Summer

2026

Editorial by Megan Douglass: Still Waters Run Deep: Cultivating Collective Conscious & Conscience

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

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Valerie Jean: April 2026 – The People’s Potluck

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

Baba Wayne Curtis Edited by Kristian Davis Bailey: Artist Statement -“Driven by the Movement”

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

Raina Rising: Movement Meditations

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

Hoda Z. M. Amer: Dreams Of

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

Mary Kamal Gagnon: White Grief

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

Julia Cuneo: A Movement Family

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

Owólabi Aboyade: Dear Young Detroit: “a foundation ain’t the answer”

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

Abraham Paulos: The War Ant App

Sacred Spaces- Art from the Detroit 2050: Future Beyond Billionaires Exhibition

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

CHii Thee Last Poet: We Have Had Enough

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

Josmine Evans: Healing with Hibiscus – Refreshing Mind, Memory and Movement with Tea

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

Breanna Krywko: Motor City

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

Haikus By Eric

The Hydra Mutual Fund: Centering The Solidarity of Choice

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

Erin Posas: Every Day

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

Marilyn Lowen: Detroit Elder Haiku

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

John G. Rodwan, Jr. Poetry

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

Valerie Jean Blakely: The world is burning, and all I want to do is watch the birds.

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

Larry Sparks: Make The Past Serve the Future

Benni Aho: The Paris of The West

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

Bryce Grubbs: RAGE → LOVE

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

Bill Wylie-Kellermann: (Un)Forgotten: Memory as Resistance and Resurrection

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

Interview by Erin Posas: “Detroit Got D Power”: From ghettotech to transit justice, artist DUANE is making big moves.

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

Keeping Memory: How Storytellers Respond During Urgent Time: A Conversation with Cornetta Lane Smith and Ifayomí Chistine

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

Ava Ballew Poetry

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

Josmine Evans: Sweet Potatoes and Peanuts – A Harvest of Resilience

Editor's Note: This is recipe #3 in a 4-part series of recipes graciously shared from the community-inspired kitchen of Josmine Evans, founder of the Detroit-based Indigo Culinary Co. These offerings… Read More

Community. Leadership. Revolution: Sparking Change in Superior Township

Growing up in the Ypsilanti/Ann Arbor area, both Justin Harper and Jamall Bufford, the co-founders of Community, Revolution, Leadership (CLR) Academy, have long recognized the need for more youth-focused community… Read More

Lauren Fardig-Diop: Curfews Won’t Keep Our Kids Safe

The City of Detroit’s new "teen summer safety violence prevention program” intends to hold teens and their parents accountable for young people being out late by enforcing curfews and fines. … Read More

Photo Essay By Valerie Jean Blakely: 2nd Annual WSU Student Walk Out for Palestine

On October 7, in Detroit, more than 50 students and community members walked out of their classrooms and workplaces in protest of two relentless years of genocide in Gaza. Organized… Read More

Jocie Osika: What Technology Can’t Do: Community in Craft

Social media like MySpace and Facebook connect us more than ever, so it has been bitterly confusing to discover that this connection may not be elastic, drawing us together, but… Read More

Victoria Camille and Minister Eric Blount: You Watch Us, We Watch You: Detroit’s Pending Police Video Release Ordinance

Surveillance is everywhere…greenlight cameras, facial recognition, license plate readers, video doorbells, personal security cameras, and every smart device equipped with cameras and/or microphones. Whether at home or in public, someone… Read More

Dain Evans: AI Is Coming For Jobs, And We Need Systems Change To Survive It

"Watch this," I said, pulling up my audio recording app. We were in my friend's kitchen, voices echoing off the tile floor and granite countertops. The sounds of boiling water… Read More

N.A. Laster: Back To Sticks

I wish we could gather the guns and the steel, The bombs that we build and the pain that we feel, Toss it all out in the depths of the… Read More

John Telford: The 13th Hour – A Disquieting Quatrain

Xenophobic, ethnocentric, racist, classist kinds Of misanthropically myopic, microscopic minds Mask beneath intolerance a frightful face of fear That's… Read More

James Perkinson: Can AI Be Embraced As Kin?

A recent conversation with an activist friend unfolded around a frequently voiced conviction: “AI is here to stay, so we have to deal with it.” And the exchange then wrestled… Read More

One Single Rose®: Flykus /fly-koos/

Prompt: AI Artificial intelligence won’t make emotional decisions. ©2025 Flyku for YOU… By One Single Rose® Prompt: Tech Old school foundations crumble when new school upgrades can’t stand on business…… Read More

Annika Tutzer: How can we make A.I work for the benefit of humanity?

“Circuits of Care” What if we taught machines to care— not just to sort, compute, compare, but to sit beside a quiet bed, to smooth the pillow near your head,… Read More

Rev. Lucious Conway: Keeping the Gate: Why I Won’t Trade Freedom for a False Sense of Safety

I didn’t just hear about AI facial recognition on the news — I acted on it. After a string of auto break-ins in my gated townhouse parking lot, I went… Read More

Kevin L. Knowles: Sally Phone

Sally’s parents had mobile devices to do their business daily. Mommy and daddy were always busy and this drove Sally crazy. I want you to come and play with me… Read More