Aid for The People-Detroit Food Not Bombs and Food Not Class Collective needs your help

Detroit is full of hearty people. Yes, I said hearty, because we have a lot of heart. Although many in the fundraiser entitled Mutual Aid for The People-Detroit Food Not Bombs/Not Class Collective fly under your radar, they are doing the absolute loving most to help. Many Witches and Pagans not only benefit from their good works.There are some of us deeply involved in charity works as part of our Paths, so this resonates. Right now, they need a little help.

Public Facebook Photo
Detroit Food Not Bombs and Food Not Class Collective

What do they need help to accomplish? They help the poor, the needy, the in transition, and the jeopardized folks in Metro Detroit with food, hygiene, and more. Let’s hear it from them.

We are a collective who provides mutual aid for the homeless and working poor. We feed folx biweekly at the 2 main transit centers in the city, averaging 80-200 people per serve. They also receive clothing, toiletries, hygiene products, boots, winter gear, medical equipment, whatever we get we give for free. We will begin doing geurilla food drops in the neighborhoods, have work shops on self sustainability off the grid education, street medic trainings, and other free school topics. We will offer free wellness checks, free rides, free protection support when needed.
However, we are limited for a few reasons.

Public Facebook Photo shot for fundraiser by Daria Mann

Right now, the Midwestern Mitten is enduring crippling cold temperatures. Rescue missions are filled to capacity, and cities have even opened more temporary warming centers. But a single night in the warmth does not solve the issue. People need a hand up to help them survive long enough to rebound. A warm heart can heat more than just the body.

Pagans in Michigan are usually at the forefront of contributing goods, labor, and money for outreach. From helping with the Street Store, to contributing to public gardens, it is just how we are made. Well, it is my belief that there are a lot more giving hearts out here in these streets.

If you are so moved, their fundraiser is located on Facebook at Mutual Aid for The People-Detroit Food Not Bombs/Not Class Collective.

Special thanks to Chef Harriet of Sisters On A Roll for being such a warrior on the front lines of love.

The myth of the Section 8 excuse

One day, when people do research outside of Google, they might learn that Section 8 was not designed to undermine the Black family. That's an old and tired lame excuse for other factors that were imposed that did lead to the removal of the Black men from our society.

Section 8 was where people went after they were gone, caught up by the systems put in place and skewed place to add them to the prison industry complex. Maybe people need to stop repeating  what they heard others say and read for themselves.

Nothing in the Great Society programs was designed for this end. The twisting the application and guidelines by oppressive agenda pushers led to the twisted results we see now.

Stop letting popular media, and revisionist history pieces,  raise your children and feed your mind. The mythos of Black on Black crime bring a "thing" separate from crime was a single book that was patched into by perverse racist elements been in pushing a bigoted narrative. There is only crime.

The introduction of drugs into the communities in order to undermine political advocacy, enfranchisement, and societal agency was the big picture goal. The power lies in the ability to make, enforce, and elect leadership that sustains and reform laws. Without communities being to focus on generating those who can do this, due to the drug crisis, we saw the destruction of the progress made by the Black Freedom Movement (aka the Civil Rights Movement).

Make no mistake, this policy of death by little bites effective. Then add to this the actual dumbing down of content in not only the schools, and entertainment, but the also the devaluing of the tradesperson. Erasure of images of common folks living noncaricatured existences only increased as we worshipped the and electronic screen success stories.

Somewhere along the line, the goal became that everyone went to college..... But forgot that college not only is for getting a job, but for the ability to learn to think and reason. It's a party, but not the only path. There people who look down on trade school graduates are often the same ones who pat themselves in the back for getting MBAs or Computer skills, ignoring that there are also trade educations. And the division that marked Booker T. and W.E.B. continues, the irony lost that it still hasn't been resolved despite all this posturing.

Current pundent writers the Diaspora take shits at the old guard leadership without acknowledging that there is no one other than entertainers and athletes who command enough space to take their places IN GENERAL. Or they worship any leader but with a slick website, the right PC buzzwords, and enough material to fill infomercial. These cults of Personality and anti Personality are not only counterproductive, but dangerous to the fights ahead of us to preserve the actual focus on the preservation of our rights as humanity in the Western World.

