did the killing joined hands (see suggests (page 16), with the state of our he never said so. page 10). Others began marching against souls. Copyright The people of Detroit waited. They Crack (see page 26). Still others began Jesus weeps over Jerusalem. "If only had trusted the labor and civil rights imagining what the city might look like you knew the things that make for peace." movements. They waited for good lead- if we surrendered our addiction to cor- And, as is true in Guatemala, South ership. Meanwhile, they received emer- porate domination (see page 22). Africa, in all places of crisis around the gency food packages from Germany and And residents suddenly found a voice. world, we begin to see the faces of they watched the city's infrastructure They shouted down several of the mayor's people whose whole confidence is in the deteriorate. megadevelopment plans. They vetoed Gospel. The faces of people who can Whole city neighborhoods were con- casino gambling. They now talk about teach us the things that make for peace. demned to accommodate corporate de- preserving Detroit's housing stock, re- We see the tension of the crucifixion velopers like GM and Chrysler, but the designing systems of education and reenacted and we hold our breaths__ new, improved plants (which had been support for youth, and supporting small 6 THE WITNESS The Diego Rivera Mural, Detroit Institute of Arts, 1953-1959

We wade into that light often. Your shoes clicking on tile, by Christina Pacosz we talk behind our hands, or not at all. My fingers long to forWladek make the sign of the cross, but there is no fount filled with holy water blessed by the parish priest. Only a fountain of Light pours from an abundant source above me. I breathe infinite light. carefully in a vast room, each wall a gigantic picture.

publication. I get a stiff neck staring up at the Christ child with I can't remember when you tell me what your father told (you tell me) Hoover's face. This Jesus is squat and

and you: Diego sat sketching the deafening factory in a pool o ugly. You laugh your bitter laugh. quiet, drawing men standing to attention at minute tasks. reuse Grandfather was in Diego's direct line of vision and for Our faces turn up, plants desperate for light. Father and grateful for an indelible, uncheatable immortality. daughter, we speak in whispers. Our voices move away from us, ripples on the surface of this immense cathedral required You never said Rivera was married to an artist. You of light. probably didn't know. Decades later I discover her: Frida Kahlo. She was a wife and desperate to be a mother. You dressed the dandy in your youth. Mother starched Henry Ford didn't commission her to paint the workers on Permission your white shirts and brushed your single dark suit his assembly line. spotless. You polished your Cancellation shoes and combed DFMS.

/ your black hair. Mother smiled at you, you looked so good. Church Giants with wise oval eyes guard this room. They stare into the light from under straight dark hair and stand on

Episcopal thighs the girth of old-grown cedar, skin the color of

the madrone. Beneath wide and solid feet gems gleam purple of and red amid the black flag of earth. She painted herself, brown ochre, like the giants in her husband's mural, with a monkey at her shoulder, yellow

Archives I wear a dress of navy taffeta that rustles like water over ribbon tied in its fur, matching the one wrapped in her stones in a shallow creek. I walk to the fountain, the focus hair. She didn't have a chance to paint your father stooped

2020. of limitless light and kneel on the marble rim, burdened by over his work. so much light pushing on me, insistent as a tide. You hand me pennies to drop in the fountain like prayers. How you One dark night, the Detroit streets deep in sharp, cold Copyright stare at me! Who can tell what the future will bring? rain, your father stepped off a curb, into a fast car, and died on the pavement he'd been promised was gold. You tell me Rivera was a communist who loved all the poor people of the world, especially the people of Mexico. We visit your mother in her flat near Michigan Avenue. Your words catch on hooks lodged in the soft flesh of your She steams kielbasa, fries pierogi in pale yellow butter and throat, and you gulp air like a fish wrenched from water. sets out rye bread for us. You are faithful and attentive, a good son, and loyal too. I watch light descend with such surety and imagine swimming out to meet it. You would be so small and far She cooks. Her husband perpetually glares into a room away then. filled with cascading light he will never see.

October 1991 fifties, dressed in a three-piece suit and driving a sedan. It was, of course, shock- Standing up to Death ing that so young a girl was into pros- titution. It was even more shocking that by John Meyer the mother was promoting and encour- he Street is a dense confusion but people usually know where they aging her daughter's behavior. of sights and sounds and lurk- are in relation to it. Mainstream people I recall on one occasion observing ing death. To be on the Street, often choose to stay away from the the man in the suit drive up and honk to be poor at all, means to be Street, or hurry through it if necessary. his horn. This time, as the 12-year-old Orelatively unprotected from death. In On the other hand, a number of main- was not at home, the mother and two the Mainstream, things are organized stream people say goodbye to their jobs younger siblings came out the front to keep death back. Death has to wait in and families each year and enter the door to greet him and invite him into line. Not so on the Street: death is free Street by way of drugs, alcohol and the house; and in he went as though he publication. to rage like a storm. The death rate on crime — or by way of depression, fam- were a visiting uncle. There is nothing and the Street is already high and getting ily upheaval. Far fewer people from more to report. My imagination tells higher. We are now beginning to hear theStreet cross over into the Main- me they had an adult conversation over reuse coffee. It is the confusion of it all that for the phrase endangered species applied stream. to young Black males in the central left me in a lasting turmoil. Where were city. We have come to see our life the boundaries? What were families required On one of the "live" corners of De- and ministry as a contest of for if they did not protect their young troit, across from Tiger Stadium, at the from this kind of exploitation? west edge of the downtown, St. Peter's will with Death. It is what I began to think troubled thoughts Permission Church stands tall against the night. On gives focus to all that we do: about the whole neighborhood. It the same corner, as baseball fans hurry seemed that child abuse, in varying de-

DFMS. from their cars towards the glare of the grees, was happening in almost every / the soup kitchen, the pro- stadium lights, street people, at a slower household. From this I drew a connec- pace, with no special place to go, hunt gram for girls, the worship, tion to the increasing number of younger Church for returnable bottles and cans. or the repairs on the boiler. women "working" Michigan Avenue St. Peter's clings to a precarious life, and Fort Street. I would now say, based Low income, welfare dependency, partly on what others are saying, that

Episcopal hunting for money and members, park- joblessness, the normal benchmarks of sexual child abuse is integral to the the ing cars for baseball fans, and trying to poverty, are frequently found on the of adapt itself to the state of mind known culture of the Street. (It also happens in as the Street. It has itself become a Street; but we may question whether the Mainstream but is not integral to it.) "Street Church." poverty and the Street are indeed the I also saw that we were confronting Archives The Street is more than a metaphor same thing. Not everyone on the Street something more than a series of prob- is poor in these terms. lems to be solved. We were inside an 2020. for poverty. The Street is an emerging separate culture, one of growing size, It was in trying to understand the enveloping mystery — like the night with identifiable values of its own in self-destructive behavior of young itself, something all around us but noth- people in our neighborhood that we Copyright sharp contrast to those of the Main- ing to grab hold of. Indeed, like some- stream. I am intrigued by the view that began to look beyond economic depri- one in a horror movie, I began to shiver the Street is the very shadow of the vation as the prime motivator. Why at the night air. The neighborhood, no mainstream society of jobs and fami- were so many risking their lives on longer merely a place of deprived cir- lies and faith in the future: a sinister Di- prostitution, drugs and crime? There cumstances, became for me the sinister onysian underworld that attracts, re- were many answers, but one began to underworld of the Street. I even imag- pels and mocks the straight world. arrest our attention: sexual child abuse. ined St. Peter's in flames for daring to There are no visible boundaries to For me it goes back to a time when think about "doing something." Only mark where the Street begins and ends, we noticed a 12-year-old Southern gradually did I step out of my fear and White girl in the neighborhood "doing name the darkness. John Meyer is rector of St. Peter's, Detroit. tricks," almost daily, with a man in his Death is a sign, a countersign to 8 THE WITNESS Life. Here we are thinking sacramen- tally and Biblically, even mythologi- cally. In Biblical terms, Death is both a power and an enemy. Death, given the chance, would capture and rule the moral high ground and become the truth about life, the controlling meta- phor. Sexual child abuse, which functions as a rite of initiation into the Street, is a baptism unto Death. It claims to tell you who you are -- that "You are a child of confusion!" "You have no future!"

publication. "Your mother is the Night!" — but never calls you by name. The average and child or adult in our neighborhood must

reuse survive a blizzard of such signs. It is on for this level that the Church is called to respond.

required We have come to see our life and ministry as a contest of will with Death. It is what gives focus to all that we do, whether the soup kitchen in our base- Permission ment, the program for girls, the wor- ship of the congregation, or the repairs DFMS.

