Why we need racial justice in farming

We need all the support we can get to build this movement locally. In the spirit of “a high tide raises all ships”, racial justice in the progressive farming movement will benefit everyone.

Bridging Social Justice & Community Resilience

On June 23rd, 25 Transition leaders from across the country met virtually to share and explore strategies for bridging community resilience and social justice. Our conversation focused on strategies that align with Transition’s approach of systemic–yet localized–solutions, and fall into two main categories: healing the damage of systemic racism and building equitable new systems.

Building an Anti-Racist Food Movement

Reparations is about recognising that the wealth and privilege of white people came from the exploitation of black and indigenous people and taking the necessary steps to heal that trauma. That means taking time to understand how you benefit in whatever way from white supremacy.

Farming While Black: Excerpt

Finally, reparations demands that we release the frontier mentality that plagues progressive spaces. The frontier mentality is the erroneous idea that the way to solve existing problems is to create or grow an initiative led by white people, rather than support existing projects led by front-line communities.

Can Reparations Help us to Re-envision International Development?

Reparations are important because they provide an alternative vision of what international development could be if these issues were properly taken into account. Although originally defined in terms of active amends to repair a wrong, debates around reparations have grown to include new ways of understanding contemporary problems.

Reparations Towards a More Just and Beautiful World

In the words of Dr. Maya Angelou, “No one of us can be free until everybody is free.” When we move away from domination by supporting and uplifting those who have been most impacted by the worst of it, we are able to move toward equity. Where there is equity there is balance, and where there is balance all life flourishes.