A New Detroit is Happening: US Social Forum

I arrived in Detroit Sunday, June 20th, to attend a National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights pre-US Social Forum meeting. Detroit is a city that has been devastated by the flight of industry, racism, lack of public services, and kicked while down by the latest economic crisis. Detroit feels like a body stripped of flesh, bones and sinews exposed. 

Those bones are built of resistance however. We hear about the destruction, neglect and institutional brutality of Detroit. We don't often hear of all the incredibly creative organizing happening in the midst of it. This US Social Forum created an entire

track to learn about the situation in Detroit, and to find ways to support the work that is happening on the ground.

People began to arrive here Monday night and Tuesday morning. By the opening march, thousands filled the streets with colorful signs, with drum music, with costumes and puppets and voices lifted in joyous defiance. The march passed a partially boarded up window that, through broken glass, looked onto a  spray-painted wall that said, "Detroit, Everything's Going To Be All Right." A muttered prayer of hopeful, desperate protection, one we could blanket the country and the whole world with. But the organizers and activists and the people of Detroit know if it's going to be all right, they are the ones who are going to have to make it all right.

The three slogans for this year's USSF are: "Another World is Possible," "Another US is Necessary," and "Another Detroit is Happening." And it is. Hopefully we can all take this opportunity to learn from the resistance in Detroit, to share our own stories, and to continue building a movement for a new and just world.