I SAY ALL THIS BECAUSE FOLKS ARE MISSING THE POINT.

Stop focusing only on the losses, success comes from studying successes with the same gravity. Learn the differences between strategy and tactics. Create your own support networks and stop viewing every person of another race as your automatic enemy. There are enough real ones that it is foolish to create them from our own arrogant, and probably narrowly, informed opinions.

Working with others is how things get done, but before that can happen you have to know what you are working to achieve. The hold on Black Freedom Movement initiatives, that some of our allies have intoxicated us with in the name of false claims of intersectionality, has not helped. To be intersectional, you need to identify your sections. That means that when it's time to talk about race, we do. When it's time to talk about issues within that issue that affect certain groups, we do, but never at the expense of silencing the overall points of bettering conditions for humanity and out right to be recognized as human.

You can't do that without the ability to think, and minds need food. Read. Read and write your own thoughts out on paper or on a tablet, not in a tweet style bite. Learn to hold a thought more than for five minutes past exiting a tab.

Do not be a parrot. Think about how things may come this point from different points of view, even your enemy's.

Do not be a wage slave. Sell your labor by the hour, not become an employee in fealty to another person's dream. Remember that you have your own dreams and are the dream of your ancestors. Don't become a nightmare.

Conduct yourself with honor. Take self responsibility for your actions and ideas. Know when you are facing systemic oppression, or when you're facing the result of your own choices. There is a difference.

Ok. I'm off the soapbox. I have work to do.

Grandma

It starts with simple things. The brush of a breeze across the skin that reminds you of simpler times. The sound of a child's laugh when it sounds in a corridor. Even the smell of lipstick from an older company catching your notice.

All these are simple moments of unimportance. Each is contained in its own world of insignificance in our day. But for some of us, those of us in grief, they are like tinkling bells calling us to remember.

The strike of tonal memories and scent awareness. They resonate through us. The evocation of captured vignettes that are echoed in the current timeline of others.

I lost my grandmother on April 29, 2017. But in actuality, I lost her again that year. The second time was worse than the first.

The first time I lost her was when I was cut off as an unofficially adopted child. The cognitive dissonance, and continuous emotional damage of being caught between houses and factions in my younger years led to a custody struggle of three sides. My biological parent, my foster parents, and my grandmother.

In the war, my grandmother lost. She kept tabs on me, I believe. Communication between my foster mom and my grandmother was somewhat regular. I will never know.

Years passed and eventually through tragedy, displacement, and the total upheaval of my world, I found myself back in her presence again. I say with certainty of the soul, she was the only one in the entire world of heaven or earth that truly understood me, other than my foster father.

If I could have made a bridge between them both and sat upon it, I would have done so. A place to be seen, a place to be held, a place that we could have lived in a mutual set of worlds. But that was not to be.

She passed last year, exactly one week after my birthday at the age of 100 years. That is a lot those eyes have seen, yet the thing I remember most about them was their acceptance, kindness, and the understanding that I have never seen anywhere else in this life for me. She was my rock, my refuge, and my only advocate in life.

I have no true sense of belonging anywhere. I never have had one except in her presence. That is the only memory I have that means family to me. The moments like the ones where my foster father and grandmother were in the same room while I played with a toy house my biological mom bought me.

My foster mom was at home, or work, or somewhere else. I don't remember. But that memory is the most solid. My biological father was in jail, as always.

The second most real memory was when I was in her bed,  10 years ago. I was tired, broken, and sad. So, she let me sleep in her bed. I slept for the first time in a very long while without being sad. The room full of dolls who were like silent guardians.

Of course, she made sure to let me know I was fat. She was worried. But she also meant no harm by it, and never hurt me when she said it.

Her favorite phrase was, "I would rather make you mad than hurt your feelings".

She never made me mad. She was my grandmother. And from those days, til her last days, she always had my back.

Now, the first year since she has gone is almost done. The truth remains as full then as now. She was the only one who truly meant family to me, even more than my foster father.

