Douglass Debs Dinner 2023 Photo Recap

by Joanne Coutts

After a three-year hiatus Detroit DSA’s Douglass Debs Dinner returned on October 28 at the UAW Local 600 hall in Dearborn. More than 130 socialists attended, and the event raised more than $5,000 net to support our chapter’s labor, environmental and electoral organizing, political education, and membership engagement.

From left to right: Dan, Julie, Amanda, Peter, Deb, and John…where are Caleb and Jane? Caleb is home sick and Jane is…

….Jane is hanging with the cool cats, NYC-DSA Member and Keynote Speaker, Stylianos Karolidis (left photo) and UAW Region 1 Director, LaShawn English (right photo).

Special thanks to the Douglass Debs Planning Committee. To Carolyn’s Kitchen, UAW Local 600, everyone who donated an item/s for the gift baskets, volunteered on the evening, and, of course, the speakers. Looking forward to next year!

The Detroit Socialist is produced and run by members of Detroit DSA’s Newspaper Collective. Interested in becoming a member of Detroit DSA? Go to metrodetroitdsa.com/join to become a member. Send a copy of the dues receipt to: membership@metrodetroitdsa.com in order to get plugged in to our activities!

Douglass Debs Dinner 2023: Photo Recap was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Key Readings

LOnger

• Gøsta Esping-Andersen, The Theory of Social Democratic Party Formation and Decomposition, Politics Against Markets pp 26-38
• Alexander Gard-Murray & Geoffrey Henderson, Policymaking Under Uncertainty: The Case of Climate Coalitions, 2023
• Alexander F. Gazmararian & Dustin Tingley, Uncertain Futures: How to Unlock the Climate Impasse, June 2022
• Jane McAlevy, How to Rebuild a Union: L.A.’s Teachers, from A Collective Bargain
• Thomas Meany, Fortunes of the Green New Deal, 2023

Shorter

• Andrew Yamakawa Elrod, Built Trades, Phenomenal World, August 11 2011
• Tara Olivetree, Power, Workers, and the Fight for Climate Justice, Systems Change not Climate Change, September 2, 2021
• Yakov Feygin and Nils Gilman, The Designer Economy, Nomea Mag, January 19 2023

Industrial Policy

• Lee Harris, Industrial Policy Without Industrial Unions, The American Prospect, September 28, 2022
• Lee Harris, Workers on Solar’s Front Lines, The American Prospect, December 7, 2022
• Noam Scheiber, Building Solar Farms May Not Build the Middle Class, The New York Times, July 16, 2022
• Lauren Kaori Gurley, Shifting America to Solar Power Is a Grueling, Low-Paid Job, Vice, June 27, 2022
• Lee Harris, Union Leader: Stellantis Will Send Electric-Vehicle Jobs to Mexico, The American Prospect, December 14, 2022

Inflation Reduction Act

• Ryan Cooper, The Inflation Reduction Act’s Quiet Revolution on Public Power, The American Prospect, August 18 2022
• Lee Harris, Inflation Reduction Bill Uses Public Finance to Stoke Energy Investment, The American Prospect,
• Lee Harris, California Might Pass Its Own Personal Build Back Better, The American Prospect, May 20, 2022
• David Dayden, How Policy Got Done in 2022, The American Prospect, September 26 2022
• David Dayden, Why Progressive Groups Struggled With the Biden Agenda, The American Prospect, September 27 2022

Labor & Electoral Strategy

• Rebecca Rainey & Ian Kullgren, Unions Seize Midterms ‘Hot Moment’ to Rebuild, Support Democrats Bloomberg Law, September 2022
• Harold Myerson, Can the Hotel Workers’ Union Save the Democrats?The American Prospect, November 2022
• Joan Greve, ‘We’re going to win’: the union fighting for Democratic votes during the US midterms
  The Guardian, October 29, 2022

by Sarah H

A day after the Israeli Defense Forces began its latest assault on Gaza, a group of East Bay DSA members crossed the bridge into San Francisco, bound for the Israeli Consulate. Their crimson shirts blended into a sea of red, green, black and white, as they joined our coalition partners in a call for resistance and the right to return after decades of struggle.

Since the war in Gaza broke out on October 7, an upsurge in solidarity with Palestine has reverberated around the world and across the East Bay. Chapter leaders and paper members alike have stepped up to bottom-line actions, from the chapter’s first mobilization on October 8 at the Israeli consulate, to the “No Money for Massacres” phone bank, to Oakland Educational Association’s resolution on Palestine and beyond.

