Modern Vectors of Economic Liberation
Unwinding of Past Harm + Investment in Systems of Equity = Modern Vectors of Economic Liberation
"When communities come together to collectively own and manage assets, they can leverage their joint economic power to collectively assert their rights and exercise cultural and political power in a more impactful way than they would on their own. And, when neighbors build community wealth together they create safe and sovereign spaces that foster self-determination and build shared prosperity."
Nwamaka Agbo
Consider examples of non-extractive economic models:
One Vision of an Equitable Future
Summary of Efforts Toward Equity
Quotes
"We live in a global economic system where more money means more power. It will take all of us, working together, to develop solutions that repair the harm caused by that system and begin to restore both people and the planet.
When communities come together to collectively own and manage assets, they can leverage their joint economic power to collectively assert their rights and exercise cultural and political power in a more impactful way than they would on their own. And, when neighbors build community wealth together, they create safe and sovereign spaces that foster self-determination and build shared prosperity." Nwamaka Agbo
“For over 70 years economics has been fixated on GDP, or national output, as its primary measure of progress. That fixation has been used to justify extreme inequalities of income and wealth coupled with unprecedented destruction of the living world. For the twenty-first century a far bigger goal is needed: meeting the human rights of every person within the means of our life-giving planet.”
― Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist
Metrics
Methods of Liberation
SPARCC Policy Platform (sparcchub.org)
Alternative Ownership Enterprises Report – Transform Finance – Nov 2023.pdf - Google Drive
Changemakers
Restorative Economics — Nwamaka Agbo
Kate Raworth | Doughnut Economics
Sustainable Economies Law Center (theselc.org)
Prosperity Now | Prosperity Now
Articles
The emerging solidarity economy: A primer on community ownership of real estate (brookings.edu)
Books
Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist by Kate Raworth
Podcasts
Film/Video
Nwamaka Agbo: The Road to Restorative Economics – Community Ownership, Community Governance
Kate Raworth: A healthy economy should be designed to thrive, not grow | TED Talk
Towards a Regenerative and Distributive Economy on Vimeo
Beyond Capitalism and Socialism: A Conversation On Inventing the Regenerative Economy - Bioneers
Reparative Capital for Marginalized Communities - YouTube
Questions for Research and Reflection:
Taking Action:
Learn about each modern vector of economic liberation below
Envisioning an Equitable Future: a Spoken Word Series by K. Melchor Q. Hall
Summary of Efforts Toward Equity
Land has always been a source of wealth for white people; however, white people have made it nearly impossible for Black people to access and keep land. Using such tools as eminent domain and loopholes in heir's property laws, white people have found myriad ways to rob Black people of their land.
The concept of a Black Commons , or the creation of land parcels held in a trust in perpetuity for the benefit of the Black community, pushes back against the colonial legacy of land commoditization while creating a means of Black economic and political sovereignty. Lands stolen through government action such as eminent domain must be returned, as was the case with Bruce's Beach in California. Because much of Black land was taken through eminent domain for the creation of “public spaces''' like Central Park, Dr. Rashawn Rays of University of Maryland suggests that intervention is necessary to redistribute public lands for the private and collectivized use of African Americans is a form of reparations.
Kavon Ward of Where is My Land works toward land reparations.
Another source of Black Land loss has been through loopholes in Heir's Property Law. The Black Family Land Trusts’ WRAP strategy (Wealth Retention and Asset Protection) creates a model for black wealth retention and asset protection. The organization supports black families in unencumbering deeds and land titles for their own properties and then helps those families protect the land intergenerationally through estate and financial planning. On a national level, organizations like the Center for Heirs Property are advocating for the Heirs Property Act, adopted in 17 states, to end the forced partition sales affecting black landholding families. The WRAP strategy also includes use of legal innovations, like the placement of lands in trusts and conservation easements to secure land and subvert traditional forces of economic displacement.
Black-owned farmlands represent another major area of historic Black land loss. The barriers to achieving success that current and future Black farmers face are intensified by intersectional forms of discrimination. Black farmers therefore require specialized interventions that will help them to access economic incentives, access to capital for business investment, and take advantage of technological innovations. For instance, the Jubilee Justice Rice Project provides farmers with technology needed to grow new varieties of rice more efficiently and access to markets to distribute the rice.
Agencies like the USDA have been historically fraught with racism. To sustain the wellbeing of Black farmers, these agencies must have regular and robust oversight. The Justice for Black Farmer’s Act, is one step in this direction.
Quotes
“There's nothing you could do that is more entrepreneurial than farming. Everything is in your hands.” -Alexander Thompson, Thompson Prawn Farm: Preserving African-American Land Heritage
“At the core of everything we do, we want to drive consumers to land-based education and outreach, getting them onto the small family farms that really sustain those communities and allow that consumer to really build a respect and admiration for the work that goes into raising the food that they're enjoying at their kitchen table,” said Ashley. “Once we connect the farmer to the consumer and other markets, we want to continue bringing new people into the industry through our education and outreach. -Ashley Smith, co-founder of Black Soil: Our Better Nature : Farm Credit and Black Soil Kentucky Partner to Support Black Farmers
“We were watching the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and all of the other people we can name,” said Ashley Scott, one of the effort’s organizers, referring to Black victims of police violence killed last year. “My friend and I were just depressed and feeling like we needed to be able to do something to protect our husbands and sons.” They found a 96-acre (39-hectare) property for sale in central Georgia, and came up with a 10-year-plus timeline and a vision of using the land to build intergenerational wealth, something financial experts say is key to closing the racial wealth gap. The families purchased the property in August 2020, and after some social media and news coverage, “we went viral,” Scott, 34, a realtor in Atlanta, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview. “We had thousands of people reach out saying they wanted to move to Freedom.” Today, the group’s 19 founding Black families has amassed more than 500 acres in two parcels. Aiming to be a model for equity, energy efficiency, local food production and more, the Freedom project has drawn political support as an opportunity to build a community from the ground up.
ASHLEY SCOTT The Freedom Georgia Initiative
Land ownership today could look very different. The idea of collective ownership has a long history in the United States. Even during slavery, a piece of ground was granted by slave masters for enslaved African subsistence farming. The Jamaican social theorist Sylvia Wynter called this land “the plot.” The principles of collective land ownership evolved in post-slavery Black America.
How a Black Commons Could Help Build Communal Wealth - YES! Magazine (yesmagazine.org)
Metrics
“Under the bill, up to 32 million acres would move to Black ownership over a decade — nearly seven times the 4.7 million acres now in Black farms. A new USDA agency, the Equitable Land Access Service, would administer the program. The USDA would buy land from willing sellers at fair market value for use in the program. Up to 20,000 grants of 160 acres would be made annually through 2030. Recipients would be new or experienced Black farmers. Beginning farmers would be required to complete a training program.” - 'Justice' bill would transfer up to 32 million acres to Black farmers | Successful Farming
In their book From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century, William A. Darity and A. Kirsten Mullen lay out the calculations for the present-day value of the original land distribution reparations that were promised--but never made--to the formerly enslaved as one method of accounting for the wealth that was stolen from their descendants. Noting other scholars’ work, they explain that the price of land in the United States in 1865 was about ten dollars, and at least 40 million acres of land were allocated to be distributed based on the number of freedmen and female heads of household (approximately 4 million). At $10 per acre, the total value of land promised would have been $400 million in 1865. Darity and Mullen use three interest rates to increase earlier values at compound interest--4, 5, and 6 percent. Using a conservative 5 percent, the present value of that reparations land would be $733.2 billion. This does not take into consideration unfulfilled promises of the Southern Homestead Act (the provision of eighty acres of land to be sold to freedmen at $5 total), nor the potential for each of the freedmen to be granted 40 acres as an allocation, an allocation that “would have been equivalent to the average size of land grants given to white families under the Homestead Acts between 1868 and 1934.”
Based on the most conservative size of the plots of land that were to be delivered to the formerly enslaved, each recipient would receive payment of about $18,245 using a 5 percent interest rate. If forty acres were to have been allocated to each freedmen--amounts equivalent to the grants to Whites with the Homestead Acts--the present-day value using a 5 percent interest rate would be more like $2.9 trillion and payments per person would be approximately $74,500. Payments such as these could promote individual Black land ownership and wealth building.
Methods of Liberation
Land Reparations:
Pathways to reparations: land and healing through food justice
Example: California's Novel Attempt at Land Reparations | The New Yorker
Land Reparations & Indigenous Solidarity Toolkit (resourcegeneration.org)
Land Back: A Necessary Act of Reparations - Non Profit News | Nonprofit Quarterly
Democratize Land Ownership though community land trust & black commons
How a Black Commons Could Help Build Communal Wealth - YES! Magazine
Examples:
Earthseed Land Collective & WILDSEED & Kibilio (Refuge) Community and Farm
Support Black Farmers with Technical Aid & Innovation
Example: The Thompson Prawn Farm: “One recent success is the Thompson Prawn Farm located in Cedar Grove, North Carolina. Operated by Joe and Geraldine Thompson, this 80-acre farm has recently become home to a thriving aquaculture enterprise. As Alexander describes it, Joe Thompson raised tobacco for 30 years on the land, but following the tobacco buyout he had to discontinue his operation. He wanted to continue farming, so he reinvented himself as an aquaculture farmer raising prawns. In 2012 the BFLT purchased an agricultural conservation easement on 40 acres of the farm where the prawn ponds are located. Now Alexander says, “Joe makes the same or more money as before and it’s a whole lot easier. With proceeds from the easement, he was able to pay off debt and buy more land.” At the closing, Alexander says, Thompson “stood up with tears in his eyes and said he could lay his dead bones down at peace when the time comes knowing his land will always be used to feed people.”-Preserving African-American Land Heritage
Example: Jubilee Justice RICE Intensification Project
Support Black Farmers with Legal Aid
Estate Planning & Risk Management
Example: FARMS
Protect Heirs’ Property: “...the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act, enacted by a handful of states.74 This law requires that courts provide heirs with an opportunity to buy out the share of the person who wishes to sell and instructs courts to consider the noneconomic value of the property, including its cultural or historical significance, when deciding whether to order a partition sale. Finally, the law requires that the property be assessed by a neutral third party and publicly listed.” -Progressive Governance Can Turn the Tide for Black Farmers
Dr. Jennie L. Stephens talks with USDA Deputy Secretary Dr. Jewel Bronaugh
Commit to oversight and regular audits of the USDA
“Progressive governance demands transparency and accountability. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) should regularly audit the USDA to ensure that it is processing and approving loans to black farmers at the same rate as white farmers. Additionally, the USDA should create an online civil rights complaint database that will be jointly monitored by the GAO and periodically publish statistics about the speed at which the complaints are processed, the number of complaints found to have merit, and the number of pending complaints. Finally, Congress must ensure that the USDA’s Office of Civil Rights is sufficiently staffed to process these complaints.”- Progressive Governance Can Turn the Tide for Black Farmers
Timelines of Equity
2011
The Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act (UPHPA) is made available for states to enact. The act was drafted to stabilize tenancy-in-common ownership for disadvantaged families because for many decades state partition laws have contributed to widespread and devastating involuntary land loss among families who owned tenancy-in-common properties. The three major reforms of the UPHPA were: buyout of cotenant that petitioned court for partition by sale, bolstering preference for partition in kind, and a revamped sales procedure designed to yield higher sales prices.
2020
The Justice for Black Farmers Act is introduced by senators Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren. The Act would mandate new oversight to dispel racism within the USDA and devote $8 billion annually to buying farmland and granting it to Black farmers. John Boyd, Founder of the President of the National Black Farmers Association (NBFA) called “the most ambitious legislative proposal ever developed to address historic and ongoing discrimination against Black farmers.”
2021
March
President Biden includes $5 million in aid for socially disadvantaged farmers in COVID relief bill. element of President Biden’s massive stimulus relief package would pay billions of dollars to disadvantaged farmers — benefiting Black farmers in a way that some experts say no legislation has since the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
April
Congress advances slavery reparations bill H.R. 40. H.R. 40 would establish a federal commission to study the legacy of slavery in the United States and its ongoing harm and develop proposals for redress and repair, including reparations. The bill has been introduced at every congressional session since 1989 but has never before reached a committee vote, normally the first step toward passing legislation.
May
California Governor Gavin Newsom signs AB 3121, authored by then-Assemblymember Shirley Weber (D-San Diego), which established a nine-member task force to inform Californians about slavery and explore ways the state might provide reparations
August
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announces it is providing $67 million in competitive loans through the new Heirs’ Property Relending Program (HPRP), which aims to help agricultural producers and landowners resolve heirs’ land ownership and succession issues. Intermediary lenders — cooperatives, credit unions, and nonprofit organizations — can apply for loans up to $5 million at 1% interest.
September
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signs SB 796, authorizing the county to transfer land taken by eminent domain, back to the Bruce family after nearly 100 years. The land had been stolen after local Whites became angry about a Black family’s success and beach resort that served Black customers.
Changemakers
11 female farm influencers redefining rural entrepreneurship (southernstylesandsteeds.com)
National Farmers Union - Canada
Sustainable Economies Law Center (theselc.org)
Family Agriculture Resource Management Services
Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust
National Black Food and Justice Alliance
Center for Heirs Property Preservation
Solidarity Through Land | Kingston Land Trust
Black Church Food Security Network
Little Jubba Central Maine Agrarian Commons
Kibilio (Refuge) Community and Farm
Home | Athens Reparations Action
Articles
Why the US Should Use Federal Lands to Pay Reparations for Slavery (businessinsider.com)
Repatriation and Reparations: Land-Based Indigenous and Black Futurity (seattleu.edu)
The Non-Tragedy of the Commons - Land Stewardship Project
An Enormous Land Transition is Underway. Here's How to Make it Just. | Civil Eats
Progressive Governance Can Turn the Tide for Black Farmers
Proposal for a "Black Commons" - Schumacher Center for New Economics
New Laws Help Rural Black Families Fight for Their Land | The Pew Charitable Trusts
Restoring Hope for Heirs Property Owners: The Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act
Vermont Land Trust seeks to expand BIPOC farm land ownership in VT
Chef Adrian Lipscombe is buying land to preserve Black foodways
Preserving african american historic Places
Preserving Black Historical Resorts Is a Radical Act - YES! Magazine
'Justice' bill would transfer up to 32 million acres to Black farmers | Successful Farming
Black Soil Is Reshaping the Future of Black Farmers in Kentucky | Travel + Leisure
Books
Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm's Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land by Leah Penniman
Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement by Monica M. White
The Commoner’s Catalog for Changemaking - Chelsea Green Publishing
Systematic Land Theft by Jillian Hishaw
Don’t Bet the Farm on Medicaid by Jillian Hishaw
Podcasts
A Black Family Got Their Beach Back — And Inspired Others to Fight Against Land Theft
Reparations, Bruce's Beach, and Black land loss.
Solving Heirs Property--Episode 2
Point of Origin: Farming While Black on Apple Podcasts
Pay Check Podcast Season 3: My Family's Land Shows How Black Wealth Is Won, Lost - Bloomberg
Proof Podcast | America's Test Kitchen (americastestkitchen.com)
Film/Video
A Gift of Justice: The Central Virginia Agrarian Commons
FEMA Changes Document Rules For Assistance To Families Living On Heirs’ Property
Black Farmers - If You Don’t Know, Now You Know | The Daily Show
The Gullah’s Battle to Keep Their Homes and Way of Life
Black Farmers in Search of Justice Film
The Freedom Georgia Initiative
Webinar: Farm Legacy and Estate Planning: Strategies for Risk, Resilience, and Culture
Dr. Jennie L. Stephens talks with USDA Deputy Secretary Dr. Jewel Bronaugh
Questions for Research and Reflection:
- How do all Americans benefit from programs designed to reduce Black land loss, e.g. the Heirs Act?
- How can diverse land ownership contribute to a more resilient food system?
- How can Black land restoration contribute to greater economic stability for Black people? What would be the benefit to white people?
