Speaker 1: Um um, Welcome back to Point of Origin, the podcast
Speaker 1: about the world of food from around the World. I'm
Speaker 1: your host, Stephen Sadderfield. Okay, so this is a podcast
Speaker 1: and you might not know that the voice emanating from
Speaker 1: your speakers is that of a black man, and that
Speaker 1: means many things. That has many implications, but one of
Speaker 1: the big ones that I think about a lot is
Speaker 1: the internal and external generational trauma of our relationship to land.
Speaker 1: And for a long time, when I thought about land,
Speaker 1: for me, it brought up feelings of anger and discomfort.
Speaker 1: And in some ways that is still true because for
Speaker 1: us so called African Americans, displacement and dispossession our stories
Speaker 1: that come to many of us at a young age,
Speaker 1: as told through members of our family or via lived
Speaker 1: experience and at school. The stories of our bondage really
Speaker 1: diminished the breadth of our experience and knowledge in American agriculture.
Speaker 1: But with all things in relationship to nature, there is duality.
Speaker 1: And the older I got and began to meet other
Speaker 1: black friends from around the country, I started to adopt
Speaker 1: a new story that was just as true and just
Speaker 1: as easy to tell as the traumatic one, and that
Speaker 1: is the story of black resilience, ingenuity, environmentalism and health.
Speaker 1: Today we're talking to one of the sharpest minds in
Speaker 1: the US on matters of food, justice and sovereignty, Leah Pennaman.
Speaker 1: Leah is a farmer, author, activist. She is a co
Speaker 1: founder and co director at Soul Fire Farm and Grafton,
Speaker 1: New York. Her book Farming While Black, which came out
Speaker 1: in two thousand eighteen, quickly became an indispensable handbook for
Speaker 1: all things land reclamation in sovereignty. It is an inspirational
Speaker 1: guide and endlessly insightful as she is, as you will
Speaker 1: soon hear. But first a man I deeply admire and
Speaker 1: pleased to call a friend, my brother, Eugene Cook, who
Speaker 1: is an urban farmer and educator of grow where you
Speaker 1: are here in Atlanta, Georgia, and he is the very
Speaker 1: worthy first in studio guest of our first season on
Speaker 1: Point of Origin so today Point of Origin Farming While Black,
Speaker 1: Part one of two. First up, Eugene Cook, Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Point of Origin Today on our special episode Farming
Speaker 1: While Black, we have one of my favorite black farmers,
Speaker 1: Eugene Cook, from my hometown of Atlanta, Georgia, who is
Speaker 1: an agroecologist and also founder of Grow Where you are.
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us live in studio. Are first
Speaker 1: ever in studio guests for Point of Origin. Thanks for
Speaker 1: coming through Man so great to be here. Thank you brother, definitely.
Speaker 1: So we had the opportunity to meet last year and
Speaker 1: I got a chance to see you in your element
Speaker 1: on the land, moving through different plants, with ease, with knowledge,
Speaker 1: with grace. Can you tell us how you began on
Speaker 1: your journey as a farmer? First, I want to say
Speaker 1: the title of the show is great Stephen like Point
Speaker 1: of Origin. Yeah, you didn't mention that on the whole
Speaker 1: way up, but this is beautiful. It's poignant too, because
Speaker 1: my introduction to food, really my introduction to the understanding
Speaker 1: of where food comes from, was through my parents and
Speaker 1: my maternal grandparents, my mother's parents, who are farmers in Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: We would go to that farm. I was born and
Speaker 1: raised in California, so we'd go to that farm every
Speaker 1: couple of years during the summertime, sometimes in other seasons
Speaker 1: as well, and I would see what it was like
Speaker 1: to manage large acreage of farms, which was primarily in
Speaker 1: commodity crops, grains and soybeans and things, but then close
Speaker 1: to the house where all the farm animals were, all
Speaker 1: the home garden, and the variety of the food, the
Speaker 1: freshness of the food, all of that was put into me.
Speaker 1: Experientially talked about as well, but mainly experientially put into me.
Speaker 1: And I was required to keep a garden at my
Speaker 1: parents home in California on the side of the house.
