permaculture

[lakinroe@silcom.com]

>From Starhawk: 
I’m here at the US Social Forum—and I’ll do my best to blog every day or so—I 
won’t send them all out to ever single one of these lists, but you can find 
them—with pictures and comments, at www.starhawksblog.org . 
Enjoy! 

US. Social Forum—We’re Here! 
I flew into Detroit last night with two wonderful women from the Hunters 
Point Family agency that our Earth Activist Trainings partner with. Lena 
Miller directs the agency and Jasmine Marshall runs the Peacekeeper program, 
working as a case manager for many of the girls who work in the gardens where 
I’ve volunteered. 

We arrived—and attempted to reach our motel by the river—just at the moment 
Detroit’s Riverfest culminates in a massive fireworks display. A million 
people go down to the river to watch—which made reaching out motel a 
challenge. We finally had to abandon our taxi and walk the last block, with 
all our bags. But we got there to find the streets humming with people, a 
party in progress in the parking lot, barbecues going on patches of grass by 
the sidewalks, and the sky alight with the thunder and a rain of light and 
color. 

We got settled and headed out to find food. I have to say it was a different 
experience for me, walking down the street in those crowds and crowds of 
people, mostly young, mostly black, all of them dressed to look good. The 
whole city was drenched in heat haze and pheromones, and I enjoyed seeing it 
a bit through the eyes of much younger women who were looking pretty good 
themselves—and definitely attracting far more male attention than I ever do 
on my own these days. Jasmine, who is twenty-three, was so excited! “I can’t 
believe it—all these black people out on the streets, just chillin’, having a 
good time, and nobody shuttin’ it down! Why can’t we have that in the 
Bayview?” And it’s true—with all the economic devastation of Detroit, there 
are thousands of people out here enjoying themselves, wearing short shorts 
and gold platform shoes. A trio of trumpeters in an empty lot blast out a 
riff. A couple of trombone players across the street answer them—and they 
play back and forth, a musical conversation in the street. 

Why can’t we have it in the Bayview? There’s a long history, that goes back 
to the bulldozing of San Francisco’s Fillmore District back in the 60’s for 
redevelopment, destroying a thriving and lively Black community. To the 
closing of the naval shipyard, once the big employer in the Bayview, and the 
resulting unemployment and poverty and the residues of toxic wastes. And most 
immediately, to the intertwined gang violence and police violence. More 
people die violently, per capita, in the Bayview than in Iraq, or so I've 
heard. The infant mortality rate in the Bayview is on a par with Haiti or 
Bulgaria. 

As I’m writing, Jasmine and Lena are gossiping and the conversation moves to 
all the young men they know who are dead. Jasmine says, “My whole age group 
is gone. All the boys I grew up with—they’re all gone.” Dead, or in prison. 

We spend a lazy morning, sleeping in, and finally make our way down to Cobo 
Hall, the big convention center that houses registration for the Forum. The 
line to register stretches about a mile back. We take turns waiting. In line, 
I meet a man named Leonardo, from LA. He turns out to know my buddy Lisa, who 
is part of our training collective Alliance of Community Trainers. Lisa is 
slight and blonde and always charged with energy—after ten minutes of 
acquaintance, Lena calls her “A soldier of the movement.” She’s biked down 
here and is holding a place for us. 

Leonardo tells us how he’s organized his community in East L.A. They’ve 
managed to get a whole progressive contingent elected in the neighboring town 
of Mayview, and they threw the whole police department out. The cops were 
corrupt and abusive, harassing the Latino community, setting up checkpoints 
for cars and confiscating them from illegal immigrants. So, they simply fired 
them all. Every one. Now they will create a police department—if only so the 
city can get insurance—but it will be under the direction of a civilian 
police commissioner, not a chief of police. 

So, I’m already inspired by the time I get my registration armband. Then I 
meet up with Bill Aal from Tools for Change—with whom I’ll be teaching the 
Earth Activist Training in Bellingham with a focus on social permaculture, 
and Carlos, from New York, who does popular education and is part of a men’s 
healing group. We all go to lunch at the Avalon Bakery, a small bakery 
started by two women, Anne and Jackie, to bring a thriving business alive in 
one of the city’s dead zones. Now it’s the anchor of a street of cafes and 
shops. 

Then Bill, Carlos and I go on to the march, while Lena and Jasmine go back to 
rest up. The march is quite wonderful—colorful, lively, not painfully loud, 
but mostly what’s wonderful is the incredible diversity of people. The 
organizers of this event have really done it—they’ve brought together a truly 
diverse crowd. As Lena puts it—“It’s not only every type of person, but every 
shade and variety of every type.” Black, white, Latino, Asian, Native 
American, every race, age, style of dress and political persuasion seems 
represented. There are environmentalists carrying sunflowers and a contingent 
of domestic workers in magic T-shirts. There are a couple of anarchists with 
black flags and Revolutionary workers selling newspapers and big puppets of 
Martin Luther King with recordings of his speeches playing. A brass band 
plays and four young people in pink T-shirts dance. Two clowns walk by on 
stilts, and drummers play a samba beat. 

The march is a beautiful vision of what a real social movement could be. 
Ironically, we march through downtown Detroit, an area blasted and blighted 
by the city’s economic losses. Vast areas are simply empty—full of weeds, 
with here and there a burned-out carcass of a house. Beautiful stone 
churches, relics of a time when there was money and jobs, loom over vacant 
lots. The old Detroit Free Press building, a dignified stone castle, is now 
boarded over with a sign offering free rents to any enterprise that would 
venture to locate there. Faded signs grace the tattered marquis’ of boarded 
over department stores. London had more signs of life after the blitz. 
Indeed, it’s hard to imagine any enemy nation inflicting more damage on a 
city than has been done here by capitalism at its most irresponsible and 
brutal. 

Through the devastation winds this lively and beautiful march, a sign of hope 
and resilience. If there’s any hope for our poor country and our battered 
world, any chance we can turn our direction around toward real justice and 
balance, it lies in the people here, this beautiful coming together across 
all the divides. 

Now we’re resting. Maybe we’ll go out to a party tonight, maybe we won’t. But 
I’m so glad to be here. 


This post has been sent to you from Starhawk@lists.riseup.net .  This is an  
announce-only listserve that allows Starhawk to post her writings 
occasionally  to those who wish to receive them.  To subscribe to this list, 
send an email to Starhawk-subscribe@lists.riseup.net .  To unsubscribe, send 
an email to Starhawk-unsubscribe@lists.riseup.net .  Starhawk is a lifelong 
activist in peace and global justice movements, a leader  in the feminist and 
earth-based spirituality movements, author or coauthor of  ten books, 
including The Spiral Dance, The Fifth Sacred Thing, Webs of Power:  Notes 
from the Global Uprising, and her latest, The Earth Path.    Starhawk's 
website is www.starhawk.org , and more of her writings and information  on 
her schedule and activities can be found there. 

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