Twenty-three years ago, I wrote to Grace Lee Boggs completely out of the blue. She had no basis for knowing who I was or what I was involved in. In fact, I had only recently learned about Grace through the research of my friend, Jung Hee Choi.
While I am far from the first to say it, it must be said again: meeting Grace Lee Boggs was an unmistakable turning point in my life. Grace helped me to see the power of ideas—that revolution requires more than protest and agitation, it requires a leap forward in our consciousness. For Grace, radicalism was not defined by anger and militancy, but by our creative capacity to generate new and transformative models of work, governance, and community. Because of Grace, I was finally able to see a deeper connection between theory and practice. This, in turn, helped me to link study and organizing more effectively.
Over 17 years, I was blessed to get to know and to work closely with Grace, including co-writing her final book, The Next American Revolution (2011). Most of those years were spent living in Detroit just minutes away from 3061 Field Street. I know this house is a special place filled with movement history. While I never had a chance to meet Jimmy, you could feel his presence and sense the impact he had on Grace and everyone he touched.
In her final years, Grace drew up a directive for some of us (who had worked with her for over 100 years combined) to create the James and Grace Lee Boggs Foundation. We manage the estate and property of Jimmy and Grace. But as you can imagine, what they possessed was not material wealth. As Grace drew from the early philosophical writings of Marx, "Real wealth is not material wealth and real poverty is not just the lack of food, shelter, and clothing. Real poverty is the belief that the purpose of life is acquiring wealth and owning things. Real wealth is not the possession of property but the recognition that our deepest need, as human beings, is to keep developing our natural and acquired powers and to relate to other human beings."
It is the "real wealth" of Jimmy and Grace—their histories, their ideas, and the love that they spread to all those around them—that we can share with others by preserving their historic home as a community museum. While I didn't ask Grace for this position, I accept it as a sacred duty because I know this is one of the most important tasks I've ever been given, not for my career but for the sake of humanity at this time of both great hope and great danger on the clock of the world.