- What are the benefits of democratized land ownership and the establishment of localized Black Commons?
Taking Action:
Consider your family's heritage and the areas your ancestors once lived. Consider how you might invest your time, resources and agency to benefit a community struggling with land loss:
- Contribute to an agency that aids Black families struggling with Heir's Property cases
- Contribute to a Black Land Trust
- Contribute to a Black Farming Cooperative
- If your ancestors' plantation lands are still in existence, consider working with descendant communities to place a monument to those who were enslaved there, restore a graveyard, etc.
Envisioning an Equitable Future: a Spoken Word Series by K. Melchor Q. Hall
Summary of Efforts Toward Equity:
Housing is a universal need. It provides stability, security and a sense of wellbeing economically, socially, physically and spiritually. Liberation in housing involves a complete reevaluation of federal policy, private ownership, and even the housing market itself. To liberate housing, we liberate the land itself from the marketplace, we establish land trusts, reevaluate private ownership, family structures - and even our definition of "enough." While segregation, divestment and other obstacles continue to disadvantage Black communities, Black communities are responding with innovation. New solutions to housing including the creation of land trusts and the separate sale of houses on them, permanently stabilizing housing costs and preventing gentrification. Zoning must also be addressed; single family housing tracts have long been used, in combination with racial housing covenants, as a way to continue housing segregation. Cross the country, single family housing zoning is giving way to allow for additional dwelling units (ADUs), and forms of multi-family housing including apartments, condos, and community-based collective housing models like co-housing. In addition, the creation of historic cultural zoning overlays in traditionally Black and brown neighborhoods, along with changes to property taxation, can protect these neighborhoods from gentrification.
Quotes
"Housing in American communities is, for too many people, unaffordable, unstable, and segregated. The related crises of affordability, eviction, and segregation and systemic racism in housing require new approaches. Our finance system as a whole (the market undergirded by the government and its regulatory frameworks) is largely designed in the interest of profit-making and support for enterprise, with other social considerations an afterthought. While some parts of the housing finance system are geared toward answering the need for broader housing security, community investments, or equitable access to wealth-building, these have generally been treated as secondary concerns in the system’s operation. Little attention has been paid in this sphere to the problem of racial segregation.
In this series, we invite experts from research, advocacy, and government to consider how housing finance can begin to move beyond the constraints of racial capitalism and domination3 to further the creation of more just and equitable housing systems. The enclosed essays speak from a range of diverse viewpoints to explore how housing finance can be harnessed towards the ends of residential integration, equitable investment, and housing security, rather than purely for profit. Our authors offer ideas across a spectrum of proposed reforms. They describe how aspects of our current housing finance system derive from, or fail to correct for, our deep history of structural racism; they propose concrete steps toward re-engineering our current regulatory structure and housing programs to better advance equity, including addressing the particular harms of racial segregation; and they argue for expanded social housing and other visionary reforms."
Racial Justice in Housing Finance: A Series on New Directions
By Megan Haberle, former Deputy Director, Poverty & Race Research Action Council and
Sophia House, Deputy Director for Policy, Housing Solutions Lab, NYU Furman Center
Personal Narratives
Metrics
“Land trust housing also protects owners from downturns because people are not over extended; as a result, foreclosure rates for land trusts have been as much as 90 percent less than conventional home mortgages.”-Community Land Trusts (CLTs) | Community-Wealth.org
Over 99% of shared equity homes avoid foreclosure proceedings- Shared Equity Housing: By the Numbers | Grounded Solutions Network
The share of minority households living in shared equity homes increased from 13% in 1985 to 43% by 2018. - Shared Equity Housing: By the Numbers | Grounded Solutions Network
7 out of 10 Shared Equity homeowners are first time homebuyers. -Shared Equity Housing: By the Numbers | Grounded Solutions Network
Methods of Liberation
Land reparations:
Pathways to reparations: land and healing through food justice
Example: California's Novel Attempt at Land Reparations | The New Yorker
Democratize land ownership though community land trust & black commons
How a Black Commons Could Help Build Communal Wealth - YES! Magazine
Example: Black Family Land Trust
LA Mall Purchase Would Be the Biggest Victory Yet for Community-Driven Development (nextcity.org)
Black Community Group Fights Plan to Redevelop Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza (capitalandmain.com)
Collective owned infrastructure
The Freedom Georgia Initiative | Building It for Ourselves!
Developments in low-income housing policy
All people of color will have access to affordable housing | Liberation in a Generation
The radical way cities are tackling affordable housing
Why Hospitals Are Subsidizing Apartments For The Homeless
How European-Style Public Housing Could Help Solve The Affordability Crisis : NPR
Example: “The Mile High city has become a national reference point in conversations about affordable housing because local leaders aren’t just proposing solutions, they’re investing significant money to meet aggressive targets. In early 2016, Denver launched a $10 million Revolving Affordable Housing Loan Fund to help widen the capital pool for affordable housing projects. The initiative has had so much success bringing new projects online that the city expanded support for affordable housing last fall, approving plans to preserve or build thousands of units. A new $500,000 property tax increase, paired with new development impact fees, will raise $156.4 million over the next decade. “-Solving affordable housing: Creative solutions around the US - Curbed
Timelines of Equity
Timeline Of Fair Housing In America
A History of Housing Cooperatives | National Cooperative Law Center
1927- One of the first housing cooperatives was sponsored by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union.
1960’s- Dorothy Mae Richardson, a resident of the Central North Side of Pittsburgh, started the movement called Citizens Against Slum Housing (CASH) raising almost a million dollars and convincing 16 financial institutions to make community loans to rehabilitate her community. CASH marked the beginning of a new form of community-based development and led to the founding of Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS) of Pittsburgh in 1968.
1966- Martin Luther King addresses the leaders of the Chicago Tenants Rights movement “...This day, we must continue our already successful efforts to organize, in every area of Chicago, unions to end slums. Together, we must withhold rent from landlords that force us to live in subhuman conditions.
And let me say, here and now, that we are not going to tolerate moves that are now being made in subtle manners to intimidate, harass and penalize Negro landlords who may own one or two buildings, while ignoring the fact that slums are really perpetuated by the huge real estate agencies, mortgage and banking institutions, and city, state and federal governments.” -https://socialistworker.org/2010/03/19/housing-struggle-then-and-now
1968- The Fair Housing Act prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin or sex.
1969- New Communities created the first community land trust on a 5700-acre tract of land in Albany, Georgia.
1974- Equal Credit Opportunity Act outlaws discrimination in lending
1988 -Congress passed the Fair Housing Amendments Act, which expanded the law to prohibit discrimination in housing based on disability or on family status (pregnant women or the presence of children under 18)
2015- the Obama Administration sought to fight housing discrimination by strengthening existing rules for Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH), which require local governments that receive certain federal funds to analyze challenges to fair housing choice and establish goals and priorities to address the fair housing barriers in their local communities.
Changemakers
People of Color Sustainable Housing Network
The Black Homeownership Collaborative
National Fair Housing Alliance |
Alkebulan Community - Foundation for Intentional Community
Inquilinxs Unidxs Por Justicia
Africatown Community Land Trust
Articles
Housing reparations | County Health Rankings & Roadmaps
Building Community Wealth: Shifting Power and Capital in Real Estate Finance
The emerging solidarity economy: A primer on community ownership of real estate (brookings.edu)
How housing reparations can help close the Black homeownership gap (reparationscomm.org)
One Way To Close The Black Homeownership Gap: Housing As Reparations | KQED
Last Week Tonight: John Oliver says we need reparations for housing discrimination. (slate.com)
A New Housing-Rights Movement Has the Real-Estate Industry Running Scared | The Nation
Methodologies for Housing Justice Resource Guide
Racial Justice in Housing Finance: A Series on New Directions
How Black real estate developers are breaking ground for underrepresented communities - ABC News
5 policy solutions to advance racial equity in housing | Habitat for Humanity +
[Origins and Evolution of the Community Land Trust in the United States]
An Unusual Community Land Trust in Colorado Is Making Its Mark
Land Banks and Community Land Trusts Partner to Unlock Affordable Housing Opportunities
A tiny home of one’s own: black women embrace the small house movement | US news | The Guardian
Black Americans are leaving their homes to start their own all-Black communities - ABC News
Building Freedom, Georgia: A Safe Community for Black Families, Built by Black Families
FHFA nominee pledges to address racial homeownership gap - Roll Call
Books
Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities
Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice
The Community Land Trust Reader by John Emmeus Davis
Podcasts
Learning to love rent control - The Weeds
For The Wild: SEVERINE VON TSCHARNER FLEMING on the Commons to Which We Belong
Film/Video
Community Land Trusts: A Model for Reparations?
Black Oaks Center for Sustainable & Renewable Living
Policy Solutions to Advance Housing Justice | ChangeLab Solutions
How housing reparations can help close the Black homeownership gap
A Black Lens of The Built World - Housing Innovation Collaborative
Webinar - Stabilizing Communities: Advancing Housing Justice Organizing and Policy Strategies
Dorothy Mae Richardson: A Visionary
More:
Questions for Research and Reflection:
- How can investing in shared equity homes stabilize home ownership for Black families?
- How do community land trusts halt gentrification?
- What is the relationship between housing justice and European notions of private property?
- How can affordable housing stabilize black economic wellbeing?
Taking Action
Consider your family's heritage and the areas your ancestors once lived. Consider how you might invest your time, resources and agency to assist Black community members with housing-related issues, e.g.:
- Pool funds for the down payment for a house
- Take out a margin loan from your investments and use it to help a Black colleague or friend put in a cash offer to purchase a house; then help them re-finance to recover your funds.
- Pool funds and assist Black community members in making renovations to their homes or taking care of deferred maintenance issues.
- Work toward changing zoning codes in your community to more equitable ones that include multi-family housing and ADUs
- Review your communities' covenants; root out racial bias wherever you find it.
Envisioning an Equitable Future: a Spoken Word Series by K. Melchor Q. Hall
Summary of Efforts Toward Equity:
A good education is the key to many aspects of success, including better employment prospects and social mobility. School desegregation and integration have faded as solutions to education inequality; instead, Black families are calling for a change to property tax funding of schools, which favor wealthy white neighborhood schools, and instead seeking equal funding for all schools regardless of neighborhood.
The educational outcomes of Black students are still linked to the level of school funding. Activists have called for school finance reform and funding increase. States like Michigan have responded by centralizing and equalizing funding levels across the state nullifying the link between property tax and school funding. Other strategies have targeted additional funds for under-funded schools. States like Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New Jersey have moved toward achieving resource equity according to the American University of Education:
- “Provided additional funds to districts serving high concentrations of economically disadvantaged students
- Raised standards for teachers and principals, increased their salaries, and provided them with ongoing professional development
- Invested significantly in pre-K programs such as Head Start, school readiness programs, and scholarship programs to increase access to quality early childhood programs for low-income students”
These policy changes have resulted in increasing funds for Black education and shrinking the achievement gap.
African American immersion models like the Little Sun People childcare center or the Ember Charter Schools focus on Afro-centric curricula.
In response to racial disparities in treatment and discipline of Black children in public schools, black families have taken to unschooling or homeschooling their children. With the help of pioneers in the field like Paula J. Penn-Nabrit and organizations like BLACK FAMILY HOMESCHOOL EDUCATORS & SCHOLARS these folks have been able to chart a path of success shaped by their own hands.
For those Black families that cannot homeschool, education reform activists like Geoffrey Canada the visionary founder of Harlem Children’s Zone are extending cradle to grave wrap around services to support the education of the nation's lowest income families. States like Colorado are also taking action to extend access to early childhood education.
In response to the racist abuse that Black students face in K-12 schools, education reformers like Fania Davis are introducing restorative and transformative justice as an alternative to traditional discipline.
Scholar activist Zaretta Hammond is forwarding the movement of culturally responsive teaching to address implicit bias in teachers.
The funding landscape for higher education is tumultuous for all students. While legacy admission still plagues Ivy league institutions, many of them offer low-income students tuition free educations. More than 20 states offer tuition free community college. State institutions in Portland OR are offering free tuition specifically to Black and indigenous people. Students are at the forefront of university reparations. At Georgetown, they have voted to tax themselves to pay reparations for slavery while student activists at Cal State are making similar demands.
Finally, Black student debt relief would be needed as part of any serious reparations platform.
Quotes
"Black Americans won’t reach true economic justice until our nation’s K-12 leaders fully confront and make amends for the public education system’s racist history. This process of reconciliation and reparations is essential for understanding contemporary K-12 racial disparities, rebuilding trust, and restructuring an institution that still causes the subordination and undereducation of Black students." - Do America's Public Schools Owe Black People Reparations? (edweek.org)
“We are bringing a Black experience,” Burges said. Black history, literature and culture “should have never been left out,” she said, adding: “It should have never been invisible, but an older gentleman told me a long time ago, he said, ‘Joyce, the story’s going to be told according to the people who write the story, and Black Americans — we are writing this story … so this is the spirit of how we write our curriculum for families, and it’s a beautiful thing.” -Why more Black families are choosing to home-school their children this fall
Personal Narratives
Metrics
“a 10 percent increase in spending per student for all 12 years of public school led to 7.25 percent higher wages in adulthood, and that the effects were greater for low-income students.” -https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w20847/w20847.pdf
“In 2015, 140 Black home-schooling families were given standardized tests. The tests were compared to those of more than 1,200 Black public-school students, which showed that Black homeschoolers scored higher in reading, language and math. The home-schoolers’ scores were also equal to or higher than white public school students’ scores, on average.”-Why more Black families are choosing to home-school their children this fall
In one study , young white participants who listened to a 10-minute audiotape with instructions in mindfulness showed less implicit bias towards blacks and older people than those who listened to a 10-minute discussion of nature. -Mindfulness Meditation Reduces Implicit Age and Race Bias: The Role of Reduced Automaticity of Responding - Adam Lueke, Bryan Gibson, 2015
Methods of Liberation
Specific concepts on the liberatory path:
Providing college education funding and student debt relief for African Americans as part of a program of reparations
- 4 ways reparations can address racial inequality in education (reparationscomm.org)
- Student loans, the racial wealth divide, and why we need full student debt cancellation (brookings.edu)
Expanding Federal grants to close the property-tax funding gaps between schools that serve majority-Black communities and schools that serve white ones;
- Public Education Opportunity Grants - Center for American Progress
- The Property Tax- School Funding Dilemma
Colleges and Universities making reparations to account for histories of slavery and institutional racism
- Portland college offers free tuition to Black and Native American students - OPB
- Historically Black college in South Carolina offers free tuition
Increasing access to Afro-centric Curricula
- The Path Less Traveled: Afrocentric Schools and Their Potential for Improving Black Student Achievement while Upholding Brown (fordham.edu)
- Legal Action to Support Black History AP Course - Google Drive
Increasing Homeschooling
School Finance Reform
Timelines of Equity
Changemakers
Clean Slate - EdBuild - 2020.doc
We the People: Math Literacy for All
CENTER FOR BLACK EDUCATOR DEVELOPMENT (thecenterblacked.org)
BLACK FAMILY HOMESCHOOL EDUCATORS & SCHOLARS
Learning for Justice | Education Resources
The Little Village Lawndale High School for Social Justice
About RJOY – Racial Justice for Oakland Youth
Articles
Opinion | Who’s Afraid of Black History? - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
4 ways reparations can address racial inequality in education (reparationscomm.org)
Ta-Nehisi Coates Talks Reparations With Harvard, Georgetown Presidents - The Atlantic
Do America's Public Schools Owe Black People Reparations?