Speaker 1: Same thing, just fresh peppers, tomatoes, corn, nothing big, nothing major,
Speaker 1: but had the clear understanding that, oh, food comes from
Speaker 1: the soil, and if it's going to be right outside
Speaker 1: my house, I'm obviously gonna keep it as clean as possible.
Speaker 1: So that was just built into me. And then the
Speaker 1: journey into farming came much later when I was becoming
Speaker 1: a father for the first time. In and Samantha and I,
Speaker 1: the mother of my oldest son, We were in a
Speaker 1: space in Pomona. We were running a house and Pomona
Speaker 1: that had a small backyard big enough to grow food
Speaker 1: in for a small family. And right when I knew
Speaker 1: that she was pregnant, I just went out there and
Speaker 1: started planting food. Didn't even really think about it. She
Speaker 1: and I had planted a plum tree and a lemon
Speaker 1: tree prior to that. But we're in Pomona, California, and
Speaker 1: there's just food growing. And people came over for a
Speaker 1: birthing celebration and they saw all this food and they said,
Speaker 1: you should teach people how to grow food. I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know how to do. I'm not in a
Speaker 1: position to teach anybody. And they said, well, you got
Speaker 1: more food than we have growing in our backyard. And
Speaker 1: that's when it really started to click to me that yeah,
Speaker 1: we should utilize the land close to us to ensure
Speaker 1: that we can eat. Do you remember what your grandparents
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma, what their relationship to the land was. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's my grandmother and grandfather Patterson. For them, the
Speaker 1: land was their universe because they were on eighty acres
Speaker 1: in an area that had been what they call Indian territory. Right.
Speaker 1: My grandfather has really strong indigenous bloodlines here to the
Speaker 1: United States, mixed with the African bloodline, and my grandmother
Speaker 1: has more of the mix of the African bloodline and
Speaker 1: the European bloodline. So for me to come through my
Speaker 1: mother and then with my father's genetics coming from Alabama
Speaker 1: with all that strong African and indigenous bloodline. The land
Speaker 1: was just I mean, really it was the universe. That
Speaker 1: my grandfather explained to me, it was everything that he
Speaker 1: valued was outside of his house other than his family members.
Speaker 1: You know, he kept his home clean and he and
Speaker 1: all of that. But what he actually valued was outside
Speaker 1: of the house. It was all the experiences that have
Speaker 1: but outside it was the sky. Being able to understand
Speaker 1: what was coming and what had left by looking at
Speaker 1: the sky, being able to keep track of time, by
Speaker 1: seeing what was happening in the fields. They had dug
Speaker 1: a pond, a pretty large sized pond, had fish in there,
Speaker 1: There were ducks, there were chickens, there were pigs there.
Speaker 1: You know, there was just life. Yeah, it was just
Speaker 1: all around. So I would be coming from skateboarding in
Speaker 1: Cerritos and Compton and Lakewood in California and go on
Speaker 1: a summer vacation to my grandparents house and just be
Speaker 1: out where I could stand in the middle of the
Speaker 1: gravel road, look one direction as far as I could see,
Speaker 1: the other direction, as far as I can see, there's
Speaker 1: nothing but the earth, no traffic, no stop signs. So
Speaker 1: for them, the land was their university, was how where
Speaker 1: they spent their time, their lifetime was spent on a
Speaker 1: piece of land. And is that land still a part
Speaker 1: of your family? It is, there are parts of it
Speaker 1: are part of the family still. Yeah, there's still relatives
Speaker 1: down there living on it, relatives living in the house. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The fertility of it, I don't know too much about.
Speaker 1: And because it had been agribusiness farmed for years and
Speaker 1: years and years towards the end. Yeah, when you had
Speaker 1: this epiphany. What was your firstborn's name, Cush Cush, So
Speaker 1: when Cush was born, I mean you mentioned that was
Speaker 1: kind of an impetus for you. But did you move
Speaker 1: into farming like full on right away or was it
Speaker 1: a gradual process. It was a gradual because still we
Speaker 1: were I was in southern California. So it went from
Speaker 1: there to working in partnership with nonprofit organizations doing community work.
