A new dream

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

By Grace Lee Boggs
Special to the Michigan Citizen

At this time on the clock of the planet, of the world, our country and our city, I cannot get out of my mind “The Second Coming,” the famous “Things Fall Apart” poem written by William Butler Yeats nearly 100 years ago, 1919, in the wake of the First World War and the 1917 Russian Revolution.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction,

While the worst

Are full of passionate intensity

By contrast, in the U.S.A. today and especially in Detroit, we are shaking the world with a new dream.  This is because

- Detroit’s devastation by deindustrialization has provided us with the space and place to begin anew.

n-We are bringing the country back into the city,  growing our own food instead of worsening global warming by trucking  it in from distant factory  farms.

- We are making a radical revolution of values, a cultural  revolution as profound as the transition from agriculture to industry 500 years ago.

- With passionate conviction we are Re-Imagining Work and Education.

- Our goal is to create Dr. King’s beloved communities.

Contact Grace Lee Boggs at boggscenter@boggscenter.org