/ on the boiler. It is important to know that our main thrust is on the level of

Church signs. First, the most basic sign: St. Peter's perseveres on its corner despite the fact

Episcopal that it is itself an endangered species the and careens on the edge of viability. of But the important thing is the promise, that the "powers of Death will not pre-

Archives vail against the Church." Staying put on our corner, and not fleeing, is the John the Baptist credit: Dicrdre Luzwick 2020. precondition of the promise. of life. "Despite the stained sheets that we have undertaken a shelter and re- Second, we do a lot of baptizing. you may die on, no matter what you did lated programming directed towards Baptism is a powerful sign in itself —

Copyright or didn't do, your life was not a mis- girls and young women on the Street the sign of victory of Life over Death - take: it was worth living. The meaning (St. Peter's Inn and Alternatives for - but must be seen then in competition of life flows from the resurrection of Girls). with other signs, the countersigns of Jesus and not from achieving some- Thus "standing up to Death" means Death, which it is intended to trump. It thing in the Mainstream." It is easy to that when we intervene on behalf of a is remarkable that so many from our let the fog of confusion settle in and girl, we are not merely rendering a girls' program, on their own initiative, obscure this. service, but engaging in struggle with request baptism for themselves or for Death. We are choosing Life. The same their babies. Fourth, we have developed, in con- junction with others, ministries that are could be said for the soup kitchen as it Third, following on the above, we street-related. We have already men- ladles out soup or for the congregation try to be unambiguous about the value tioned the soup kitchen. More recently as it prays and sings. October 1991 9 SOSAD Save Our Sons And Daughters by Mary West

publication. n the wall of Vera Rucker' s ers, pestering and arguing. Her mother Melody Rucker, an Episcopal teen, and office hangs a framed ar- says she planned to be a lawyer. was killed by random gunfire. report on Melody's condition. Rucker rangement of wallet-sized On the night of August 19, 1986, reuse photographs. From a dis- remembers her sister and cousin run- for Melody went to a friend's house for a ning past her, crying. Then Rucker was tance, it looks like the class picture back-to-school party. Some young men allowed to view the body of her lively, from a high school yearbook. But these crashed the party and were forced to required expressive child. "One side of her face faces - some smiling, others solemn - leave, then returned with guns and fired was destroyed. She looked like a mon- - were not brought together by school into a group of teenagers. Three of the spirit. They are boys and girls who died ster." teenagers died. Rucker describes her grief as a feeling Permission of gunshot wounds. The hours Vera Rucker spent at the Vera Rucker is chairperson of Save that "a part of my heart was cut away." emergency room became "the longest People expressed their sympathy in

DFMS. Our Sons and Daughters (SOSAD). / Founded by Clementine Barfield in Janu- wait of my life." The doctor came out to many comforting ways. But to those ary, 1987, SOSAD brings together Church families and friends of some of the 1,500-plus children aged 16 and younger shot in Detroit since 1986. One hundred Episcopal ninety-five of these died, including Vera the Rucker's daughter, Melody. DETROIT HANDGUN of VICTIl Dressed in a baseball cap and softball team tee shirt, Vera Rucker describes Archives Melody as an active and outgoing child. She ran track, played basketball and vol- 2020. leyball, acted in school plays and served on the youth task force of the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan. Melody "had her Copyright little tempers," her mother recalls, but would quickly "make up for it, writing little notes, making phone calls." She could get "mouthy" with her two broth- Mary West is an emergency care nurse at Detroit Receiving, a founder of the Catholic Worker house in Detroit and a member of the Detroit Pastoral Alliance. Herb Gunn is editor of The Record of the W CHILD Diocese of Michigan. credit: Bill Hay, Ihc Detroit Free Press 1 0 THE WITNESS who said to her, "I know how you feel," Rucker responded that they could not know how she felt if they had not lost a child to violence. "I said, 'I hope you never know how it is I feel.'" Soon after, Rucker began to hear and read about Clementine Barfield, another mother in Detroit whose son had been shot and killed. "Mrs. Barfield shed some tears and then set out to do something." Rucker's belief that they - - the police, city officials — should take action against street violence was chal- publication. lenged. "I realized that I was part of the and 'they.'" When Clementine Barfield was the guest on a radio talk show, Vera reuse Rucker called in. From that connec- for tion, along with contacts made with other grieving mothers, a movement of required relatives and friends of slain children began to take shape. At first, they simply met in one an-

Permission other' s homes "to just embrace and talk and share." SOS AD now organizes many

DFMS. programs against violence and in sup- / port of families and communities. A monthly newsletter is published. Marches Church are organized for Pentecost and Father's Day. Prayer services are held to memo- rialize the children. Conflict resolution Episcopal workshops and leadership training are the

of offered to groups of young people. Family support groups, a male grief support group, adult and children's grief coun- Vera Rucker, Melody's mother, takes to the streets opposing handguns and preaching Archives seling groups meet on a regular basis. reconciliation. credit: Herb Gunn Vera Rucker compares violence to "a struggle and unity. "I used to be afraid 2020. prison, but she has stayed in touch with sore steadily growing over time." Al- his mother and grandmother. When asked of the Bible. Now I'm beginning to though she does not expect it to be re- what she would say to him now, five look at Scripture differently." In the

Copyright solved overnight, she remains hopeful years after her daughter's death, she first class, Rucker's Bible study group about SOS AD's original goal of prevent- says, "I would tell him that I don't hate discussed the book of Joshua, and the ing the spread of violence. "If I could him; that I hope he gets his life to- gathering of 12 stones from the dry bed say or do anything to help one person not gether." of the Jordan River, one stone for each to go through what I've gone through," Vera Rucker is leery of Christians of the 12 tribes of Israel. Through then the effort has been worthwhile. who offer the ritual kiss of peace, then SOS AD, Vera Rucker's work is a kind Occasionally what she goes through is divide into cliques or recede into passiv- of gathering of the city's lost tribes: anger. "I think God understands when ity once Sunday services are over. She victims and victimizers, blacks and we ask 'Why me?'" Rucker has not seen has begun to explore the Scriptures at her whites, the wealthy and the poor, all the young man convicted of her daugh- parish's Wednesday evening Bible those blessed faces at last together in a ter's murder since he was sentenced to study and is finding themes about portrait of the living. Util October 1991 1 1 in Mexico City, spoke before 1,200 of The Unions: his fellow auto workers in Detroit. Jimenez, along with 11 other union leaders, was fired from Ford's Cuautit- from Motown to Mexico lan plant in June 1989 when the com- pany tried to cut short a workers' by Jane Slaughter movement against wage cuts and speedup. Apparently feeling that the ifteen years ago, Black reached a peak in 1982 with the death $50 per week Cuautitlan workers earn Detroiters, fathers and moth- of Vincent Chin, who was Chinese- building Cougars and Thunderbirds is ers, made a good living American. Yelling, "Because of you, too much, Ford is out to bust their working in the plants and we're out of work," a Chrysler foreman union. believed that their children could do beat Chin to death with a baseball bat Jimenez received two standing ova- publication. the same. It was hard work but it was outside a Highland Park bar. tions during his short speech, which was and good money for those without formal translated from Spanish. He was greeted skills or a lot of education. Today, as a brother by the crowd of United reuse no east side Chrysler worker be- Auto Workers members. for lieves that his son will follow him Today U.S. auto workers are suf- into the factory; he only hopes fering because multinational corpo- required that his plant — now moved to the rations can pay workers in Mexico's suburbs — and he himself can hang older plants (like the one where on until retirement. No Detroit Jimenez worked) $10 a day; the

Permission teenager believes there is a decent mostly teenage women in the newer job waiting for him; the result is maquiladora parts plants near the

