At 91, Grace Lee Boggs still regularly travels the country for speaking engagements, providing guidance to activists and organizers on her experience with social justice movements and her vision for the future.  All this is done in addition to her usual commitments as an activist in Detroit, running the Boggs Center and participating in labor, civil rights and people of color movements in the city.

On Friday, May 4th, I once again had the chance to hear Grace Lee Boggs speak in New York City.  Although I have heard her speak several times in the past, this time the theme of Grace’s speech was Martin and Malcolm—the connections, common threads, and shared lessons we can take from these two visionaries.  The event took place at the Brecht Forum in Greenwich Village, as community members packed into the space to hear her words.

A theme established not only by Grace, but by the audience was the value of “transformative organizing.”  Social justice movements must not only be limited to having demands met, winning campaigns, although successes should surely be celebrated and sought after.  However, a question that activists must ask themselves, how have we, our organization, our community, and the movement at large changed and grown through the process of organizing?  If the answer is positive, then the organizing effort has been successful, regardless of whether all of our demands were met.

The transformative power of organizing our communities wove its way into Grace’s words, and into the audience’s questions and comments after her speech.  Through all of the other topics covered—urban rebellions, the non-profit industrial complex, the weariness and potential of Detroit, and the revolutionary aspect of living simply—the gathering brought us collectively back to what Martin and Malcolm had established through their leadership: Organizing communities has the power to change us as individuals as communities, to dare to believe that injustice and oppression are not inevitable, to believe that we deserve better.  It is through the transformative power of organizing that we raise the consciousness of our communities and ourselves.