How reparations can be paid through school finance reform (theconversation.com)
"School Finance, Race, and Reparations" by Preston C. Green III, Bruce D. Baker et al. (wlu.edu)
Home - Reparations for Black Students
How School Funding's Reliance On Property Taxes Fails Children : NPR
Inequality in Public School Funding | American University
States with the Most & Least Equitable School Districts (wallethub.com)
Here's why Black leaders say debt forgiveness is a civil rights issue - CNN
Building Better Narratives In Black Education
Cultivating Flourishing Lives: A Robust Social Justice Vision of Education
Re-emerging Demand Seen for City's Afrocentric Schools
'I Love My Skin!' Why Black Parents Are Turning to Afrocentric Schools - The New York Times
Why some black families led the charge against school desegregation - The Washington Post
The Costs of Brown: Black Teachers and School Integration
How school funding can help repair the legacy of segregation - Vox
Public Education Opportunity Grants - Center for American Progress
Michigan settles historic ‘right to literacy’ lawsuit - The Washington Post
States Gear Up to Overhaul K-12 Funding in 2020
The Rise of Black Homeschooling | The New Yorker
Unschooling: The Educational Movement More Black Parents Are Joining - mater mea
A Bold Agenda for School Integration
Four Ways Teachers Can Reduce Implicit Bias
Books
Countering the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys Vol. I by Jawanza Kunjufu
Podcasts
Vulnerable Students Could See More Money With This School Funding Fix : NPR
Episode 4: "Agitate! Educate! Organize!" — School Colors
Contemporary Perspectives on Black Homeschooling on Apple Podcasts
Young, Self-Directed and Black at The Sudbury School of Atlanta
8 Black Hands on Feedspot - Rss Feed
Black on Black Education Podcast • A podcast on Anchor
Black Educators Matter • A podcast on Anchor
In Nation's First Black Public High School, A Blueprint For Reform : Code Switch : NPR
Film/Video
Contemporary Perspectives on Black Homeschooling: Paula J. Penn-Nabrit
What’s the Deal With Free College?
The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman on Vimeo
Geoffrey Canada’s TED Talk | Harlem Children’s Zone
A Peek Inside Little Sun People on Vimeo
Creating a Culturally Responsive Classroom
More
Questions for Research and Reflection:
- In what ways does equalizing school funding in low property-tax Black neighborhoods create equity for Black students?
- How does the whole country gain from increasing educational opportunities for Black and other children of color?
- How does increasing educational opportunities across the board lessen the need for a prison industrial complex?
- How do natural learning environments contribute to increased educational outcomes?
- What industries benefit from a highly educated workforce? What industries are challenged by educational equity for poor and students of color?
Taking Action
- Advocate for a change in school funding policy to make it equitable across neighborhoods, cities and the whole state
- Consider joining your schools' PTA to ensure that African American viewpoints on curriculum are heard
- Consider running for your community's school board to ensure that African American viewpoints on curriculum are heard
- Attend community meetings and stand with African Americans on racial equity issues
- Pool funds to help retire the student debts of local African American students
- Pool funds to create scholarships for African American students
Envisioning an Equitable Future: a Spoken Word Series by K. Melchor Q. Hall
Summary of Efforts Toward Equity:
Black people continue to fight for sovereignty over their labor power in the United States. In response to workplace disempowerment Black people are starting their own enterprises at historic rates. Startup accelerators are providing wrap around services to Black entrepreneurs including funding. The Northwestern Mutual Black Founder Accelerator is one such example.
Black workers are currently overrepresented in low-income service sector jobs and underrepresented in the fastest growing high-income sectors like tech. Organizations like Black Tech Nation, however, have committed to building a Black tech ecosystem in the city of Pittsburgh. And Black Girl Code is on a mission to train one million girls to code by 2040. To support service economy workers, organizations like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), are organizing workers in the home care and fast-food industries.
Not only are Black workers working for themselves, entering into new fields and organizing old ones, they are changing the conditions of exploitation from the inside out by becoming the owners of the places where they are employed. The largest worker cooperative in the United States today is the South Bronx-based Cooperative Home Care Associates (CHCA) which is owned primarily by Black and Latinx women. Cities like New York are actively incentivizing worker ownership by supporting conversions in more than 10,000 areas of service.
Quotes
"Another tool to rebalance labor relations is worker-owned cooperatives, which have a long tradition in African American communities as economist Jessica Gordon Nembhard has noted. From early on, she points out, “African Americans realized that without economic justice—without economic equality, independence, and stability … social and political rights were hollow, or actually not achievable.” - Why Empowering Workers Is a Form of Reparations - YES! Magazine (yesmagazine.org)
"Our mission is to close the racial wealth gap and we have a 7-step methodology that we believe can empower Black millennials [and] Black professionals to increase their net worth, acquire assets and align themselves with generational wealth, because what we find is that individualism is a major problem in the Black community in terms of creating wealth. We're trying to take a step back and take our communities through seven steps.
It's learning Black history one, so that we can develop a sense of identity. We can share scripts that can help us feel more empowered when we're faced with disarming conversations or racist systems that we don't know how to address. Then the next step is going into personal development where we're developing a wealth mindset and overcoming imposter syndrome because being a minority in this society, it's easy to feel as if we are inferior or subordinated and not able to be our best selves. Next, we talk about financial literacy, which is really…shaping the paradigm for Black millennials, because I think what plagues the Black community as a whole is how we define success. We look at celebrities and fame or materialism, and we think income is success. Or we think the perception of success, wealth, fame or income and fame is success. Understanding that the real success needs to be assets, net worth ownership…are you estate planning to extend that wealth to the next generations and the next generation? Then we talk about economics, which is really breaking down societal dynamics around politics, economics, and sociology, and understanding…how the dollar is an economic vote…reprogramming the economic lens. We talk about community building, which is extremely important and developing a framework of functional communities and how we can add value to each other and create win-win scenarios for the Black community…we hope that we can raise the net worth of 500 Black millennials by 25% by the year 2025, and ultimately assume a more self-sufficient and competitive posture politically and economically in this country."
Johnny Bailey Explains Why The Key To Black Liberation Is Economic Power (forbes.com)
Metrics
Closing the racial wealth gap could net the US economy between $1.1 trillion and $1.5 trillion by 2028.-The future of work in Black America | McKinsey
“On average employee owners making less than $30,000 have 17 percent greater median household net worth and 22 percent higher median income from wages than their non-owner peers.” -https://www.nceo.org/data
Methods of Liberation
Liberated Zones: liberated Zones are territories where the masses (the community of people who live in and around a specific area) are in near-complete control over their political and socio-economic destinies because they control the institutions in a specific region, city, town or state. -Liberated Zones Theory - Community Movement Builders
- Example: “AUSTIN, Texas — A black liberation autonomous zone is forming in Austin, which is the Texas State Capitol. The developers of the city’s “sovereign citizen” collective reject state authority to “protect Black liberation and prosperity,” according to their published information.” -Black liberation autonomous zone — 'Orisha Land' — forming in Austin – Law Officer
Solidarity Economics refers to a wide range of economic activities that aim to prioritize social profitability instead of purely financial profits. A key feature that distinguishes solidarity economy entities from private and public enterprises is the participatory and democratic nature of governance in decision-making processes as one of the main principles of the SSE sector.
- Example: “When the Crenshaw Plaza Mall came up for sale last year in a historically Black neighborhood of Los Angeles, a group of residents decided to push back against gentrification and bring the property into shared community ownership. The Downtown Crenshaw coalition has now raised the $28 million dollars needed for a down payment on the mall, but brokers have accepted another bid at a lower price. Sign the petition to support Black self-determination through community purchase of the mall and read more about the Crenshaw community’s vision for building the solidarity economy in their neighborhood.”-New Economy Roundup: 40 Acres and a Mall, Black Solidarity Economy Fund, Health over Profits - New Economy Coalition
Mutual Aid refers to tools that help communities resource each other:
Example: Hurricane Ida Sparks Mutual Aid Network in New Orleans - Bloomberg
SUSU: learn more here: Susu: Capitalizing Development from the Bottom Up
revolving loan funds: San Francisco African American Revolving Loan Fund
Organized Labor in the Service Sector can help low-income workers bargain for better wages, health and safety measures and job security.
Can labor unions help close the black-white wage gap? | Urban Institute
Unions and Upward Mobility for Service-Sector Workers
Incentivize and Support Worker Ownership: helps workers to become owners and decision makers to create more security and empowerment at work.
Mayor de Blasio Launches Employee Ownership NYC | City of New York
Seeking a More Worker-Friendly Economy, Some States Push Employee Ownership
Ex: Satya Yoga Cooperative & Cooperation Jackson
Timelines of Equity
African American Labor History | Encyclopedia.com
Civil Rights and the Labor Movement: A Historical Overview - International Brotherhood of Teamsters
A House Divided African American Struggle Against Segregation
(1866-1877) The Reconstruction era, emancipated slaves encountered greatly restricted economic opportunities.
In 1866 the black owned and operated Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company employed hundreds of black ship workers.
In the 1880s, the Knights of Labor—a national body composed of thousands of local "assemblies"—opened its doors to black members, on the grounds that all workers, regardless of race, should have equal rights and should work together to further the interests of the "producing classes.
1907, Du Bois published a study, “Economic Cooperation Among Negro Americans,” a brief outline of a history of cooperative economic activity among black communities nationwide to that point.
1925 the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) was organized by A. Philip Randolph
The passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, particularly its Title VII, finally outlawed discrimination in American workplaces and in union ranks.
Changemakers
Southern Reparations Loan Fund
Black Economic Justice Institute
Our Mission - Black Economic Alliance
About - Malcolm X. Grassroots Movement
Coalition of Black Trade Unionists
Mutual Aid — The Black Collective
Articles
Why Empowering Workers Is a Form of Reparations - YES! Magazine
The future of work in black America | McKinsey
A Future for Workers: A Contribution from Black Labor
Black Workers, Unions, and Inequality
Can labor unions help close the black-white wage gap? | Urban Institute
Johnny Bailey Explains Why The Key To Black Liberation Is Economic Power
Never Mind Guaranteed Income, we want the cow | Fund for Democratic Communities
Capitalism, Democracy, and Du Bois’s Two Proletariats – Items
This Rust-Belt Town’s Survival Strategy Is All About Giving Workers Control - YES! Magazine
How a Guaranteed Income Could Relieve the ‘Pressure Cooker’ of Poverty
Susu: Capitalizing Development from the Bottom Up
Small Businesses Have Surged in Black Communities. Was It the Stimulus? - The New York Times
Building supportive ecosystems for Black-owned US businesses | McKinsey
Race, Equity and the Transformative Power of Employee Ownership
Books
A Freedom Budget for All Americans: Recapturing the Promise of the Civil Rights Movement in the Struggle for Economic Justice Today-by Paul Le Blanc Michael D. Yates
The New Systems Reader: Alternatives to a Failed Economy by James Gustave Speth
Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination by Robin D.G. Kelley
Principles of Black Political Economy by Lloyd Hogan
Podcasts
Film/Video
Webinar: Race, artificial intelligence, and systemic inequalities
“Teach a Man to Fish” Parable is a Lie - Ed Whitfield Explains Why
Ed Whitfield: "The Other Side of the Door"
Jessica Gordon Nembhard: Cooperative Economics and Civil Rights
Ask Prof Wolff: Cooperation Jackson and Humboldt
An Economy for Everyone: Bold Strategies to Build Racial and Economic Equity
More
Questions for Research and Reflection:
- How best can we respond to an over-representation of black laborers in low-income service sector industries? What policy changes, education and economic approaches might best support low-wage workers finding higher paid work?
- How can worker ownership improve job security for Black Americans / all Americans?
- How can strategic investments in cooperatively owned industries build community scale wealth?
- How has the decline of labor unions impacted wage growth? (How would an increase in labor unions impact wage growth?)
Action
- Open professional doors of all types for African American colleagues, including Board, committee and special project appointments, etc.
- Serve on your company's DEI committee and support full implementation of its recommendations for workplace equity initiatives
- Refer consulting and other professional opportunities to young African American colleagues
- Contribute to conference scholarship funds so African American students or graduates may attend.
- Pool funds and provide African American students with coaching and mentorship opportunities
Envisioning an Equitable Future: a Spoken Word Series by K. Melchor Q. Hall
Summary of Efforts Toward Equity:
A program of reparations could end health disparities in the Black community. Meanwhile, movements like White Coats for Black Lives and #shutdownSTEM have promoted creative ideas like colorblind lotteries to address racial disparities in biomedical research funding. Researcher Alondra Nelson even advocates for the use of genetic technology to increase research in health concerns specific to Black people and push for reparations. Innovative Black entrepreneurs like Kimberly Wilson, creators of the platform Hued and Unity Stoakes, president and co-founder of StartUp Health are also turning to technology to decrease racial disparities in healthcare. Health Equity activists like BLKHLTH are combating implicit bias in healthcare settings with trainings. The Carolyn Downs Family Medical Center is the last of the Blacks Panther Parties Peoples’ Free Medical Clinics and a model of Black centered healthcare. Healing Justice Activists like Cara Page and Tamika Middleton at the Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective are working to address widespread generational trauma from systemic violence and oppression by reviving ancestral healing practices outside of mainstream healthcare. Black Herbalists like Karen Rose are at the forefront of connecting Black folks to traditional Black medicine ways. Black women and birth workers have a long history of tending to each other outside of formal institutions like hospitals which pose numerous threats to the wellbeing of Black birthers and babies. The movement for Black doulas and midwives like those supported at the Sacred Seeds Black Doula Collective are putting Black parents and Black babies front and center. Organizations like the Satya Yoga Cooperative, the first BIPOC owned and operated yoga cooperative in the US is training a new crop of Black health workers to use movement to improve the wellbeing of BIPOC bodies. Mental Healthcare professionals like Dr. Gail Parker are lifting up yoga as a method for addressing the impact of race-based trauma.
Quotes
"Cash restitution would save lives," said Harvard University FXB Center for Health and Human Rights Director Dr. Mary Bassett, who recently argued for reparations as a strategy to decrease health disparities in a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine.
"There is a strong positive correlation between socioeconomic status or income and health outcomes, including mortality," Bassett said.
"We already know that if you feel secure, you're more likely to exercise more, to have less stress, to gain less weight, not develop sleep apnea -- you name it," said Dr. Chyke A. Doubeni, director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Health Equity and Community Engagement Research. Some experts propose reparations as solution for decades of racial health inequities - ABC News (go.com)
“This is a moment where genetic technology is being used for an endeavor that many African-Americans had tried to accomplish for decades and generations: reparations. And they’re using genetic technology which has not always historically been a friend to Black communities if we think about the legacy of eugenics for example. And they’re using this to try to get freedom and restitution for Black people.” -Alondra Nelson More African Americans Are Learning Their Roots With Genetic Testing : NPR
Metrics
“Nearly a third of women who gave birth in hospitals said they were mistreated, compared with just one in 20 who gave birth at home. - The Giving Voice to Mothers study: inequity and mistreatment during pregnancy and childbirth in the United States | Reproductive Health | Full Text
“Women who had doulas had significantly less epidural use (54.4% versus 66.1%, P < .05) than women in the usual-care group. They also were significantly (P < .05) more likely to rate the birth experience as good (82.5% versus 67.4%), to feel they coped very well with labor (46.8% versus 28.3%), and to feel labor had a very positive effect on their feelings as women (58.0% versus 43.7%) and perception of their bodies’ strength and performance (58.0% versus 41.0%).”- Effects of providing hospital-based doulas in health maintenance organization hospitals - ScienceDirect
Methods of Liberation
Heath and Medicine Reparations
Frontiers | The Case for Health Reparations | Public Health (frontiersin.org)
Healthcare Needs to Make Reparations to People of Color | HealthCity (bmc.org)
An Antiracist Agenda for Medicine - Boston Review
The Case for Health Reparations - PMC (nih.gov)
Healthcare for All
Public Options Will Improve Health Equity Across the Country - Center for American Progress
Funding for Research and Development of Treatment Modalities for African Americans
Fixing Medical Devices That Are Biased against Race or Gender - Scientific American
Development for African American Mental Health Protocols and Treatment
How to Heal Black Generational Trauma, According to Experts - Word In Black
Home Birth, Midwives and Doula Assisted Birth at Home and Inside Hospitals
Midwifery and Antenatal Care for Black Women: A Narrative Review
Increased Training Recruitment and Retention of Black Doctors
Patient Experience Better When Patients Visit Docs of Same Race
Example: Swedish, Meharry Medical College team up to diversify health care in Puget Sound region
Implicit (and explicit) Bias trainings, tools and reforms in hospital settings
Implicit Bias Training in Healthcare Eliminates Disparities
Dignity in Pregnancy and Childbirth Project - SB464 Resources (diversityscience.org)
You searched for blood bank - Lown Institute
Community Based Integrated Healthcare Centers
PATHWAYS TO INTEGRATED HEALTH CARE- STRATEGIES for AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITIES and ORGANIZATIONS
Community-Based Models to Improve Maternal Health Outcomes and Promote Health Equity
Traditional Medicine Training & Apprenticeships for Preventative Self & Community Care
People’s Medicine School — Rootwork Herbals
Celebration of African American Medical Researchers
Celebrating 10 African-American medical pioneers | AAMC
Fund for Reduction of Personal Medical Debt
Timelines of Equity
Timeline - Achievements in Minority Health - Health Equity - CDC
Celebrating 10 African-American medical pioneers | AAMC
The History of Black Midwives in America and their impact on today’s birth culture
1921 Sheppard–Towner Maternity and Infancy Protection Act which provided federal aid for programs related to mothers and newborn babies, as well as midwife training programs. It was the first social welfare program in the country.
