Farming While Black

by Leah Penniman

  The Victory Bus Project gives people living in New York City a way to visit their loved ones incarcerated upstate, while providing fresh food packages from member farms. Photo courtesy of Michael Rudin.

  In the Northeast the Freedom Food Alliance engages in another form of mutual aid. The alliance formed out of the political prisoner Herman Bell’s Victory Gardens Project in Maine, where volunteers cultivated land and distributed no-cost food in urban areas.† In 2009 Black farmers and food justice activists convened at the Growing Power Conference in Milwaukee and launched the Victory Bus Project. The project gives people living in New York City a way to visit their loved ones incarcerated upstate, while providing fresh food packages from member farms.

  The Freedom Food Alliance exemplifies a crucial component of movement work: the survival program. Too often our generation centers “armchair activism,” which may consist of nothing more than online pontification or defeatist headshaking about the inadequacies of others’ efforts. Meanwhile our people are deprived of land, food, and the means of survival. The Black Panthers understood the need to animate their theoretical framework with direct action and direct service. To the extent that our resources and physical ability permit, we, too, are obligated to get our hands dirty in the work of direct mutual aid.

  * * *

  * Juneteenth, or “Freedom Day,” commemorates the abolition of slavery in Texas on June 19, 1865—and more generally the emancipation of African Americans throughout the former Confederacy.

  † At the time of writing, Herman Bell was released on parole after 45 years of incarceration.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  White People Uprooting Racism

  But all our phrasing—race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy—serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. You must never look away from this. You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions, all land, with great violence, upon the body.

  —TA-NEHISI COATES

  At the Woodbourne Correctional Facility in upstate New York, guest teachers are not allowed to use red markers, and all images must be approved by the administrators in advance. Jonah and I worked within these and dozens of other regulations as we prepared our “farming and food justice” workshop for the incarcerated individuals who were earning their college degree through the Bard Prison Initiative.

  On our way to the prison, we drove through one economically depressed rural Hudson Valley town after another, each one less resourced than the previous one. A few houses dotted the road, laundry hanging over sagging porches. We felt the painful irony that the Woodbourne Correctional Facility sat, quite literally, on land that once produced food. The land was now perverted as a tool for tearing apart our communities and draining its resources.

  We passed through razor wire and triple locks, fingerprinting and white guards, peeling paint and 1970s encyclopedias, and caged humans. Thirty men, almost all Black or Latinx, attended our class. They told stories of gardening with their grandmothers, climbing mango trees at home in Puerto Rico, and running their family farms in the South. Bolstered by these memories, we got to work on business plans for the farm and food enterprises they planned to create once they were out.

  Upstate New York was once home to thriving trade routes and prosperous dairy farms. The US Department of Agriculture’s destruction of parity pricing and its “get big or get out” policies since the 1950s undermined the small-farm economy and incentivized consolidation. As agriculture declined in the area, the prison industry rose to take its place. New York State Department of Corrections is the state’s largest agency, with a 2017 budget of $3.182 billion.1 Politicians representing the towns where prisons are located vehemently protect this bloated industry and the jobs it provides in their mostly white communities.

  These remote upstate New York prisons are filled with people of color from New York City, despite evidence that keeping close ties to one’s community and family decreases recidivism.2 While the majority of drug users and sellers in the state are white, 90 percent of people locked up for drug offenses are Black and Latinx. The result is a dysfunctional relationship between racist criminal justice policy and economic stability. The prison system harms rural communities because it ignores economic devastation and sidesteps development policy. It harms urban communities by kidnapping their people and reinforcing institutional racism. It harms us both by pitting our basic needs—for economic survival and freedom—against each other.

  Jalal Sabur prepares to bring vegetables to people incarcerated at the Green Haven Correctional Facility. Photo courtesy of Michael Rudin.

  Working-class Black and white people have long understood that we are natural allies, and the owning class has done everything in their power to invent and promote racist ideas to divide us. Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 occurred when Black and white indentured servants took up arms against the landed gentry of the Virginia House of Burgesses. This interracial militia captured Jamestown and burned it to the ground. Word of the rebellion spread far and wide, and several more uprisings ensued. The planter elite were alarmed and deeply fearful of alliance between their workers, so they enacted laws that permanently enslaved Virginians of African descent and gave poor white indentured servants new rights and status. The white rebels were pardoned and the Black rebels were punished, further cementing the racial divide.3

  Despite violent attacks by elite forces, poor whites and Blacks continued to organize together. They formed the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, an interracial alliance demanding their fair share of subsidies and profits, and improved working conditions. Harrison George of the Communist Party remarked in 1932, “The impoverished farmers are on the march. We cannot order them to retreat, even if we desired.”4

  Our generation must carry on this march. White supremacy erodes our humanity and is our common enemy. The white elite created white supremacy, a “historically based, institutionally perpetuated system of exploitation and oppression of continents, nations, and peoples of color by white peoples and nations of the European continent for the purpose of establishing, maintaining and defending a system of wealth, power and privilege.”5 White supremacy infuses all aspects of society including our history, culture, politics, economics, and entire social fabric, producing cumulative and chronic adverse outcomes for people of color. What can be created, can be destroyed. White people need to be active in the dismantling of white supremacy.

