(Originally posted at Propositions Press)
The second part of my early summer research travels consisted of just under a week spent in Detroit. There I joined eleven of my Compass colleagues, living together in a rented house, sharing food and space. We timed our days in the city to coincide with the week of the United States Social Forum.
The US Social Forum is part of the worldwide Social Forum process. Some from our group had attended the World Social Forum in Caracas, in Nairobi, and the European Social Forum in Paris. Other friends and wider collaborators of ours attended the first US Social Forum in Atlanta three years ago. I’d found their reports intriguing. Once some of us learned that the 2010 event would be held in Detroit, we were set on being there.
But right then, at least for me and I think all of us, came the question, what does it mean, “to attend,” “to participate in,” “to witness” a complex event like the Social Forum? We each had to answer that question for ourselves, and also as a group. An important consideration was our aim to find ways to further understand, engage in, and contribute to the ongoing work of social change happening in Detroit, beyond the Social Forum. And finally, this whole effort also exists in the context of our larger work of situating radical cultural work in the greater Midwest.
Indeed the Forum proved to be a multi-faceted event that no single person could possibly experience in full. There were many components, beginning with the opening march, continuing with hundreds of workshops and sessions, the daily schedule of plenaries, the work brigades, the demonstrations, the parties, the tours, and so on. Added to this extensive menu of goings on were the great many unofficial events, hang-outs, performances, and social spaces that welled up from the true grassroots. Even expecting it to be this way, the actual experience was a bit overwhelming just the same.
One from our crew, Brian Holmes, had described Paris during the European Social Forum as a city that was remade by activists for the duration of the Forum, extending the spirit of the Social Forum process—ie, that Another World Is Possible—far beyond the confines of the official Forum site. This approach to what creative activists could do during the Forum informed our plans. Since some of us had been working on meeting and forming relationships with Detroit activists over the past year, putting energy into some kind of self-initiated production out in the neighborhoods of Detroit seemed like a contribution we could make that might be out of reach for visiting activists less familiar with the city, and without the relationships with people operating locally.
That is the backdrop to the decisions I made for my week. My experience, which overlapped greatly with and depended on the group experience, but was different from every other individual experience, could be divided into three elements. Each part resulted in its own narrative of labor, decision-making, research, experimentation, and outcome.
They were
1) The housing. The process of finding a suitable house for short term rental in a city not our own was an involved experience requiring a good deal of cooperation, outreach, and planning. The actual experience of living with eleven comrades for a week in a big house, plus at least nine or more who joined, was a joyful test of how we could get along and know each other at a greater level of closeness. Also, the location was terrific. Robert Taylor, our on-the-ground scout really set us up well. We were in Highland Park, on a side street between Woodward and John R, just a little ways south of Henry Ford’s first factory, and a short bike ride from D*Flux. It was good to learn a little bit about Highland Park, including the embattled public utility situation there.
2) The participation in the official Social Forum program. For us this meant registering as an organization and offering a two-hour workshop, and that involved another process of discussion, writing, and workshopping
(at Mess Hall in Chicago and at the Beneath the University conference in Minneapolis) over several months. Though persons from our group attended other USSF sessions and official events, for me the participation in the official program was limited to helping with our session, walking in the opening march, and volunteering with one of the work brigades
3) Creating a free event and temporary social space in Detroit, away from the downtown USSF site. This event, which became known as Drift and Surge, took the form of a cookout under a large tent designed and loaned to us by the progressive architect Adrian Blackwell. Though this event also took some amount of foresight and planning, especially in terms of arranging the loan and delivery (the tent is quite large, needing about four people to easily lift it when folded up), the particulars of the event simply could not be determined until we were actually assembled in Detroit. For one thing, we had to find an appropriate space to hold the event, and then go through the process of setting up the tent, which was not exactly a straightforward task. And then making determinations about guesstimating attendance, getting the word out, buying the food, etc.
To record a sense of the mosaic-like experience of the week, then, I can specify the following highlights from the above three.
