Winter

2025

Megan Douglass: Editorial – The Dialectic of Grief and Healing

If you’ve spent any time in Detroit in the social justice world, you’ve probably heard of thinking dialectically as a way to engage with, analyze, and contend with big ideas… Read More

One Single Rose®️: Bag Lady

Bag lady, I know your shoulders are weighed down from weight of the world residing inside your bags— Pain Discrimination Racial profiling Heartache Low self-esteem... The stitching is coming apart… Read More

Perseis Skipper: Healing, healing

Healing, healing is something we all must do. if it’s for a sinking heart, or grief, maybe self reflection? I too, want to heal the inner child that is crying… Read More

Community Wins

Kim Redigan: On Picking Apples in a Time of Genocide

It’s one of those autumn afternoons in Michigan when October holds its breath as the brilliance reaches its fleeting peak. Bent branches drop flecked apples to the earth while leaves… Read More

Veronica Trevino: The world is coming to an end

The world always feels like its ending I have to be everywhere at once and everything feels impossible I am unprepared, a mess, and am rushing at all times I… Read More

Mary Gagnon: Deir Al-Baleh

Benjamin eats burning tents for breakfast. Smoldering and braided with decay. Soaked in the oxidized blood of children. His arteries are clogged with melted I.V. lines and the last breaths… Read More

Danielle Thompson: Disaster and Deafness: Centering Community Support And Disability Awareness in the Age of Climate Change

The World Health Organization estimates that now roughly 1.3 billion people suffer from some form of disability and warns that disability prevalence is on the rise. However, the exact statistics… Read More

Marcia Lee: 20 years of grace – a love letter to Detroit

Dear Detroit, You were my first love, my heart’s home. You have helped me to come home to myself. You have shown me, through your waterways, the way you grow… Read More

Hadassah Greensky: Indigenous Peoples Day in Detroit

Detroit, Michigan — otherwise known as Waawiyaatanong — where the curved shores meet, the area between Windsor and Detroit — along the Detroit River corridor, occupied territory of the Anishinaabek.… Read More

Jenny Teed: Charity Hicks Memorial Tree Reflection

I have deep gratitude for Hadassah Greensky for including a stop at Charity's Tree, as part of the Water Walk on Waabizii Mnising (also known as Belle Isle) as part… Read More

Kristian Davis Bailey, Feedom Freedom Growers, and Ghazzah Comrades: iamWe – A Cross-Pollination Trip from Detroit & Ghazzah to Puerto Rico

In early January, I booked a last-minute ticket to Puerto Rico with one of my closest friends and comrades - RG. At that point, RG had suffered through three months… Read More

Sacred Spaces: Boggs School 5th Grade Class

Ian Dickinson These healing works come to us from members of the 5th grade class at the James and Grace Lee Boggs School in Detroit. This November they came to… Read More

Ru Colvin: Wisdom

You ever think of how wise trees must be? Some of them have been here for hundreds of years.. can you imagine the stories they’d tell if they could talk?… Read More

Andrew Kaplowitz: Home Sick on Saturday Night

“May we all heal at the speed of land” -meital yaniv The sound of the bath running blends with the pitter patter of my fingers on the keys. A cup… Read More

Hrishika Makker: Invincible

I am broken pieces of diamond, Broken, but still shining in the dark They managed to break me To carve Words I don't want to believe onto me Switched the… Read More

Birch Kemp: An Experiment in Hope

Land. Instead of holding it back let’s give it back. What does it mean to hold land in a bank? Land Bank? What a perverse concept. However, Land Bank is… Read More

John Telford: ‘ZEITGEISTIAN WISHES THREE’

Tomas Garberding: The Emerald Dream

Lush emerald surroundings sing their tune in the morning A betrodden but comforting scene, peaceful times Soft and sensitive conversation taking place, fresh with an evoking sensitivity The trip is… Read More

Monica Isaac: George Jackson

Monica is a mixed media artist living on the eastside of Detroit. Recognizing art as a tool of education and resistance shapes my creative work. Specifically, I use Film photography… Read More

Madison Katrina Flood: Naked Like Water

Naked Like Water unlearn and remember you can swim sinuously surrender to serendipity breathe simultaneously… Read More