Speaker 1: And this is around two thousand one at the time,
Speaker 1: and I was working with a project at the Watts
Speaker 1: Labor Community Action Coalition, the w l c a C.
Speaker 1: And we were doing a garden instruction program, but it
Speaker 1: was really based on wrapped around poetry and art and communication,
Speaker 1: and gardening was one of the pieces that the youth
Speaker 1: had to do so working with teenage youth, all black
Speaker 1: and brown youth, a lot of Latino UM and Latino
Speaker 1: X youth, and we were planting food in these community gardens.
Speaker 1: And then people said they were watching what I was doing,
Speaker 1: and different residents came and say, you need to meet
Speaker 1: this brother named a Donna Jaw. He's doing work over
Speaker 1: at Crenshaw High School. You need to meet him. You
Speaker 1: need to meet him. And I was like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: you know how do I meet him? And I ended
Speaker 1: up ended up going to Crenshaw High School going to
Speaker 1: the back. That's all people told me. You go to
Speaker 1: the back of Crenshaw High School and there's a big
Speaker 1: old garden. Just go back there and look for him.
Speaker 1: Went back there, I started yelling his name. He never
Speaker 1: came out. Finally I got a call on my phone
Speaker 1: and it was him and he said, people say, you're
Speaker 1: looking for me. You don't need to see me. You
Speaker 1: need to see Dana. You don't need to talk to me,
Speaker 1: You need to talk to Dana. So he said, come
Speaker 1: out to Crenshaw you can meet Dana. And I met
Speaker 1: sister Dana out there and I was in a food forest.
Speaker 1: It's a three quarter acre agricultural space at a high
Speaker 1: school in Los Angeles, calip Conia. There was designed to
Speaker 1: teach agriculture back in the I guess probably the early
Speaker 1: seventies and then had just gone into not being used.
Speaker 1: So in two thousand one, there were cherries, figs, chere
Speaker 1: Maya's bananas, grape vines, avocados, zapotees like stuff I had
Speaker 1: just never seen tasted. It was primarily a subtropical fruit
Speaker 1: food forest with vegetable understory, broccolis and charred and spinach.
Speaker 1: And that was when it really started. I started working
Speaker 1: with him there on almost a daily basis. The I
Speaker 1: was doing a contract work with a nonprofit that ran out.
Speaker 1: I didn't have any more money. All types of different
Speaker 1: things happened, evictions, all types of different things happened, and
Speaker 1: I found myself living and studying with this teacher, and
Speaker 1: my world has been transformed ever since. Yeah, man, well,
Speaker 1: let's uh, let's talk about your world today. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know we're skipped many years, but it's relevant because
Speaker 1: the last time we talked, you were also talking about
Speaker 1: bringing some of these skills and agriculture to high schools
Speaker 1: here in Atlanta. So is that still part of your
Speaker 1: your work here. Absolutely, we've had the good fortune of
Speaker 1: partnering with There's a gentleman named Dr Charles Moore, so
Speaker 1: he works with Emery and with Grady. He's an ear
Speaker 1: nose and throat specialist and he had the experience of
Speaker 1: seeing all this this hunger and health issues throughout Atlanta
Speaker 1: and has implemented a sliding scale community clinic on his
Speaker 1: own time, separate from working as a doctor, and through
Speaker 1: that he contacted us and had us do some after
Speaker 1: school programs, some summer camp programs with the youth, and
Speaker 1: that helped us to solidify our curriculum. So now Grow
Speaker 1: where you Are has a curriculum for food system immersion.
