Dear Family: What a journey this has been. Words cannot convey just how completely exhausted I am from all of the deep thinking, deep connecting and traveling back and forth from place to place. I've been stretched but I know there is more that I can do, and places that I can still go with my thinking. Friday was the last full day of our trip and we spent much of it doing touristy things. The tourist in us actually began Thursday night when we went out for Coney Island hot dogs, like the Detroit equivalent to the Philly Cheesesteak (though you know which one I'm going to say I like better), it's basically a chili dog with onions and mustard. Yeah I know, so good for the soul, but when in Detroit. I can't say I didn't enjoy it, I also can't say that I'll ever have one again, but never say never right? Friday was a more substantial day. After waking up for our last morning at our friends' place in Gross Pointe we wandered over to the Vedic Village Gardens where they work as farmers. It was beautiful to see the strange peas, the trellises of tomatoes and watermelon and the rows and rows of dark green leafy magic. Ellie and Michael accompanied us, taught us, and discovered with us that they are a part of the rebirth and reimagining of Detroit. We are so grateful to them. After we left them we decided to to take Rich Feldman up on his suggestion to go and to really experience the murals of Diego Rivera at the Detroit Institute of Art. We had already planned to visit some museums on Friday because we knew that one of our favorite musicians, Patti Smith, had a photography exhibit there. We stopped at her exhibit and I found myself floored at the intimacy with which she approaches photography, especially when I discovered that her initial reasons for taking photos had to do with her desire to know two of her grandmothers who died before she was born. Photography then becomes a method of touching the untouchable. She also utilized her photography to capture moments and the essence of those she loved and admired, for example, within hours of his death she had photographed the bed of Jim Carrol, her friend and an individual she considered to be "the most beautiful poet of my generation". In our image laden world I tend to forget the potency that a photograph can take. Nothing, however, could compare to seeing the murals of Diego Rivera of Industrial Detroit. It's hard to imagine such a mural being commissioned today, by any city, that lays so bare the brutality of their cash crop. There's the green of the skin of the workers dealing with toxic chemicals; the bloodshot eyes of the workers; the hellish flames of the furnace; the beauty of nature juxtoposed against the wretched conditions we put it under; the embryo in the body of the earth that we slice with our machines; the search for immortality that ruins the souls of our medical industry; the hunched backs of leaving workers; Henry Ford, face twisted, attempting to control the minds of the workers; people in gas masks making bombs; the wealthy portrayed cartoonishly as they come to observe the factory; the old gods who demanded blood for power being replaced with machines who demand work; and the goddesses of fertility. I'll never look at a mural the same again, this was truly the standard, and yet it lay behind the walls of the museum rather than on the walls of our street corners where it belongs. After we left the mural we were planning to go to the Charles Wright African American Museum but had gotten there too late and so decided instead to make our way to the Motown Museum. Going from Diego Rivera to Motown was a bit surreal. Having seen and learned so much about Detroit in our two weeks I began to think about how Motown was coming into prominence during the period of history where the might of the factories was beginning to wane. Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown, worked his last job before his endeavor in the music industry in the Ford Plants. He said it was the worse job he ever had, and then began to employ some of the same lessons he learned in the factory in his own business. The stamp of industrialization was everywhere to me in HIitsville U.S.A. Studios. They pumped out hits like Ford pumped out cars, only this time the machines doing the work were human beings. As they say, you come in raw materials and you go out a star. And like any product, your expect to produce, you cease producing, you cease having any value in this system. Berry Gordy set the bar for the music industry that has suffered more than its share of critique over the years, and of course is not the fault of Berry Gordy. Motown is but a microcosm of something much bigger than it, and nothing has made this clearer to me than the lives of Black musicians that have been lost in recent years. Our music INDUSTRY, in fact our celebrity industry, wants to squeeze everything out of us that it possibly can. And we the people demand it. If our favorite artist doesn't come out with something every year or so we throw fits like they owe us something. And when they crack they are severely ridiculed. And after this is accomplished we do the same to one another and ourselves. But that's the thing, we aren't machines, and this world isn't a factory. We can't produce endlessly without rest, and no one should be able to demand of us things that we are not willing to give, that's not being successful, that's called slavery. I hope that we all remember that next time someone has expectations of us at the detriment of our own well beings. Industrialization cannot get the best of us. Peace, Tai Amri

