Summer

2025

Megan Douglass: Editorial – Memory Fuels the Movement

There is a grounding exercise that I have loved ever since it was introduced to me at a National Council of Elders convening by Shea Howell, a revolutionary elder and… Read More

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Dr. Hoda Amer: Palestine in Chains

Palestine In Chains is an illustrated story of survival, bravery, pain, and resilience. In this drawing, a woman sits cross-legged on the floor. She cries tears of barbed wire, symbolic… Read More

Anjelica Jade: The Pulse of Eternal Knowledge: Memory and Mycelium

When considering memory in relation to nature, trees often come to mind. The rings inside each tree tell us exactly how long it provided the precious oxygen we need to… Read More

Leslie Cieplechowicz: A Conversation with Ramiro Alvarez, Communications Director of the Detroit Disability Power

“Honestly, straight up, the biggest problem people with disabilities face is that people do not care enough. People don’t even like the word disabled. We've been called everything in the… Read More

Dom Witten: Hair and Lineage

It’s been nine months since I’ve wanted to [ ]. I could’ve birthed a copy of myself but one night I saw my body unzip crown to heel. Thick… Read More

Fatou Sow: Art, Poetry, and Prose

Fatou Sow is a creative writer, poet, and professor with Senegalese and African American roots from Detroit, MI. Her work focuses on familial connection, self-reflection, and humanistic experiences shared across… Read More

Hank Kennedy: What’s in a Name? Stop honoring fascists and bigots in civic infrastructure.

“It used to be called Dondero.” “Yeah, I went to Dondero.” “Hey, remember Dondero?” Dondero. Dondero. Dondero. When I worked and shopped in Royal Oak, I heard that name a… Read More

Joanne Coutts: In Search of Solidarity: Reflections on a weekend of Search and Recovery in the Sonoran Desert

Introduction By April 2020, as the world grappled with the harsh reality that the COVID pandemic was not going to be over quickly and that not everyone who contracted the… Read More

Megan Douglass: Celebrating Our Roots, Cultivating Our Collective Consciousness: A Conversation with Elder Baba Simmons

Listen to the whole interview at Podcast - Riverwise Magazine Read More

Katelyn Rivas: Ecology of Migration on Detroit River

Midnight passage over water. Blushing strawberry moon. A litany of stars reflecting the deep blue story curving into my Black body. I hope to see my mother on the other… Read More

Katelyn Rivas: The Longing of Migration

When I see the bodies of Gazan children pulled out from an ocean of rubble, I often think of the humpback whale who carried her lifeless calf on her head… Read More

Mary Gagnon: Everything That Hurts

Artwork by Mary Gagnon Acrylic on birch. 4 feet by 3.5 feet. It is called "Right of return" and it depicts two sisters who, after being displaced by war into… Read More

Josmine Evans: Sassafras – A Spring Tonic for Healing

Editors Note: This is recipe #2 in a series of recipes graciously offered from the community inspired kitchen of Josmine Evans, founder of the Detroit based Indigo Culinary Co. We… Read More

Making Room for Abolition

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Laura Bailey “LB” Brandon and Charles “Buddy” Smith: The Soul of Charles Buddy Smith

Part 1: The Migrating Memory of Music Article & Inquiries by Laura Bailey “LB” Brandon Music, Poetry, & Stories by Charles “Buddy” Smith A direct link to music history in… Read More

Mary Gagnon: The Art of Remembering: A Defiant Act of Resistance

References: Clarke, K., & Yellow Bird, M. (2020). Decolonizing pathways towards integrative healing in social work. Taylor & Francis Group. ProQuest Ebook Central. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/wayne/detail.action?docID=7245245 Decolonizing Pathways Towards Integrative Healing in Social… Read More

Russ Bellant: TALKING ODE TO A SNOWFLAKE

Today a beautiful snowflake flew through the sky and fell on the land that I call home. I tell it that its artful unmatched design is a gift of its… Read More

Nancy Poprafsky: UNSUITABLE

Very rarely did I see my grandpa wear a suit. He was a farmer. A farmer’s most important business was taking care of the land so he could take care… Read More

Triniti (iii): 26

"Pieces of Me" collage art by Trinity (iii) Teach me Inner technologies And circuit my mind back to Source Remind us of how we arrived dancing with light And that … Read More

Demetric Walls, aka DWallsCanTalk, aka Shabazz Shakur: Turning Pain into Pathways Through the Power of Music and M.O.T.I.V.E.

Every single person walking the earth is a music producer. It’s no coincidence that human body parts share the same name as music instruments (organs, eardrums, vocal chords, heartbeat). I… Read More

Tanya Martinez: Las Manos de Generaciones

In my piece, Las Manos de Generaciones, I aimed to express the importance of immigrant families in adapting and persevering. I was inspired by my own family and the millions… Read More

Community Win!

Community win! Congratulations, Detroit Disability Power! Read More

Tap In Times

Find your people! Read More

Katy Nightingale: Migration is an Act of Courage

Riverwise back cover Katy Nightingale (she/they) is a semi-nomadic woman of Western European immigrant descent who grew up in the Great Lakes region. On her travels she has learned from… Read More

YVAK: A Meditation on Modern Movement Organizing

Richelle Still (she/her) is a passionate young person dedicated to making a difference wherever she finds herself. As a recent graduate of the University of Miami, she is making her… Read More

Creating Other Worlds: Abolition As A Portal To The Possible

Many of us are familiar with the idea of abolition from history lessons that link it with the fight to end chattel slavery in the United States. However, given this… Read More

What We’re Reading, Watching, Listening To

A Few Organizations Feeding, Fighting For, Helping to Heal Our Environment & Community

Arboretum Detroit arbdetroit.org Black To The Land Coalition blacktothelandcoalition.com Capuchin Kitchen Earthworks Urban Farm cskdetroit.org/earthworks Clean Water Campaign For Michigan michigancleanwater.org Citizen’s Resistance At Fermi 2 - https://www.shutdownfermi.org Detroit Black… Read More

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