Grace Lee Boggs

Grace Lee Boggs (1925-2015) was an activist and community organizer for more than 60 years and is the author of the autobiography "Living for Change: An Autobiography" and, with Scott Kurashige, "The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century."
Articles by this author
Views Monday, September 13, 2010 The Good Food Evolution "Every year 76 million cases of foodborne illnesses occur, leading to about 300,000 hospitalizations and 5000 deaths." (New York Times, Sept. 4, 2010) That's because most Americans still believe we have no alternative to the food produced by agribusinesses who care as little about our health as they do about the health of the chickens, turkeys, cows and pigs, so tightly packed in pens and cages on factory farms that the floor is scarcely visible, and where visible, is covered with excrement. Read more |
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Views Monday, August 23, 2010 Living for Change: If Not Now, When? I won't be marching with Jesse Jackson in the March called by the UAW and the NAACP to commemorate the August 28, 1963 March on Washington. That's not only because at 95 my marching days are over. As early as 1963, Malcolm X called the "I have a Dream" March a "Farce on Washington" because John Lewis had been forced to delete from his speech any references to Revolution and Power by the MOW's "Big 6" organizers: A. Philip Randolph, Dr. King/SCLC, Roy Wilkins/ NAACP, James Farmer/CORE, Whitney Young/Urban League, John Lewis/SNCC. Read more |
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Views Monday, July 12, 2010 The 2nd US Social Forum: ReBuilding and ReDefining the USA Eleven score and three years ago 55 delegates -- mostly lawyers, merchants, planters and slaveowners, representing their personal and regional interests, but calling themselves “We, the people of the United States” -- met in the State House in Philadelphia (where the Declaration of Independence had been signed 11 years earlier) to write the Constitution for the new U.S. government. Read more |
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Views Saturday, December 19, 2009 Climate Change Movement Builds at Copenhagen Climate-change activists at Copenhagen will argue that, far from solving the climate crisis, carbon-trading represents the unprecedented privatization of the atmosphere, and that offsets and sinks threaten to become a resource grab of colossal proportions. Read more |
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Views Saturday, April 05, 2008 Living for Change: Obama and MLK The new energies being unleashed by Barack Obama hold great promise. In his person and prose Obama embodies the achievements of the movements of the 20th century and the hope that we can become the change we want to see in the 21st century. To build the movement for change will not be easy. The challenges we face demand profound changes not only in our institutions but in ourselves. To become part of the solution, we must recognize that we are a large part of the problem. Read more |
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Views Wednesday, January 16, 2008 King's Legacy of Change I have had the privilege of participating in most of the great humanizing movements of the second half of the last century: peace, labor, civil rights, black power, women's rights, Asian-American rights and environmental justice. Each was a tremendously transformative experience, expanding my understanding of what it means to be an American and a human being, challenging me to become more visionary and creative in developing strategies to bring about radical social change. Read more |