Just as any mass organization becomes conditioned through struggle, EBDSA’s response to the war in Gaza has been a learning process. Not without its growing pains, our membership is figuring out how to mobilize people in the face of an American-backed genocide. 

By joining the Palestinian resistance, the chapter took a step in becoming a mass organization that supports movement work and centers the anti-imperialist, internationalist line more directly.

In an effort to document this process, East Bay Majority spoke with six organizers who have bottom-lined large actions, phone banks and labor-backed resolutions.

In lieu of compiling a comprehensive list of all of the actions the chapter has taken to support Palestinian liberation, this article focuses on these three organizing tactics, which may continue to inform our local strategy and build our mobilizing capacity.

Actions

Public actions have become a central, and of course, highly visible, part of this movement. According to EBDSA member Thomas M, a crucial first step in the chapter’s mobilization was to democratically decide to support the Palestinian Action Network—a coalition that includes the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and Jewish Voice for Peace, among others. 

“It was an important and healthy act of self-criticism as a chapter to ask ourselves, ‘How much are we centering ourselves versus providing support to make it happen?” Thomas said. 

Though there was significant discussion about how a coalition should be built, and how much unity is required to take action with other organizations, ultimately, the chapter democratically decided that international solidarity should take precedence. EBDSA member Bert K. put it this way:

“In general, we should be willing to have programmatic unity with groups who may disagree with us on certain things,” Bert said. “It’s more important to get people out in this moment when genocide is happening in front of our eyes.” 

As such, EBDSA members have taken on support roles at protests, like acting security marshals, to back the Palestinian Action Network. 

“These are organic formations of people who have capacity who are willing to throw down,” Thomas said. 

Bert also noted that the chapter steering committee has expedited its process of endorsing actions so that organizers can ensure better turnout at each protest.

The chapter’s capacity to mobilize has grown with each action, even sending a small detachment to the famous AROC-organized action to block a boat transporting Israeli military equipment out of the port of Oakland on November 4. The next day, DSA members from all Bay Area chapters came out in droves to the International Day of Solidarity: Free Palestine, joining a crowd of around 50,000 people that converged on San Francisco City Hall.

“I’ve really been impressed with the comrades that have come forward,” Bert said. “Some people who have been on the fringe of the work are now stepping forward as leaders, and it’s a great thing to see.”  

Thomas M also pointed to smaller actions, such as the November 9 letter delivery and die-in at Representative Eric Swalwell’s District 14 office (following one at DeSaulnier’s District 10 office, led by organizers from outside DSA) in Castro Valley, when members demanded a conversation with the Democratic congressman. He told East Bay Majority that he believes DSA’s status as a mass organization shouldn’t preclude us from supporting liberatory movements. 

“It’s imperative to embrace community organizing on top of mass organizing,” Thomas said.  

“Letting myself be tutored by other organizers from other movement spaces and adopting their toolkits is, I think, a powerful way to reaffirm our commitment to becoming an organization of organizers, by learning from other orgs and creating those relationships.”

Phone banks 

By the second week in October, the National Political Committee (NPC) voted to launch a national series of phone banks called “No Money for Massacres” to target members of Congress, urge them to vote no on sending military aid to Israel and call for an immediate ceasefire.

EBDSA and California DSA steering committee member Nickan F. helped kick off the first California phone banks on October 16, a coordinated effort between different DSA bodies that has continued weekly since then. 

Nickan said that the East Bay phone banks have generated 25,000 calls and patched 450 people into their representatives, resulting in a few elected officials flipping their position to support a ceasefire, including Barbara Lee and Mark DeSaulnier. Nickan feels it’s a vital leadership development tool, as “a lot of people, myself included, had never taken on this specific task before, or never bottom-lined an event before.”

The phone banks also introduced a political education segment where guest speakers explain and summarize the conflict to help educate volunteers.

“I think we can build on this experience and do what we’ve done right again in the future,” Nickan added.  

Labor for Palestine

Finally, organized labor has assumed a critical role in EBDSA’s response to Israel’s attacks on Gaza. By October 14th, members of East Bay DSA’s labor committee, themselves union members, had drafted a template resolution for union members to adapt and try to pass through their own unions. That effort quickly grew into Bay Area Labor for Palestine, as rank-and-file union members met weekly to figure out how to advance solidarity with Palestine in their unions.

According to EBDSA member Keith BB, many activists within the organization who found jobs as rank and file teachers and public workers have led the charge within their unions to create public statements about the genocide.

