AUGUST 22, 2025 LABOR POWER Labor power creates unity in the community Argus Farm Stop on Liberty and Second St. is one of my regular spots. The cross-fertilization happens on many levels and if you read the current Groundcover magazine article “Food as Medicine,” you will understand good mental food as the place to start. Tim Wellman brought me the lamb’s quarters mentioned in that article. When we get greenhouse hostels set up, lamb’s quarters will be grown. There is evidence that it has anti-cancer properties. Belief in these properties is probably anecdotal, as funding for basic research is not done unless investors see profit coming. Our Grandmothers’ wisdom came from observation of intuitive pointers and the trial and error of many generations. What is edible is an ongoing experiment. How you feel throughout the digestive process is more important than the taste that ends when you swallow. If you get addicted to taste, maybe your gut biome has been colonized by a dangerous bacteria or other children of LUCA, Last Universal Common Ancestor/the first life form. LUCA cells are cells with no nucleus. The gut biome and the vagus nerve are sometimes referred to as “first mind.” Consider that matter is an expression of the mind.The mind from which thought emerges is a deeper awareness. Mindfulness of this mind is the challenge that Western Civilization is facing. The dialectics of thought that result in a higher synthesis are similar to unity in the community with threads that can be woven together to create something more useful. KEN PARKS Groundcover vendor No. 490 Organized power can be more effective in the expression of “Revolutionary Love” and it is time to bring the many into one fold. The first opportunity to pull the threads together is the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice and their alternatives to violence program which began on August 15. International Day of Peace is in September. Veterans for Peace annual event at the Ark is now on Veterans Day, November 11, 2025. Ann Arbor Coalition Against War is every Friday at 6 p.m., now at Fifth and Liberty. Many good events occur in relative isolation from each other. For example the July 31, 2025, press conference at the University of Michigan to support the Chinese professors imprisoned arbitrarily was good but lacked the broader support of the peace and freedom movement. We are all busy and have not yet mastered simple and complete. We can begin by using the Groundcover News community calendar as a way to share and communicate. Labor Power Labor power is what unites the community and was best explained by Karl Marx in “Das Kapital.” Volume 3 became popular in the 1990s as neoliberal imperialism emerged with the Reagan campaign to privatize everything. Financialization with hedge funds that leveraged debt into new forms of debt slavery became the model of neoliberal imperialism. “Monthly Review” is an excellent forum for intellectual labor. They are developing the “environmental rift” that Marx mentioned as an essential feature as capitalism extracted the resources from nature and left an environmental rift — damage to both the environment and all the living beings in it which corporations leave as a public burden. The Ann Arbor District Library once had “Monthly Review” on the shelf in the magazine section on the third floor but someone vandalized them and they do not carry it now. I call it successful bookburning to eliminate scientific intellectual work. Fortunately, there is Monthly Review Online. Unity of body, speech and mind is the beginning of labor power, the ability to get the job done, no matter what, be it washing the dishes or visualizing a pure land. Take a step in the direction of freedom. A clean sink is a pure land! Once we understand labor power and our responsibility to use it creatively to end genocide and every form of supremacism, we will be revolutionary love and celebrate life. There will be “Dancing in the Street” as Martha Reeves and the Vandellas prophesied.The unity of theory and practice is the dance of life. Study is where the work begins. It ends in freedom! GROUNDCOVER NEWS 7 THREATS from last page homelessness. As of Tuesday morning, no spike in FD-12s has been reported, according to the DC Hospital Association, which tracks this data. The White House has recently touted involuntary commitment as a solution to homelessness with an executive order that encouraged cities and states to use the practice more frequently. D.C. already regularly conducts encampment clearings throughout the city, clearing over 50 encampments so far in 2025. On federal land in the District, camping is also illegal, and U.S. Park Police have previously arrested people for camping. Before Trump’s press conference, these regularly scheduled clearings went as planned on Jul. 23 and Aug. 6. On July 23, one man’s belongings that he no longer wanted were removed by DMHHS. He called DMHHS himself, and said he had waited six months for DMHHS to come to clean the area. The 55-year-old man had been unhoused for at least two years, according to him, and declined shelter services offered by Miriam's Kitchen outreach workers. The belongings he wanted to keep were moved to a new location. On Aug. 6, DMHHS closed encampments under the bridge overpass on Queens Chapel Road NE, as well as an encampment up the road in the woods off Park Ave NE. By 10:30 a.m., the one resident present had packed up their belongings with the help of an outreach worker and moved to a new location. Once DMHHS was prepared to begin clearing the area, someone noticed a dog tied to a tree under the street overpass. Three MPD officers were called to extract the dog for the Animal Humane Society to come pick up afterwards. One of the officers approached the dog cautiously with a catch pole in hand and successfully removed the friendly dog from the encampment. The dog wagged its tail, jumped around hoping to play, and slurped up the water it was given. At the encampment off Park Ave NE, no residents were present, and DMHHS cleared the area of many black trash bags of items after removing the singular tent left behind. Mackenzie Konjoyan, Nina Claves, Jelina Liu, Donte Kirby, and Annemarie Cuccia contributed reporting. Courtesy of Street Sense Media / INSP.ngo
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