DFMS. the despair which engulfs blocks border are paid $4 to $7. There are / and neighborhoods. over half a million maquiladora Like refugees from some natu- workers. A new plant opens every Church ral disaster, Detroiters have watched day, and their numbers are expected in disbelief as their lives have been to double by 1995. turned upside down. Since the 1950s Despite the Mexican government's Episcopal Detroit has lost hundreds of thou- prosperity propaganda, Mexico has the of sands of jobs. Many autojobs have been subjected to an austerity pro- been eliminated permanently. Oth- gram during the last decade which ers have been exported. has driven wages down in prepara- Archives In the 1980s Detroit auto work- tion for the pending Free Trade

2020. ers were known for their intoler- Agreement with the U.S. ance of foreigners when the ques- Between 1982 and 1987,700,000 tion was jobs. As Japanese imports jobs were lost. Of those, 200,000

Copyright took a larger and larger share of the were lost when the government pri- market, anti-Japanese sentiment ran vatized or liquidated state enter- high. The International UAW would credit: Lynd Ward prises in preparation for the open mar- not allow Japanese cars in its parking Now, after a decade of line speedups ket. In 1981, 240,000 higher-paying lot. Some local unions distributed and job loss in the U.S., some American jobs in the traditional auto industry — bumperstickers with such sentiments auto workers are looking for partners producing for domestic consumption - as "Remember Pearl Harbor!" and instead of scapegoats. Members of the -were eliminated. Another 130,000 "Park your car in Tokyo." The ugliness New Directions union movement brought were eliminated in 1986, while em- Jane Slaughter is author of Choosing Sides: a Mexican auto worker to Detroit last ployment of auto maquiladoras, which Unions and the Team Concept and an editor year. produce only for export, grew from of Labor Notes. Marco Antonio Jimenez, who lives none in 1980 to 125,000 today. Jimenez 1 2 THE WITNESS is part of a democratic movement in the sent abouquet of roses to the Soviet Embassy Ford workers' union which is battling the Military Pollution The world's armed forces are the single in Washington applauding the successful government-dominated Mexican Work- largest polluter on earth, and the U.S. military nonviolent opposition to the August Soviet ers Confederation (CTM). New Direc- annually produces more toxins than the top military coup. The accompanying message tions members too feel that their union in five chemical companies combined, according saluted the Soviet people, saying that "What the U.S. is often more attentive to man- to a new report by World Priorities, a they have achieved through nonviolent agement's needs than to their own. Their nonprofit research group in Washington, resistance inspires us all and increases hopes movement was founded to fight both for D.C. The report, "World Military and Social for peace throughout the world." union democracy and against what they Expenditures, 1991," also contends that In a public statement, the AFSC called see as an anti-worker corporate agenda. four out of five cancers are linked directly or for "new defense-cutting initiatives in both They are the ones who organized indirectly to environmental causes, that the United States and the Soviet Union," and urged the United States and other western Jimenez's tour of auto plants in five U.S. pesticides are causing one million serious governments to allow the Soviet people to cities; who held a small demonstration human poisonings a year, and that one-fifth of humanity lives in areas where the air is determine their relationship to central state publication. outside Ford headquarters to protest the unfit to breathe. authority, "bearing in mind the importance

and murder of Cuautitlan worker Cleto Nigno For the cost of a nuclear-armed submarine of respecting and guaranteeing the rights of by CTM thugs; who gathered signatures ($2 billion) a worldwide citizens' program minorities." reuse on petitions against the Free Trade Agree- could begin to reforest the earth, the report AFSC News Release, 8/91 for ment; who traveled to Mexico to meet maintains, and for $5 billion a year - the cost with their counterparts firsthand. of six Stealth bombers—a significant reduction

required They include Ron Maxwell, a rank and in global air pollution could be achieved. filer at Ford's Utica Trim plant outside The Human gwes?9-10/91 What's Missing for U.S. Families Detroit, who has already seen 70 door "It may be hard to understand what's panel jobs from his shop disappear to Permission missing in U.S. family policy unless you Mexico. Maxwell, who was born in Ten- Bishops Criticize Drug War know what's taken for granted almost nessee and raised in the Motor City, says, Bolivia's Roman Catholic bishops criticized everywhere DFMS. / "They're pitting auto worker against auto the joint U.S.- Bolivian anti-drug strategy in else in the in- worker, instead of putting the blame where a May statement which attacked corruption dustrialized world. Church it really belongs, on the corporations. If in the government and private sector and we don't get people involved in what's emphasized the church's preferential option Writing in going on we're not going to be strong as for the poor. Mothering (Spring Episcopal a union." The U.S. congress has approved sending military advisors to Bolivia to work with the 1991), Amy the Even if union leaders in the U.S. were Kaplan pre- of country's armed forces in the war on drugs. willing to wage an all-out fight — which Outside intervention and the use of force sents a de- they are not — capital is likely to win this should be avoided, the bishops said. tailed study of direct family benefits in five

Archives round. Those who care about Detroit can They defended coca growing and the countries — Hungary, France, Germany, only hope that out of the solidarity activ- traditional use of the plant by campesinos, Sweden, and the United States. Four of the

2020. ity that is beginning with the tiny steps but also proposed substituting equally five countries offer a paid leave for between described above, a movement can grow profitable crops for coca. three and nine months, at the birth of a child which will eventually be strong enough At present, they said, poor growers "can at between 90 and 100 percent of salary, plus Copyright to take on all the forces which are contrib- barely survive on what little land they have," the option of additional leave with less pay. uting to Detroit's misery. while "those who obtain huge profits from Four of the five nations studied also have policies that provide tax incentives like family Ron Maxwell and the New Directions this underground economy enjoy impunity and protection offered to them by the powerful allowances, childcare allowances, income activists he works with are taking the long and influential." replacement while caring for a sick child, view. They know their only hope for a One World 8-9/91 and universal income-support programs. It's long-term solution is to support Latin no surprise that the United States is the one American workers and Asian workers in that has none of these family supports." their fight for a living wage. It is on this Flowers for the Soviets Monika Bauerlein in Vine Reader, openness and this understanding that the The American Friends Service Committee 9-10/91 future of Detroit auto workers depends.

October 1991 1 3 I etroit has always been for me and in smaller numbers, inside white fell. A drop in jobs meant that low-income people 1 a state of mind, a mixture of businesses. illegal drugs, prostitution and other forms of illegal^ hope and lost opportunities, But a rigid system of racial apartheid core became unlivable for the black middle class, | of dirt and despair, of shiny and police violence permeated the entire to the city in the 1970s and 1980s. new automobiles and unimaginably community. At the city' s northern bound- Other people of color began to move into the city* long unemployment lines. As a boy, I ary, Eight Mile Road represented a ra- Americans had never really found. The largest group regularly visited the city. My favorite cial version of the Berlin Wall. White Syrians, and later the Palestinians, Iraqis and Saudis aunt and a large, extended family lived realtors in the suburbs, as a rule, refused By 1990, nearly 200,000 Arab-Americans lived ii in the suburban community of Inkster. to sell homes to blacks, regardless of despite many common economic and political inte When summer rolled around, we their income, education or credit. The meetings or cultural events because they fear bein^ trekked north to the mecca of Motown. city's police force was brutal in its har- jobs, because the corporations have relocated their i Hundreds of thousands of African- assment and victimization of black citi- The challenge of rebuilding and resurrecting Detr American families from Tennessee, Ala- zens. national policy of urban reconstruction for the 21 st c publication. bama and Mississippi had flooded into In the automobile plants, the system of this crucial city, attacking and uprooting widespi and the city during the 1940s and 1950s, of racial exploitation for blacks was searching to escape rigid racial segrega- commonly called "niggermation." At reuse tion and the penury of sharecropping. Dodge Main plant, for example, 99 for Detroit seemed an ideal place for black percent of the general foremen were opportunities. There was by the end of white, 100 percent of the plant superin- required World War II a small but growing black tendents were white, and 90 percent of entrepreneurial and professional class. all skilled tradesmen and apprentices Black enterprises such as Barry Gordy' s were white. Blacks received the worst Motown were influential. By the sixties,

Permission jobs at the lowest levels of pay; my it was no longer unusual to see African- cousins and their friends were always Americans in some positions of impor- assigned to the very worst and dirtiest DFMS. / tance in the school system, government jobs — in the engine assembly area, the body shop and the foundry. It was un-

Church usual to find a black autoworker with more than 15 years of experience who had not already suffered some crippling

Episcopal accident, such as the loss of a finger or an the eye. of The urban uprising of 1967 pushed thousands of middle-income whites out

Archives of the city, fearful of their lives and property. Large corporations began a 2020. pattern of "milking" theirindustries inside the city limits, reallocating their profits from local consumers to new firms based Copyright in the all-white suburbs or in the sunbelt. Economic decay overtook Detroit by the 1970s. Schools declined as the tax base

Manning Marable is a professor of history and political science at the University of Colorado, an author, a serialized columnist and contributing editor to The Witness. Detroit auto worker and his daughter Jim West is a freelance photographer and an credit: Jim West editor of Labor Notes.