1965- Medicaid was signed into law
(1969-1975) Black Panther Party’s Free Medical Clinics
2010- President Obama signs the Affordable Care Act into law.
2019- President Trump signs The Federal Employee Paid Leave Act into law
Changemakers
African American Wellness Project
Sacred Seeds Black Doula Collective • Soul 2 Soul Sisters
Midwife of Color Initiatives to Eliminate Birth Outcome Disparities
Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective
Karen Rose — Sacred Vibes Apothecary
Black Yogi 101 - Yoga Green Book
The Carolyn Downs Family Medical Center
Institute for Healing & Justice in Medicine
Articles
Frontiers | The Case for Health Reparations | Public Health (frontiersin.org)
This Is Where Black Americans Live Longest - Word In Black
Beyond Berets: The Black Panthers as Health Activists
Fixing Medical Devices That Are Biased against Race or Gender - Scientific American
Alternative grant models might perpetuate Black–White funding gaps - The Lancet
Fund Black scientists - ScienceDirect
Black tech founders work to improve health care for people of color : Shots - Health News : NPR
Embracing Genetic Diversity to Improve Black Health | NEJM
AN ASSESSMENT OF HOME REMEDY USE BY AFRICAN AMERICANS
African American Herbalism: North American Black Herbalism
Many Are Turning to Black Herbalists for Restorative Care
Black distrust for modern medicine drives movement to holistic health | The Spokesman
‘Alternative’ Health Care and African-Americans : NPR
Black Yoga Collectives Aim to Make Space for Healing - The New York Times
Blacks and Yoga, a Growing Phenomenon - DefenderNetwork.com
How midwives and doulas could reduce Black maternal mortality - City & State New York
These Black Midwives Opened A South LA Facility With The Goal Of ‘Empowered’ Births | LAist
Home birthing helps Black women reconnect with African roots - TheGrio
‘Black people should have their babies where they live’ - Chicago Reader
For People of Color, Could Home Births Be Safer Than Hospitals? - Collective Colorado
Books
The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation After the Genome by Alondra Nelson
Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth by Dána-Ain Davis
Restorative Yoga for Ethnic and Race-Based Stress and Trauma by Gail Parker
Black Women’s Yoga History by Stephanie Y. Evans
Just Medicine: A Cure for Racial Inequality in American Health Care by Dayna Matthew
Podcasts
Black Yoga Experience on Apple Podcasts
Sisters in Loss Podcast: Miscarriage, Pregnancy Loss, & Infertility Stories on Apple Podcasts
13 Blackness & Belonging — Prentis Hemphill — irresistible
Black Body Health Podcast – The Center for Black Health & Equity
Film/Video
A Healing ARC for Hospital Inequities: From Institutional Racism to Reparative Justice
Yoga in the Black Community – Scholar Spotlight
“Traditional Herbal Remedies in the African American Community”
Learning How to Heal Yourself with Plants: Herbalism Gallery Talk with Karen Rose
All My Babies | Negro Midwives in Albany, GA (1953)
Natural Birth Seemed Impossible | Romper’s Doula Diaries
America’s Healthcare System Failed Black People. So What Does the Future Hold for Us?
Alondra Nelson: The Black Panther Party and health care equality
Questions for Research and Reflection:
How might self-organized wellness initiatives decrease overall healthcare costs in the country?
Is research and development of separate modalities of healthcare for African Americans needed? Why or why not?
How might the expansion of home birth and doula-assisted birth impact Black families?
What factors have led to an increase in use of traditional herbal medicine in the Black community?
How can digital strategies be leveraged to improve health outcomes for Black people?
How can genetic technology aid and assist Black people in the cause of reparations?
Action:
Consider your family's heritage, the areas your ancestors once lived, and whether there is historic harm to unwind in the area of healthcare. Consider how you might invest your time, resources and agency in Black communities in health-related areas, e.g.:
- Contribute to a fund that covers co-pays for African Americans seeking mental health services
- Contribute to a scholarship to send an African American student to medical school
- Contribute legal or other professional skills by volunteering with a Black-led health non-profit
- Work with your faith community to launch an RIP Medical Debt campaign to benefit residents of a Black community
Envisioning an Equitable Future: a Spoken Word Series by K. Melchor Q. Hall
Summary of Efforts Toward Equity:
Food justice is an important element of the movement for reparations; it necessitates both access to land and access to economic redress in a variety of forms, given the historic connections much of our farmlands have to slavery, sharecropping and other injustices.
Food justice includes the guarantees that fair proportions of public funding from the USDA and state agencies flow to Black farmers who have traditionally been excluded due to documented and adjudicated acts of racism; scholar-activist Jillian Hishaw works to try to rectify various aspects of land injustice including heir's property issues. Food justice also includes reparations in the form of land grants to Black farmers based on the recognition that Black farmers have been systematically kept from owning land or had their land stolen. Activists Like Leah Penniman are seeking larger tracts of land through acts of reparations using tools like google maps. Detroit food activists like Erin Cole have taken matters into their own hands, turning abandoned lots into community gardens using resources from the Detroit Black Farmer Land Fund.
Food justice includes the development of urban agriculture projects like Frontline Farming and neighborhood kitchens like Black Power Blueprint's Jiko Kitchen, or the Black Culinary Collective that demystify food production and model healthy ways of preparing food. Economic development initiatives like the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative create healthy grocery environments in low-income communities. Nutrition incentive programs themselves and especially cash matches for SNAP and WIC benefits spent on fruits and vegetables in Black-led farmers' markets like City Farms Markets organized by food activist Karen Washington can have a dramatic impact decreasing barriers to food access. Direct delivery of these foods eliminates transportation barriers. The Better Buggy in Atlanta is an example of a Black-led farm to doorstep organization.
Quotes
"Located in an art deco building that had once been a boat dealership, the Uhuru Jiko is our most ambitious project yet, to bring African economic and cultural life to this depressed commercial area, stop gentrification and to build a critical program for our community. Black Power Blueprint will build a bakery, café, and community commercial kitchen to serve as the headquarters for Uhuru Foods & Pies, one of the many economic institutions of Black Star Industries and the African People’s Education and Defense Fund around the U.S." - Uhuru Jiko Kitchen / Café - Black Power Blueprint
“To grow your own food gives you power and dignity. You know exactly what you’re eating because you grew it. It’s good, it’s nourishing, and you did this for yourself, your family and your community.” Karen Washington Karen Washington — Rise & Root Farm (riseandrootfarm.com)
"While mainstream efforts for reparations center financial compensation via legislation and litigation, social movements expand this conceptualization in order to address critical and yet often overlooked components of reparations. Equitable access to land and opportunities to heal from intergenerational trauma are two of these reparations demands that social movements prioritize." Jessica Gilbert, Rebekah Williams - gilbert_and_williams__2020__pathways_to_reparations_pre-print.pdf (ppgbuffalo.org)
“I think that there's a little bit of a misunderstanding that the main thing that's needed is education or convincing people to eat healthy. We found the reality is that folks usually have within their households or within their family the knowledge and the desire. We surveyed folks on this and the major barriers to eating these foods are transportation and cost. So we eliminate those barriers and people have no problem cooking what we provide.” Leah Penniman - Soul Fire Farm’s Leah Penniman Explains Why Food Sovereignty Is Central in the Fight for Racial Justice | Vogue
Metrics
“Black farmers peaked in number in 1920 when there were 949,889; today there are only 48,697; they account for only 1.4% of the country’s 3.4 million farmers (95% of US farmers are white) and own 0.52% of America’s farmland.”-Black US farmers dismayed as white farmers’ lawsuit halts relief payments | US news | The Guardian
”$5 billion would go to farmers of color, who have lost 90 percent of their land over the past century because of systemic discrimination and a cycle of debt”-Black farmers will receive $5 billion of the stimulus package - The Washington Post
Methods of Liberation
Reparative Land Justice-Reparations through land redistribution
How Soul Fire Farm Is Supporting Black Farmers On The Land And On The Hill
Farmer Cooperatives- cooperatives allow black organizations to pull their resources and organize for collective wellbeing.
A Co-op for Black farmers is thriving in northern Minnesota
Just Funding & Debt Cancellation from the USDA. -Black farmers were routinely and systematically denied loans, information, and access to the programs essential to survival in a capital-intensive farm structure
The USDA Is Set To Give Black Farmers Debt Relief. They’ve Heard That One Before : NPR
Food Hubs & Accelerators for Black Food Businesses
The “Dining Room” inside the Accelerator is the first African American food hub in Omaha
Cooperative Grocery Stores
In St. Louis, Tosha Phonix is Growing Food Justice
WIC, EBT funded CSA (community supported agriculture) Shares & EBT funded Food Deliveries.
CSA is a SNAP in the time of COVID
How Online Grocery Delivery Could Help Alleviate Food Deserts : The Salt : NPR
Farm to School, Farm to Prison, Farm to Hospital Programs- All expand access to fresh food for folks in institutions.
Glyen Holmes - Farm Aid Farmer Hero
Timelines of Equity
Freedom Farmers: Black Agriculture and the Origins of Food Justice
- 1881 -Booker T Washington founded the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute training black people in over 33 different trades that spanned agriculture, horticulture, livestock, and dairying; he later founded the first Black cooperative extension service in the nation.
- 1960’s The Nation of Islam held 13,000 acres in Georgia and Alabama and supplied food through the organization’s distribution arm, Salaam Agricultural Systems, which owned grocery stores and restaurants in predominantly Black neighborhood
- 1962 United Farm Workers, founded by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, united Filipino and Mexican workers in a movement that won rights for tens of thousands of farmworkers and paved the way for legislation guaranteeing basic worker rights to agricultural workers.
- 1966 the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund was founded to develop land-based resistance strategies including cooperative like the Freedom Quilting Bee Coop.
- 1969 the Black Panther Party launched the Free Breakfast for Children Program at a church in Oakland, California.
- 1969 Fanny Lou Hamer founds the Freedom Farm with “680 acres of affordable housing, community gardens, commercial kitchens, community kitchens, food preservation and preparation, cooperative purchases, and many acres of food crops”
- 1993 a small group of workers formed The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW, )a worker-based human rights organization recognized for its achievements in the fields of corporate social responsibility, community organizing, and modern-day slavery and other labor abuses common in agriculture.
- 1996 LaVia Campesina and brought the concept of food sovereignty to the public debate during the World Food Summit
- 2010 Good Food Purchasing Program developed by the Food Chain Workers Alliance to win fair wages and working conditions and end food worker exploitation
- 2012 Soulfire Farm, a reparations project was founded to redefine help black and Latinx folks' relationship with land.
- 2017-Maine voters pass first 'right to food' amendment in US
- 2021 New York city is the first city in the country to passes a bill to provide minimum working standards for app-based couriers
Changemakers
SOUL FIRE FARM – Ending racism and injustice in the food system
Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust (nefoclandtrust.org)
FrontLine Farming | Beyond Organic | Colorado
Home - F.A.R.M.S (30000acres.org)
DETROIT BLACK COMMUNITY FOOD SECURITY NETWORK
The Federation of Southern Cooperatives
Samin Nosrat’s list of Black farmers, chefs, writers, historians and more to follow on Instagram.
WANDA: Women Advancing Nutrition Dietetics and Agriculture
NATIONAL BLACK FOOD & JUSTICE ALLIANCE
Articles
A Reparations Map for Farmers of Color May Help Right Historical Wrongs | Civil Eats
Seven Ways to Fight for Food Justice – Food Tank
Shining a Light in Dark Places: Raising up the Work of Southern Women of Color in the Food System
REFRAMING FOOD HUBSFood Hubs,Racial Equity, and Self-Determination in the South
Building the Case for Racial Equity in the Food System by the Center For Social Inclusion
Decolonizing Regenerative Agriculture: An Indigenous Perspective - Bioneers
Young Farmers Racial Equity Toolkit
Pathways to reparations: land and healing through food justice
Economic and Community Development Outcomes of Healthy Food Retail
Battling Inequity in Food Systems with Entrepreneurship
Want to See Food and Land Justice for Black Americans? Support These Groups.
22 Individuals and Organizations Building Stronger Black Communities and Food Systems – Food Tank
Black US farmers dismayed as white farmers’ lawsuit halts relief payments | US news | The Guardian
Books
Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement by Monica M. White
Systematic Land Theft by Jillian Hishaw
Black Food Geographies by Ashanté M. Reese
Land Justice: Re-Imagining Land, Food, and the Commons by Justine M. Williams
Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land by Leah Penniman
Black, White, and Green: Farmers Markets, Race, and the Green Economy by Alison Hope Alkon
The Color of Food by Natasha Bowens
Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine One Plate at a Time by Adrian Miller
Building Houses out of Chicken Legs by Psyche A. Williams-ForKwame Onwuachi
The Cooking Gene by Michael W. Twitty
Working the Roots by Michele E. Lee
Podcasts
Commons Groundswell - Agrarian Trust
22 of Karen Washington Podcasts Interviews | Updated Daily - OwlTail
All of the 20 Food Podcasts by Black Women (compiled by soulPhoodie)
Jillian Hishaw on Who Owns Our Farmland - The Whole Carrot
Film/Video
A Food Justice Story (Official Trailer)
Counter Space - VICE Video: Documentaries, Films, News Videos
A Growing Culture’s Hunger For Justice Series
Black Food Matters: Race and Equity in the Good Food Movement
Taste The Nation With Padma Lakshmi – The Gullah Way
Food, race and justice | Malik Yankini | TEDxMuskegon
The Lyle Center Presents: Black Food Matters: Racial Justice in the Wake of Food Justice
More
Questions for Research and Reflection:
What is the relationship between privilege, poverty, and food consumption?
How have black Americans created food security for themselves and their communities?
What resources could be leveraged to increase black access to land?
How has land access facilitated food security?
How can ending food apartheids improve educational outcomes for black students?
How do food manufacturers benefit from food apartheids?
Taking Action:
Consider your family's heritage, the areas your ancestors once lived, and whether there is historic harm to unwind in the area of food systems. Consider how you might invest your time, resources and agency in Black communities in food-related areas, e.g.:
- Buy produce from a Black-led Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm; donate CSA shares to Black families in your area
- Work with others to invest in bringing a mobile grocery van into a food desert in a Black community in your area
- Lobby for major retailers to bring a grocery store to a food desert in a Black community in your area
- Hire African American chefs just out of culinary school to cater business dinners; invest in their businesses
- Invest in culinary incubator projects benefitting Black communities
- Buy and donate land in Black communities to Black Land Trusts; invest in establishment of community gardens
Envisioning an Equitable Future: a Spoken Word Series by K. Melchor Q. Hall
Summary of Efforts Toward Equity:
Securing the Black vote, second only to electoral organizing, is one of the most powerful strategies to build Black power and influence. When Black people have equal access to voting, they make change. The white response to Black changemaking has been to suppress that vote. Organizers like Cliff Albright and Latosha Brown of Black Voters Matters have taken to the streets to mobilize Black voters in the South. In 2020, their organization increased voter turnout in key states like Georgia by more than 25% over the previous year. Stacey Abrhams and her voting rights organization Fair Fight were also able to register over 800,000 voters, helping them turn their states “blue'' in the latest presidential election. Amidst regressive voter suppression tactics in the South, states across the nation are dropping barriers to the vote. Voting rights expansion has now outpaced voting rights suppression. Americans in general, and Black Americans specifically, are voting at the highest rate in a century.