Speaker 1: So it is about urban agriculture and the growing, but
Speaker 1: it's also about what happens in the restaurants. It's it's
Speaker 1: about how transportation is a part of the food system,
Speaker 1: what happens in the stores, how things are marketed. And
Speaker 1: since then we have partnered with a musician here in
Speaker 1: Atlanta named Rory and Rory he has a initiative called
Speaker 1: the Woods where he's been going around the country doing
Speaker 1: performances in the woods or at at urban farms or
Speaker 1: or even suburban farms to bring his fan base, his
Speaker 1: music base out of the traditional music venues where there's
Speaker 1: alcohol and violence is being talked about. He said, I
Speaker 1: wanted people to be able to experience music in a
Speaker 1: natural setting and on a farm. And so those are
Speaker 1: the initiatives that we've been really rolling out because in
Speaker 1: the school systems, we found that they have to deal
Speaker 1: with a lot of administrative oversights and x spectations that
Speaker 1: are not really as conducive to the way that we
Speaker 1: like to teach. We like to bring in chefs, we
Speaker 1: like the children to have a very self guided experience
Speaker 1: inside of safe parameters. It's difficult to do that in
Speaker 1: the school systems right now. Yeah, and and so did
Speaker 1: doctor Moore have some personal experience that led them to
Speaker 1: want to specifically invest in this education. Yeah, Specifically, what
Speaker 1: I heard was that he had been driving to work
Speaker 1: in a particular route normally, and he went a different
Speaker 1: direction and found himself. You know, you're from Atlanta, you
Speaker 1: can make a different turn and literally we're in a
Speaker 1: whole another class of lifestyle, you know, the intense oppression
Speaker 1: that is part of our experience as African people here
Speaker 1: under a colonial tyranny. It's still looks like it looks
Speaker 1: all over the world. There are aspects of this city,
Speaker 1: Atlanta that are like third world countries um as far
Speaker 1: as it is with their facilities and cleanliness and and
Speaker 1: all that kind of thing. And so he started seeing
Speaker 1: some of these things and was blown away and wanted
Speaker 1: to deal with the health issues immediately because he's a doctor.
Speaker 1: And then after that he started doing a program called
Speaker 1: Walk with the Doc where he would take walks on
Speaker 1: Saturday morning into some of the nature preserves and show
Speaker 1: people different plants that had healing properties. So after doing that,
Speaker 1: it kind of evolved into writing prescriptions for people that
Speaker 1: would be green beans instead of a prescription for diabetes medication.
Speaker 1: So did you fulfill those prescriptions? We did fulfill the
Speaker 1: prescriptions if people came to the farmers market. More importantly,
Speaker 1: we were working with the children of these people who
Speaker 1: were getting these prescriptions and showing them this is how
Speaker 1: we plant this, this is where it comes from, this
Speaker 1: is how we maintain it after we grow it. It
Speaker 1: can go a couple of different directions. We can take
Speaker 1: it to this restaurant, or we can take it to
Speaker 1: this store, or we can take it to the farmer's market.
Speaker 1: And they experienced all of those. We took them to
Speaker 1: farmers markets, had them do a produced tour with a
Speaker 1: manager at Whole Foods, and of course different black owned
Speaker 1: farms in the Atlanta area. I'm interested in the curriculum
Speaker 1: that you've developed around trying to help these young people
Speaker 1: have a more comprehensive view of the food system outside
Speaker 1: of just growing food, because the two are very much
Speaker 1: related but also quite different as well. Right, one is
Speaker 1: just about your own personal power and agency on the land.
Speaker 1: But can you say more about that curriculum why you
Speaker 1: felt it was so important to bring in a more
Speaker 1: holistic view of the food system them instead of just
Speaker 1: how to grow food. Absolutely, our curriculum is called the
Speaker 1: New Power Generation, and we were working with young people
Speaker 1: at that time, they were about five years old to
Speaker 1: about thirteen years old. So grow where you are as
Speaker 1: a collective of growers who work in the food system
Speaker 1: in different ways. So for example, Jovannah Johnson Cook, my
Speaker 1: partner who helped to really give birth to the organization.
Speaker 1: She started as a grower and she now is a chef.
