From Revolution to Evolution: The Legacy of Grace Lee Boggs

초록

Grace Lee Boggs (1915-2015), a Detroit-based social activist and community organizer, argued that social change must start with individual choices and transformation. Boggs called this transformation the evolution of the individual, and believed that such evolution must be the basis of any revolution. This essay argues that Grace Lee Boggs’s notion of revolution as evolution is indicative of the shift from leader-focused and group-based twentieth century social movements to community-centered and individual-based twenty-first century movements in the U.S., and posits that Boggs’s theory of evolutionary revolution can provide a useful framework with which to understand the structure, effects, and limitations of the Women’s March on Washington, Heather Heyer’s legacy, and protest movements across the U.S. against Trump and his discriminatory policies. Further, this essay sees Boggs’s theory and practices of evolutionary revolution as being at the center of twenty-first century civic struggle in many nations across the world at a time when we are seeing a resurgence of ultra-right nationalism, while simultaneously gesturing towards a cosmopolitan conceptualization of citizenship. Lastly, this essay suggests that understanding of Boggs’s social programs, which are practical implementations of her theory of revolution, can offer insights into how to not just build revolution out of resistance against injustice, but also how to implement and sustain the change central to revolution both locally and globally.

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