Activist summer.

• Author: Colatosti, Camille
• Position: Detroit Summer 1993

Jamez, a seventeen-year-old from Los Angeles, spent three weeks this summer vacationing in an unusual spot - Detroit. "When I told my friends I was taking off for Detroit," he laughs, "they looked at me like I was nuts. But I've learned things here that they wouldn't believe."

From June 27 to July 17, Jamez joined sixty-three youths, ages fourteen to twenty-five, to become part of Detroit Summer 1993.

The project, co-sponsored by the Detroit Greens, included labor and civil-rights leaders among its national endorsers. Unlike many neighborhood "paint-the-town" projects, Detroit Summer 1993 had no bank or corporate sponsorship. Instead, it was led by a committee of community activists - "volunteers from age fourteen to eighty-two," explains co-ordinator Michelle Brown. The project ran on a shoestring budget, accepting donations from individuals and in-kind support from community organizations. Most Detroit Summer participants lived with individual families.

Those who came were college students - recruited by graduates of Detroit Summer 1992 - former gang members trying to find alternatives, and youths without a clear focus. They came to Detroit to "learn how to live with people in today's world," as one volunteer explains.

Before arriving in Detroit, volunteers were asked to submit an essay explaining why they wanted to come to the city, what they hoped to learn, and what they could contribute. "Of course, no one was turned away," says Brown. "If anyone was willing to come to Detroit to work for three weeks for free, we took her. But we wanted participants who were thoughtful about what they were doing."

Together, volunteers worked in urban greenhouses, transformed vacant lots into parks, painted murals, designed and constructed giant puppets, performed community theater, and rehabilitated homes.

"The projects that Detroit Summer 1993 undertook were not simply symbolic," said community activist John Gruchala.

After gang members sprayed graffiti on a whitewashed wall where volunteers were preparing to make a mural, the participants could have simply painted the wall again, or given up. Instead, they met with gang members and persuaded them to help.

"It was an important experience for the volunteers," says Brown. "They realized that they could convince people to rethink how they wanted to live."

Participants also planted and tended a community garden that will feed more than thirty-five city families. Another garden will supply fresh vegetables...