So here I find myself alone. At least when she was here, I felt that there was a bit of grace and love that still tied me to something in this world that loved me wholly, not just for what I could do. Everyone needs a grandmother.

Everyone needs a grandmother.

I dedicate this to her, because though our faith was not the same, she would have liked this.

Metro Detroit Pagan Community Statement of Concern 2018 - G.L.W.C of Michigan

Metro Detroit Pagan Community Statement of Concern

2018

METRO DETROIT, APRIL 12, 2018 — Actions and circumstances have necessitated, in the view of this body, an official statement regarding our position on several matters. Over the last year, the rise of “witch hunts”, “witch wars”, and what appears on its face to be a power imbalance are of concern to us.

Multiple organizations in the region are in internal and external crisis. Leadership positions are no longer based on community visions. The previous culture of service, vision, and upliftment is now one infected with backroom negotiations and breaches of promise. Rumors and hearsay are used to destroy character, without chance for rebuttal, in the public eye. The torches are lit and we see missteps, mistakes, and ignorant actions no longer being times for education, but times for total annihilation by social media attackers and mercenary courtiers.

Michigan moved from presumption of innocence, and subsequent actions against those who commit physical harm. Now the community punishes, with great zeal and relish, any perceived infraction no matter the relevance to the person’s position. Personal slights are magnified into full on reputation assassinations. The drive to foment conflict and cause factioning is in full swing, and we fear it has not yet reached its amplitude.

Of primary concern are the following:

• The hyperbolic reactions and consolidation of personal and organizational harassment against persons during a crisis without a community sit down meeting.
• The penchant for the total destruction of leadership without thought to restorative measures considered to the community.
• The removal of persons from positions of leadership based on non-public and personal relationships and affairs.
• The insidious climate of a McCarthy type marginalization of people based on differing ideas, tenets of spiritual practice, and political views.
• The fostering of conflict in what seems to be a premeditated path to an underground purge of said persons.

We urge our peers to step back a moment and consider their actions very carefully. How you proceed in the next year will set the stage for an incoming generation. Now is the time for open and honest public conversation and transparent airings of accusations and grievances.

For at least three in our community, they are hamstrung by this shift. Their character and actions were cast aside to rot, good works be damned. That is the risk of public service, though. However, usually the public is not swayed by private agendas so easily. How many stakes will be needed to feed your witch hunt fires? If this continues, when will you take your place in one next?

“A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows public opinion.” – Grantland Rice

The G.L.W.C. of Michigan was founded in 2012 to To Facilitate Workshops, Events, Classes, Community Outreach, and a Forum for the Magickal and Magickally Interested Communities.

Media Contact:
Kenya Coviak
rzrrvn@yahoo.com
G.L.W.C. of Michigan/Great Lakes Witchs Council

PBN Blues Series: “Michigan Water Blues” by Jelly Roll Morton

We return to our series for the Pagan practitioner with another PBN Blues Series installment. Did you miss us? We missed you.

*We would also like to remind you, Flint, Michigan still does not have clean water.

There are time when the only way to break a streak of bad luck is to shake it off and seek new places and faces. Changing the mind can change the world. But if roots are being done on you locally, booking a flight or hitting the road, may be the answer, if viable. In these circumstances, clients are known to come for insight and work to prepare their route and “traveling mercies”. As a business person, you want to retain clients, but you also want to be of service to them as well. How you handle referrals is delicate and important.

Traveling on, but not without baggage
Curtis L. comes to you with his “I just quit another job” shirt on his back, pressed and fresh. A customer from your early days of business, he has stuck with you for 20 years. Traveling where the work will take him, he drifts from town, and state to state. His flashy watch matches the shine in his eyes, and you anticipate new employment status, and newer lady friends, in some place at the other end of a tank of gas. You mentally prepare to gather his usual assortment of spell components.
Curtis L. surprises you this time, though. He tells you that this is probably the last time you will see him for some years. It seems that he has a job up  in Michigan, and a plethora of opportunities. He is asking you not for his usual small kit, but simply a travel protection root bag and the name of a good shop or worker in Detroit.
Now, Curtis L. has been as dependable as the rains in fall, and the earth underfoot. His regular business has often meant the difference between being able to be in the black at the end of a month, and counting a loss. His word of mouth also keeps a steady stream of wealthy ladies finding your shop and lining your cash register drawer. Even his church friends come for blessed Seals of Moses you get from Sleeping Gryphon.  Yes, indeed, Curtis L. is a valued customer.
For this reason, you decide to sabotage his move. In your opinion, the relationship is too beneficial to both of you. You decide to fill the order, but nullify it with your own work. You then set lights for his job to fall through before he has been there a week. You will break this man for both of your sakes. In your view, no other worker can look after him like you, anyway.