14 October ad to rely on the underground economy of hustling, might be able to see ictivity, simply to survive. Rapidly, Detroit's central progress in every other which began to relocate to neighborhoods adjacent city. Part of this strategy searching for the same opportunities which African- must be economic. Re- consisted of Arab-Americans. First the Lebanese and ligious groups and foun- , established an economic and cultural infrastructure, dations could help finance i the greater Detroit-Dearborn area. Unfortunately, community-controlled relderly are afraid to go out at night to attend civic corporations, which mugged and robbed; the poor have ceased to look for provide investment capi- rffices beyond the reach of public transportation, tal, technical advice and oit, it seems to me, should be the cornerstone of a new, business expertise to entury. Because if we could turn around the problems community cooperatives eadpublication. poverty, generating new jobs and new hopes, we and minority small en-

and trepreneurs. We need to restructure welfare pro-

reuse grams to reward, rather for than punish, unmarried women with children with

required initiative to go back to school and obtain job skills. We must employ federal government re- Permission sources to expand and to strengthen the so-called DFMS.

/ safety net, providing a decent living wage to The Detroit auto show credit: Jim West

Church those who cannot work, and an ex- volving a total of 560 inner-city youths. panded housing program to address the The schools' proposed names -- Mal- problems of the homeless. colm X Academy, Marcus Garvey Episcopal Part of the solution must also be edu- Academy, and Paul Robeson Academy the cational. For decades, many black edu- - were designed to reinforce a sense of of cators have argued that the violence and "Afrocentrism" — racial pride, histori- socially-destructive behavior which one cal and cultural consciousness within

Archives witnesses in our inner-cities demands a African and African-American traditions. new approach toward the education of Special Saturday classes and tutorials 2020. young people. The chaos outside the were planned in specific areas, such as boundaries of our schools, the drugs and mathematics and the sciences. Anchor- crime, destroy the self-esteem and con- ing this program would be the presence Copyright structive social values which help to give of articulate and culturally-aware black any community a sense of itself. Young male educators, serving as mentors, in- black males, especially in single, fe- structors and disciplinarians. In the male-headed households, lack black male proposal, the Robeson Academy was to adult role models in their lives. be all-male, with the other schools making Clifford Watson, an elementary school this transition over a period of time. Last principal in Detroit, has advanced a pro- February, the Detroit School Board re- posal which attempts to address these viewed the controversial proposal, and problems. The original plan envisioned approved it by a vote of 10 to one. the creation of three grade schools, in- Opposition surfaced from several

1991 15 quarters. The American Civil Liberties students expelled from the school sys- all things being equal. Young black males Union and the National Organization tem. Black feminists and others aligned could be challenged to interact with their for Women Legal Defense Fund went with NOW's Legal Defense Fund and sisters not from the basis of male chau- to Federal district court this August to the ACLU were characterized as "Uncle vinism but with respect. They could successfully block the implementation Toms" or the active begin to acquire the of the plan, fundamentally on the grounds agents of white If we could turn around the values essential in that it discriminated against black female supremacy. problems of this crucial city, a responsible ap- students. The Michigan branch of the Where some proach to social ACLU's executive director, Howard Afrocentric educa- attacking and uprooting wide- relations, including Simon, argued "These schools may open tors such as Watson spread poverty, generating new sexuality and child up a whole new world for these boys. err i s their argument jobs and new hopes, we might raising. By divid- That world should be open to girls too." that a system of ing their project on Watson countered in television inter- instruction which be able to see progress in the basis of sex, they publication. views that the particular manifestations specifically excludes every other city. indirectly contrib- and of this urban crisis were particularly black females will —Manning Marable ute to the tensions devastating to young black males, who contribute construc- and contradictions reuse comprise the overwhelming majority of tively to an environment in which young which already fuel problems between for those engaged in criminal activity and black males can be saved. A coeduca- black males and females -- which is violence in the city, and 90 percent of all tional setting could accomplish even more, directly against the interests of the Afri- required can-American community as a whole. Detroit has the largest Arab popula- The struggle to save Detroit, and tion outside of the Middle East. More other cities like it, cannot be viewed in

Permission than 200,000 people, speaking 52 dif- narrow, political, economic or educa- ferent dialects, emigrated to Detroit. tional terms. The larger question we The first to arrive were Christians must confront is our attitude toward DFMS. / from Lebanon and Syria who assimilated human beings of different ethnic identi- quickly, and opening markets. Later ties, cultures, religions, and lifestyles

Church arrivals, largely Muslim, found work in than ourselves. Is there a moral and the Ford Rouge plant. ethical responsibility which links those "There was a unity here," explained living in the comfortable confines of the Episcopal Ishmael Ahmed, director of the Arab- suburbs with families struggling to sur- the American Community Center for Eco- vive the rats, roaches and crackdealers of A children's art show at the Arab Center nomic andSocial Services. "Everybody this summer was aborted when someone on their local street corners? Is it suffi- needed work and everybody did not set fire to the building after killing a cient for churches to donate canned goods

Archives know the language." center employee. for Christmas, or to invite a black choir The desire to assimilate into U.S. credit: Laura McGoire, Dearborn Times Herald to Sunday morning services? One cannot 2020. culture was brought up short during the lutionary Union Movement. embrace the pain of the poor from a di s- 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Ahmed said. "People came here very suspicious tance; one cannot understand the outrage In the 1970s, Arab workers learned about the United States and with a certain of young black and Latino teenagers who Copyright that the UAW was buying Israeli gov- self-respect," Ahmed said. "The civil desperately are searching for work and ernment bonds. Twenty caucuses were rights movement for the Chicanos and self-respect, just by voting for liberals at organized and Chrysler's Dodge Main Blacks had a direct effect. People started election time. Detroit is a symbol for the plant was shut down when workers thinking we have a right to preserve our vast class and racial chasm which cuts marched on then UAW president Le- culture." across our country. Our ability to re- onard Woodcock. They secured prom- During the Gulf War, the Arab com- move the barriers of inequality which ises that all bonds would be sold. Ahmed munity was conflicted about the war, still plague millions of poor, unem- noted that ironically Chrysler had hired concerned for family members abroad ployed and minority people is simultane- so many Arabs at Dodge Main to dilute and worried about persecution by U.S. ously a test of our political resolve and the radical influence of the Black Revo- "super patriots." J.W.-K. spirituality. EKI 1 6 THE WITNESS publication. and reuse for required Permission DFMS. / Church Episcopal the of Archives