Speaker 1: She has a food delivery business for mothers who have
Speaker 1: just given birth and the families that are in that
Speaker 1: space and time, and also for private schools here in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: Then there's Nicole Blue who started as a grower and
Speaker 1: also makes medicines. And then we have people like you're
Speaker 1: familiar with Chef Mari Sella Vega who comes from a
Speaker 1: family of growers and then and is focused on doing
Speaker 1: her work in the restaurants. So we have all these
Speaker 1: key people and members in our collective that have these
Speaker 1: very specific perspectives and are also coming from a place
Speaker 1: of being young entrepreneurial people, some on their own businesses,
Speaker 1: some of them just move in a way that is
Speaker 1: an entrepreneurial spirit and they bring that and add that
Speaker 1: value to wherever they are, similar to the work that
Speaker 1: you do. So we wanted them to see a broad
Speaker 1: base of people working in the food system, and we
Speaker 1: wanted them to understand that the reality is for us,
Speaker 1: as as people who are creating our society, that the
Speaker 1: reality is that we are going to move in multiple
Speaker 1: systems almost no matter what kind of work we're gonna do,
Speaker 1: because to have success, I mean, you may not have
Speaker 1: thought you were gonna have to be a radio host,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It might not have been
Speaker 1: anything you were thinking about, or it maybe was something
Speaker 1: you were thinking about and you could always see and
Speaker 1: if it was like that for you, then we wanted
Speaker 1: to be like that for the youth. We want the
Speaker 1: youth to see Yet I may really like growing food,
Speaker 1: but I also may have a really good charismatic way
Speaker 1: of teaching and passing this on. The curriculum is about
Speaker 1: showing people that from the food everything is born. Like
Speaker 1: all these other industries are born from agriculture, but if
Speaker 1: we know the growing part, most likely we can shift
Speaker 1: through a lot of the other parts. The growing really
Speaker 1: provides the deepest foundational relationship to the food. I think
Speaker 1: it's so essential to to organize the curriculum in that
Speaker 1: way as well, because of the pressures that heavily subsidized
Speaker 1: and grow industrial food systems put on small farms and
Speaker 1: growers that to just say, well, if you grow your
Speaker 1: own then because it's not really that simple. R not
Speaker 1: that simple. If it's not simple for what young white farmers,
Speaker 1: then we can forget it. We have to tap into
Speaker 1: the place that we're already familiar with, which is our creativity,
Speaker 1: which is our improvisation, which is our our preference for collaboration.
Speaker 1: I mean like jazz music was created from the idea that, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I may be out of this world on this horn,
Speaker 1: but I sound really good if I'm next to somebody
Speaker 1: who's out of this world on piano at the same time.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean. And so the collaboration and
Speaker 1: the creativity is what for food sovereignty to be actualized
Speaker 1: in the way that we're talking about, and for our
Speaker 1: communities to come into a place of healing as well
Speaker 1: as a place of abundance and safety. If we don't
Speaker 1: know how to grow food, then we're like, we're denying
Speaker 1: how this country was founded. And not just the black
Speaker 1: part of the country. The entire country is founded on agriculture. Period.
Speaker 1: All the wealth that we're still pushing around is agriculturally based.
Speaker 1: So then why are farmers the lowest and the most
Speaker 1: undervalued piece of that chain. It makes no sense. No,
Speaker 1: the farming know it. No, it good nowhere the food
Speaker 1: comes from, and then from there while out into the
Speaker 1: future that you want to create. Welcome back to point
Speaker 1: of origin. So tell us how you got to Atlanta
Speaker 1: to begin with. Through my teacher aDNA Jaw from California.
Speaker 1: We were working and we had hired a man named
Speaker 1: Rashid Nury to help do some paperwork for some projects
Speaker 1: that we were working on. And then from that point,
Speaker 1: Rushi did a short trip in Africa, in West Africa
Speaker 1: in Ghana, and when he was in Ghana, he met
Speaker 1: three women from Atlanta, Mary Casey Bay, Jeane Billingsley Brown,
Speaker 1: and Zena Stucky and they were talking about essentially the
Speaker 1: idea of creating small, many farms throughout Atlanta that would
Speaker 1: help to support a new food system. Because these women
Speaker 1: were very informed on the toxicities of the current food
Speaker 1: system and just the lack of access to some of
Speaker 1: the things that they wanted and had getting them fresh.