Part of that leg work is simply about figuring out how to talk to your coworkers about Palestine, said Keith.

“The important question to ask is, ‘why are we spending billions of public funds to pay for bombs blowing up schools instead of building them and paying for workers’ wages and addressing understaffing and crumbling facilities?”

These one-on-one organizing conversations are most effective when framed around America’s role in creating consent and the infrastructure required for apartheid, he added.

“We don’t have to be experts to know that huge civilian casualties are not okay and that the US government shipping out billions is causing massive civilian casualties,” he said.

Sometimes, these conversations even lead to widespread rank-and-file support for resolutions in support of Palestine, according to EBDSA member and Oakland educator Hillary C.

Namely, the Oakland Education Association—a union containing many DSA members—was one of the first labor organizations to unite its membership around collective support of the Palestinian resistance.

Almost immediately after October 7, EBDSA member and teacher Maura M. began talking to another rank-and-file member of OEA who wanted to write a resolution. This ad hoc group called itself OEA for Palestine.

“We took the DSA template and started workshopping from there, inserting our perspective as educators,” Maura recalled. “We involved several people from my [school site] and it was really collaborative.”

OEA’s response was fast. In about three days’ time, Maura and her fellow educators had submitted the draft resolution to the union’s executive board. Ultimately, the resolution was passed unanimously on October 18 and went on to pass through OEA’s Representative Council on November 6. These resolutions not only help push an anti-imperialist line forward, it also helps flex the muscle of democracy within the union and normalize the fundamental socialist priority that we fight for people we don’t know.

Hillary C explained that OEA for Palestine has also begun to organize teach-ins as a way to engage their students in dialogue about the Palestinian resistance.

In October, students at Hillary’s school, Oakland Tech, led a walkout of 50 or so high schoolers that she said materialized mostly through word-of-mouth. 

Hillary added that OEA for Palestine has shared these teaching materials with other educational unions, like UESF, to build capacity for cross-rank-and-file organizing. 

Maura M’s school, which is located in the Oakland flatlands, has a significant population of immigrant families from the Americas. The students learn about colonization during the indigenous peoples’ unit in their social studies classes. So it wasn’t a leap for a group of those same students, recognizing the Palestinian struggle as also similarly indigenous and decolonial, to organize a walk-out and turn their parents out for the November 4 protest. 

“These students very much understand displacement and US imperialism,” she said.

East Bay DSA members started Bay Area Labor for Palestine as an organizing space for supporting these rank-and-file efforts to push local unions to stand in solidarity with Palestine and call for a ceasefire. The group now includes members of nearly twenty Bay Area unions, and community and political organizations. The organizing efforts of Bay Area Labor for Palestine coalesced at the Bay Area Labor for Palestine rally at Oakland’s Oscar Grant Plaza on December 16, with contingents from unions like OEA, UESF, UAW 2865, ILWU Local 10 and more, as well as the Palestinian and Arab-led organizations PYM and AROC. This labor-led march was the first of its kind in the country.

Looking ahead

As the Palestinian resistance continues to grow, there will be more opportunities for EBDSA to build mobilizing capacity and bolster our international solidarity work. Another one of the highlights coming out of this moment of political rupture is a reinforcing of our cross-chapter relationships with those others in the Bay area, namely DSA San Francisco, Marin DSA, and Silicon Valley DSA, as mutually-supportive contingents formed for these mass rallies.

“Having that communication across chapters, allowed us to be supportive in each other’s local organizing as well, if even just being able to plug other folks into work that was closer to where they could express their power,” Thomas said.

“For example, Marin DSA has been wanting to pressure their local House Rep. Huffman into calling for a ceasefire, meanwhile someone in JVP who I’ve been working with did as well, and I was able to connect them to bolster their efforts or at least get conversations going.” 

Bert noted that humanitarian crises have an unfortunate way of fading into the background as time goes on and atrocities become normalized. 

“The challenge is, how do we become part of a sustainable movement in support of Palestine and connect to anti-imperialist struggles?” 

Both Thomas M and Bert K emphasized that the rechartering of the chapter’s International Solidarity Anti-Imperialist subcommittee as its own proper committee is a further step in the right direction. 

“It’s never not a crisis for the Palestinian people,” Bert said. “At this moment, we need a broad united front to oppose Israeli apartheid and support the Palestinian resistance. It has to be central to our work.”

Workers are in control of their own organizing process, making them more invested in those plans and more likely to do the work required.