Curtistine Hooper is baptized in the Detroit River. credit: Liz Rogei 2020. 9

Copyright 'Rain your spirit in my heart by Ruth Seymour I rom beside the old piano at Ganey's voice, a strong gospel praise Jesus," Ganey sighed into the micro- the front of the sanctuary, backed by guitar, a simple song that both phone at song's end, unleashing a rustle Catrina Ganey scanned faces the half-way house adults and other of similar praises through the flock. ' in the pews. Nine residents worshippers joined confidently and Need. Response. Power. Another from neighborhood half-way houses, hungrily. Sunday service at Church of the Mes- five black professionals and seven The church's acoustics sent back a siah in Detroit. Somehow, fewer and young, white Birkenstockers. sound that was gentle, welcoming, full. fewer members are achieving more and Up into the gothic rafters climbed "Thank you Jesus, praise you Lord more. One wonders what on earth could October 1991 1 7 make this small Christian community study halls. The church also sponsors 41, whom the rector calls "Superwoman lose steam. evening youth groups, Girl Scouts and — secretary for United Way by day and Not the disbanding of dozens of shared a summer work program. "Without phenomenal grass roots organizer" by households after a decade's effort. Messiah, I might be selling drugs, I night. Not this decade's membership de- might be doing anything," says 19- "You have a few people doing sig- cline from 100 active parishioners to 25. year-old Manuel Rios, an easy-smiling nificant things, really making a differ- (Sunday services now draw 90 people - young man with hair greased back into ence," McNeal says. - ten years ago the congregation was a duck tail. Ganey, for one, is a hospital chap- twice that size.) lain and college drama instructor. When Not the death by stabbing of she first visited Church of the Messiah a young parishioner during her during a nasty rainstorm three years afternoon nap in the church's ago, she stood on the porch dripping rehabilitated apartments. and wondering whether to walk inside. publication. Certainly not car thefts and Half of the congregants (then, as today) and petty vandalisms. were from nearby adult foster care In a neighborhood sickened homes. Some were dishevelled, disori- reuse by decades of joblessness, nar- ented and smelled funny. for cotics, violence and unrecycled "I thought, 'Oh, my gosh what is this lives, about 25 Messiah mem- | place,'" she recalls. "It looked weird. I required bers like Ganey are still hang- had never been in a place where people ing on. dressed like that sat by people, quote, And they are producing: unquote, looking good. I was also struck

Permission * $4 million in neighbor- • by the interracialness of it. hood housing development in | "But I felt something drawing me in.

DFMS. the last five years. With pub- I felt: This is what the Kingdom of God / lic, private and congregational is going to look like." dollars, the church has refur- * * * Church bished more than 145 living November 1971: Just 15 months out units, including four apartment of seminary (Episcopal Divinity School buildings, trained residents in in Cambridge) Ron Spann became Episcopal cooperative management and rector to the disappearing Church of the turned over the first building to Ron Spann, rector of Messiah, raises the paschal of Candle. credit: Liz Rogers the Messiah on the near east-side of cooperative resident control. Detroit. Ground is to be broken this winter for * Annual delivery of 80,000 pounds A few white elderly parishioners had Archives 12 town houses, the first new housing (100 bags per week) of fresh fruits, been struggling for years to keep their to rise in this neighborhood for years.

2020. staples, meats and vegetables to sen- doors open, without a pastor, and in a * Improved math and reading ior citizens. Church members also racially turned-over neighborhood. scores among neighborhood chil- paved a corner lot for a basketball court Span was in his late 20s, politicized,

Copyright dren. Before- and after-tests showed and host early Sunday coffee hours to single and fresh from a charismatic an average increase of about two grade help mentally impaired congregants conversion. His goal: Build a Detroit levels in academic skills for students preview the upcoming service. arrangement similar to the burgeoning attending the church's after-school The Messiah crew aren't saints, re- charismatic Redeemer community of ally. They are just normal people, with 400 adults and children in urban Hous- Ruth Seymour is director of the Journalism other jobs. All 25 of them. And they say ton. Institute for Minorities at Wayne State their numbers are starting to grow again. University. Build he did. From an Episcopalian Liz Rogers, an artist, lived in the Messiah That maybe, by now, they're reaching and decidedly charismatic base, the community for two years and recently 30. Messiah community mushroomed in moved to study sculpting at the New York "I think that is what makes Messiah shared households, community eco- Academy of Fine Arts. so special," says Gwendolyn McNeal, nomics and cooperative government 1 8 THE WITNESS peaked in 1980, there were 95-100 prayer service at the gates of a local for a church that was committed be- adults sharing homes within four blocks defense contractor. That afternoon, she yond itself." of the church. took a nap at home. "A child of one of Spann, too, had been rethinking his Spann is black; most of his commu- the church members walked in, since church's vision. nity converts were "white, young, col- Michelle never locked her door, and He spent a year on sabbatical among lege-educated liberals wanting to be a found the body," Spann said. fellow black theologians in Atlanta. And part of a church doing something in the The entire Messiah community reeled. he thought often of his 1984 trip to Nica- community," says Messiah member Liz "I had never suffered such a loss," ragua. There, he recalled, he had seen Rogers. Spann says. "And if there was any way "people enjoying what I had seen black Members contributed their entire in- we had repressed our anxieties about the people enjoying during the late' 60s and comes to a common purse, which paid violence that stalks this neighborhood, '70s in this country — some sense of rent and food and individual allowances you could not repress it then." destiny," he said. of up to $10 per month. Some main- The hemorrhaging of membership out "I had heard 16-year-old kids who publication. tained jobs to finance the church's ef- could quote Che and forts; others contributed skills to neigh- Guevara. I realized that borhood needs. The church founded a was not true for 16-year- reuse day care center and school, as well as a old kids around the for painting and plastering company that neighborhood of Mes- employed neighborhood residents and a siah. And so we began required housing development corporation. taking the youth minis- "Rather than living in the world and try in new directions." going to church we were living in church Church study halls began promoting individ- Permission and going out into the world," Spann says. "We were asking a lot of our- ual tutoring after school. Evening youth groups dis-

DFMS. selves, sometimes unwisely." / And yet even this inflow of hope cussed raw neighborhood could not turn back the creeping urban problems as well as gen- Church tide of poverty, desperation and crime. erating championship in- And, as with other communitarian ef- terchurch sports teams. Some of the newly baptised: Kaellen Weld-Wallis, Justin and Spann began more en- forts around the country and world dur- Daniel Cannon. credit: LU Rogers Episcopal ergetically infusing Gos- ing the 1980s, Spann said, internal en- the pel and black culture into church serv-

of ergy and commitment began to flag. of the church community continued. ices, while provoking members, black "People married, had kids, and with But even in the midst of that decline, and white, to examine the role race was these tender babies, they wanted to get even as good-bye parties became more

Archives playing in their own congregation. out of the neighborhood. They said, 'Oh the norm than baptisms, a new center of my God, my child could get killed,'" gravity began to emerge. Black member- "It would seem," says Spann, "that if 2020. Rogers explained. ship from the neighborhood began to there is enough power to get Jesus out of Still, no one was prepared for the climb. the dead, it must be peanuts to break

Copyright murder. Donald Softley, 42-year-old director down divisions between men and women, Michelle Rougeau, Spann recalls, was of East Side Initiative, a community black and white, right?" a neurosurgical nurse, "an off-the-scale agency serving 40,000 residents, is one After Rougeau' s murder, one Detroit extrovert. A lively, attractive, warm of those who has joined Messiah in the newspaper columnist likened Messiah' s person — kids just flocked around her - last few years. Today he is board presi- membership to a bunch "of Lutheran - from a big French Catholic family." dent of the Church of the Messiah Hous- seminary volunteers in Tanzania," Spann After 10 years in Messiah's common ing Corporation. recalled. The analogy infuriated church households, Rougeau moved into the St. "Messiah had this reputation in the members at the time. Paul Manor, an apartment building which community for being a caring active Today, interracial trust and teamwork the church had restored. One morning, church in terms of helping people satisfy is a dominant trait of the Messiah com- she took neighborhood children to a human needs," he said. "I was looking munity. But occasional cultural discom- October 1991 1 9 forts still confound the core group. The good into another. flame and see our congregation has even broken at times "For everyone deliverance. This is into a "pepper" group and a "salt" group involved, that a story of how to talk things through. struggle creates a God's hope andjoy For one thing, some members say, kind of together- for us are stronger there has been an irritatingly subtle pre- ness that tran- than anything in sumption in and around Messiah that scends race," Soft- our lives." middle-class whites who live in the neigh- ley says. The man in his borhood are somehow more heroic than low-slung black knit blacks. cap looks up and almost reveals his "We have fears for our children, The Detroit river eyes. A woman in too," spurts McNeal. There is anger in is navy blue in the the front row lights her smooth voice. "Because some of us morning; seaweeds publication. the last half of a ciga- are black it does not make it any easier." frame the shore like and braids of hair. rette. "You can pray together and live to- The Church of Across a grass reuse gether and all the things human beings the Messiah has aisle, on blankets for do with each other," Softley says, "but gathered on an is- and sheets, ten chil- the fact that you are of different races land between Can- dren await ritual — required will always be there." ada and Detroit to Curtistine and Curtis Hooper hold fresh, self-con- Ultimately, however, when the faces baptize new mem- symbols of their new life in Christ: a scious, excited. of Messiah turn outward, the cry of bers. candle and a Bible. credit: Liz Rogers Godparents-to-be

