project leader
Eric C
location
3061 Field Street
(Near East Side/Islandview)
latest update rss
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the project

         Riverwise Magazine is a collective effort to highlight and strengthen grassroots movement activity throughout the city of Detroit. Former staff members of the Michigan Citizen Newspaper alongside active members of the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center for Nurturing Community Leadership launched the magazine in 2017 with an eye towards reporting on emerging movements, especially among communities of color. 

        Riverwise documents the people and places building a more equitable and just city. While government agencies lay down the red carpet for billionaire venture capitalists and corporate 'tech' headquarters, Detroit's 'underserved' are projecting visions of a sustainable future.

         With a distribution of 10,000 copies a quarter, we are encouraging new ways of thinking about our city in coffeehouses, barbershops, community centers and bookstores.  Our work has been supported by a generous grant from the New Visions Foundation and individual donations. We anticipate being able to maintain the current level of funding for basic production for the coming year but we have depended on the volunteer work of authors and artists.       

          We are now calling on you, our growing readership, to help us support local writers and artists working with us to tell these remarkable stories. Their unique insights and abilities are essential to projecting new ideas and propelling us towards a more humane world. 

           Our commitment to expand the traditional role of a community publication is paramount to the mission of Riverwise magazine. We provide an independent, visionary voice about the challenges facing our city and our country. This campaign is one step towards aligning our funding structure with the communities we seek to engage.

the steps

             Riverwise will use your donation to support writers and artists. We will  broaden our call for submissions' to writers and artists and offer a stipend for  published work.

          These stipends will be allotted according to our quarterly publishing schedule which currently falls in the first week of months, February, May, August and November.

          We will also encourage visionary activists who don't consider themselves 'writers' in the traditional sense to develop stories based on their activism within grassroots communities. 

why we're doing it

 Within many Detroit communities, activists are struggling to cope with a myriad of state-induced crises. Water shut-offs, rampant mortgage and tax foreclosures, school closures and other injustices have ravaged historically stable neighborhoods. 

           The response by local government support has been to continue providing tax breaks and other advantages to the wealthy in a fevered attempt to quickly inject investment into specific, favored regions in the city. Neighborhoods that need support and the most have been left to fend for themselves. Drawing on a history of “making a way out of no way,” people are developing visionary solutions to not only survive, but thrive in a city based on values of compassion and care. Documenting these stories is critical to expanding the consciousness of everyone about the kind of changes we need to create a better future. With your help, we hope to support for writers and artists who have dedicated their lives to telling the stories of people making a real difference in our communities.   

           Riverwise has initiated this campaign to help support writers and artists who have engaged in fighting these issues directly, or have committed themselves to telling the stories of those who have responded with visionary and empowering programs.

budget

Although we failed to reach our original goal, we are honored to be able to provide some stipends to Riverwise contributors with the amount that we did raise.

The $9,000 we hoped raise was to be allocated toward support of written and artistic submissions to Riverwise magazine. We hoped the amount would allow us to provide stipends for article and art content submitted during our first year, or first four issues. The amount of $1,082 that we did raise will go toward the same cause,  but for a smaller number or writers and artists. 

Riverwise features submissions from Detroit grassroots activists writing about everything from their participation in the Standing Rock protest to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline to trying to creating a forum for self-reliance from within their low-income housing complex. With the money raised through the recent IOBY campaign, Riverwise will disburse stipends of approximately $150 to seven of these writers who volunteered their time and intellect to the first two Riverwise issues (Winter2017 and Spring2017).

 

We thank IOBY again for the opportunity to increase our capacity to compensate the folks who advance the movement for social justice. And we look forward to the opportunity to work with IOBY again in the near future. 



RAISED = $1,150.00
 less ioby Platform Fee  $35.00
less ioby Donation Processing Fee (3%) $32.48
TOTAL TO DISBURSE = $1,082.52

Original budget:

Our financial goal during this campaign is to raise $9,000 to be allocated towards support of written and artistic submissions to Riverwise magazine. This amount would allow stipends for the number of submissions required for each of our quarterly issues for one calendar year.

 



PROJECT SUBTOTAL = 9,000
ioby Platform Fee  $35
ioby Donation Processing Fee (3%) $270
TOTAL TO RAISE ON ioby= $9,305

 

updates

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photos

This is where photos will go once we build flickr integration

donors

  • Lindsay & Kido
  • Fiana Arbab
  • Eleanor Gamalski
  • Eamon H.
  • The Putnam Family
  • Anonymous
  • Maly Mota
  • Mary Ellen Howard, RSM
  • Mike Doan
  • Shea Howell
  • Deborah Williamson
  • Naim K Edwards
  • Shirley Tomczak
  • Anonymous
  • John
  • Richard
  • Eric B. Vaughn
  • Naim K Edwards
  • richard f.