The End of History

“Unless we take agency and action in making history, it’s hard to know what’s going on.” - Rich Feldman (Paraphrase) Last night I had dinner with my Ann Arbor family and six of my friends. My father is a constant reminder of how essential history is for the {r}evolution of humanity. As we sat around the table he told my own history, both flattering and unflattering portions. The truth is that without my family there are huge parts of my life that I would have no clue about because my age had not allowed me to process it. And this sense of history and identity extends far beyond me, as my father also is a genealogist and is frequently reminding me of my lineage, helping me to trace where I come from and in so doing helping me to see where I need to go. Wednesday I spent time with the Detroit historian Rich Feldman. One of the questions that has been asked several times in our time here in Detroit is, “What time is it on the clock of the world?” Standing at the now defunct Packard Plant with Rich, he pointed it out where Detroit stands on that clock. He traces this current period of time in a 500 year swath, and he marks it’s beginning in a number of different ways which are: 1) The transatlantic slave trade 2) The rise of individualism 3) The turning of the EARTH into LAND, from protecting the planet to exploiting it and exchanging it for profit 4) The turning of WORK for our community into JOBS for corporations 5) The destruction of women’s way of knowing and the earth’s way of knowing and replacing it with the dominance of “experts” 6) The earth being used and abused for economic advancement Rich confronted what has become an assumed truth in our society, that knowledge is power, and spoke about how indeed it is this belief that has led us to ignore the education of our hearts and our souls and has led us to this current economic system that is almost completely devoid of any moral accountability. Perhaps there is nowhere in America that that is clearer than in Detroit, perhaps and perhaps there is nowhere in America that we can see so clearly that this 500 year period is coming to an end and is no longer working than in the Rust Belt. To prove this point Rich spoke extensively about the writings and teachings of Jimmy Boggs, the late husband of Grace Lee Boggs. Jimmy saw the ending of the age in a number of ways: First in the end of the labor movement and the rise of civil rights, because the agribusiness was overcome by the industrial revolution and then the factories of the cities that drew so many people from their farms began to move out into the suburbs, disenfranchising those who were already in many ways disenfranchised; Christopher, mi hermano in {r}evolution pointed out to me that the second big vision of Jimmy was the rise of the underclass/outsider class being replaced by robotics, where workers were no longer needed, there is an excess of human beings, 2.3 million prisoners, and super unemployment, something else that we must overstand is that the U.S. isn’t just a part of the evil empire of the New Age, but that after World War II it becomes The World Super Power, and that perhaps this was the plan all along, to bomb the hell out of Europe and Japan so that we could dominate the world market, which we had for about 35 years, sending our energy cartels all over the world to control the oil and gas market); third Jimmy pointed out that this movement is not just about socialism, but about how to use our technological knowledge for the advancement of humanity rather than for economic dominance and profitability. The question is always, how do we become engaged citizens rather than just consumers and producers? So here we are, in this world where there are at least a billion unemployed human beings, where there is a completely disenfranchised underclass of people, like those in our prison systems and those who get out of it and become returned citizens, where energy cartels are trying to run things, and where the empire is trying to convince us that unions, who Rich tells us have the responsibility to be a part of our much needed social transformation, and I’m trying to place myself on the clock of the world. I live in Oakland, I’m from Philly, and right now I’m checking out Detroit, and as I look around at what our cities are trying to do, it seems to me that all of our money seems to be going into civic centers, stadiums, condominiums, trying to build up our cities for big business like we were trying to build up our factories for big business 500 years ago. One of the most chilling things that I heard from Rich was that Detroit used to be the 6th or 7th largest city in America, that’s what number Philadelphia is today. So when Rich asks what will the world look like 107 years from now, tracking this past 107 year cycle in Detroit, we must all start asking ourselves if we will be living in the ruins of a condo world or in the green from the sweat of a new American {r}evolution. I know which path I want to choose, do you? One love, Tai Amri (aka Baby Pastor)