“Our ultimate end must be the creation of the beloved community.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
There are certain points in time throughout history when the qualitative changes taking place and prevailing ideologies matter more than others. I believe this is one of those times.
As we approach 2026 and the 250th anniversary of the United States, a nation-state born from the invasion of Turtle Island, it is also important to keep in focus the year 1492. That date is considered the beginning of Western settler colonialism and racial capitalism, which brought the genocide of Indigenous peoples, the enslavement of Africans, and the destruction of the Earth that continues today. This is our story, one born of violence, murder, rape, othering, and destruction.
In this moment, we are living through species extinction across our planet and a fundamental systemic collapse. Many Riverwise readers will recall the Indigenous teaching: look back seven generations, look forward seven generations. Human beings lived for tens of thousands of years before “modern society.” In the timeline of history, you and I are only here for a blink. But what we do now and how we manage this moment will have deep reverberations for centuries to come.
As you read on, I invite you to keep in mind some important understandings about the prescient dangers of AI:
AI data centers are an environmental disaster: draining water and burning energy; Tech power and corporate power are concentrating in fewer hands, making even the nation-state less relevant; Politicians talk about “regulation,” but millions will never find jobs in this system; Teachers worry about cheating, while disabled communities celebrate new accessibility; Militaries are already using AI to fight wars with drones; Fake news and deepfakes spread confusion and mistrust. (Even I was fooled by an AI-generated speech supposedly from the Pope. It sounded like a powerful manifesto for 21st-century social justice. I was excited, and then two hours later, I was informed by my wife that it was a fake. Scientists warn AI is reshaping how our brains work.
Seeing Giants Fall
In a speech, given in front of Detroit’s Packard Plant in 2014 at the age of 99, the late revolutionary philosopher and longtime Detroit activist, Grace Lee Boggs said: “I feel sorry for anyone who does not live in Detroit, because we see giants fall.”
She meant that the crumbling factory was proof that an era was ending. The age of Western rationalism, the industrial age—faith in unlimited growth, technology above human relationships and the worship of the dollar—was collapsing. We had sold our souls for stuff and status. What comes next can be different: deeper human connections, commitments, collective responsibility and care.
In their 1974 book: Revolution and Evolution the 20th Century, James and Grace Lee Boggs shared a significant idea: The importance of thinking dialectically and naming the fundamental contradiction in the creation of the United States as the struggle between the forces pushing economic and technological advancement versus the forces centering the cultural values of humane sociality, ethics, and a politics of connection and care to advance humanity. This imperative is one we should continue to develop as we consider the implications for a continued infatuation with the ever increasing presence of technology in our daily lives.
James Boggs, Automation, and Outsiders
In 1963, James Boggs published The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker’s Notebook. He wasn’t just an organic intellectual—he was a revolutionist who worked at the Chrysler-Jefferson Assembly for 28 years. He used to say he lived through agriculture, industry, and now automation.
He saw something many marxists and radicals of his time missed: the working class would not keep expanding forever. Automation was already pushing people to the margins. He called them outsiders—folks made obsolete by racial capitalism. AI will multiply the number of outsiders in the years to come.
In the early 1980s, during the Poletown struggle in Detroit, GM and the City of Detroit, with the support of the UAW, forcibly removed thousands of residents from the Poletown neighborhood. The neighborhood was demolished to make way for a new GM assembly plant. Forcible displacement. The city evicted approximately 4,200 people from 1,300 homes, along with destroying 140 businesses, six churches, and a hospital. The neighborhood was predominantly a working-class, multiracial community that included Polish immigrants, African Americans, and many others.
James made a bold claim: “A job ain’t the answer,” and community was more important than “Jobs.” He drew a crucial line between jobs and work. Jobs are about survival in an economy that doesn’t value life. Work is about meaning, community, and social value. That distinction matters even more today.
Revolution, Evolution, and Contradictions
In 1974, James and Grace published Revolution and Evolution in the 20th Century. They studied the dialectics of revolution and argued that the fundamental contradiction in U.S. history was not just labor versus capital, but something deeper: the struggle to advance economically and technologically at the expense of social, human, and cultural values.