Permission social needs drowns out inner frictions. A female priest, Susan Boch, speaks: grab smaller hands as 60 people trudge The chemistry of Messiah, from the "This is our family, gathered at its across warm morning sand, the church body briefly swollen with visiting fami- DFMS. start, has depended on the inner turning heart." / out. It is the spilling of one community' s And again: "Gaze into the candle's lies and friends and two dogs on leashes. As its children wade Church waist-high into the river The conversation comes around to Grampa Henry City Nights to be drenched under a thrown into the Detroit River by an Indian woman by Naomi Long Madgett crockery pitcher, the Episcopal seeking to save him from the sinking ship. church sings and claps: the My windows and doors are barred (Or was he the one who was the African prince

of "Rain your spirit down against the intrusion of thieves. employed to oversee the chained slave-cargo, in my heart, rain, Master The neighbors' dogs howl in pain preventing their rebellion, and for reward set free?) The family will never settle it; somebody lost Jesus, ram..." Emergent, Archives at the screech of sirens. dripping, the children are There is nothing you can tell me the history they had so carefully preserved. one-by-one swallowed 2020. about the city into church family. I do not know. Insurance rates are soaring. Each child holds up a It is not safe to walk the streets at night.

Copyright flickering candle to On the front porch it is cool and quiet The news reports keep telling us the things symbolize a new undy- after the high pitched panic passes. they need to say: The case ing life in Christ. Pre- The windows across the street gleam is hopeless. dictably, strong gusts of in the dark. wind toss away some of There is a faint suggestion of moon-shadow But the front porch is cool and quiet. the little flames. Predicta- above the golden street light. The neighbors are dark and warm. bly, Messiah's children The grandchildren are asleep upstairs The grandchildren are upstairs dreaming defy the wind; they turn and we are happy for their presence. and we are happy for their presence. readily to each other's (Excerpts and Entrances, Lotus Press, Detroit) flames to keep all candles glowing. Util 20 THE WITNESS so successful, and its staff so ready for Swords into Plowshares, the challenge, that it has recently moved into a larger space on the same block. The currently exhibiting artists are Tanks into Artworks noted political cartoonist Bill Day (De- troit Free Press) and Detroit mixed- by Blaise Tobia & Virginia Maksymowicz media artist Eric Mesko. Their show, etroit is one of only three spective if there is to be peace. Art can cities in the nation featur- play the role of conscience and, like the ing a gallery dedicated fully prophets, break open realities that a to showing art concerned society ignores, is unaware of, or has peace and justice issues (the others are become insensitive to." Chicago and Albuquerque). Swords A retired Methodist minister, Bristah

publication. into Plowshares Peace Center and came up with the idea of using an empty Gallery is situated downtown, next to and storefront owned by Central United the Detroit Council On the Arts, and Methodist Church to create a space where called "Art Wrought From Operation reuse draws a diverse audience of people in visual artists, poets, musicians, nonar- Desert Storm," juxtaposes 36 original for the arts, church people, politically ac- tists and even children could gather to cartoons by Day and an ambitious in- tive people and just plain people off the envision a more peaceful world. In 1985, stallation by Mesko that includes mili-

required street. Swords into Plowshares opened with an tary weapons, videos, drawings and "Why the arts and peace?," wrote Jim exhibit of 75 panels (all made in Michi- paintings. (The accompanying photo- Bristah, the gallery' s founder and direc- gan) of the Pentagon Peace Ribbon. graph shows just a small section of the

Permission tor, in an article for The Other Side Since then Bristah, his wife Jo, and a installation, including part of a wall- magazine. "The arts reach into our feel- hard-working committee of volunteers size bank of television sets and a nearly ings, into the deeper levels of our being... have presented the work of artists from life-size tank.) DFMS. / The arts are universal, the needed per- around the world. The gallery has been For information call 313/965 -54422. Church Episcopal the of Archives 2020. Copyright

credits: Eric Mesko, artist; Marilyn Zimmerman, photographer October 1991 21 businesses and 16 churches bulldozed. The City of Detroit would also have to give GM a 12-year, 50 per cent prop- erty tax abatement and spend nearly $300 million to clear the land and pro- vide the plant with water, highways, sewage removal, etc. But, said the mayor, the deal was worth it because the Poletown plant would provide 6000 jobs ("It was a cheap price to pay for progress"); and besides, if the city did not comply with GM's demands before the 10-month deadline, it would go publication. elsewhere. and At the time the project was opposed by what appeared to be only a small reuse minority, primarily the people in the for threatened community. At a series of public hearings, attended by thousands, required residents spoke tearfully of how they had grown up and raised their families in this community, walked to school along its

Permission streets, been confirmed and married in its churches; and asked why residents

DFMS. were not allowed to vote on issues so / critical to their lives. Against these ordi- nary working people were arrayed not Church only GM and the city administration but also the UAW, the majority of the City credit: David C. Turnley

Episcopal Council, and the Catholic Archdiocese

the (nearly half the Poletown residents were of Catholic). Making over Motown At first many of the Poletown home-

Archives owners could not believe that the city or by James Boggs state could condemn their property so 2020. callously. They had faith that if they James Boggs worked on the Chrysler leven years ago, in the sum- spoke up and protested, the city and GM assembly line for 28 years and was active in mer of 1980, Detroit Mayor would relent and find some other site or Copyright the labor and black movements. He is the Coleman Young and Gen- reconfigure the plant so it could coexist author of American Revolution: Pages from | eral Motors Chairman Tho- with the neighborhood. But each week it a Black Worker's Notebook and Racism mas Murphy announced that a new and the Class Struggle. Boggs now partici- became clearer that their protests were pates in Detroiters' Uniting, a group $500 million Cadillac plant would be falling on deaf ears and that the city was projecting ideas for the future of Detroit. built in the center of Detroit, in the going to use the right of eminent domain Hamtramck neighborhood known as to take their property. David Turnley is an award-winning Detroit Poletown. In order to build this "state Free Press photographer stationed in Paris. Meanwhile, the administration was His Poletown photography appeared in of the art" factory (which would re- resorting to all kinds of tricks to put pres- Poletown: Community Betrayed by Jeanie place two older GM plants employing sure on homeowners and small busi- Wylie-Kellermann, University of Illinois 15,000), 4200 residents would have to nesses in the community to move. City Press, 1989. be displaced, and 1500 homes, 144 services began to decline; garbage was

22 THE WITNESS collected infrequently or not at all; city lights would go off, encouraging van- dalism and arson. Unemployed "dem- onstrators" were paid to march through the community shouting, "We want jobs." Step by step the administration did its best to tear the community apart physically and morally. The end came in the middle of the night of July 14, 1981 when 60 police officers wrecked the Immaculate Conception Church, the headquarters of community resis- tance, arresting protesters who had been publication. maintaining a vigil against the threat-

and ening demolition. Looking back, the Poletown contro- reuse versy can be seen as the beginning of a for life and death struggle between politi- cians who still have the illusion that our In 1980, the city of Detroit condemned Poletown, an integrated, low-income neighbor-

required hood, to accommodate construction of a new General Motors' Cadillac plant. cities can be saved by the same multina- credit: David C. Turnley tional corporations which have aban- houses, thus restoring to the tax rolls it has been our historical experience for doned them, and a growing grassroots hundreds of properties that would oth- the last 75 years, most Americans have Permission movement based on a human-scale vi- erwise have to be demolished with tax- thought of the city as a place to which sion of the city as a joining together of payer monies. [Detroit has boasted the you go for a job working for some big

