final detroit 2012 summer update #13

yes, i know that i am a day late with the 13th and final update on detroit 2012. i had to travel back across country and clean and grocery shop and make chili and burn candles and think about things quietly in my own home. tomorrow we begin a study group i am facilitating on grace lee boggs' the next american revolution. i am trying to get organized after all that soft wandering we undertook together these past two weeks. i began a new journal, one with a peacock in foil - a gift from my friend, the poet amber dipietra. i wrote that, for the first time, i feel like an adult. i am heading somewhere with the people i love and it is different than where we've been.

tai amri, his dad dwight, step-mom diane, christopher and i went to the charles wright african american museum saturday. it was so beautiful and so wretched. the prettiest fact presented, by far, being that every single one of us was born of a single african woman. but then soon the belly of the ship that you step down into. mannequins upon mannequins shackled together on wooden shelves. they tried to make the faces look scared enough. impossible. the innuendo of it alone was enough to stir the imagination, tho. they had a little panel on the man who had been a slave trader, but later saw the light and quit to become a preacher. he wrote amazing grace. "t'was grace that saved a wretch like me..."

we went around and got a last round of sweaty hugs at the detroit summer 20th anniversary celebration and headed to the airport. detroit, i shed a couple of tears when the plane took off, did you know it? came home to chilly oakland and used a hoodie to walk to the car. and now we are back to our lives in oakland. this morning tai amri gave a beautiful sermon on detroit and work and jobs and peace. tomorrow, i go back to the office for the first time in two weeks. 

i was thinking earlier that part of my not wanting to write this last update was about my not wanting to finish writing you all my thoughts on revolution and grace and peace and then i thought, heck no, you should just keep on blogging regularly about these things, and so i have decided i will, tho once a week is more likely than every two days. if you want, keep reading on my blog from now on. i still have a ton of pictures and some video to share, as well. i am actually glad that mercury is retrograde right now, because that is an excellent time for reviewing and refining what has just happened, and i hope we all take time to do that and to share it. at the end of the new work talk at the boggs center with both frithjof and grace,  she gave us an assignment that i will remind my cohorts of here. i urge the rest of you to take it up as well: she asked us all write a paragraph or short paper on next steps toward independent electricity production in our communities, or toward any aspect of new work in our communities. i'll post mine on my blog when i write it, as well as sending it to grace at the boggs center. please join me. 

for all of you who supported our indiegogo campaign to get to detroit, you are a part of this project and we thank you. for all of you who worked shoulder to shoulder with us this week, we love you. 

with love and outstretched fingers,

:michelle 

working [class] reading series

:working [class] reading series

* Amee Puckett Boswell in conversation re: working, illness, property, management, momness and more
* Mg Roberts as featured poet
* and David Brazil, Steve Farmer, Sara Larsen, Lauren Levin, and Suzanne Stein - some of the organizing members of the Poetic Labor Project - filling us in on their symposium and blog (http://www.labday2010.blogspot.com/)

bring a covered dish or beverage. bring some pomes or almost poems. bring your curiosity about poetry, your thoughts on work or class or access. also, think christmas lights, driveway, old couches, kids and dogs, barbeque, after party.

:first fridays beginning may 6, 2011
:8pm at michelle puckett’s house
:702 w. macarthur blvd
:oakland, ca

with this series we aim to soften things up. we are thinking of people who interest us and then asking them what poems or thoughts they might have about work, bodies at work, working class perspectives on the world, stories of capitalism, commonality, and the millions of offshoots poetry allows us to consider given these things. we want to mix scenes and get comfie. we want hot dogs.

what we are looking for:

1. any work, on any topic, by people who identify as raised-poor or working class.
2. work from people from other classes, granted it considers deeply the plight and dignity of working people and casts them centrally in the writing.
3. also, we want to facilitate a short dialogue with a worker – most often one who does not identify as a “writer” – each month. we will look at poetics and the work of words through a loose lens of labor and the body that performs it.

it is important to say that this series consciously considers physical bodies. the venue, a garage, will have space heaters and blankets and fans if oakland nights get hot. it is also completely wheelchair accessible, though we really regret to say that bathrooms are upstairs. assistance will be provided to anyone who needs it and there is a bathroom at the gas station across the street and at macarthur BART.

we think just by talking about couches and kids and bathrooms we are making for a new tone as far as reading series go. we hope you’ll join us. hot dogs will be provided but BYOB.

:michelle puckett & amber dipietra

working.class.reading@gmail.com