This contradiction is at the heart of justifications for the genocide of Indigenous people and enslavement of African people. American exceptionalism requires endless wars and the plunder of the Earth. And it continues to bottom-line today’s obsession with AI and technology, even when these tools threaten our very survival.
That is why this technological moment matters so much. AI is not appearing in a vacuum. It is being introduced within a culture already shaped by more than 250 years of racial capitalism, settler colonialism, and individualism. Unless we confront this fundamental contradiction, AI will only speed up the destruction of life and the deepening of disposability. Violence, individualism, the rising right and counter-revolution is not a recent occurrence, it is baked into the bones of our society. .
Resistance in Our Time
And yet, history is never just about destruction. Over the last two decades we’ve seen movements rise: the U.S. Social Forum, Occupy Wall Street, the responses to Trayvon Martin and George Floyd and the formation ofBlack Lives Matter, Standing Rock, immigrant rights struggles, the Me Too movement, the disability justice movement and trans voices resounding across the country.
Today, global solidarity with the Palestinian people reminds us again that moral clarity and resistance can emerge even in the darkest times. These movements are all part of a cultural struggle against the isolation, violence, and individualism of this society. They are seeds of something new.
What I Saw on the Line
While working on the assembly line at Ford’s Michigan Truck Plant in Wayne, Michigan, from 1970 to 2001, I saw the human side of this contradiction.. I watched the shift from people to robots up close. In the early 1980s, thousands lost jobs. Workers cried on their last day on the line.
When I was first hired in 1970, the plant employed about 4,000 people. By the late ’80s, that number had dropped to 2,400. Outsourcing and automation displaced the rest. The promise that capitalism would always provide jobs collapsed before our eyes. We often joke- “do you think the purpose of capitalism is to give us jobs?
James Boggs was right again: “a job ain’t the answer.” The contradiction between technology and our humanity was being lived out in Detroit.
Technology in My Family
At the same time, I see another side of technology through my son. He has a cognitive disability and does not read or write in the way most of us do. But through voice technology, he communicates, learns, shares his ideas, and expands his world.
For him—and for many disabled people—voice technology and yes, AI can be a gift. This is the tension of our moment: AI can deepen exclusion, but it can also expand access. This contradiction is an important consideration as we think through this moment, what we want from all of this technology, how we foreground humanity, inclusion, compassion and community rather than economic profit.
Islands of Sanity: A Cultural Struggle
The task ahead is to create islands of sanity—communities where work, relationship and care matter more than consumerism and status. The contradiction James and Grace named is still here: will we stay trapped as workers and consumers, or will we grow our souls and recommit to each other?
AI is here to stay. The question is whether we let it deepen disposability or use it to strengthen beloved community. For me, the answer will not come from jobs or regulation. It will come from redefining work, purpose and relationships.
AI represents more than a tool. It is the latest expression of individualism and technological and economic domination. On its current path, it will destroy the planet, our remaining connections, communities and our spirits.
The alternative is centering culture, community and care in our systems. It requires us to redefine success itself, redefine our relationships to time and recognize, as James and Grace used to ask “what time is it on the clock of the world?” The epoch of Western domination is ending, a new epoch being born. Not jobs, not accumulation, not endless growth. Success must mean local, sustainable work, human connection, peace zones for life, liberated zones, beloved communities.
A new world is possible. A new U.S. is necessary. And a new Detroit is already happening.
Questions for Us
- What does it mean to live in the age of the ending nation-state? How do we move toward local visionary freedom?
- As we resist violence and individualism, how do we grow our humanity for the time after fascism?
- How do we reimagine time and face limits to growth? Beyond resisting AI, how do we recommit to care—for ourselves, our neighbors, and the Earth?
- The age of rights is ending. The age of collective responsibility is here. What does it mean to say, “Change begins with self?”
- Why do so many cling to a collapsing system?
- How do we heal and listen across generations?
