LIVING FOR CHANGE
The Next American Revolution
By Grace Lee Boggs
Left Forum Closing Plenary, Cooper Union
New York, March 16, 2008
Read the full text here.
Here’s my own abridged version for those of you without the time to read the whole thing (though it was almost impossible to pick out the important parts, the speech was so rich. I encourage you to read it all):
I have decided to talk about the next American Revolution because I believe it is not only the key to global survival but also the most important step we can take in this period to build a new, more human and more socially and ecologically responsible nation that all of us, in every walk of life, whatever our race, ethnicity, gender, faith or national origin, will be proud to call our own.
I also feel that it would be a shame if we left this historic gathering in this Great Hall, at this pivotal time in our country’s history –when the power structure is obviously unable to resolve the twin crises of global wars and global warming, when millions are losing
their jobs and homes, when Obama’s call for change is energizing so many young people and independents, and when white workers in Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania are reacting like victims — without discussing the next American revolution.
Since it is hard to struggle for something which you haven’t struggled to define and name, my aim this evening, quite frankly, is to initiate impassioned discussions about the next American revolution everywhere, in groups, small and large.
… [After years of organizing and study] we became increasingly convinced that our revolution in our country in the late 20th century had to be radically different from the revolutions that had taken place in pre-or-non-industrialized countries like Russia, Cuba, China or Vietnam. Those revolutions had been made not only to correct injustices but to achieve rapid economic growth. By contrast, as citizens of a nation which had achieved its rapid economic growth and prosperity at the expense of African Americans, Native Americans, other people of color, and peoples all over the world, our priority had to be correcting the injustices and backwardness of our relationships with one another, with other countries and with the Earth.
… “The revolution to be made in the United States,” Jimmy wrote, nearly 30 years before 9/11, “will be the first revolution in history to require the masses to make material sacrifices rather than to acquire more material things. We must give up many of the things which this country has enjoyed at the expense of damning over one third of the world into a state of underdevelopment, ignorance, disease and early death.” Until that takes place, “this country will not be safe for the world and revolutionary warfare on an international scale against the United States will remain the wave of the present.”
“It is obviously going to take a tremendous transformation to prepare the people of the United States for these new social goals.” Jimmy continued. “But potential revolutionaries can only become true revolutionaries if they take the side of those who believe that humanity can be transformed.”
… The courage, commitment and strategies required for this kind of revolution are very different from those required to storm the Kremlin or the White House. Instead of viewing the American people as masses to be mobilized in increasingly aggressive struggles for higher wages, better jobs or guaranteed health care, we must have the
courage to challenge them and ourselves to engage in activities that build a new and better world by improving the physical, psychological, political and spiritual health of ourselves, our families, our communities, our cities, our world and our planet.
… This vision of an American revolution as transformation is the one projected by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his April 4, 1967 anti-Vietnam war speech. As Vincent Harding, Martin’s close friend and colleague, put it recently on Democracy Now, King was calling on us to redeem the soul of America. Speaking for the weak, the poor, the
despairing and the alienated, in our inner cities and in the rice paddies of Vietnam, he was urging us to become a more mature people by making a radical revolution not only against racism but against materialism and militarism. He was challenging us to “rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world.”
In Detroit we are engaged in this “long and beautiful struggle for a new world,” not because of King’s influence (we identified more with Malcolm) but because we have learned through our own experience that just changing the color of those in political power was not enough to stem the devastation of our city resulting from deindustrialization.
Despite the huge differences in local conditions, our Detroit-City of Hope campaign has more in common with the struggles of the Zapatistas in Chiapas than with the 1917 Russian Revolution because it involves a paradigm shift in the concept of revolution.
One way to understand the paradigm shift is by contrasting our vision of health in a revolutionary America with the health care programs offered by the Democratic presidential front-runners.
Hillary’s and Obama’s “health care” programs are really insurance programs having more to do with feeding the already monstrous medical-industrial complex than with our physical, mental and spiritual health. By contrast, once we understand that our schools
are in such crisis because they were created a hundred years ago in the industrial epoch to prepare children to become cogs in the economic machine; once we recognize that our challenge in the 21st century is to engage our children from K-12 in problem-solving and community-building activities, our children and young people will
become participants in caring for their own health and that of our families and communities. Eating food they’ve grown for themselves, creating and sharing information from the Net, and organizing health festivals for the community, they will not only be caring for their own health. They will be helping to heal our communities.
Our campaign involves rebuilding, redefining and respiriting Detroit from the ground up: growing food on abandoned lots, reinventing education to include children in community-building, creating co-operatives to produce local goods for local needs, developing Peace Zones to transform our relationships with one another in our homes and on our streets, replacing punitive justice with Restorative Justice programs to keep non-violent offenders in our communities and out of prisons that not only misspend billions much needed for roads and schools but turn minor offenders into hardened criminals.
… This kind of transformation is what the next American revolution is about. It is not a single event but a process. It involves all of us, from many different walks of life, ethnicities, national origins, sexual orientations, faiths. At the same time, based on our experiences in Detroit and the panels I attended at this weekend’s Forum, I see the Millennial generation playing a pivotal role. As Frantz Fanon put it in The Wretched of the Earth, “Each generation, coming out of obscurity, must define its mission and fulfill or betray it.”
3 Comments
April 9, 2009 at 12:29 pm
I’m curious. How do you expect to pay for the rebuilding of our infrastructure, education of our children, and medical care for our people without the money making evil of a commercial or industrialized society? And what makes you think that it’s ok to talk about “white workers” acting like victims. What would your response be if someone put up a blog talking negatively about the “black workers.” The socialist ideas you speak of such as providing all with health care sound wonderful. However, they have the same basic flaw that all socialist ideas have; they take away the incentive to work harder and the drive to be inventive and productive. Dr. Kings message was one of equality and peace. He believed that everyone had an equal right to work hard for the things they wanted in life. He did not believe, however, that those things should be handed to anyone simply because they have the ability to turn oxygen into carbondioxide. The problem with Obama rallying our youth is that he isn’t inspiring them with new ideas or beliefs. He’s bribing them with free health care, refunds on taxes they haven’t paid, and a flawed sense of entitlement. He’s telling them that the way to help the wage earner is to take from the wage payer. Barack Obama hasn’t inspired these people. He’s bribed them. You should be ashamed of yourself for doing the same.
May 11, 2009 at 2:00 am
Jeremy, you claim that programs designed to provide a better standard of living for the poor and working classes discourages hard work. You are assuming we live in a society where hard work = more profit. Would you be bold enough to claim that CEOs, Politicians, Celebrities and Athletes who make millions of dollars each year work harder than farmers, factory workers, teachers, and soldiers who often struggle to provide basic needs to themselves and their families?
September 6, 2009 at 2:06 am
It’s interesting how you reference only Socialist Communist Revolutions. You must be a devout Communist like Van Jones.
I suggest, since you seem to like Communist Countries so much that you go to one of those countries and live there instead of trying to destroy the U.S.A.