Not only are Black folks voting, but they are also contributing to campaigns at the highest level in centuries. While Citizens United opened the floodgates for dark money and corporate finance of elections, Black voters responded by increasing small donations to their own candidates. While campaign finance is a contentious issue, as of 2018, 24 cities and towns and 14 states had some version of small-donor public financing programs, in which small donations from local residents are matched by public funds. These matching public financing programs have increased the racial, gender, and economic diversity of both political donors and candidates, lowering the financial barriers to candidates who wish to run for office.
Quotes
“I am sitting here as a hope and the dream of a slave… My family was treated and sold like cattle, Yet, here I stand, and that’s because there were people who had a belief and they had a vision. The work that we do, we do this work because we believe that we are standing on the side of right. And I do believe that, ultimately, when people recognize their own power, then that’s when things change.”-Latosha Brown Founder of Black Votes Matters
“We changed the trajectory of the nation. Because our combined power shows that progress is not only possible—it is inevitable.” -Stacey Abrams
““I am a democratic idealist who believes that politics need not be forever seen as ‘I win, you lose,’ a dynamic in which some people are permanent monopoly winners and others are permanently excluded losers.” -Lani Guinier, a tenured law professor and former NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund attorney
Changemakers
Black Voters Matter Fund – Black Voters Matter
Let My People Vote • Soul 2 Soul Sisters
Metrics
“800,000 new voters”- Number Registered by Stacey Abrahman to win the 2020 gubernatorial election.
“Under North Carolina’s judicial public financing program from 2004 to 2012, donations by special interests plummeted from 73 percent of donations received by judges seeking office to just 14 percent.”- Citizens United at 10: Why fighting corruption is a racial justice issue | Facing South
Methods of Liberation
Secure the right to vote by restoring Voting Rights Act
How to Restore and Strengthen the Voting Rights Act | Brennan Center for Justice
Enact Automatic Voter Registration
Automatic Voter Registration, a Summary | Brennan Center for Justice
Expand Voter Registration Opportunities:
“We can upgrade technology at government offices to help citizens register to vote. When voters interact with the Department of Motor Vehicles and other agencies, those offices should transfer registration information electronically to election officials. This would create a seamless experience for the voter, since the registration would take place as part of an underlying transaction. Although many state agencies are required to offer this opportunity under federal law, they still rely on analog systems.”-4 Simple Ways to Improve Voting | Brennan Center for Justice
Expand Early Voting: Congress should set minimum early voting requirements in federal elections, and the states that don’t offer early voting should adopt it.
Implement Same Day Voting Registration: “State laws need to be changed to include more time to register. Most states cut off registration weeks before an election — before many voters are even paying attention. That leaves too many citizens outside the democratic process. Instead, voters should be allowed to show up on Election Day to register or to update their registration status and cast a ballot. This turnout-boosting reform would provide much-needed flexibility for today’s mobile society.”-4 Simple Ways to Improve Voting | Brennan Center for Justice
Prevent long lines: Congress and the states should set and enforce standards to ensure all polling places have sufficient voting machines, poll workers, and other resources to avoid long lines.
Make Election Day a national holiday:
Make Election Day a national holiday
Fund black political candidates by Removing Money from Politics
No money in politics
Equal time to all candidates
Lani Guinier’s Thoughts on Proportional Representation
"What we need are election rules that encourage voter turnout rather than suppress it. A system of proportional representation–which would allocate seats to parties based on their proportion of the total vote–would more fairly reflect intense feeling within the electorate, mobilize more people to participate and even encourage those who do participate to do so beyond just the single act of voting on Election Day. Most democracies around the world have some form of proportional voting and manage to engage a much greater percentage of their citizens in elections. Proportional representation in South Africa, for example, allows the white Afrikaner parties and the ANC to gain seats in the national legislature commensurate with the total number of votes cast for each party. Under this system, third parties are a plausible alternative. Moreover, to allow third parties to run presidential candidates without being “spoilers,” some advocate instant-runoff elections in which voters would rank their choices for President. That way, even voters whose top choice loses the election could influence the race among the other candidates."-https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/making-every-vote-count/
Cancel Party Primaries
“Final-Five Voting (FFV) is the combination of two simple changes: First, replace separate party primaries with a single primary offering one slate of candidates (all Republicans, Democrats, Independents and third parties on the same ballot) in which every registered voter is eligible to participate. The top five finishers from that open primary advance to the general election. Second, do what New York City should have done: use ranked choice voting in the general election that follows the single open primary to determine the majority winner. Ranked-choice—also known as instant-runoff voting—is perfectly suited to a five-way general election because while five candidates deliver the benefits of dynamic competition, those benefits would be diminished if one of the five candidates were to win with a narrow plurality. Instant-runoff voting narrows the field to the final two before the winner emerges with a true majority.”-Want to Strengthen U.S. Democracy? Try This Voting System | Time
How do mail in ballots effect equity in elections?
Mail-in voting did not swell turnout or boost Democrats, study finds | US news | The Guardian
Timelines of Equity
1870-1889 | Black Women's Suffrage Timeline | DPLA
Black suffrage in the United States - Wikipedia
Black voting rights and voter suppression: A timeline
Articles
The Votes of Black Americans Should Count Twice | The Nation
The Enduring Influence of Fannie Lou Hamer, Civil Rights Advocate - The New York Times
Lani Guinier: Champion of Democracy
Stacey Abrams’s fight against voter suppression dates back to the Revolution - The Washington Post
The fight to vote: Black activists work to upend a history of voter suppression - ABC News
WHY COMPETITION IN THE POLITICS INDUSTRY IS FAILING AMERICA
Want to Strengthen U.S. Democracy? Try This Voting System | Time
Make Election Day a national holiday
How to Restore and Strengthen the Voting Rights Act | Brennan Center for Justice
Democrats prioritize campaign finance overhaul with ‘For the People Act’ • OpenSecrets
House Passes Democrats’ Centerpiece Anti-Corruption and Voting Rights Bill - The New York Times
Citizens United at 10: Why fighting corruption is a racial justice issue | Facing South
Big Data Supercharged Gerrymandering. It Could Help Stop It Too | WIRED
Progress Report: Grassroots Reforms Fight Gerrymandering
Instead of cash reparations, give every black American 5/3 of a vote - The Washington Post
The Votes of Black Americans Should Count Twice | The Nation
Books
Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America by Stacey Abrams
Lifting as We Climb: Black Women’s Battle for the Ballot Box by Evette Dionne
Black Votes Count: Political Empowerment in Mississippi After 1965 by Frank R. Parker
Say It Louder!: Black Voters, White Narratives, and Saving Our Democracy by Tiffany Cross
Tyranny of the Majority: Fundamental Fairness in Representative Democracy by Lani Guinier
Podcasts
VOTING WHILE BLACK on Apple Podcasts
The Docket: The Rise And Fall Of The Voting Rights Act Of 1965 : The NPR Politics Podcast : NPR
The Black Constitution on Apple Podcasts
Black Civics on Apple Podcasts
Black Civics & Economics | Podcast on Spotify
Film/Video
FLH Testimony Before the Credentials Committee
ALL IN: The Fight For Democracy – Official Trailer
Why voting in 2016 could be nearly impossible for some Americans
Democracy in Black with Dr. Eddie Glaude Jr. | Black America
Christopher Tinson | Warring With Democracy: Black Activism & the Challenge of History
Questions for Research and Reflection:
- How can redistricting be used to improve representation of underrepresented groups?
- If incarcerated people could vote, how would that impact the development of new prisons?
- How can empowering Black voters change the shape of American politics?
Taking Action
Envisioning an Equitable Future: a Spoken Word Series by K. Melchor Q. Hall
Summary of Efforts Toward Equity:
Restorative Economics practitioner, Nwamaka Agbo describes the four primary patterns of economic oppression that have defined our economy and financial industries: control, exclusion, extraction and accumulation. Agbo and other economic justice activists advocate for financial governance for the common good, which includes community self-directed and owned infrastructure to distribute financial returns to the community itself. They also argue for inclusive financing programs including the empowerment of non-banking lenders like Black-owned Community Development Financial Institutions. Inclusive financing also means going beyond lenders altogether and making use of community-based and grassroots financing methods including Economies Based on Barter, Gifts, Time Banks, and Local Currencies. In response to extractive financing, activists are looking to regenerative financing, which proposes a philanthropic just transition framework from extractive power dynamics to real wealth transfers. Finance Justice Activists are creating frameworks for shared prosperity. Projects like the Boston Ujima Project and Restore Oakland are embodying a solidarity economy that grows powerful, thriving, communities.
While Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and others have collectively pledged 50 billion dollars towards racial equity that is not enough or sufficient to address the harms caused by the finance industry. Activists encourage Black folks to #bankBlack, sparking increased investment in Black-owned banking institutions like the largest black-owned bank in America, OneUnited Bank. Meanwhile, Amalgamated Bank has joined a growing call for reparations in the U.S.
Quotes
“Strategically reinvest resources into Black and Indigenous communities that have been disproportionately extracted from and exploited. Invest in types of businesses and initiatives that actually focus on shared prosperity.” Strategically reinvest resources — Nwamaka Agbo
“There is significant variation in mortgage rates driven by a host of factors, all of which negatively impact African American borrowers,” the paper states. “These inequities make it impossible for Black households to build housing wealth at the same rate as white households.” The inequities total $13,464 over the life of an average loan, the research shows. If those extra costs to African Americans were eliminated, the $130,000 Black-white gap in liquid savings at retirement would drop by half, according to the paper, which analyzes the cost differences and recommends how such inequities can be addressed. The unequal costs of Black homeownership — and how to fix them | MIT Sloan
In 2018, Boston Ujima Project launched the Ujima Fund with a goal to raise $5 million by the end of the year. Evans said Ujima is well on its way to reaching that goal, having raised more than $3.7 million with 313 investors to date. The fund pools money from community members, supporters, and foundations, and will be invested in local businesses in communities of color, all vetted and voted on by Ujima members who get one vote each — no matter how much they invested. There are three tiers of investor types: the Kujichagulia note, which Evans said is geared toward working-class Massachusetts residents ($50 to $10,000 investment range); the Umoja note ($1,000 to $250,000); and the Nia note ($5,000 to no cap). “The returns go down with each [note] that I’ve named, which is not conventional,” Evans said. “The convention is the more money you [put] in, the higher your target return is, and we’ve flipped that. The idea behind that is to be redistributive in principle and also demonstrate reparations in a way. We’re disrupting this notion that it’s only wealthier people that are able to have opportunities to build wealth.” How the Boston Ujima Project is fostering change in Boston
Metrics
According to Citigroup's study:
NOT ADDRESSING RACIAL GAPS BETWEEN BLACKS AND WHITES HAS COST THE U.S. ECONOMY UP TO $16 TRILLION OVER THE PAST 20 YEARS:
- Closing the Black wage gap could have added $2.7 trillion in income available for consumption or investment
- Improving access to housing credit might have added an additional 770,000 Black homeowners, adding $218 billion in sales and expenditures
- Facilitating easy access to higher education for Black students could have increased lifetime incomes $90-$113 billion
- Providing fair and equitable lending to Black entrepreneurs might have resulted in the creation of an additional $13 trillion in business revenue and potentially created 6.1 million jobs per year
“Currently, Black businesses bring in average revenues of $1,031,021, compared to $6,485,334 for non-Black businesses. If Black businesses increased their average revenue to the level of non-Black businesses, it would increase total revenue in Black businesses by $676,356,621,618.”-To expand the economy, invest in Black businesses
“Black businesses create an average of 10 jobs per firm, compared to 23 for non-Black businesses. If the average employees per Black business increased to 23, it would create approximately 1.6 million jobs (1,583,268).”- To expand the economy, invest in Black businesses
Methods of Liberation
Eliminate regressive financing and subsidization of corporate control of energy and food systems
Enact progressive taxation, including a wealth tax on wealthy individuals and corporations, to repair and rebuild communities
Eliminate subsidies and tax breaks to the fossil fuel industry
Provide non-extractive financing for cooperatively owned enterprises that meet community needs, such as community solar and regional food systems
Invest in Human Development and Capacity Building
Build community of practice & social movement infrastructure
Invest in Black Led CDFI’s
A community development financial institution is a financial institution that provides credit and financial services to underserved communities.
Timelines of Equity
1967 Poor Peoples Campaign Announced: “King planned for an initial group of 2,000 poor people to descend on Washington, D.C., southern states and northern cities to meet with government officials to demand jobs, unemployment insurance, a fair minimum wage, and education for poor adults and children designed to improve their self-image and self-esteem (King, 29 November 1967)”-Poor People’s Campaign | The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute
1994 - Community Development Financial Institutions Introduced
2006 - B-Corporation Movement Founded
2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act : “An Act to promote the financial stability of the United States by improving accountability and transparency in the financial system, to end “too big to fail”, to protect the American taxpayer by ending bailouts, to protect consumers from abusive financial services practices, and for other purposes.”-Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act - Wikipedia
2011 Occupy Wallstreet “was a protest movement against economic inequality and the influence of money in politics that began in Zuccotti Park, located in New York City's Wall Street financial district, in September 2011. It gave rise to the wider Occupy movement in the United States and other countries.
Changemakers
Black Economic Justice Institute
Black Cooperative Investment Fund
Grassroots Finance - Sustainable Economies Law Center
Home — African American Alliance of CDFI CEOs
Rising Tide Capital | A non-profit organization
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights Restore Oakland
PUSH Buffalo – Welcome to PUSH Buffalo
Social Impact Now – Social Impact Now
Home - Founders First Capital Partners
We invest in inclusive entrepreneurship (missiondrivenfinance.com)
Articles
How one ex-banker is mobilizing capital markets to finance reparations | TAG24
Building an Equitable Tax Code: A Primer for Advocates | PolicyLink
New York Times: Opinion | Banks Should Face History and Pay Reparations » NCRC
Amalgamated Bank becomes the first major US bank to endorse reparations - CNN
Radical Collaboration for Black Wealth Creation
A People’s Orientation to a Regenerative Economy - Climate Justice Alliance
Opinion | Banks Should Face History and Pay Reparations - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Want to Advance Racial and Economic Justice? Invest in Small, Black-Led CDFIs — Inside Philanthropy
Q&A: Exploring CDFI’s Role In Closing The Racial Wealth Gap - Los Angeles Times
To expand the economy, invest in Black businesses
Eliminating the Racial Wealth Gap Would Pay Dividends Across the Entire Economy - Los Angeles Times
Global Tax Agreement Will Set 15% Minimum Rate - The New York Times
Restoring the Rule of Law in Financial Regulation | Cato Institute
The Radical Reinvention of Inclusive Insurance | Center for Financial Inclusion
Helping residents ‘buy back the block’ with American Rescue Plan funds
New Initiative Rallies Philanthropy Behind Black-Led Grassroots Organizing – The Libra Foundation
How Institutional Racism Affects the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (forbes.com)
Business Case for Racial Equity - W.K. Kellogg Foundation (wkkf.org)
Eliminating the Black-White Wealth Gap Is a Generational Challenge - Center for American Progress
Closing the racial wealth gap requires heavy, progressive taxation of wealth (brookings.edu)
It's Time for U.S. Business Leaders to Talk About Reparations (hbr.org)
Books
Moving Mountains: The Power of Main Street Americans to Change Our Economy by Janice Shade
Financial Justice: The People’s Campaign to Stop Lender Abuse by Larry Kirsch
Podcasts
More Than Profit: Economic Justice and Wealth Building With Cassandra Webb on Apple Podcasts
Film/Video
Regenerative Finance: A Path to Economic Justice
IEN Webinar: All Investments Affect Racial (In)justice - Intentional Endowments Network
Restorative Economics: How do we transition to a more just economy?
