Future history: Jeff Mills

Finally got around to reading the fantastic Jeff Mills feature in The Wire issue #300.

Excerpted & linked: “Well for me, maybe one of the most influential things that happened was during the riots in Detroit in 67. My parents decided to pack the family up and take the family out of the country because it was too violent in Detroit – it primarily happened in our neighbourhood in Detroit, where all the bombings and all the police and the army came in, and they declared martial law. You could not leave your house. It was the summertime, there was no way you could keep six kids in the house in summertime, it was just impossible. So they decided to make a vacation, and they took all the kids to Expo, in Montreal, an exhibition on Futurism – architecture, technology. And I must have been six or seven at that time.

In Detroit, you had to keep all the shades down, because there were snipers. If army men thought they saw something in the window that was pointed at him, he had the right to shoot at it. So we had to keep the shades down, in a dark house, in the middle of the summer, we had no air conditioning. There were no supermarkets, they were closed. It was like a warzone. The army was using the school ground for landing helicopters. And they were marching down the middle of our street, tanks were coming down our street, going to the worst part of the riot.

We stayed there for a few weeks. It was maybe most impactful because you go from one very bleak, very bad situation, to something very bright, very promising. For a kid, six or seven, it was like Disneyland, these big installations, big exhibition halls.”

I posted it elsewhere, but this 10 minute documentary on Underground Resistance is just perfect: via Current TV, care of The Mire – school yourselves.

“Your failed systems will be eliminated worldwide and overcome.“