Motivate Citizen Participation: New essay by Grace Lee Boggs Available Online
In October 2003, Detroit-based activist, cultural worker, and octogenarian Grace Lee Boggs energized and inspired a national gathering of artists, arts organization and community leaders, and activists with her speech at Animating Democracy's National Exchange on Art & Civic Dialogue. Describing a United States that is becoming increasingly jobless; jeopardizing its youth in a problem-wrought education system; and resented for its economic, military, and cultural domination, she implored, "Can we create a new paradigm of our selfhood and our nationhood?" In Boggs' subsequent essay, she expands on ideas seeded at that gathering. Boggs' message is timely and inspiring as communities seek to motivate citizen participation in upcoming elections and other critical civic concerns.