The post Against Formulas in Organizing: Why Workers and Their Conditions Should Dictate Campaign Plans appeared first on EWOC.

by Jane Slaughter

Detroit DSAers brought our new “Defend Rashida” window signs to Representative Tlaib’s reelection launch event last Saturday. The signs were eagerly snapped up by the 100 or so Black, white, and Arab Michiganders there.

At the event, Rashida talked about the movements that give her strength: for water as a human right, for driver’s licenses regardless of immigration status, “the rent is too damn high,” for stopping fossil fuel subsidies, Black Lives Matter, the UAW strikes.

“We didn’t get civil rights or the right to organize unions because of who was president at the time,” she said. “We got it when the streets demanded it.”

The call-out that got the most applause was for the ceasefire movement. People were at her rally not just because of Rashida’s years of service to every good cause, but because she is under attack right now, censured by the House of Representatives for supposedly “promoting false narratives” about Hamas’s attack on Israel. Every Republican in the state legislature, where she once served, has called on her to resign. Democratic Majority for Israel bought a TV ad in Detroit accusing her of standing with terrorism.

Two Democrats, Nasser Beydoun and Hill Harper, say that AIPAC offered them $20 million to run against Rashida in 2024. Beydoun told the Detroit Free Press that on November 10, former state Democratic Party Chairman Lon Johnson made him the offer, which he refused. Harper, who wants to replace retiring Senator Debbie Stabenow, also said no.

AIPAC is going after all members of the Squad next year, but to knock off the most outspoken pro-Palestine member of Congress, a Palestinian-American herself, would be AIPAC’s crowning achievement. “They are ready to set a hell of a lot of money on fire,” Tlaib said at the rally. “I’m not afraid of the bullies.”

Rashida’s safely Democratic 12th District includes part of Detroit, all of Dearborn, all of Southfield, and other western suburbs. She won her 2022 primary handily against incompetent campaigner Janice Winfrey, the Detroit City Clerk.

This will be the first time she may face a serious challenge for Congress. Building on our strong relationship, working for Rashida’s reelection should be a main goal of the chapter for the next eight months.

You can donate to counter AIPAC’s money here. You can get a free red, black and green “Defend Rashida” window sign, with a picture of Rashida and the DSA logo, at Detroit DSA’s general meeting December 16, at Swords into Plowshares, 33 E. Adams, Detroit.

Jane Slaughter has been a Detroit DSA member since 2018 and works on the labor and political education committees, as well as The Detroit Socialist.

The Detroit Socialist is produced and run by members of Detroit DSA’s Newspaper Collective. Interested in becoming a member of Detroit DSA? Go to metrodetroitdsa.com/join to become a member. Send a copy of the dues receipt to: membership@metrodetroitdsa.com in order to get plugged in to our activities!

Defend Rashida! Say It Loud! was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In the past months, Democratic Socialists of America has mobilized to end the Israeli siege on Gaza and its illegal, US-funded occupation of Palestine. Panelists discussed this resurgence of a Left anti-war movement in the context of the climate crisis and explore how ecosocialist organizers can deepen internationalism and anti-militarism within domestic climate organizing. Palestinian liberation is central to the climate justice movement—and why demilitarization is not only socially necessary, but a requirement for meeting climate and environmental goals.

Featuring:

• Ashik Siddique: Co-Chair, Democratic Socialists of America
• Batul Hassan: Green New Deal Campaign Commission, NYC-DSA
• Patrick Bigger: Research Director, Climate and Community Project
• Zena Agha: Policy Analyst, Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network
• Ruth Boyajian: Dissenters, Georgia State University

Co-sponsored by DSA’s Green New Deal Campaign Commission and the International Committee.

A recording of the panel was emailed to registrants..

On the 1st of December, the United Auto Workers International Executive Board, alongside other labor unions & allies, announced the UAW’s support for a permanent ceasefire in Israel & Palestine. The announcement also called for the formation of a Divestment and Just Transition Working Group to study the UAW’s ties to the ongoing violence & terror of the Israeli occupation, and to explore future scenarios for a Just Transition of US workers from the war economy. The endorsement represents an important step forward for international solidarity between US labor unions and Palestine, and is the product of a long, often neglected, history of Palestinian solidarity by rank & file workers organizing within the UAW to pressure its leaders into action and divest its ties to the Israeli state. Tonight, we hear from Mary, a labor historian, filmmaker, and a graduate worker in UAW Local 2865, on the history of Palestinian solidarity by UAW rank & file workers, and how those lessons from our collective past can inspire working people today. We will also hear from Gordon, a labor organizer in UAW Local 7902, on organizing for Palestine in his local and at New York University, and the struggle that lies ahead for the UAW in the new year. 

