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

Tawana Petty: Alchemizing Violence

Purveyors of violence Do not goad us into peace They distribute ammunition In biometric vending machines They coerce cult retribution Erode all sensibilities Oblivious to the Frankensteins Alchemized inside their… Read More

Bill Wylie-Kellerman: Book Review -No Guilty Bystander: The Extraordinary Life of Bishop Thomas Gumbleton by Frank Fromherz and Suzanne Sattler

In a fitting coincidence of gospel nonviolence, Detroit Catholic Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, 94, crossed over to God in fullness on April 4, 2024, the anniversary of the assassination of Martin… Read More

Rev. Deb Hansen: Perspectives from the People’s Conference for Palestine

On the last weekend this past May, the People’s Conference for Palestine: Our Struggle for Liberation was held at Huntington Place in Detroit. Convened by fifteen organizations, the conference drew… Read More

Mediterranean Fire Project, Curated by Habibah Sheikh

These works were created in response to poetic texts written by Habibah Sheikh, a nomadic performance artist originally from Lebanon, and curator of the exhibition Mitli Mitlak (Like Me, Like… Read More

Jennifer Disla: Who does America Belong to…

America founded through oppression Built its capital on Black Bodies Yet Pilgrims came in search of religious freedom But whose freedom Who decides what freedom means Who decides which religion… Read More

Russ Bellant: Tax Abuse in the City

The fight for tax justice in Detroit affects every resident of the city. You are subject to tax injustices if: you pay property taxes or a water bill, or if… Read More

Emergent Justice: Dismantling The School -to- Prison Pipeline

Leslie Cieplechowicz – Ventra Asana: Creating Bird Meadows within Detroit

“As an ecology minister, one who situates the value of earthcare at the center of my ministerial calling, I believe that the protection of nature is a divine mandate, not… Read More

Marcellus Williams: Perspectives and Emotions

i have this place where i can go (a place of calm) - but still i need help there is no way to make it all by myself -you see… Read More

Detroit Will Breathe: Why We Need a Mass Movement Fighting Racist Policing at Home and Abroad!

The Current State of Policing Today, May 25th, 2024 marks the four year anniversary of George Floyd’s murder and the largest uprising and social movement in the history of the… Read More

Khyla Bussey: The Blind Pig, Detroit 1967

A ceremonial scene; light a cigarette with an ashed finger to soothe the emotional anguish, indignant vestige. Inhale the lingering smoke; soft pedal into an aesthetic dimension; jive against… Read More

Megan Douglass – Editorial: Follow The Money

There is no sugarcoating the Truth. These are tumultuous times. The more conversations I have the more I encounter an ever present uncertainty about the future, sadness about the state… Read More

The State of the Young – The Young Voices Action Collective: Building New Realities, One Dream at a Time

Do you remember the dreams you had for the world when you were a child? What barriers kept you from making them a reality? Are they the same ones keeping… Read More

Reflections on Mutual Aid: Mother Earth’s Call to Action for Regeneration

Living cooperatively is no easy task. As humans, we are all one species but we all have distinct fingerprints. This duality between self and group based identities might lead one… Read More