Thanks to the early arriving crew, by the time I arrived along with six others several days later on Sunday night, the house had been transformed into a home environment. Over the course of the next six days, it became ever more our space. Everybody arrived with more food, drink, kitchen gear, and simple comforts, adding to the temporary furnishings. Upon leaving for the conference site or other activity around the city, we all knew we had some place to come back to, where there would be food, comfort, and familiar company. This made a huge difference; we weren’t staying in a hotel, we weren’t scattered across town on borrowed couches, and we weren’t camping out in a tent city. If only for two weeks, we had our home, together. The absence of internet service added to the social life of the home. People left the experience with a shared desire to find a reason to do it again, whether in Detroit or elsewhere. Also, we now know for a fact that there is plenty of cheap real estate in cities like Detroit, and undoubtedly throughout the Midwest. Get a group together, find a reason to engage with a place you don’t live, find a willing landlord, and make a temporary home.
The opening march was great.
The innumerable groups on display—many of them announcing on signs and shirts from where they came, the wholly heterogenous assemblage, the creative noisemaking, and the perfect weather added up to a stellar event.
It was qualitatively unlike any American political march I have seen or participated in. The celebratory vibe prevailed, over the anger and sense of powerlessness that usually dominates American political marches. The only downer was the ending. The march petered out at Cobo Hall. Marchers were were not given any clear direction toward the opening plenary, and there were no places toward which the considerable momentum and spirit could channeled. There was some confusion and a “Oh, I guess it’s over” kind of feeling. We made it to the large indoor hall for the opening ceremonies, but the cavernous, dark, and echo-ey space killed the raucous, roiling celebration of the march.
I was somewhat ambivalent about our session, Cartography with Your Feet. I saw the purpose in having some official conference presence, and I liked our session description, but really, what can you do in two hours? For me (though not others in the group) it was about supporting the Forum, and not so much about expecting an amazing experience. Still, there was at least one terrifically gratifying episode from the session. It was delivered by a young woman named Nicki (?) who had just graduated from college, and who in the last couple of years had become connected to the local organic and sustainable food production activity around southern Wisconsin. She stepped up to share her story (to a roomful of strangers, how confident is that?) of getting acquainted with a radical Midwest and feeling connected to a place at a profound level for the first time in her life, having come out for college from the East Coast. She presented some images from her recent trip to the Midwest Renewable Energy Fair, and also spoke of having been positively moved by our Call to Farms book, which she somehow found online. That, too, was a pleasant surprise. Nicki’s enthusiasm was an inspiration.
I joined a work brigade for two mornings. The people in the brigades were different but the work site was the same, the garden project at Calimera Park on the northeast side, just off of Seven Mile. The garden is a large vegetable plot initiated by a nearby Afrocentric school, Nsoroma Institute with help from the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network. Right next to the cultivated land is an art work by Magma Glacier and Kevin Beasley called Memory Field. This earthwork sculpture will operate as a functional rain catcher, with water drained and collected in a buried cistern next to the garden. It is a brilliant collaboration between artists, students, educators, and food activists.
The reality is, both the art work and the garden are in-progress. The garden is in its first season and needs the help of many hands. Upon first sight, the garden seemed like an overwhelming project, certainly for the two people trying to see it through the summer. On both days we were very happy to provide labor.
But the lasting lesson from the work brigade was, in fact, the way the shared labor became a medium for social interaction. Especially on the first morning, when the participants came together from very different starting points, social and geographical locations. There were housing and welfare activists from Harlem, a mother and young daughter from Ann Arbor, a roving crustie who’d biked up from Cincinnati, the artist Laurie Palmer. Unlike much of the conference activity, which tended to channel people toward their pre-exisiting interests, here our worlds collided in the shared work before us. Laurie, myself, and an elder from Harlem named Ann who came with a big group from Community Voices Heard, worked for two hours together as a weeding team. We talked about where we came from, why we came, what kinds of activities we’re doing. We talked about Obama, the national political situation, compared situations in different home states. We talked about gardening and where our food systems are taking us. We laughed, sympathized with each other, and got a lot of weeding done, for which the brigade directors were extremely grateful.