North NJ Convention 2024 Announcement

Hey Comrades! As we close in on the end of the year and we all begin to think about our Chapter’s Annual Convention, which is coming up soon!  As we round out the season and come into the end of the year we wanted to share the Convention 2024 HQ chapter members can use to make submissions for convention. We apologize for the lateness of these documents. If any member feels that they will not be able to complete their submission by the Dec. 28th (11:59:59 pm) deadline please feel free to reach out to our Chapter’s Executive Committee.

The post North NJ DSA Convention 2024 Announcement first appeared on North NJ DSA.

This article originally appeared in Riverwise on November 29th, 2023.

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 system. I raced along the Lodge, I-75, or I-94 not thinking about what might be happening in the neighborhoods reached by the off ramps that I flew past. When I wanted to see the water, I would drive to Belle Isle or down to the Detroit River, little realizing that the water once ran along Baby Creek, only a couple of blocks from my house in the Dexter Linwood neighborhood.

Then in Spring 2021, I joined a water walk around Belle Isle, organized by Hadassah Greensky, and began to learn about the physical and spiritual importance of water to Anishnaabe people and their way of life. Water is not only for drinking and irrigating land to grow food, but it is also a primary means of navigation and movement from one place to another. Indigenous names for the place we now call Detroit honor the area’s abundance of water; in Wendat, Karontaen, means “coast of the straits,” and Iroquoian, Teuchash Grondie translates in English as “the place of many beavers.” Beavers love creeks! For a place to have had many beavers it must have had many creeks for them to build their dams, find food, and raise their families.

As a new Detroit resident, I felt the need to reconsider my ways of orienting and navigating the city to — as Yuchi scholar, Dan Wildcat asks — “seriously reexamine and adopt those particular and unique cultures that emerged from the place I choose to live today,” and acknowledge “that the old ways of living contain useful knowledge for our lives here and now.”

The Mapping Detroit’s Buried Waterways project is my response to Wildcat’s request. It is a way to honor the old ways of orienting, building relationship with, and moving through the land known as Detroit, and a practical guide to navigating the city’s current streets through learning about and mapping the courses that the creeks followed, and in many cases still flow underneath the concrete.

This article is part of a three-part series, it explores the maps I used to find the creeks. Part II will look at my practice of mapping the creeks, and Part III will investigate the relationship between the creeks, the greenways projects across the city, and gentrification.

“The old ways of living.”

To start to learn about the old ways that water lived in Detroit, I began researching historical maps preserved in library archives. While these resources all center settler-colonial perspectives and place names, by approaching them with a different mindset I hoped to engage with a different version of history than the one presented on the maps’ surfaces. I wanted to engage with the creeks’ intrinsic value as living beings that facilitate connections between land, people, plants, and animals.

Probably the most famous creek in Detroit is Parent Creek, also known as Bloody Run. The creek still sees daylight near the place where Obwandiyag’s (Pontiac’s) land defenders were attacked by and defeated 250 British soldiers in July 1763.

One of the earliest known maps of Detroit, Carte de la Riviere du Detroit, drawn in 1752 by M. de Lery clearly shows Parent Creek, marked as R. Parent, already being encroached on both sides by French colonial settlers’ ribbon farms. Later US maps provide more detail on the route of Parent Creek in relationship to Detroit’s current streets and document the erasure of the creek as the city expanded.

Excerpt from Carte de la Riviere du Detroit showing French ribbon farms crowding around Parent Creek. Source: Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.

Section of Map of Wayne Co., Michigan showing Parent Creek, labeled Bloody Run. Source: Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.

In this section from Geil, Harley, and Siverd’s 1860 map of Wayne County the north fork of the creek, now labeled Bloody Run, has already been erased by the ribbon farms and the plots that will eventually bury the east and west forks are already planned.

By 1878, the entire creek north of Elmwood Cemetery had been disappeared under the area that now comprises the Eastern Market and McDougal Hunt neighborhoods. Today only a short section is visible in the Cemetery.

Photo of Parent Creek by Christiana

Further east from Parent Creek runs the creek that the French called the Riviere du Grand Marais (the river of the great marsh). The land around the river was appropriated by Joseph and Louis Trombley, and the river came to be known as Trombley’s Creek.