You smile, and lie through your Fashion Fair coral lipstick and tell him you know not one authentic practitioner, sorry. You wish him well and watch him walk through your door, knowing he will return a broken man. But you also know you will then keep Curtis L. just healed enough to ensure your prosperity for many years to come. With this decision, you now have changed the course of your practice, but you are fine with that.

Fond Farewell, with some stories to tell
Curtis L. comes to you with his “I just quit another job” shirt on his back, pressed and fresh. A customer from your early days of business, he has stuck with you for 20 years. Traveling where the work will take him, he drifts from town, and state to state. His flashy watch matches the shine in his eyes, and you anticipate new employment status, and newer lady friends, in some place at the other end of a tank of gas. You mentally prepare to gather his usual assortment of spell components.
Curtis L. surprises you this time, though. He tells you that this is probably the last time you will see him for some years. It seems that he has a job up  in Michigan, and a plethora of opportunities. He is asking you not for his usual small kit, but simply a travel protection root bag and the name of a good shop or worker in Detroit.
Now, Curtis L. has been as dependable as the rains in fall, and the earth underfoot. His regular business has often meant the difference between being able to be in the black at the end of a month, and counting a loss. His word of mouth also keeps a steady stream of wealthy ladies finding your shop and lining your cash register drawer. Even his church friends come for blessed Seals of Moses you order from Sleeping Gryphon.  Yes, indeed, Curtis L. is a valued customer.

You will feel the loss of Curtis L. both emotionally and financially. His custom and referrals contributed to the success and popularity of your business. He sees you as a trusted fictive family member, and you are honored to be held in such esteem. You hold his trust sacred, and it is with this in mind, you prepare with care his last package.
You are a member of the Pagan Business Network, so you know the way to find the people he needs to know and how to place him in touch with them. You also know that a quick free divination will aid him to avoid any unforeseen trouble with the new employer. You give him this free of charge.
With a final goodbye, you send an email to the businesses you recommended, with his permission, with an introduction. He will never forget you, and will no doubt continue to sing your praises. Word of mouth on social media makes his continued referrals very probable for local clients.
Curtis L. sends you a chat message three months later. He is doing very well. That last parting gift of Boss Fix was just what he needed to foil a coworker’s plot to undermine him. His new local worker has a great relationship with him, and you and she often refer clients to each other for online customers. His reviews on both your sites is like honey to bees. Your choice to give a hand up instead of a pulling back, lifted you both.

Looking at Life
Your honor and business reputation are your most bankable asset. Without them, you have nothing. There is no lesson greater than this.

The flooding of Fae

Rescue of her family from second floor used with permission

Sometimes the bough breaks. Sometimes the Broom of the Fate is brutal, and its straws are made of pain and destruction. They destroy all we had and leave us with little else than the accounts of love and esteem that we have contributed to with our goodness and kindness and honor. It is in these darkest of times that our way is lit out of them by the glow from the stepping stones our friends lay upon our path. Such a time is here for Fae Laume.

You know her. We know her. She is us. We see her at ConVocation. We see her on social media. We know her laugh. We light up with her smile. Her steps in the community leave happiness in their wake.

But not today.

Fae lost everything. She lost her momentos. She lost her cherished memory holders. She lost her belongings. She lost her sense of safety. She lost her household goods. She lost her intact home. She lost her secret joys that all of us have, things kept in drawers, photo albums. She lost her books, her Book of Shadows, her besom, and her supplies. She lost her floors and walls.