DFMS. local communities, stores, schools and / largest number of owner-occupied homes corporation after you have been driven churches. The Poletown struggle inspired in the nation; now, it bulldozes 6,000 off the land by mechanization. But now the formation of community groups and

Church homes a year.] we know that the large industrial corpo- coalitions to resist corporate blackmail rations are not going to provide those and to demand the allocation of federal The central question is "What is the jobs for us. and city funds to neighborhood develop- purpose of a city?" Up to now, because Episcopal ment. In 1988 this grassroots movement What, then, is going to happen to the the Looking back, the Poletown of achieved its first major success when one million people still living in Detroit, Detroit voters rejected "Casino Gam- controversy can be seen as half of them on some form of public as- bling" despite the mayor's promises that sistance? We can't go back to the farms. Archives it would bring 50,000 jobs to the city. the beginning of a life and There are no new industries coming here

2020. This April 23 an overwhelming majority death struggle between politi- to employ us. Therefore, if we are think- voted No on Proposal A which would ing about a future for Detroiters, if we have sanctioned the rezoning of the riv- cians who still have the illu- are going to create hope especially for Copyright erfront Ford Auditorium site (meaning sion that our cities can be our young people, we must break with that the public auditorium would be de- most of the ideas about cities that we stroyed) for private development. saved by the same multina- have accepted in the past. At the same time, grassroots groups tional corporations which We have to stop seeing the city as just are coming together to begin rebuilding a place to which you come to make a liv- our communities. Some people are clean- have abandoned them, and a ing. Instead we must start seeing it as the ing up their blocks and planting trees and growing grassroots movement place where our humanity is enriched gardens. Others are organizing marches because we have the opportunity to work and vigils to rid their neighborhoods of based on a human-scale and live in harmony with people of many crime and drugs. Still others are taking vision of the city. different ethnic and social backgrounds. over and rehabbing old and abandoned We have to see that our capital is in

October 1991 23 people and not see people as existing to the new technologies which make pos- purchase freshly-baked bread and food make capital for production or depend- sible flexible production and constant shops where working people can pur- ent on capital to live. readjustment to serve the needs of local chase whole meals to take home to eat The foundation of our city has to be consumers. together, instead of living off McDon- people living in communities who real- We need a view of our city which ald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken. ize that their human We also need identity is based on love a fundamental and respect for one an- ?n m change in our other and between dif- concept of ferent generations, and schools. What who have also learned kids learn in from experience that school today has they can no longer leave little or no rela- publication. the decisions about their tionship to their

and lives to the market communities. place, to corporations While they are reuse or to politicians, regard- growing up, they for less of ethnic back- are like parasites ground. We have to see doing no socially required ourselves as respon- useful work. sible for our city and Then when they for each other, and raise become teen-

Permission our children to place agers we blame more value on social This lawn mower repair shop, owned by Ben and Ethel Feagan, was one of the 144 them because ties than on material Poletown businesses destroyed in 1981. credit:Davidc.Tumky

DFMS. they have no / wealth. We have to see ourselves as takes into consideration both the natu- sense of social responsibility. We have agents of change and producers rather ral resources of our area and the exist- to create schools in which young people Church than as consumers or clients for serv- ing skills of Detroiters. For example, acquire a sense of their own value be- ices. Michigan has abun- ^^^——^-^— cause they natu- We have to get rid of the myth that Episcopal dant sand. This can Our goal should be to make rally and normally there is something sacred about large- the be used to produce Detroit the first city in the do meaningful of scale production for the national and glass for storm work for the com- international market. Actually, our ex- windows which nation to use our schools to munity. Our goal periences over the last 75 years have will help us save en- should be to make Archives serve the community rather demonstrated that large-scale produc- ergy, solar panels Detroit the first

2020. tion, because it is based on a huge to harness the heat than as places where young city in the nation separation between production and con- of the sun, green- people are upgraded to leave to use our schools sumption, makes both producers and houses to grow to serve the com- Copyright consumers into faceless masses who are vegetables all year the community. ^^^^^^^^^^^ munity rather than alienated from one another and at the round. as places where mercy of market forces and the mass We need to be creating all kinds of young people are upgraded to leave the media. Instead we have to begin to create locally-owned and operated stores in community. small enterprises which produce food, our communities so that our young We can't keep running from city to goods and services for the local market. people can see stores not just as places city. But if we put down our roots Instead of destroying the skills of work- where you spend money to buy what where we are living, and put our hearts, ers, which is what large-scale industry you want, but where local people are imaginations, minds and hands to work, does, these small enterprises will com- working to meet the needs of the com- we can empower ourselves and our bine craftsmanship, or the preservation munity. In every neighborhood there children and build our cities into places and enhancement of human skills, with should be bakeries where families can that we are proud to call our own. raw

24 THE WITNESS n Its own drowsy, slowed books and plants he owned into a small begot vigilante "justice." concept of time the Sun house with a large back yard. He had Santos watched the wild birds and Spirit coursed Its way across always wanted a large green open space four-legged creatures take their share the extremes again, left to and with the first signs of warm weather of the sunflower seed harvest. He con- right, east to west. Outside in the silent he planted a garden to grow the vege- versed with the plants and reminded approach of dusk, the dew-damp crys- tables he would use for survival. The them at harvest time that he too would tal specks in the concrete of the side- garden was dug, with apologies to Mother become the food for future generations walk and the street began to reflect Earth, in a great circle. An altar to of plants. In return the sunflowers ex- rippling, broken beams of street light to prompt the blessings of the earth was tended themselves thirteen feet into the rival the dance rhythms of wind-chased erected at the center of the back yard sky and the Indian corn grew to a height shadows across the abandoned field. of nine feet. The deserted lot once filled with parked It was the summer of liberation, but automobiles, and the adjoining deso- now the time was drawing near. The publication. late steel factory, had become histori- court had instructed the landlord that and cal illusions — passing echoes of the Santos had 30 days to vacate the house. voices of working people from a time Santos walked matter-of-factly to the reuse when the factory had provided a living

for open window. for hundreds of families. The weeded- "Ayyyyiiiieeee...!" he shouted with a over parking lot was being reclaimed force that originated from the unity of required by the weary, calculated movements of fire and water. nature and by the power of the passing The war whoop scattered the silent footsteps of Chief Pontiac and his atoms of the ascending night air. Snow

Permission warriors who once camped near the geese in their full autumn flight were creek that was near the factory. Santos proud and envious of the force that it

DFMS. remembered that there was a stone contained. Within the call survived the / monument close to the old iron cross- knowledge of the tradition of the ancient ing bridge that marked the precise loca- ones. Church tion where Chief Pontiac had held his "Ayyyyiiiieeee...!" War Council prior to the attack on old The reserved people of the crowded Fort Detroit. The monument had been

Episcopal suburb did not understand the intrusion buried years before by the careless the using found objects: feather gifts from of the strange sound. It sent electrifying of dumping of gravel and stone. the winged creatures, soil gathered from chills down their spines and recalled for When Santos first returned to the distant places, special stones borrowed some the days of the covered wagons forming a circle for protection. The

Archives small working-class town where he had from places of power and solitude, hard grown up he left the streets of Detroit seeds like that of the horse chestnut tree sound sliced the thin air so neatly that