Joanne Coutts: Mapping Detroit Buried Waterways – Part II: Building Relationship with the Creeks

Editor’s Note: This article is part 2 of a series. Part I was published in the Fall 2023 edition of Riverwise. Read it online @bit.ly/waterwayspartone or by going to riverwisedetroit.org… Read More

Gigi Boyd: Gathering The Pieces

The night after the results came in, I sat alone, a heaviness pressing against my chest. The air felt different, colder, chauvinistic as if the sun had burned through the… Read More

© Safara Parrott: Eulogy for a Stone Fruit Tree

I woke up to find you already kissing the ground from which you were raised /blood rush and overwhelmed / I did nothing/ but let out a small earnest sigh… Read More

Josmine Evans: Collard Greens and the Politics of Resilience

Editor’s Note: As an offering to the Riverwise Community, over the next four editions we will feature a special recipe and it’s story from the community inspired kitchen of Josmine… Read More

Lauren Silver: Found Objects, Found Connections: Art As A Pathway To Healing

Ghosts, mixed-medium collage with sticks and fibers 2024 My Melody, mixed-medium fiber assemblage with found objects, dried botanicals, and feathers 2024 Nest, Self Portrait, mixed-medium, found object assemblage with mini… Read More

Gay Hergert: Tapping Away The Pain: The Healing Power of The Emotional Freedom Technique

Editor’s Note: The information provided here should not be considered as providing medical advice or a cure for any particular ailment you may be experiencing. Always consult with a medical… Read More

Safiyah Basir: Demystifying Diabetes: Ending Stigmas One Story At A Time

I’m a mom to six-year-old twin boys, balancing motherhood, my studies, and my advocacy. I believe, as I often say, “There is nothing I cannot do, I just have to… Read More

Toi Theriot: Peace Returns Home

Peace taps gently and places a toe just over the threshold... Peeking into the house as it cracks the front door... "Hellooo... hellooo... hellooo... hellooo...." It's echo resounding off the… Read More

Dain Evans: Zine – What is Eco-Grief

From a Queer Death LGBTQ+ End of Life Doula Care Warning We’re gonna get in our feelings! This zine might bring up some anxiety or depression around grief. It is meant… Read More

What we are reading, watching, listening to, and supporting

Who’s Energy? Our Energy! The People’s Power Program Uplifts Activism, Advocacy And Agency in Creating Just Utility Policies

In Fall 2021, DTE Energy, which serves 2.3 million customers across Southeast Michigan, put $50,000 in dark money into the narrative campaign which helped to tank Proposal P. Proposal P,… Read More

no single path through the mountains

Ali Gali (they/them): I am a queer, non-binary artist, cultural organizer, and space-maker from Antakya, Turkey. In my visual practice and poetry, I trace entanglements of bodies, spirits, and… Read More

Where is the Sun? How Climate Change has Changed the Mental Health of Children

On June 26, 2023, the sky did not look right. It was red, full of smoke, and you could not see the sun. There was an alert for high air… Read More

Mapping Detroit’s Buried Waterways – Part I: Finding the creeks

When I first moved to Detroit in 2014, my orientation to navigate to work, the grocery store, the theater, indeed anywhere I wanted to go, was centered around the freeway… Read More

Co-Authored Futures: Youth-led Design-build

On a cloudless summer day in late July, twenty high school students attending Lawrence Tech’s summer architecture camp board a bus from the LTU campus in Southfield bound for Detroit’s… Read More

End Fossil Fuels! A Photo essay by Valerie Jean

On September 17, 2023, 75,000 concerned people converged on Times Square to demand President Biden declare a climate emergency and end any fossil fuels development and infrastructure projects. We must… Read More

Everyone pays the price when Israel orchestrates the dehumanization of its own people

I will not start by recounting the number of Palestinians Israel has murdered since October 7, nor emphasizing how many of them are women and children. I will not beckon… Read More

A Message from Rising Leaders

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

Breath

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

The Ongoing Presence of Charity Hicks

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

Sacred Spaces “Solvent”

“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

Snapshots of Lila

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

Art by Nicole Miazgowicz

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

#DefendMassaferYatta! We Will Not Be Erased: Creating Community & Building Resistance One Artwork At a Time.

"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