Curtis Renee, Detroit Organizer for Black and Queer Liberation, to Be Remembered Oct. 11
Loved ones will gather at the Marygrove Conservancy to celebrate the Detroit Safety Team co-founder, who died at 44
Curtis Renee's family and friends will gather Sunday, Oct. 11, to celebrate their life, joined by a wide circle of Detroiters still grieving the organizer and chef, who died in September at 44. Renee co-founded Detroit Safety Team and spent years helping neighbors handle conflict and harm without calling the police. Tributes have poured in from across the city and far beyond it.
The homegoing and celebration of life runs 11 a.m.–4 p.m. on the Marygrove Conservancy campus in northwest Detroit and will be livestreamed, according to the event flyer. Guests are asked to RSVP ahead of time.
Renee and fellow organizer John Sloan III first shaped the team's approach at the Allied Media Conference, an annual Detroit gathering of media makers and organizers, according to an episode of the podcast “One Million Experiments” featuring the pair. They built ways to keep people safe and respond to harm without relying on police or prisons, then carried that work into the city. Today, Detroit Safety Team trains residents as safety practitioners so neighbors can lean on one another when harm happens. On the podcast Freedom Dreams, Renee talked about encouraging Detroiters to look for alternatives to police when they feel unsafe.
Allied Media Projects, which produces the conference, credits Renee with co-founding both Detroit Safety Team and Black Lives Matter Detroit. In its Instagram tribute, the organization wrote that Renee touched its community "as a friend, founder, organizer, and healer." When protests over the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor swept the country in 2020, Renee and Sloan appeared on Detroit PBS's American Black Journal.
That summer, Renee also coordinated legal observers for the National Lawyers Guild's Detroit and Michigan chapter, arranging support and care packages for observers who had experienced police violence. "Curtis led our program with care, love, and compassion," the chapter wrote on Facebook.
Friends remember Renee's cooking almost as often as their organizing. The Detroit Justice Center mourned them as "a revolutionary organizer, an incredible chef, a world builder and a trusted friend." Common Justice, which spent time with Renee this summer through its first Practitioners Lab cohort from Detroit, called them "a fierce abolitionist." The Detroit branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation honored Renee in a memorial graphic as an unapologetic fighter for Black and queer liberation.
Those who want to help can give to the fund supporting the celebration of life and Renee's legacy on Zeffy or donate to Detroit Safety Team.
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