Speaker 1: So they talked and they were willing to invest. They
Speaker 1: were willing to introduce us to their contacts. So Rashid
Speaker 1: contacted me and said, Hey, if I go to Atlanta,
Speaker 1: will you come and help me do this thing. I
Speaker 1: talked it over with my teacher and I came in
Speaker 1: two thousand and six to start truly living. Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about that, because you have
Speaker 1: the right approach to growing in this modern world, given
Speaker 1: the many constraints that come with land use and all
Speaker 1: the rights and bureaucracy and so on. How have you
Speaker 1: managed to grow food in an urban area with all
Speaker 1: of that, all those restrictions. It's We're in an interesting
Speaker 1: place because Atlanta, from what I've come to know from
Speaker 1: people who don't live here and who are involved in
Speaker 1: urban agriculture and other cities, Atlanta is very much focused
Speaker 1: on by other cities as a somewhat of a model
Speaker 1: for urban agriculture. So there's multiple kind of models that
Speaker 1: we've had to work with, but it's always comes down
Speaker 1: to land ownership. Right now, Atlanta is one of the
Speaker 1: few cities that has an Urban Agricultural Commissioner, and the
Speaker 1: idea is to involve urban agriculture more in the planning
Speaker 1: of the city as well as well. I shouldn't. I
Speaker 1: don't know for sure, but I know that food access
Speaker 1: was a major point for the previous mayor. His idea was,
Speaker 1: I want people to have access to fresh food in
Speaker 1: every half mile throughout the city of Atlanta. So it
Speaker 1: could be a community garden, it could be an urban
Speaker 1: food forests, it could be a farm. The difference that
Speaker 1: I'm experiencing because Grower you are is a social enterprise,
Speaker 1: So we're a business that seeks to do plenty of
Speaker 1: social good, both ecologically and with the general public. Yet
Speaker 1: it's different than a community garden. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of investment happening in community gardens because community gardens are
Speaker 1: spaces where the land is still owned most of times
Speaker 1: by the city, remains in that way, and they're not businesses.
Speaker 1: No matter how much food has grown there, you're not
Speaker 1: really allowed to sell it from there and make a
Speaker 1: business off of it. So there's a lot of folks
Speaker 1: who are have other positions in the food movement who
Speaker 1: will support community gardens, but NOE won't necessarily support urban
Speaker 1: farms or urban farmers, because one is about creating this
Speaker 1: kind of public not really consistent food supply because community gardens,
Speaker 1: when it gets too hot, people stop doing it. When
Speaker 1: it gets too cold, people's up doing it. They go away.
Speaker 1: They get plowed up every spring so they can start
Speaker 1: new and and it does a good thing for the
Speaker 1: feeling of the people, but it's not food security and
Speaker 1: it's definitely not food sovereignty. As urban farmers, we are
Speaker 1: more inclined to be working towards food sovereignty, and that
Speaker 1: means business models that function if the current agrib business
Speaker 1: food business models don't function and are not sustainable without subsidies.
Speaker 1: Then when we start to develop a city, a new
Speaker 1: city that wants to incorporate urban agriculture and urban farming,
Speaker 1: then we've got to look squarely at that because people
Speaker 1: will come to us and say, is it a sustainable
Speaker 1: business model? And oftentimes the people who ask that are
Speaker 1: working in nonprofits, which you feel what I mean, and
Speaker 1: they're not business people. They don't have that experience as
Speaker 1: business people. And I've heard it said by a lot
Speaker 1: of different farmers and a lot of different people that
Speaker 1: farmers are some of the best business people you'll ever
Speaker 1: want to find, because we're actually dealing with actual numbers.