Restore Oakland: a Model for Community Investment and Safety
Crystal Hayling: Shoulder to Shoulder | Nonprofit Finance Fund
More
Questions for Research and Reflection:
Taking Action
Envisioning an Equitable Future: a Spoken Word Series by K. Melchor Q. Hall
Summary of Efforts Toward Equity:
In an ideal world, the only insurance we’d need is the assurance that our community has our back. The traditional and indigenous response to risk management has always centered on community wealth-building and distributed accountability.
The concept of modern insurance was invented to serve the slave trade. While Insurance behemoths Lloyd's of London and Greene King to have promised to make slave trade reparations, American states like Chicago have implemented disclosure laws that force business to disclose their ties to the slave industry. States like California have required insurance companies that sold slave policies in the 1800s to open their archives to the public.
Reparations activists, policymakers and others are pushing for reforms in areas as diverse as health insurance, housing and auto insurance. The most powerful models of insurance reform pool rather than individualize risk pricing, which helps to combat the lingering racial bias. Racial bias is also reduced by limiting the variables insurers use to assess risk. According to the Consumer Federation of America, “Three states (California, Massachusetts, and Hawaii) prohibit the use of credit history in auto insurance ratings. California also prohibits penalties for a lapse in prior coverage. In 2017, the New York Department of Financial Services issued a regulation largely prohibiting the use of education level or occupation in its ratings systems, and in 2019, the state of Michigan also outlawed those factors.”
While reparations for past discrimination might even the playing field, a more powerful action might be to nationalize the insurance industry itself to pool risks, remove the profit incentive to lower cost and better protect the rights of all Americans.
Quotes
“Single payer provides for leverage and cost control. It is the only way to get the rapidly rising cost of health care (currently paid for primarily out of government funds, just not effectively) under control.”-Jack Bernard, a retired healthcare exec and the former Director of Health Planning for the State of Georgia.
Metrics
“$556 million”- The amount paid out by insurance companies in 2004 for overcharging Blacks in funeral insurance. -Insurance industry facing lawsuits, restitution
Methods of Liberation
Reparations for slavery insurance:
“T.I. goes on to suggest four avenues for reparations: 10 percent ownership of Lloyd’s be given to the descendants of African slaves, accurate annual tracking of those reparations, a $1 million cash loan (with 1% interest) to every African American adult once in their lifetime for the next 200 years, and at least one African American member on its board.”- “Not Enough” — In Open Letter, Rapper TI Demands Lloyd's of London Pay Reparations To Descendants of American Slaves
Nationalization of the insurance industry
How health insurance changed from protecting patients to seeking profit | Stanford Medicine
Attempts to Socialize Insurance Costs in Voluntary Insurance Markets: The Historical Record
Ban insurers from using drivers’ credit scores, education, and occupation to set premiums
Pooled-risk pricing in all insurance
Design principles for risk-pooling systems | Nature Human Behavior
Implement tools to reduce the disparate costs borne by Blacks: Homeownership, racial segregation, and policy solutions to racial wealth equity
“Increase support for small dollar mortgage loan programs. It is a pervasive myth that homes of lower value are riskier investments for mortgages, but recent analysis from the Urban Institute shows that these buyers have comparable credit scores and their mortgages have similar loan-to-value ratios to more valuable properties.[32] As homes in Black neighborhoods are already devalued, this barrier to entry to homeownership disproportionately affects Black buyers, especially those who are first-time buyers.
Reduce uneven costs of mortgages for Black homeowners. Homeownership while Black is expensive. Creating a rate-and-term refinancing option would help more households reduce monthly mortgage costs and lower the barrier to homeownership.
Extend credit and down payment assistance to borrowers impacted by discriminatory housing and lending practices. Historical and ongoing policies such as redlining, restrictive covenants, “steering,” and more have extracted wealth from Black neighborhoods for generations. While it is not enough to simply extend credit based on redlining maps drawn in the New Deal Era, past injustices must be redressed by helping to develop areas left behind by racist policies.
Adopt credit scoring practices with less discriminatory impacts. Current metrics of credit scoring do not account for regular payments from rent and utilities, instead they prioritize loan and credit card payments. Expanding notions of credit-building can dispel the myth that Black homeowners are risky investments.
Increase diversity in the appraisal profession. Nearly 9 in 10 property appraisers are white, while 2% are Black, according to Urban Institute analysis of 2019 Census data.[33] With the numerous instances of appraiser bias making headlines on a consistent basis, better representation in the profession which holds sway over much of the valuation process could go a long way to mitigating the effects of societal bias against Black neighborhoods.
Continue stimulus and relief efforts for homeowners and buyers in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Black Americans are joining the ranks of homeowners at a steady rate, but the disparate impacts of the pandemic and associated recession mean that preexisting Black homeowners faced disproportionate difficulty with mortgage payments. Foreclosure moratoriums allowed many to hold onto their homes, but now they face repayment of deferred mortgages, and a bifurcated economy has not yet returned Black employment to pre-pandemic levels.”
Publicize closed payer claims, make all insurance claim data public
Timelines of Equity
https://content.naic.org/sites/default/files/inline-files/HistoricalContextOutline_Final_0.pdf
Changemakers
Consumer Federation of America
Supporting Members, Industry & Consumers - About | NAIC
Articles
Harnessing Indigenous Knowledge for Climate Risk Management
CNN.com - Suit seeks billions in slave reparations - March 27, 2002
The Zong case: How an insurance lawsuit helped end the slave trade | Fortune
Insurance industry facing lawsuits, restitution
Activist investors take aim at insurers amid pandemic rebound | S&P Global Market Intelligence
Black Leaders Call Out Big Insurance Companies - Hudson Valley Press
Racial Justice in Housing Finance: A Series on New Directions
The unequal costs of Black homeownership — and how to fix them | MIT Sloan
There are clear, race-based inequalities in health insurance and health outcomes
22 studies agree: 'Medicare for All' saves money | TheHill
A New Generation of Activist Doctors Is Fighting for Medicare for All | Time
Whatever Comes Next, Single Payer Coverage for Californians Advances
Books
The Inconvenient Conversation – Race-Based Life Insurance Premiums by James Morris Robinson
Caring for Equality: A History of African American Health and Healthcare by David McBride
Talking About SINGLE PAYER: HealthCare Equality for AmericaDr.James Burdick
Podcasts
[Podcast] Where does the insurance industry sit now on racial issues?
Film/Video
Attorney Ben Crump Files Lawsuit Against State Farm on Behalf of Employee
How Single Payer Health Care Combats Racial Disparities
Life Insurance and the Black Community.
Blacks In Finance: A Rich History
More
Questions for Research and Reflection:
How could all citizens benefit from a nonprofit insurance industry?
Does public insurance claim data increase public accountability in the insurance industry?
The American Care Act pooled insurance risk pricing while lowering costs. Could the same concepts be applied to other insurance industries?
What are some creative forms of repair that might mitigate racial bias in the insurance industry?
Action
Envisioning an Equitable Future: a Spoken Word Series by K. Melchor Q. Hall
Summary of Efforts Toward Equity:
BWB Report 2022 New (house.gov)
Quotes
Metrics
Methods of Liberation
For future tax policy changes aimed at eliminating disparities:
- Progressive Taxation: Implementing progressive tax policies, such as increasing tax rates on high-income earners and capital gains while providing targeted tax relief for lower-income individuals and families, can help reduce income and wealth disparities.
- Equitable Property Tax Assessments: Reforming property tax assessment practices to ensure fairness and accuracy, particularly in historically marginalized communities, can help alleviate disparities in property tax burdens.
- Universal Basic Income (UBI) or Guaranteed Minimum Income: Exploring policies such as UBI or guaranteed minimum income programs can provide a baseline level of economic security for all individuals, including African Americans, regardless of employment status, helping to address poverty and income inequality.
- Closing Tax Loopholes and Exemptions: Closing loopholes and exemptions that primarily benefit wealthy individuals and corporations can generate additional revenue that can be reinvested in programs and services to address racial and economic disparities.
- Community Investment and Economic Development: Investing in economic development initiatives, infrastructure projects, and job creation programs in African American communities can stimulate economic growth and opportunity, ultimately reducing disparities in taxation and wealth accumulation.
By implementing these and other targeted policy changes, policymakers can work toward eliminating disparities for African Americans in taxation systems and advancing equity and economic justice for all.
Timelines of Equity
Changemakers
Black Women Best: The Framework We Need for an Equitable Economy - Roosevelt Institute
Articles
Four Ways to Reduce Racial Inequities in the Federal Income Tax System | Urban Institute
Closing the racial wealth gap requires heavy, progressive taxation of wealth | Brookings
pl_brief_tax_110714_c_0.pdf (policylink.org)
Books
Podcasts
Tax and racial justice: the Tax Justice Network podcast, the Taxcast - Tax Justice Network
How One Woman's Detective Work Uncovered a Racist Tax System - The Aspen Institute
Film/Video
Questions for Research and Reflection:
Action
Envisioning an Equitable Future: a Spoken Word Series by K. Melchor Q. Hall
Summary of Efforts Toward Equity:
Since the 1950s, construction of highways, light rail and other transportation systems have been used to bisect thriving communities of color, effectively destroying these communities. Now, generations later, Black architects and designers in the design justice movement like Taylor Holloway in New Orleans and Melisa Sanders in St. Lous are bringing a reparative lens to urban planning that literally heals the scars of racism in urban cities, undoing decades of architectural exclusion. Black communities in Tulsa, New Orleans, Detroit, New Rochelle, New York, and more are advocating for projects that literally bury and bandage the scars of highways, turning under and over spaces into opportunities to bridge communities back together again. Organizations like Design as Protest remind us that we can use the tools of infrastructure and transportation to design a just world.
Quotes
"What is Equitable Development? Quality of life outcomes, such as affordable housing, quality education, living wage employment, healthy environments, and transportation are equitably experienced by the people currently living and working in a neighborhood, as well as for new people moving in. Public and private investments, programs, and policies in neighborhoods that meet the needs of residents, including communities of color, and reduce racial disparities, taking into account past history and current conditions." Equitable Development as a Tool to Advance Racial Equity
“Yesterday is gone forever, which is why it is extremely important that whatever we do in this common space preserves, memorializes and codifies the rich history,” said Dr. Nelson Adams III, chairman emeritus of the St. John Community Development Corporation, an Overtown nonprofit.
"Let’s begin a public policy-making process that tackles some of the greatest causes of inequity for communities of colour. Let’s recognize the connections between the many symptoms of inequity in the US and people’s lived experiences. Let’s begin with the walk itself: transportation. Often forgotten, it is the crucial difference between socio-economic initiatives being within or out of reach and a necessary first step towards building a better, more equitable and healthier world." The next step for antiracism is transportation - here's why | World Economic Forum
Metrics
“The neighborhood bounded by the southeast corner of Gallatin Street and Georgia Avenue in Washington’s Petworth neighborhood in Washington is an illustrative example of the complexity of the issue. In 2000, that area had about 3,500 residents, 85 percent of them black. Homeownership was about 80 percent at the time. Today the homeownership rate is 85 percent, and 63 percent of the people there are black, with Hispanic and white people moving in.
Home values increased from about $167,000 to $367,000 and continue to trend up. We see gentrification and displacement of African American residents in this area, but given the high levels of existing homeownership, almost certainly some people are selling their homes for much more than they originally paid. Involuntary displacement is always a bad thing, but wealth-building for longtime residents is good.”- Yes-you-can-gentrify-neighborhood-without-pushing-out-poor-people/
“No evidence that such displacement is more common in gentrifying neighborhoods than elsewhere, nor that property tax limitation protects long-term homeowners in gentrifying neighborhoods. We do find evidence that gentrification directly displaces renters.”-Gentrification_Property_Tax_Limitation_and_Displacement
“30” the number of communities in various stages of exploring plans to take down elevated highways. Removing Elevated Highways with Federal Infrastructure Funds
Methods of Liberation
Reclaiming Land Above Highways with land bridges.
Reclaiming Land Beneath Highways
Miami’s historic Black Overtown gets makeover | See Pics - World News
Turning Highways into Boulevards
Righting the Historical Wrong of the Claiborne Highway - The New York Times
Healing Interstate injustice by removing freeways | Panethos
Blocking the Expansion of Highways
Texas Highway Expansion Project Paused Over Civil Rights Act Concerns
Dear Pete Buttigieg: Stop These Highways, Too - Bloomberg
Production strategies
“Production of either market-rate or affordable housing may combat displacement by increasing housing supply.”
Preservation strategies
“Since housing production strategies require high costs, strong real estate markets, and long-term horizons, strategies that preserve affordable rental units in older buildings may be more effective and feasible for counteracting displacement forces in some communities”
Homestead Exemptions: caps or breaks on property taxes for longtime residents.
Preserving affordable housing: what works | Urban Institute
Neighborhood stabilization strategies
“Arguably, neighborhood stabilization strategies that offer tenants protections allowing them to stay in their changing neighborhoods are a more direct form of anti-displacement policy than housing production or preservation.”
Equitable Development as a Tool to Advance Racial Equity
The Evaluation of the Neighborhood Stabilization Program
Timelines of Equity
1950’s first Freeway Revolt found its first expression in San Francisco
1967- I-40 in Nashville Tennessee was the first highway project had been halted by claims of racial discrimination.
1969- after over a decade of relentless pressure and public activism, Congress passed NEPA requiring new infrastructure projects to conduct environmental impact statements and public comment.
1979- Los Angeles adopted the HPOZ Ordinance paving the way for the designation of historic districts and cultural overlay zones.
1980’s beginning of the modern environmental justice movement
Changemakers
Highway Boondoggles | U.S. PIRG
urban planners as organizers towards liberation
Architecture | Blackarc Design | United States
National Campaign for Transit Justice – Transit is Essential. Justice is Crucial
Articles
California reparations task force discusses infrastructure's discriminatory history - capradio.org
Roads and Reparations: - Inglewood Today News
The next step for antiracism is transportation - here's why | World Economic Forum (weforum.org)
How Transportation Planners Can Advance Racial Equity and Environmental Justice | Urban Institute
US Goal of Racial Equity in Infrastructure Is Left to States
Six Initiatives Model Ways to Practice True Design Justice - Metropolis
White Paper on Anti-Displacement Strategy Effectiveness
TO CONTROL GENTRIFICATION: ANTI-DISPLACEMENT ZONING AND PLANNING FOR STABLE RESIDENTIAL DISTRICT
The rise of the ‘overlay’: How an obscure zoning tool is shaping Philly’s future (again)
Can Removing Highways Fix America’s Cities? - The New York Times
Removing urban highways can improve neighborhoods blighted by decades of racist policies
What It Looks Like to Reconnect Black Communities Torn Apart by Highways
College Park, Md., explores reparations for Lakeland urban renewal - The Washington Post
Infrastructure law aims to reconnect Black and Latino neighborhoods
Architect-Advocate Pascale Sablan Is Revising The History Of The Built Environment
To build safe streets, we need to address racism in urban design
'Safe Streets' Are Not Safe for Black Lives - Bloomberg
Books
Chocolate Cities: The Black Map of American Life by Marcus Anthony Hunter, Zandria Robinson
Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by Adrienne Maree Brown
Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need by Sasha Costanza-Chock
The Just City by Susan S. Fainstein
Seeking Spatial Justice by Edward W. Soja
Podcasts
Righting the Historical Wrong of the Claiborne Highway - The New York Times
There Goes the Neighborhood: Miami, Part 2 | The Stakes | WNYC Studios
Episode 61: Housing, Highways and Systemic Racism
Episode 305: Talking Anti-Racist Transportation Policy | Podcast
Film/Video
How I-94 ripped apart the Rondo neighborhood and one group’s plan to help restore it
Claiborne Avenue: Past, Present, and Future
How do we respond to anti-Black racism in urbanist practices and conversations?
