Riverwise is a community-led/driven/created social justice magazine emerging from organizing, arts, culture & liberation work being done in Detroit and beyond.
Movement. This is a word that gets bandied about regularly. It is also one that isn’t always so clear and carries many meanings. Meditation. This is a word that we… Read More
In the fall of 2025, the federal government came to a halt, unable to reach an agreement on a national budget. By October, word spread across the US that, beginning… Read More
I don’t like explaining my work. I like to leave it up to people to decide.I like to joke that their interpretation is usually better than mine. If I have… Read More
Writer. Birthworker. Abọriṣa Abolitionist. Mother. All of my identities are grounded in birth, transformation, and new ways of being. In my youth, I considered myself an activist. As a younger… Read More
In 2017, artist Barbara Fox (BF) designed a coin for the state of New Jersey, celebrating immigrant families as they enter through Ellis Island in pursuit of the American Dream.… Read More
Mural by Mary Gagnon located at the Artist Village in Brightmore, MI. I grew up in East Dearborn, the daughter of Arab immigrants, learning early that my body was always… Read More
My earliest memory is of a red metal wagon, a little rusty, covered in “No Scab Papers” bumper stickers. My childhood best friend and I remember holding hands from atop… Read More
Featured article from the "Future Beyond Billionaires" exhibit held at Swords into Plowshares Peace Gallery. I’m writing this to you because you love Detroit; you build communities of care and… Read More
In Winter 2025, Riverwise partnered up with our friends at the Swords Into Plowshares Peace Center and Gallery for the Detroit 2050: Future Beyond Billionaires exhibition, which ran from November… Read More
Featured article from the "Future Beyond Billionaires" exhibit held at Swords into Plowshares Peace Gallery. We have had enough of your governments We have had enough of your schools We… Read More
Editor’s Note: This recipe is a part of a series graciously offered from the community inspired kitchen of Josmine Evans, founder of the Detroit based Indigo Culinary Co. We hope… Read More
They demolished our neighborhoods so they could put up highways. They put up highways so they could build and sell cars. They sold cars so they could build and sell… Read More
Abortion may be protected in Michigan, but protection has never guaranteed access. For many people across the state, getting care is shaped by cost, distance, clinic closures, stigma, and the… Read More
This poem was written on a day when I was supposed to be doing grad school homework. I felt too distracted. I had spent much of the semester processing the… Read More
I miss the fist Joe miss my parents, grandparents & the Bob-lo Boat Note: Detroit Poet Laureate jessica Care moore recently invited Detroiters to write haiku for our city, so… Read More
Weather Report Unlike white men wearing short pants in Midwestern winter, wholly unworried that the car might not start – no waiting for buses with these guys – and confident… Read More
I like to be very still. Very quiet and listen to them sing. Then I am not thinking about Genocide, ecocide. Drones, bombs, and war. I am most certainly not… Read More
She is bass lines and sirens. She is your relaxing reward for a day of hard work. She slaps the back of your head when you say something stupid. She… Read More
When I sit cross-legged in a handstand in contemplation on action - my action - anger spills onto my living room floors. Movement was spurred by anger, an anger that… Read More
Think Detroit in the 1930’s: religious hate radio is being invented here - broadcasting white supremacy and antisemitism; corporate industrialists openly embrace fascism and turn guns first on the homeless… Read More
Meet DUANE: Still smoldering from the late March 2026 cover of the Detroit Metro Times, working with Godmother of House, DJ Stacey “Hotwaxx” Hale, catwalking to open a fashion show,… Read More
A recent executive order targeting exhibits deemed “divisive” or “race-centered” has placed institutions like the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture under pressure—raising urgent questions about how… Read More
Whatever You’ll Let Me You are not an easy person To come by, that is. Like a warm day in February, Melting the top two layers of compounded snow.… Read More
To many, the climate crisis is not given a thought. And to many, they do not realize that's where you’re caught amidst psychological warfare. A warfare that convinces us that is… Read More
Breathe…Do you feel it? Mother Earth left her soulful whispers in there. You take a deep breath in and feel it. You feel the crud of those who have to… Read More
I fell asleep sheltered by a willow tree that wept for the state of Detroit in 2023. I doze and woke, woke and dozed on a Belle Isle park bench… Read More
“Solvent” an exhibition by Halima Afi Cassells and Shanna Merola invokes the world between memory, history, collective storytelling, and liberation at the water’s edge. “Mama Lila” Cabbil - October 23rd,… Read More
I still find Lila’s hair pins underneath and between my car seats. I would pick her up at the big, red-trimmed house on Wildemere for meetings. She would always be… Read More
Artist Statement: These pieces are based on a camping trip I took to Iceland a few years ago. I couldn't believe how varied the landscape was - sometimes even within… Read More
"Nakba" is the Arabic word for catastrophe. It refers to the violent expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians from their land on May 15, 1948. From May 26 - June 17th… Read More
By Malu Castro & Michelle Martinez, This paper was adapted from a talk given at Detroit’s 2023 Concert of Colors in 2023 and builds on ideas we are teaching at… Read More
Siyo, greetings and good day. Jesse Deer In Water here, organizer and speaker for Citizens’ Resistance At Fermi Two (CRAFT). CRAFT is an Indigenous-led, intergenerational, multi-racial, and cross-cultural grassroots organization… Read More
Hope was a young girl who lived in the land of Gladness. Hope's hair was made of sunshine; her freckles were bits of stardust. Hope's meals came from the Spring… Read More
Darkness. Scamper to the window, Swipe aside the dusty curtain. I am not the only one looking out into the night. I hold one of the sets of eyes straining… Read More
We are gone in ourselves. One second we try and avoid knocking down the spider’s web, only to walk right through it a minute later, unnoticed. We are cut like… Read More
“No transformation without a crisis.” - Rev. Dr. Barbara Holmes This year is already the hottest year on record. When I share photos and stories about my work in a… Read More
Young, with lead capped molars, his curling fro is close cropped, kept close, like many a revolutionary called up back then for exigent circumstances: to rumble in a jungle… Read More
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2023
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2023
Special Citizen Empowerment Issue
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2021
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2021
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2021
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