  Black food and land sovereignty is the collective responsibility of the entire community, not just the purview of African American people. This chapter offers strategies for European heritage people to examine their privilege and take concrete action to uproot personal and institutional racism. We explore strategies for enacting reparations, forming alliances, transforming organizations, “calling in” oppression, and connecting with our personal histories. Recognizing that, as historian Howard Zinn once said, “you can’t be neutral on a moving train,” this chapter offers steps to actively work against the grain in your spheres of influence and start to undo the harms of racism.

  Reparations

  Enslaved Africans never received reparations for their unpaid labor or broken families. The promise “40 acres and a mule” during Reconstruction was retracted. In fact, some white plantation owners received reparations for their “lost property.” If African American people were paid $20 per week for our agricultural labor rather than enslaved, we would have $6.4 trillion in today’s dollars in the bank right now. This figure does not include reparations for denied credit and homeownership opportunities, exclusion from the social safety net and education, or property theft and destruction.6 There is a reason why the typical white household has 16 times the wealth of a typical black household: 80 percent of wealth is inherited, often traceable back to slavery times.7 Existing policies reinforce and a
ugment the wealth gap.

  The most important action that white people can take to uproot racism is to enact reparations, to quite literally give back what was stolen. We are not talking about Georgetown University–style reparations, where the institution gave a formal apology and preferential admission to the descendants of people sold as slaves in 1838, but did not offer scholarships or include the descendants in the reparations committee. We are talking about true reparations, which have the following three characteristics:

  “Nothing about us, without us”: Black people get to define what reparations look like.

  “No strings attached”: Transfers of land and resources without oversight or conditionality.

  “The whole pie”: Give the land, money, and jobs away, even and especially when it entails personal sacrifice.

  Take stock of your resources, including your job, assets, property, and power. Ask yourself what you can give away in a loving act of reparations. Can you job-share with a community member and then hand over the reins once that person learns the ropes? Can you give away your land and downsize your living arrangements? Can you eliminate superfluous expenses and give that money away to front-line organizations? Can you convince other people with money and power to align their actions with the priorities of front-line communities? Black and Indigenous members of the Northeast Farmers of Color Network and Soul Fire Farm alumni put together a reparations map (www.soulfirefarm.org/support/reparations) to channel these resources directly to people of color working on farming and food justice projects. Users can explore the map and contact one another directly to transfer resources.

  Farmer Dallas (left) won the first reparations map victory, earning funds for Harriet Tubman Freedom Farm in North Carolina. Photo by Neshima Vitale-Penniman.

  Reparations also entails working for policy changes that undermine the systemic nature of the wealth gap. The following are among the policies for which we should advocate.

  To be in allyship as a white person can mean doing “unglamorous” tasks in support of people-of-color-led projects. Photo by Capers Rumph.

  Pass HR 40: Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act.

  Guarantee a “Universal Basic Income”—a minimum livable income to cover the costs of food, shelter, education, transportation, and health care.

  Provide free and universal education, from pre-K through university.

  Increase federal and state investments in historically Black colleges and universities.

  Eliminate the down payment for home buyers of color and provide foreclosure interventions.

  Enforce housing antidiscrimination laws.

  Cap the mortgage interest tax deduction.

  Tax all income for Social Security, not just the first $128,400, and raise the payout to low-income earners.

  Close loopholes like “step up” that allow people to avoid paying tax on property they inherit.

  Enact affirmative action in colleges and universities.

  Provide equitable funding for public schools across districts.

  Raise the minimum wage and Social Security payouts.

  Provide free and universal health care.

  Grant the right to unionize for all employees.

  Enact a progressive restructuring of tax codes at the local, state, and federal levels.

  Divest from the criminal injustice system, and invest in restorative justice, mental health services, and job programs.

  End money bail and capital punishment.

  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.8 This myth is rooted in the frontier mind-set of European colonizers who romanticized the “Wild West” as an “unsettled” area with unlimited free land and opportunity. This myth drove the brutal exploitation of Indigenous people, Mexican Americans, and Blacks and the exploitation of natural resources. To release the frontier mentality, we must follow the lead of people of color. Logically, those harmed directly by racism are the same people who know best how to remedy that harm.