Section of Plan of the settlements of Detroit 1796: Reproduced in collotype facsimile from the original manuscript in the Clements Library, with a note by F. Clever Bold showing the creek and Louis Trombly’s ribbon farm. Source: Wayne State University.

Although descendants of the Trombley family continued to “own” land around the creek after Michigan’s ratification as a state in 1837, the creek was renamed Connor Creek for Henry Connor, who had been assigned ownership of land on the creek’s northeast side. Both Trombley’s and Connor’s land claims are shown on John Farmer’s 1855 Map of Wayne County, Michigan.

Clip from Map of Wayne County, Michigan: exhibiting the names of the original purchasers showing the land appropriated by Joseph Lewis Trembles (Trombley) and Henry Connor. Source: Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.

Continuing east towards Lake St. Clair, Fox Creek is a shadow of its former self. Once running parallel to Lake St. Clair all the way from its connection with the Detroit River to the Milk River estuary, the creek now only sees daylight for a couple of short blocks in the Jefferson Chalmers community. For most of its northeasterly course, it is now trapped in a major sewer. Building along Connor and Fox Creeks and on the marshes where beavers once thrived and where the creeks connect to the Detroit River is one of main contributors to flooding in the Jefferson Chalmers neighborhood.

Detail from Detroit Metropolitan Area Planning Commission 1962 Major Areas in need of Sanitary Sewer Services. The sewer that encloses Fox Creek along its original course is highlighted in blue. Source: Wayne State University.

On Detroit’s Westside, US settlers were also naming creeks for themselves. James Baby and George Campbell appended their names to Baby Creek and Campbell Creek, respectively. Both creeks join the Detroit River in the Springwells area. Baby Creek is now buried under the Claytown and Petoskey-Otsego neighborhoods, and various branches of Campbell Creek are encased in the concrete of Barton-McFarland, Bethune, and Rosedale Park communities among others. The creeks are still clearly visible as late as 1905 on the US Geographic Survey maps of Detroit, which also shows the many ditches and canals built by ribbon farmers and later settlers to irrigate their land with water from the creeks’ main channels.

Clip from 1905 USGS 1:62,000 Series showing Baby and Campbell creeks and their many natural tributaries and man-made canals and ditches. Source: United States Geological Survey

The courses of Parent, Connor, Fox, Campbell, and Baby Creeks were all relatively easy to find. They were included on maps well into the late 1800s and early 1900s, many of these maps have been digitized and are accessible online. Much more difficult to locate are Mays Creek and Savoyard Creek which once flowed through what is now downtown Detroit.

There has recently been a resurgence of interest in Mays Creek with the opening of the Southwest Greenway, which runs over a section of the creek. Settler after settler slapped their name on the creek as the land “ownership” around it changed hands. It was first recorded as Campeau’s Mill Creek, then Cabacier’s Creek, May’s Creek, and finally Peltier’s Creek. In 1848 the railroad built along the course of the creek and within a few years May’s Creek was buried and built over.

Mays Creek routes

In the heart of what is now downtown Detroit, Savoyard Creek was the first creek to be drawn on colonial maps. It is marked on many old maps of Fort Detroit as Ruisseau de Rurtus or River Xavier. It was also the first creek to be converted into a sewer and buried beneath the city. Savoyard Creek has not seen the sun since 1836, and it still runs through its brick lined coffin.

Detroit in 1796 from Western Literary Cabinet. Source: Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division

Savoyard Creek routes

“Useful knowledge for our lives here and now.”

Visiting libraries, exploring the maps, and seeing the courses and names of the creeks change over time is fascinating. I could have sat in my living room tracing the creek routes onto a current map of Detroit, which would probably have taken a couple of days and oriented me to nothing more than the relationship between my couch and my fridge. That approach seems very out of keeping with Dan Wildcat’s definition of decolonization and it certainly would not facilitate connections with the creeks or honor their value as living beings. Instead, using GIS technology I have set out to map the creeks by walking and biking all of Detroit’s buried waterways, the creeks, the canals, the drainage ditches, and the rivers. I have been at it for more than a year now and am still far from completing the project.

Part II of this series of articles will explore my process and the different mapping practices I am using in the project.

The Detroit Socialist is produced and run by members of Detroit DSA’s Newspaper Collective. Interested in becoming a member of Detroit DSA? Go to metrodetroitdsa.com/join to become a member. Send a copy of the dues receipt to: membership@metrodetroitdsa.com in order to get plugged in to our activities!

MAPPING DETROIT’S BURIED WATERWAYS — PART I: FINDING THE CREEKS was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.