Transit Justice Forum: The Future of Suburban Transit
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xEluaKPPxkg
More
Questions for Research and Reflection:
What tools can cities use to preserve the cultural history of black communities?
What’s the relationship between gentrification and housing justice?
How can stabilizing black housing prevent gentrification?
How can the repair of wounded cities contribute to reparations for the black dispossessed?
Action
Envisioning an Equitable Future: a Spoken Word Series by K. Melchor Q. Hall
Summary of Efforts Toward Equity:
Can you imagine a world without prison? Mariame Kaba, abolitionist, activist and author of We Do This ’til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice encourages us to do so. This world has dismantled the New Jim Crow and made reparations and guarantees of non-repeat for the old Jim Crow. In this world without prisons, a universal basic income, or better yet, a redistribution of the means of generating income alongside equitable vocational enrichment opportunities ensures that there is a very little market for crime in the first place. In a world without prisons community accountability is the norm. Community-based Transformative Justice includes a set of practices where all individuals affected by an injustice are given the opportunity to address and repair the harm. Black people not only want political sovereignty but judicial sovereignty as well. A world without prisons has less use for the police. The police divestment movement looks for creative and empowered solutions to police presence. One solution is removing police from traffic enforcement and creating new sources of revenue for cities that discourage the use of petty fees and fines that fall heaviest on the poor and communities of color. Other solutions look like making use of social workers in domestic violence disputes instead of police.
Beyond the visionary world of transforming the prison industrial complex, reformers are at work unwinding current harms.
Changemakers
Free Alabama Movement | National Movement Against Mass Incarceration and Prison Slavery
History of the Campaign | Chicago Torture Justice Memorials
Prison Activist Resource Center
Quotes
"I tend to think of abolition as one result of transformative justice: abolition is the end of prisons; transformative justice is the methods people use to uproot injustice patterns in communities." - adrienne maree brown The Fictions and Futures of Transformative Justice – The New Inquiry
"Over the past 10 years Connecticut policymakers have adopted four intervention methods that have been shown to reduce prison populations through a combination of bipartisan legislative justice reform, judicial discretion, and executive action. A key theme of the reform effort is the importance of reducing the number of young people entering the criminal justice system. Given the high rate of recidivism for people sentenced to prison, officials in the state believe that stemming the flow of new admissions can produce substantial short-term and long-term results." Decarceration Strategies: How 5 States Achieved Substantial Prison Population Reductions | The Sentencing Project
“Our protest against prison slavery is a protest against the school-to-prison pipeline, a protest against police terror, a protest against post-release controls . . . the entire structure of courts and police, of control and slave-catching must shift to accommodate us as humans, rather than slaves.”-Melvin Ray, member of the Free Alabama movement
Metrics
“According to the Solidarity Research Center, the California prison system lost as much as $636,068 in revenue for every day the strike lasted.”-A Strike Against the New Jim Crow - Dissent Magazine Provide context for quote.
Denver's STAR program, sending mental health pros on certain calls instead of police officers, is about to get bigger - Denverite, the Denver site! “From June 1 to November 30, health professionals responded to 748 calls, including trespassing, welfare checks, narcotic incidents, and mental health episodes- 2021 STAR Program Evaluation
“In 2014, California voters supported an initiative to reduce certain drug possession offenses to misdemeanors, which reduced the incarcerated population by 8,700.”-A Strike Against the New Jim Crow - Dissent Magazine
“Through Justice Reinvestment, cumulative averted costs and savings in these states exceed $3.2 billion, allowing states to invest hundreds of millions in ineffective supervision and treatment programs to make communities safer.”- The Justice Reinvestment Initiative
“300”- Number of laws states have passed since 2019 aimed at alleviating collateral consequences. -https://www.arnoldventures.org/stories/states-are-reducing-the-collateral-consequences-of-criminal-records
Methods of Liberation
- Restorative Justice is a set of practices that work to repair and prevent harm by addressing the needs of all involved in an incident, without calling on police or relying on punitive solutions.
- Fairly compensate prisoners for work
- Eliminate “peremptory challenges”
- Peremptory challenges allow trial lawyers to remove jurors from a case, often for arbitrary or ill-defined reasons. Arizona will be the first state to eliminate peremptory challenges entirely
- Enhance Public Defense Funding
- End Mandatory Sentencing including three Strikes
- Remove Police from Traffic Enforcement
- Testing for Racial Prejudice in Parole
- End to solitary confinement.
- Provide Prisoners with healthy food and medical care
- Equity Permit Programs for Marijuana Industry
- “In California, the city of Oakland passed an attempt at what we might think of as drug war reparations. The equity permit program allocates half of all permits for medical marijuana dispensaries to people who have served time for marijuana violations in the last ten years or lived in a neighborhood where the highest number of arrests for possession or sale of the drug took place. Building on this model, local and state governments—and businesses that have profited from prison labor—could sponsor people once imprisoned for drug crimes to set up marijuana dispensaries.” - A Strike Against the New Jim Crow - Dissent Magazine
- Implement Justice Reinvestment Initiatives with Black Community Participatory Budgeting.
- “In 2011, North Carolina faced rising corrections costs and a prison population projected to grow 10 percent by 2020. In response, state lawmakers passed comprehensive legislation in 2011 that focuses supervision and treatment resources where they can have the biggest impact, empowers probation officers to employ swift and certain sanctions to respond to probation violations, and ensures that every individual convicted of a felony who leaves prison will receive supervision. Since enactment of these reforms, probation revocations have fallen by approximately 25 percent, admissions to prison have declined 28 percent, and the state’s prison population has dropped 12 percent, allowing the state to close 11 small prisons. The state’s crime rate has fallen 30 percent since enactment of Justice Reinvestment legislation. North Carolina reports saving and averting more than $543 million in corrections costs and has invested more than $47 million, largely in efforts to strengthen community supervision.”-The Justice Reinvestment Initiative
- “And yet, despite millions of dollars invested in JRI, recent studies have shown that the states which implemented such reforms demonstrated no increase in decarceration as compared to non-JRI reform states, and no states actually reallocated revenue from the criminal justice system to community-based prevention programs.”-https://forgeorganizing.org/article/path-reparations-war-drugs
Timelines of Equity
Abolition of convict leasing Start with Ida B Wells life
Articles
Prison Abolition Syllabus | AAIHS
Mariame Kaba wants us to imagine a future without prisons
A Strike Against the New Jim Crow - Dissent Magazine
The Justice Reinvestment Initiative
A Path to Reparations for the War on Drugs | The Forge
INCITE!-Critical Resistance Statement | INCITE!
A World Without Walls A Critical Resistance Abolition Organizing Toolkit
A New Vision for Pretrial Justice in the United States
Toward a Just Model of Pretrial Release: A History of Bail Reform and a Prescription for What’s Next
Some states seek to eliminate racial bias in jury selection with peremptory-challenge changes
Jury selection is notoriously racist. Arizona has a bold plan to fix it. - Vox
Public Defenders Fight Back Against Budget Cuts, Growing Caseloads | The Pew Charitable Trusts
9 Ways States Can Strengthen ‘Underfunded, Overburdened’ Public Defense | The Crime Report
‘It Tears Families Apart’: Lawmakers Nationwide Are Moving to End Mandatory Sentencing - The Appeal
Solving racial disparities in policing – Harvard Gazette
States are Reducing the Collateral Consequences of Criminal Records | Arnold Ventures
Press release: Governor Polis signs collateral consequences reform bill - CCLP
Insurrection & Abolition: Ida B. Wells and the End of the Convict Lease System - Rampant Magazine
Books
We Do This ’til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice by Mariame Kaba
Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y. Davis
Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era by Dan Berger
Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy by Heather Ann Thompson
Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom by Derecka Purnell
Burning Down the House: The End of Juvenile Prison by Nell Bernstein
Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice by Paul Butler
Podcasts
Justice in America Episode 20: Mariame Kaba and Prison Abolition - The Appeal
Ending mass incarceration with CNN's Van Jones - The Next Stage podcast by Web Summit | iHeartRadio
Imagining A World Without Prisons Or Police : Code Switch : NPR
Stream TWO SIDES OF JUSTICE | Listen to podcast episodes online for free on SoundCloud
Film/Video
Movement Lawyering: Land, Bail and Reparations
Reimagining Community Safety: Police Accountability with Deborah Ramirez
Questions for Research and Reflection:
Taking Action
Envisioning an Equitable Future: a Spoken Word Series by K. Melchor Q. Hall
Summary of Efforts Toward Equity:
The movement for environmental justice and the movement for climate and environmental reparations are finding common ground.
Black people are exposed to a disproportionate amount of environmental waste and degradation; these exposures have a lasting negative impact on health, economic wellbeing and quality of life. While communities of color have been fighting for their health and safety for centuries, the modern Environmental Justice Movement took off in 1982 in Warren County, North Carolina. It was there that Black residents launched a national protest against the siting of a toxic landfill in their community. This was one of the first protests of its kind with over 500 arrests; though they lost, they set the precedent for the wave of movements to come. Today, activists like Colette Pichon Battle speak out about how Black communities in the Gulf Coast can move towards climate equity by building systems of resilience and mutual aid networks to weather any storm. Energy Justice leaders like Shalanda Baker detail innovative solutions to remove the impact to Black people from polluting technologies while increasing access to green solutions. Water Warriors in Flint Michigan is demanding justice, successfully suing the state while organizing elegant solutions to the city's divestment in water infrastructure. Futurists at Movement Generation are working to ensure that a transition to a more sustainable future centers the wellbeing and retooling of the Black labor force. Finally, there is a growing call for environmental reparations, and groups like the Sierra Club are beginning to take action.
Quotes
"Largely without support from the mainstream environmental groups and scientific elites, environmental justice communities are struggling against barriers to build the framework for a reparative, restorative environmental policy based on justice first then sustainability. Anti-urban and racist values have left critical gaps in our approaches to environmental justice, protection, and sustainability. This anti-urban attitude within mainstream environmentalism masks an unconscious racism that threatens to replicate racist outcomes even without conscious intent." Robert L. Bullard, The Quest for Environmental Justice - Environmental Reparations.
“Environmental justice in its roots is a racial justice movement," says David Mendoza, who co-chaired the task force. He says as the region grappled with the killings of George Floyd and Manny Ellis, a key concept repeatedly came up in the task force discussions: the idea that there should be reparations for harm done to environmental health, which tends to fall disproportionately on lower-income communities and people of color. It became one of the task-force policy recommendations, although the task force didn’t specify exactly what form that should take. Task force says reparations may be needed as state works toward environmental justice
"Over the next 30 years, the climate crisis will displace more than 140 million people within their own countries—and many more beyond them. Global warming doesn’t respect lines on a map: It will drive massive waves of displacement across national borders, as it has in Guatemala and Africa’s Sahel region in recent years.
The great climate migration that will transform the world is just beginning. To adapt, the international community will need a different approach to politics. There are two ways forward: climate reparations or climate colonialism. Reparations would use international resources to address inequalities caused or exacerbated by the climate crisis; it would allow for a way out of the climate catastrophe by tackling both mitigation and migration. The climate colonialism alternative, on the other hand, would mean the survival of the wealthiest and devastation for the world’s most vulnerable people." To Address the Great Climate Migration, the World Needs a Reparations Approach (foreignpolicy.com)
"I believe you don’t have to move out of your neighborhood to live in a better one” Majora Carter This I Believe - Majora Carter Fresh Pond Trees by Michael Joly on PRX
“Nationally, we need to be looking at stopping pipelines — reducing carbon but also reducing other pollutants. We need to start focusing on regenerative economies, creating community cooperatives and different kinds of economic systems that make it possible for people to thrive economically while at the same time taking us off the grid.”-Elizabeth Yeampierre (This environmental justice activist breaks down deep ties between racism and climate change | PBS NewsHour)
“I would actually trace the root cause to access to finance, access to credit. So, if we think about rooftop solar, for example, communities of color are not always able to go to their bank account and pull-out money to buy rooftop solar panels. They’re often not at the top of any solar company’s list in terms of creating a lease program for solar panels. And they’re not able to just go to the bank and get a solar loan, because they’re not — putting this in quotes — “attractive” customers. Now, if there were say, “green banks' ' that can lend money and think about the credit risk in a more creative way, we would be able to get more community solar projects off the ground. I think the federal government has a lot of leeway to think about creating a federal green bank model. -Shalanda Baker It's Not Inevitable That This Will Be Unjust’: A Q&A With Shalanda Baker On Energy Justice | WBUR News
Metrics
Justice in 100 Metrics: Tools for Measuring Equity in 100% Renewable Energy Policy Implementation
Progress Cleaning the Air and Improving People's Health | US EPA
Between 1970 and 2020, the combined emissions of the six common pollutants (PM2.5 and PM10, SO2, NOx, VOCs, CO and Pb) dropped by 78 percent. This progress occurred while U.S. economic indicators remain strong.
Clean Water Act dramatically cut pollution in US waterways
The team analyzed data from 50 million water quality measurements collected at 240,000 monitoring sites throughout the U.S. between 1962 and 2001. Most of 25 water pollution measures showed improvement, including an increase in dissolved oxygen concentrations and a decrease in fecal coliform bacteria. The share of rivers safe for fishing increased by twelve percent between 1972 and 2001.
Environmental Justice Factsheet | Center for Sustainable Systems
“According to the Mayor of Minneapolis, the change to the fee structure decreased emissions of criteria pollutants by 18,000 pounds and carbon output by six million pounds in its first year.”-LOCAL POLICIES FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: A NATIONAL SCAN
Methods of Liberation
Strategy 1: Bans
“One of the most direct ways to mitigate negative impacts on environmental justice communities is to institute an outright prohibition or ban on specific land uses or industries deemed harmful to public health and the environment.”-LOCAL POLICIES FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: A NATIONAL SCAN
Example: “In 2014, Curtis Bay residents began organizing to fight a crude oil terminal proposed by Targa Terminals located in the Fairfield area of South Baltimore.38 In 2016, Targa Terminals officially withdrew its application for the terminal due in part to resident opposition and legal challenges. After fighting off this crude oil terminal, the group first pushed for a study of the impacts of crude oil trains in the city. When this study bill was rejected by the city council, the coalition began to advocate for a more
aggressive approach to future proposals, arguing for the passage of a bill that would ban these facilities outright. Inspired by similar bans on the West coast, activists and residents in Baltimore sought to limit the expansion of crude oil infrastructure in that city—using local zoning codes to ban specific fossil fuel infrastructure. In 2018, the City of Baltimore officially became the first City on the eastern seaboard to pass a ban on new crude oil terminals. LOCAL POLICIES FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: A NATIONAL SCAN
Strategy 2: General Environmental Justice Policies and Programs
“State governments, municipalities can establish broad policies and programs with the purpose of furthering environmental justice, with a particular focus on land use policies”
See: Community Rallies for Passage of Commercial Waste Zones Bill
Strategy 3: Environmental Reviews
“Environmental reviews can be a powerful way for municipalities to regulate development in their jurisdictions.”
See: New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance (NJEJA): New Jersey Sets National Precedent with Environmental Justice Bill Signing Today
Strategy 4: Proactive Planning
“Planning is a way that cities and other localities can envision future development and proactively work towards that vision. This may include a comprehensive plan, overlay zones, and/or green zones that explicitly aim to address environmental justice.”
See: Green Zones: The Los Angeles Clean Up Green Up Ordinance
Strategy 5: Targeting Existing Land Uses
“Municipalities seeking to address existing land uses that disproportionately impact EJ communities do have a few mechanisms available to them through targeted mitigation efforts like the implementation of buffer zones, the phasing out of noxious land uses that no longer conform to the existing code, or mitigation of hazards through code enforcement.”