Public Image, "Issues and Events in Midland Michigan"- Facebook Public Post

Eleven, a number of illumination. Eleven, the number that is just so much more than the end of a sequence in our base ten world. Eleven, the number of feet of water that swept away and destroyed the physical world and home of a remarkable woman.






Fae is us. Fae is any one of us. She is living that nightmare we hush in whispered fear, in the backs of our thoughts, that we could be the next news story.


Fae lost it all. But she did not lose us. Now, what are we all going to do about it?

To help, send donations to
https://www.paypal.me/laumephotography    or to specifically help with reconstruction so the family can use the downstairs of their home again...
 email is faelaume@live.com for home depot or lowes Egift cards

Brown eyes like mine - thoughts about a festival about Detroit's magic

On Monday, I experienced something that seems trivial to others, but was a profoundly moving experience to me.

A woman requested free tickets to the festival I am running. She asked because I have posted on the event there is a limited amount of free ones available to the community for hardship. Well, she asked, so she got. Closed mouths don't get fed, you know?

 I dropped them off at her home, and she introduce me to her son and her infant daughter. The boy is 13, and wants to study Reiki. He was also interested in learning to lay hands. Well, that is at the event, so cool. The mother was doing Psalm work, and practicing herbal crafts.

Her eyes were so large and her spirit so happy when she found out she was not alone. She had no idea there is a community of magical folks and was so happy that the event was in a place that is just off the beaten track enough that she can maintain her privacy from her neighbors.

Meanwhile, the whole way home, my eyes were filled with tears. I mean, lay my face in my hands, tears.

Why?

Because it filled my heart so deep and hard with how much I miss seeing my people, seeing other brown faces, breathing the same air as I do as we speak of things that make the impossible happen.
It struck me like a bell. I have never been to an event in Detroit like this event will be. I thought I made this event for several reasons, but maybe it was really about reunion. A Black magical family reunion.

The city is so spread out now. The only spaces and faces that gather together that I travel are filled with good and honorable people. But there are so few that are like mine, that when I see them, it is like filling a cup and drinking deeply when you didn't even know you were thirsty.

I find that my heart hurt so much, but was so glad, at the same time. Because I know the legacies of why we are so segregated here, I am not surprised it is this way. But it doesn't mean that an arbitrary mile road stops the flow of our magical folks on both sides of the 8 Mile border.

For those who are not from here, yes, 8 Mile is really a thing. It is the Michigan Mason Dixon line. We have others, as well. Going downriver has its own divisions.

But that simple moment, that act of connection, when my brown eyes met her brown eyes, all the memories came into my breath. As I shared what became, for me, a sacred moment in time, I was overwhelmed.

She did not know that as we talked and I smiled, that my chest was filling up with emotion. She did not know that I had been so happy to see a Detroit address. She had no way of knowing that with every block, my childhood of sitting cross legged on the porch and listening to my friend's Mother's blues records came back to me.

I had memories of hair being oiled, and the smell of Ultra Sheen and Pink Oil on Creole hands and African hands. I remembered looking through glass cases, filled with Anna Riva books and brown paper bags stained with conjure oils. I heard the voice of my mother in her kitchen, and felt the hands of my father as he put a new set of lodestones in my palm.

As I sat in my car, I turned on the Curtis Mayfield "Diamond in the Back" as I turned South from 8 Mile rd, that I felt like I was riding on a cloud. I played that song 7 times on the way there. On the way home, Al Green led my way back up, up, up to a home in a city where I would have taken my life in my hands if I had been caught there after dark in my childhood.

I no longer believe that this festival was just my idea from my own mind. I am not divine messenger or anything. I walk the path of the Sacred Fool, and make more mistakes than I can remember. But maybe, just maybe, in this moment, I found the reason why this had to happen. Maybe this will be the beginning of a bridge.

Or maybe, it will be just a good day in a park.

But in any case, this I believe. Magic is a thing, and cannot be contained by borders, cities, races, or nations. It lives and breathes and travels and is passed on as it wills.

And on this day, I felt it pass onward, to share with a younger set of brown eyes....like mine.

#detroitconjure