This three person crew, with dirty hands and sweaty brows, stays in my memory as the real social forum, the time and space of sharing and learning from each other. Baba Moudou and Fabayo from the DBCFSN led the session, starting and finishing with circles of reflection. The whole thing was invested with a kind of reverence and honor, which is exactly the attitude we need to have in relation to the earth out of which all our food comes.
The best experience worth commenting on here was the Drift and Surge event. After successfully rehearsing the tent set-up (during which we were unsure enough to call Adrian for advice, and were exhorted by him to “be creative!”), identifying an appropriate site, coming up with some sort of rough concept, making and passing out flyers, composing a menu, and shopping at Costco, we had an event to roll out on Friday night, the last night of the USSF. Matthias Regan of Compass and CAFF went to town on a personal screenprinting mission, printing up hundreds of small flags, which he then strung together as streamer lines for decorating the tent. This provided a much-needed element of visually festivity and a graphic identity. Check it out!
We invited everyone we knew in town, on short notice. We invited the people who were living or hanging out near the site. With the site being unfamiliar to many of those visiting Detroit and some distance from the conference, and with no rsvp, we had no idea how many people would show up. It was all a big experiment, calculated to be sure, but with enough variables to make predictions of outcome difficult. But the basics were in place for a positive event: free food, a comfortable and visually appealing space, a sense of security and welcome. That was the primary purpose: to offer a small thank you to the city of Detroit, for all we’ve gained from our visits, by staging a free social and meal event to which all would be welcome.
The site, chosen for both its symbolic significance and its actual open lawn-like character, was a big grassy lot across the street from the historic King Solomon Missionary Baptist Church, where Martin and Malcolm had both preached, and around the corner from the Hush House. In street parlance the neighborhood is known as Zone 8, one of the toughest parts of a very tough city. Some from our group tracked down the property caretaker, Sam, and the pastor of the church, explained as best we could what we hoped to do, and were granted permission.
The evening turned into another real social forum. Sam loaned us a second grill, and then helped take a turn cooking. Visiting activists from different parts of the country, many friends and collaborators, and neighborhood people all joined in, making for an unusually mixed assemblage. A group of USSF attendees visiting from California happened upon the tent while being led on a walking tour of Zone 8 by local activist and author Yusef Shakur. A group of the 16 Beaver radi-cats dropped in.
We ran out of food and drink and had to make a store run. A neighbor, Mike (and Sam’s brother), who lives literally a hundred feet from the site, said to me, “Look at all this. We’ve got black, white, brown…everyone. Why can’t we have this all the time??” Rashaun Harris, and activist who is part of the Hush House staff, came by. Later on he led a group on an impromptu tour of the Hush House gardens and then into the house itself. Mike helped with some unscripted commentary about the local neighborhood that only one who had lived there for decades would know. For all of us who were lucky enough to take part, the short journey to the Hush House went way beyond a tour and become something of a shared moment of understanding. Without getting into the details, I can say simply that the sharing of information left the realm of the programmed and rose to the plane of the transformative.
The lesson taken from Drift and Surge: that with adequate and competent planning and groundwork, a social space with room for the unscripted episode can be opened up. If the instigatory group comes in with enough of a presence, and yet takes care to keep the interpretation of the event somewhat open (ie, this was not instantly identifiable as an “activist” or “political” event), then the chances are good that the resulting event is positive. The appreciation expressed by many in attendance confirmed the worthiness of producing these kinds of spaces in the (conventionally considered) marginal neighborhoods. Was it an organizing event? Did it advance some sort of agenda or get a political message out? No. But without the simple experiences of shared time and space, broad-based movements will never be built in segregated societies. Also, this was a statement against the instrumentalist tendencies found in activist spheres and subcultures. We opened a space, invited people in, and then what happened after that was up to all of us. To paraphrase E.P. Thompson, unpredictability is in many ways the essence of democracy.