2020. with great expectations. It was an oppor- that had survived the cold and damp of there was no evidence of its passing. It tunity for him to start his life over and to winter. The altar formed a circle around drew its strength from the molten core of get away from the urbanized chaos of a young tree and with the passing days of the planet as well as from the jet stream Copyright crime and drugs. The factories in Detroit summer heat it became a medicine wheel. of a high-flying hunter eagle. were being closed, one by one. Many of Slowly Santos began to regain his bal- The war whoop could not be bought his friends lost their jobs and soon after ance and power. or sold. It could not be mass produced, gave up looking for work that would pay As summer neared its end the people injected or rejected, copied or taxed. In enough to provide for their families. living in the neighborhood could no its simplest essence it was untamed and Santos moved what little furniture, longer accept the strange ways of their yet a willing servant to the slightest well- new neighbor. They could not tolerate placed cross breeze. With each use it was Jose L. Garza is a Native American- that he seldom cut the grass. He owned the Good Medicine that replenished It- Chicano who moved from Detroit to Ecorse no television or automobile and little else self. in an effort to deepen his Native spirituality. He now lives in rural Pennsylvania. This of material wealth, and yet appeared to It was Indian pride in its raw form, article is excerpted from a longer essay. be content. Fear begot anger, and anger and it had survived. QQ October 1991 25 vacant and abandoned apartment houses Basic to the "New Economics" is a Using Talents on Kelly Street were scheduled for reconceptualization of human needs, our demolition by the city. Four years later relationship to the environment, and the by Grace Lee Boggs residents had restored them at a total nature of work. cost of $540,000 (including job train- 1) Conventional Economics views The Living City by Roberta Brandes ing for 40 workers and apartment reha- human needs chiefly in material terms. Gratz, Simon & Schuster, paper $]0.95. bilitation at $26,000 per unit). Banana "New Economics" sees human needs as The Living Economy: A New Eco- Kelly has since become the catalyst for both material and non-material, i.e. for nomics in the Making, edited by Paul neighborhood revitalization both lo- expression, creativity, equality, com- Ekins, Routledge & Kegan Paul. cally and nationally. Its slogan is "Urban munity and participation. pioneers! Don't move, improve!" 2) Conventional Economics assumes rom her experience as an that growth is good and more is better. It urban activist and a New York is as if economists had never heard of publication. \Post reporter for 15 years, cancer. "New Economics" is rooted in and I Roberta Gratz is convinced the recognition that "human life and that the genuine rebirth of cities is economic activity are an interdependent reuse part of the wide ecological processes that for coming not from developers and urban planners but from neighborhood people sustain life on earth." who are fighting to preserve and im- 3) Conventional Economics views required prove what already exists. The key, she work in narrowly economic terms, i.e. says, is a "percolating-up" process as labor. For the capitalist labor is a cost rather than a "trickle-down" strategy. of production, like land and capital.

Permission Wholesale new developments like Therefore it is paid as little as possible "Urban Renewal" and GM's Poletown and marginalized or eliminated in order

DFMS. destroy the streets, pedestrians and to increase profits. At the other pole / human relationships that have devel- workers and their supporters see labor as the source of all wealth and value, and Church Habitat for Humanity workers, like many therefore entitled to a greater share of others, work to rennovate Detroit homes. and control over surplus value. For nearly credit: Jim West 200 years these concepts of work and Episcopal Today in "Rust Belt" cities the reha- labor have together provided the theo- the retical framework for the class struggle. of bilitation of abandoned houses by grass- roots individuals and organizations is In recent years, as automation and the beginning to assume the dimensions of export of jobs overseas have eroded the Archives oped organically over the years. Grass- a movement. Most of these "urban pio- role and power of labor in the industrial- roots struggles, on the other hand, not neers" are motivated not by the "bottom ized countries, the concept of work as 2020. only renew physical structures. They line" but by a whole range of human labor has become increasingly less help- build people and community. needs, including the need for affordable ful as a theoretical tool for progressive

Copyright One of the most inspiring examples housing, self-reliance and the pride that struggle. Hence the search for a more of urban rebirth by this process is comes from home ownership and re- human-centered concept of work. In the Banana Kelly, a crescent-shaped block building a community. A "New Eco- words of E. F. Schumacher, the purpose in the South Bronx. In 1977 the three nomics" is in the making. of work is: "First, to provide necessary This New Economics is explored in goods and services. Second, to enable Grace Boggs is a long-time community The Living Economy, a collection of every one of us to use and thereby per- activist who has lived (with her husband, papers written for TOES (The Other fect our gifts like good stewards. Third, James Boggs) in the same Detroit house for Economic Summit), organized as an al- to do so in service to and in cooperation nearly 30 years. Boggs is a coordinator of with others, so as to liberate ourselves WE PROS; editor of the SOS AD newsletter; ternative to the annual Economic Sum- and active in a People's Festival celebrating mits of the Western industrialized pow- from our inborn egocentricity." grassroots efforts to turn Detroit around. ers and Japan. E53 26 THE WITNESS carries a bullhorn to help lead the songs Living beyond fear and chants. Another beats a drum. Another distributes flyers. It is a kind by Mary West of visible, audible presence that has orothy Garner says that Ryan's house, saying that someone had people staring, applauding or looking there is a lot of her father in dialed 911 and reported that she had away; the kind that whips guard dogs her, who was a "rebel" and been shot. Later that day, the "dead into a frenzy. a "sensitive, wise man." He wagon" (the van from the Wayne Garner tells of death threats against encouraged her to read everything, in- County Coroner's Office) pulled up, her, delivered by a gang member who cluding the United Mineworkers' Jour- reportedly to pick up Ryan's body. Still identified himself as "Peace." Her re- nal, and told her to be careful which later, a fire truck arrived. Garner re- sponse is this: "If I die, let the Clark Gas road she chose to walk down. But it was members saying, "There's no fire now, Station's tow truck put my casket on two not for her father's memory that she but there's sure going to be one soon." wheels and take it up and down the publication. decided to confront the drug traffic on street. They can only take my life. My and her block. spirit stays here and from my spirit As a working mother, she took a others will rise." reuse number of civil service tests before being After three years of marching in the for hired as a corrections officer. Her first street and working with police, drug job was at the Detroit House of Correc- dealers continue, reaching deeper into required tions (Dehoco). For the past five years, the community, recruiting children. "A she has helped run a half-way house for drug pusher once told me, 'I boss this prisoners in southwest Detroit. She says block,'" Garner said.

Permission that her job has taught her how to control To continue her campaign against her temper and how to make decisions drugs, Garner relies on her faith, nur- tured since childhood. Every morning

DFMS. quickly. When she is on the street, she is / often recognized by former inmates. she prays for God to take care of her. "They yell, vHey, Mama G!' if they're Psalm 91 is her favorite; her Bible at Church doing okay and scatter if they're up to home is always open to it. She also takes Dorothy Garner a little time to enjoy herself. "When I get something." But it was not because of credit: Jim West her job that she began to march against Garner began walking the streets despondent, I go to the nursery," to Episcopal crack houses. around her neighborhood. "I guess I look at plants and flowers. The sight of the growing things "gives me inspiration." of She raised two daughters and one son was preaching and teaching. I decided alone, and has a grandson, age nine, who I wasn't going to live in fear." The when there's a problem at school prefers walks were accompanied by singing, Archives that his grandmother, rather than his praying and chanting. With the advice and encouragement of two local Bap-

2020. mother, accompany him. "He says, 'Grandma knows how to negotiate.'" tist pastors, Garner organized a small But it is not for her grandson that she group that met every Saturday night to

Copyright gives talks, speeches and interviews about plan the marches. The participants were her anti-drug crusade. mostly older people who, like Garner, It began on a Sunday evening in 1988. had lived in the neighborhood 20 years Most of her spare time is spent or- After many calls to the police, there was or more. ganizing and helping WE PROS grow. a drug bust at a crack house on the street The weekly marches are now spon- She is particularly proud of starting a in northwest Detroit where Garner lives. sored by the organization Garner founded male mentoring program. A female One of her neighbors, Mary Ryan, stepped called WE PROS, We the People Re- mentoring program begins this fall. outside her front door and called out claiming Our Streets. At a typical march, "I never think of turning around or "Thank you, Jesus!" people gather, don bright orange vests, backing up," Garner says. "I've never The next morning, an emergency pray in a circle then set out, escorted by backed off a fight. I've lost many, but medical service team arrived at Mary a Detroit Police squad car. Someone I've won some too." HS1 October 1991 27 publication. and reuse for required

Permission 6tOR6E BUSH'S THOUSAND POUOTS OF U6WT DFMS. / Church The November issue Episcopal the

of of The Witness will consider DEFENSE self-defense neighborhood defense civilian-based defense

Archives and then, of course, there's the Department of Defense W % printed on recycled paper 2020.

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