  Black-Indigenous Led Organizations Working on Food, Land, and Freedom

  African People’s Education and Defense Fund

  Black Belt Justice Center

  Black Family Land Trust

  Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association

  Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (Organizacion Fraternal Negra Hondureña Ofraneh)

  Black Immigration Network

  Black Urban Growers

  CATA—The Farmworker Support Committee (El Comite de Apoyo a Los Trabajadores Agricolas)

  Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation

  Centro Campesino

  Color of Food

  Community to Community Development

  Cooperation Jackson

  Cosecha

  Detroit Black Community Food Security Network

  Dignity & Power Now

  Ella Baker Center

  Familias Unidas por la Justicia

  Farmworker Association of Florida

  Federation of Southern Cooperatives/ Land Assistance Fund

  Food Chain Workers Alliance

  Food Sovereignty Ghana

  Freedom Food Alliance

  HEAL Food Alliance

  International Indigenous Youth Council

  Land Loss Prevention Project

  Líderes Campesinas

  Malcolm X Grassroots Movement

  Movement for Justice in El Barrio

  National Black Farmers Association

  National Black Food & Justice Alliance

  National Black Growers Council

  National Coordination of Peasant Organizations of Mali (Coordination Nationale des Organisations Paysannes)

  National Domestic Workers Alliance

  National Women in Agriculture Association

  Operation Spring Plant

  PODER: People Organized in Defense of Earth and Her Resources

  Restaurant Opportunities Centers United

  Sierra Seeds

  Southeastern African American Organic Farmers’ Network (SAAFON)

  Standing Rock Sioux

  Via Campesina, La; International Peasant Movement

  Sometimes “following the lead” of people of color means doing unglamorous tasks behind the scenes that fortify the work but do not garner recognition. My partner, Jonah, is currently the only white-identified person working at Soul Fire Farm, and I watch him fix toilets, trap ants, repair leaks, organize paperwork, and order supplies, while others facilitate programs and give public talks to much acclaim. He has quite literally dedicated his life to building the infrastructure to support a people-of-color-led liberation project.* Similarly, I witness the White Noise Collective cook food and prepare spaces for Harriet’s Apothecary, a Black-led space. They disappear during the healing event and return when it finishes to clean up and give our guests rides to the train station.

  A first step is to find out what Black-led organizations are working toward liberation in your area and see what you can do to support. An incomplete list of formations working on food, land, and liberation for people of color is provided here in a sidebar.

  UPLIFT

  White Anti-Racists

  Elijah P. Lovejoy was the abolitionist editor of newspapers in Missouri and Illinois. His printing press was destroyed four times by pro-slavery mobs. On November 7, 1837, Lovejoy was gunned down defending his newspaper and buried in an unmarked grave with no funeral. Over 100 years later Andrew Goodman worked with James Chaney and Michael Shwerner on the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) voter registration effort in Mississippi. On June 21, 1964, members of the Ku Klux Klan murdered the three activists with the collusion of the deputy sheriff. Lovejoy and Goodman are two of the hundreds of white people who have fought—and sometimes die
d—for Black freedom. We lift up their names along with Sarah and Angelina Grimké, James Zwerg, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland, Tim Wise, Viola Liuzzo, Margo Adair, Jessie Daniel Ames, Kirsten Anderson, Anne Braden, Marilyn Buggey, Marilyn Buck, Robin DiAngelo, Bernardine Dohrn, Virginia Foster Durr, Ruth Frankenberg, Heather Hackman, Heather Heyer, Naomi Jaffe, Selma James, Frances E. Kendall, Chelsea Manning, Peggy McIntosh, Juliette Hampton Morgan, Kathy Obear, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Adrienne Rich, Eleanor Roosevelt, Ann Russo, Mab Segrest, Ricky Sherover-Marcuse, Lillian Eugenia Smith, Fay Stender, Julie Rawson, Jack Kittredge, and Peggy Terry.9

  Forming Interracial Alliances

  Adopting a listener’s framework is the first step for white people who want to form interracial alliances. Rather than trying to “outreach” to people of color and convince them to join your initiative, find out about existing community work that is led by people directly impacted by racism and see how you can engage. Front-line communities have the long-term commitment, strategy, and expertise necessary to transform the system. Nine guidelines for interracial alliance building are provided here.

  Center relationships. There is no shortcut to building relationships. The first step is to show up. Spend as much time as possible attending community meetings, getting involved in neighborhood associations, and lending your skills and time to projects that are important to members of the community. When you tangibly demonstrate your commitment to the community, people are more likely to invite you in as a partner in initiatives. When you only reach out to someone because you want their presence at your onetime event, that is tokenizing, not relationship building.