See: The Westside Specific Plan: NATIONAL CITY: The Environmental Health Coalition (EHC) – California Green Zones
Strategy 6: Public Health Codes and Policies
“...Municipalities may choose to adopt and enforce health codes to protect residents from various air pollutants that cause or aggravate health issues….”
Detroit’s Bulk Materials Ordinance: Detroit Enacts New Ordinance to Protect Residents from Dust Pollution
Timelines of Equity
Environmental Justice Timeline | US EPA
1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike was an action taken against unfair treatment and environmental justice concerns in Memphis, Tennessee. The cause was taken up by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
1979- Bean v Southwestern Waste Management Corp. and the Formation of NECAG was first environmental lawsuit of its kind in the United States that charged environmental discrimination in waste facility siting under civil rights laws
1982- Sit-in Against NC PCB Landfill in Warren County, North Carolina-the arrest of over 500 protesters and the national attention the action received catalyzed the modern environmental justice movement
1987- The First Nationwide Environmental Justice Study: The United Church of Christ Commission on Racial Justice (UCC) released Toxic Waste in the United States (PDF).
1991- First National POC Environmental Leadership Summit led by Charles Lee
1994- President Clinton signed Executive Order 12898: Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations to focus federal attention on the environmental and human health conditions of minority and low-income populations
1999- National Black Environmental Justice Network (NBEJN) launched in New Orleans
1998- U.S. signs the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to lower greenhouse gas emissions to below 1990 levels.
2010- Environmentalists protest BP after Deepwater Horizon oil spill
2014- Activists protest Flint Water Crisis in Michigan
2015- In Juliana v. United States a youth filed a climate change lawsuit against federal government
2017- Standing Rock activists protest Dakota Access Pipeline
2019: Representative Ocasio-Cortez introduces Green New Deal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to limit the worst-case scenarios of climate change while simultaneously addressing racial and economic injustice
Changemakers
Southern Environmental Law Center - Southern Environmental Law Center
Deep South Center for Environmental Justice
Climate Innovation - Movement Strategy Center
Home Page - Climate Justice Alliance
WE ACT for Environmental Justice: Empowering Communities to Power Change
The Solutions Project - Let’s create the future we want.
National Black Environmental Justice Network
North Carolina Environmental Justice Network | EJ, Equity & Health for All
“Just Transition” - Just What Is It? - Labor Network for Sustainability
Beverly Wright, executive director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice
Dr. Robert Bullard, A Scholar of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy, the “Father of Environmental Justice.”
Catherine Coleman Flowers Founder and CEO of the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise (ACRE)—an organization working to fight poverty and provide water and sanitation equity & Environmental Health Researcher & Founder at the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice (CREEJ).
Jacqueline Patterson Director of the NAACP’s Environmental and Climate Justice program, Peggy Shepard co-founder & Executive Director, WE ACT for Environmental Justice. WE ACT educates and empowers members of BIPOC and low-income communities to make their voices heard in the fight for environmental justice.
Colette Pichon Battle Founder & Executive Director of the Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy which works with communities and develops programming focused on equitable disaster recovery, global migration, community economic development, climate justice, and energy democracy.
John Francis “Planetwalker,” raising awareness of how interconnected people are with the environment.
Articles
Reparations and Environmental Justice
Climate Reparations: The Case for Carbon Removal (nymag.com)
To Address the Great Climate Migration, the World Needs a Reparations Approach (foreignpolicy.com)
Why the Sierra Club Supports Reparations | Sierra Club
Environment and Morality: Confronting Environmental Racism in the United States
How tree planting can seed climate resilience in communities of color | Energy News Network
LOCAL POLICIES FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: A NATIONAL SCAN
Olúfémi O. Táíwò's theory of everything | Grist
Fight Against Environmental Racism Finally Gets Its Moment | Time
Opinion | How to Fight the Poison of Environmental Racism - The New York Times
Pollution Is Killing Black Americans. This Community Fought Back. (Published 2020)
A PEOPLE’S FRAMEWORK FOR DISASTER RESPONSE
Hurricane Ida showed us the future of climate catastrophe. Mutual aid showed us a way out.
A Strategic Framework for a Just Transition
‘Water warriors’: the US women banding together to fight for water justice | US news | The Guardian
PATHWAYS TO RESILIENCE TRANSFORMING CITIES IN A CHANGING CLIMATE
Books
‘From the Ground Up: Environmental Racism and the Rise of the Environmental Justice Movement’-Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster.
Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality’-Robert D. Bullard
‘Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, and Residential Mobility’- Dorceta E. Taylor
Shalanda Baker’s Revolutionary Power: An Activist’s Guide to the Energy Transformation
The Permaculture City: Regenerative Design for Urban, Suburban, and Town Resilience- Toby Hemenway
Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret- Catherine Coleman Flowers
Podcasts/Audio
CJA' “Stories from Home: Living the Just Transition”
Black Nature Narratives Podcast
Environmental Racism and Oral History Part 1 & 2
Think 100%: The Coolest Show - S2 Ep 9: Examining the Clues w/ Dr. Beverley Wright
Black History Year: Environmental Racism: A Hidden Threat with Dr. Dorceta Taylor on Apple Podcasts
Film/Video
Bulldog Films Environmental Justice Film Archive
Film and Video – Global Environmental Justice Observatory Archive
Black Workers and Just Transition
Activists fight for land to use as green space in Cleveland
COME HELL OR HIGH WATER: THE BATTLE FOR TURKEY CREEK
Mossville When Great Trees Fall
We the Power | The Future of Energy is Community-Owned
Green Space, White Space: Racial Equity and Public Places
Questions for Research and Reflection:
How might health improve if our communities were unburdened with industrial waste?
With Black communities at the forefront of urban planning, what metrics might they use to evaluate a proposal for a new development?
Beyond environmental justice, how might we shape policies to include black access to national parks and greenspace? How might communities look with these needs in mind?
Are state and federal institutions equipped to regulate polluting industries. What might incentivize them to act on behalf of environmental justice communities?
In a future where all lives mattered, whose backyard would carry industrial waste facilities. Would industries even have consent to pollute?
What would industries need to do in order to design businesses that don’t create waste?
Have you ever feared drinking water from the tap?
What kinds of activities encourage legislative actions against environmental racism?
Are changes in environmental policies enough to stem environmental racism?
Taking Action
Envisioning an Equitable Future: a Spoken Word Series by K. Melchor Q. Hall
Summary of Efforts Toward Equity:
The Black culture is American culture. While the Black artists are plagued with tokenism, appropriation, lack of attribution, lack of resources and lack of pay, black artists shape the entire field of creation. Organizations are working to safeguard that creation through intentional curation, ownership of creative venues and copyright protections. The placement of black people in decision making roles in art institutions and in arts administration does much. Untimely though, black people's vulnerability to cultural theft is linked to economic vulnerability. One powerful tool to uplift black artists is through state and national artists stipends or universal guaranteed income, an income funded by those in the art industry that have historically benefited from black creative endeavors.
Quotes
“People think it’s about removing the objects, but really repatriation is about transfer of control.” ~ Eric Hollinger, National Museum of Natural History
Metrics
Methods of Liberation
Black decision makers, owners and artist in art institutions
A global list of Black-owned/founded museums, art galleries, and spaces | Dazed
On the Rise: 47 Curators and Arts Leaders Who Took on New Appointments in 2019 - Culture Type
Black arts distribution networks
Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY Now: A Frontrunner Of Diversity In Hollywood - Hollywood Insider
Reparations from white artists
Why Jeff Tweedy Is Calling for Reparations in the Music Industry - Rolling Stone
Development & Enforcement of Black Intellectual Property
Can You Copyright a Quilt? | The Nation
Intellectual Property at the Intersection of Race and Gender: Lady Sings the Blues
Pay Black Content Creators
What Are Black TikTok Creators Being Paid?
National Artist Stipend
The State: A Friend Indeed to Artists in Need?
Repatriation of stolen artworks
Restitution? Africa and the fight for the return of African art | AFRO American Newspapers
Timelines of Equity
Changemakers
Creative Equity Toolkit - Resources for cultural diversity in the arts
Black Art Futures Fund – Shape The Future of Black Art.
Black Artists + Designers Guild
BUFU : BY US FOR US bufu by us for us
http://palmwinecollective.com/
National Museum of African Art
The Museum of African American Art LA
NMAAM20 - National Museum of African American Music
The Schomburg Center for Research and Black Culture
Articles
a lesson on cultural appropriation by art hoe founder Gabrielle richardson - i-D
Black Artists and Gallerists on Making the Art World More Inclusive - Artsy
Black Trustees Join Forces to Make Art Museums More Diverse - The New York Times
Treating Creative Black Intellectual Property Ownership as a Human Right
Black artists fight for better representation in fine art museums
How New York’s Legendary Just Above Midtown Gallery Spurred Generations of Black Artists to Success
Orchestra initiative will provide support for musicians of color - The Washington Post
Black Artists Are Left Out the $64B Art Industry—That Can Change | Observer
Exclusive survey: what progress have US museums made on diversity, after a year of racial reckoning?
As a Black Artist Soars at Auction, Rethinking ‘Blue Chip’ - The New York Times
Black Art in America, booming online, is building an art center in East Point
Lack of representation prompts African American artist to open Bronx gallery - ABC News
African American Artists Redefining Black Culture
The Philosopher Who Believed That Art Was Key to Black Liberation - The New York Times
Ceding Power: On Reparations in the Arts – The Ostracon
Books
The Wall of Respect: Public Art and Black Liberation in 1960s Chicago by Abdul Alkalimat
The Black Dancing Body: A Geography from Coon to Cool by Brenda Dixon Gottschild
Protest: The Aesthetics of Resistance by Basil Rogger, Jonas Vögeli, Ruedi Widmer
Creating Their Own Image: The History of African-American Women Artists by Lisa E. Farrington
Podcasts/Audio
‘The Stoop’ Explores African Identity in America | KQED
Black Art And Liberation With Rosalind McGary
Black Arts Movement Audio Archive - Contemporary Black Canvas
Art of Liberation on Apple Podcasts
Black Arts Admin B*tch Podcast on Apple Podcasts
Film/Video
Watch Why Race Matters Ep. 7: Black Artists and Appropriation
Art Hoe Collective Meets Lorna Simpson | Tate Collective
Black Art: In the Absence of Light (2021)
How to be Antiracist in the Arts
Anti-Racism and the Arts: Marketing Leaders Respond!z
Questions for Research and Reflection:
How can access to intellectual property protection decrease the Black wealth gap?
How can a universal income contribute to Black creative liberty?
Taking Action
Envisioning an Equitable Future: a Spoken Word Series by K. Melchor Q. Hall
Summary of Efforts Toward Equity:
For hundreds of years, starting in the 15th century with issuance of the Dum Diversas, the Catholic Church was the biggest advocate of slavery in the world:
“We grant you [King of Portugal], by these present documents, with our Apostolic Authority, full and free permission to invade, search out, capture, and subjugate the Saracens and pagans and any other unbelievers and enemies of Christ wherever they may be, as well as their kingdoms, duchies, countries, principalities, and other property... and to reduce their persons into perpetual slavery.”
Pope Nicholas V
Dum Diversas, 18 June, 1452
Religion at large has been used to justify the institution of slavery. However, many religious communities are now advocating restitution for the descendants of the enslaved. Since James Forman interrupted a church service at the Riverside Baptist Church in 1969 demanding reparations from churches and synagogues, faith-based institutions have begun transforming their traditional roles and stepping up to become agents of social change.
After waves of protest proclaiming the value of Black lives, churches have begun taking bold actions towards reconciling their past and making repair in the present. Many are researching and atoning for long histories of oppressing Black people. Others are
Quotes
If the church is to embrace anticapitalism, which it must embrace in order to work toward a truly liberating Catholicism, then our bishops could begin by allocating a fund from their various collections toward a reparations fund…” -The church must make amends to Black people with reparations | National Catholic Reporter
"Black churches have been a key element of the African American community through generations of faith and struggle, and preserving them isn’t just a brick-and-mortar issue but one of civil rights and racial justice. Historically Black churches deserve the same admiration and stewardship as the National Cathedral in Washington or New York’s Trinity Church.” - Brent Leggs, Director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund / Preserving Black Churches Project, Fund to preserve, assist Black churches gets $20M donation (nbcnews.com)
“Black Catholics want to feel heard; they want a church that reflects and uplifts them toward liberation; a church that cares about their spiritual and physical lives — a church that atones.” - Olga Segura, author of Birth of A Movement: Black Lives Matter and the Catholic Church
Metrics
“In 2007, when the first Religious Landscape Study was conducted, only 12% of black Americans said they were religiously unaffiliated — that is, atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.” By the time the 2014 Landscape Study was conducted, that number had grown to 18%. “- 5 facts about blacks and religion in America | Pew Research Center
Methods of Liberation
Recommendations from Shannen Dee Williams
Contributing funds for the upkeep of historically Black churches
Preserving Black Churches | National Trust for Historic Preservation (savingplaces.org)
Making formal apologies for the church's own histories of slavery and segregation
Southern Baptists Apologize For Slavery Stance
Stopping the closings of active African American parishes and churches.
Fund to preserve, assist Black churches gets $20M donation
Broadening formal church leadership to include anti-racist women and members of the laity.
Destigmatize Traditional African Spiritualities and their practitioners
How African Spirituality Got Tied to Satan | by Sena Voncujovi | Human Part
Timelines of Equity
1969 James Forman demanded reparations for slavery from churches and synagogues.
2016 The United Methodist Church approved a resolution to support reparations for African Americans.
2020 MINNESOTA COUNCIL OF CHURCHES released its 3 point platform for truth and reparations and engaged its network of 25 institutions in making repair.
2020 Diocese of Texas to Fund $13 Million in Slavery Reparations
2021 Catholic order pledges $100m in reparations to descendants of enslaved people
2022-Virginia Theological Seminary is giving cash to descendants of Black Americans who were forced to work there.
Articles
Catholic Order Pledges $100 Million to Atone for Slave Labor and Sales - The New York Times
How Evanston faith communities are embracing reparations
This Seminary Built on Slavery and Jim Crow Has Begun Paying Reparations - The New York Times
This church is paying ‘royalties’ when it sings spirituals composed by enslaved Africans
Virginia Theological Seminary announces $1.7 million reparations fund - Vox
A New Era in African American Religion | The Future of the African American Past Conference
Ubuntu as a spirituality of liberation for black theology of liberation
How some Black Americans are finding solace in African spirituality - Vox
Why Many Are Returning to Ancient Spiritual Practices
Hoodoo in St. Louis: An African American Religious Tradition (U.S. National Park Service)
Websites
Truth and Reparations | Minnesota Council of Churches
The Center for Jubilee Practice
Books
The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Reparations: A Christian Call for Repentance and Repair by Duke L. Kwon
Black Transhuman Liberation Theology: Technology and Spirituality by Philip Butler
Birth of a Movement: Black Lives Matter and the Catholic Church by Olga M. Segura
Podcasts
Churches For Reparations | Podcasts on Audible | Audible.com
Just Thinking Podcast | Slavery Reparations
‘Their Lives Matter’: Descendants Of Those Owned By Jesuits Want Their Voices Heard | STLPR
Black Liberation Theology, in its Founder’s Words : NPR
Ancient African Religion Finds Roots In America : NPR
Film/Video
Faith & Fire 2.0 - Faith in the Public Square: A Juneteenth Call for Reparations
Reparations and why America’s past still shapes the present
Afro-Pessimism and the Future of African American Religions
Questions for Research and Reflection:
What spiritual justifications are made for reparations for slavery?
Does reparations for slavery increase or decrease the power of faith based organizations?
How can the broader reparations strategy include faith-based institutions in bringing us closer to national reparations?
Action
Faith Communities: Designing a Plan of Repair — Reparations 4 Slavery