Speaker 1: Like we're dealing with projections that are real. We're dealing
Speaker 1: with real things. It's not ephemeral trading in digits, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. It's a different it's a different reality,
Speaker 1: which makes us hard to negotiate with when people are
Speaker 1: looking to have a successful program and not necessarily a
Speaker 1: successful food system, you know what I mean. And so
Speaker 1: that's the place that's been most tricky because many times
Speaker 1: landowners that we come into contact with have the consciousness
Speaker 1: and understand how important it is to have a good
Speaker 1: food system, and there's still layers that they have more
Speaker 1: awakening for, but they understand that our food system is
Speaker 1: fundamentally broken and that it's toxic. So the land access
Speaker 1: isn't that much of an issue. What really happens is
Speaker 1: that when people see us functioning as an enterprise, there
Speaker 1: is a lot of resist tense because you know, capitalism
Speaker 1: is almost based off the idea that artists, teachers, and
Speaker 1: farmers are going to be poor. And these are some
Speaker 1: of the most fundamental actors in the community, you know,
Speaker 1: but it's almost built on the idea that teachers, artists,
Speaker 1: and farmers are going to be poor always and with
Speaker 1: in a capitalist society, the idea of financial poverty is
Speaker 1: somehow equated to a lack of intelligence. And so when
Speaker 1: people have to engage with us directly about these real
Speaker 1: issues and we have a developed perspective and in an
Speaker 1: informed perspective, oftentimes people take that personally we're just dealing
Speaker 1: in reality. They take it personal. That is so deep.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of um in South Africa, where there
Speaker 1: have been on and off but now definitely on calls
Speaker 1: for reparations and for years, one of the most prevailing
Speaker 1: things that the government and other white folks in society
Speaker 1: there would point to is that, well, we can't just
Speaker 1: turn over this land because their first needs to be
Speaker 1: education and without the education, So it's actually, you know,
Speaker 1: been a very prevailing and disempowering narrative about indigenous and
Speaker 1: black and brown people's relationships to the land when we
Speaker 1: very well know that that is our ancestry, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the fact that I mean, you speak of South
Speaker 1: Africa and so you have probably witnessed how they respond
Speaker 1: to Julius Malemma speaking just when he talks, when the
Speaker 1: e f F, when the Economic Freedom Fighters talk, just
Speaker 1: to speak so much contention and they're saying, listen, we're
Speaker 1: speaking in your language already. How much more of that
Speaker 1: education do we actually need? And if we needed it,
Speaker 1: why you didn't start when you first colonized this. You
Speaker 1: could have started the education process anytime you wanted it,
Speaker 1: But now you want to start it. When we were
Speaker 1: asking for the land back when we're saying it's time
Speaker 1: for you to go, now we're saying, well, we don't
Speaker 1: want to leave. So we're in that situation here where
Speaker 1: if we as African people here in the United States
Speaker 1: can really understand that all of these the issues with
Speaker 1: the border, all of the issues with healthcare, our land issues.
Speaker 1: This is about land. And if it's about land, then
Speaker 1: just a step up from the land are the people
Speaker 1: who care for that. And if we don't see the
Speaker 1: people who care for the land, we have to understand
Speaker 1: why we don't. Why are they invisible? Eras is the
Speaker 1: word we use for that. How do you think about
Speaker 1: your work in a longer view of time, um in
Speaker 1: terms of building legacy and assuming legacy and with your
Speaker 1: own seeds and all the many youth year in Atlanta
Speaker 1: and beyond that you're dealing with and are being inspired
Speaker 1: by your work, how do you, as a black farmer
Speaker 1: hold that idea, that notion of of legacy and your work.
Speaker 1: One of the most important pieces of the legacy and
Speaker 1: the work is the seeds literally, So we have a
Speaker 1: seed bank that Jovannah really keeps organized and we do
Speaker 1: a lot of collecting for and that that seed gets
Speaker 1: shared and it also gets stored, labeled, cataloged, and then regrown.
Speaker 1: The other thing is the skills, because when I look
Speaker 1: back at the only reason I'm in a position to
Speaker 1: even be interviewed by you is not because we went
Speaker 1: to school together, or our parents knew each other, or
Speaker 1: we bank at the same bank, but because my grandfather,
Speaker 1: my mother and my father passed on certain skills to me,
Speaker 1: kind of knowing intuitively that they may or may not
Speaker 1: be able to pass on the land, but they can
Speaker 1: pass on these skills. So when you when I look
Speaker 1: at legacy, I look at it in the seeds. I
Speaker 1: look at it in the skills, and then really I
Speaker 1: focus on the creatives in society. Mari Sella Vega is
Speaker 1: a great example of that. Um a brother named Lelo
Speaker 1: Jones here in Atlanta International. Lelo is another great example
Speaker 1: of that. Rory is a great example of that. My
Speaker 1: my own son Cush is an example of that. And
Speaker 1: what I mean is we find the creatives that are
Speaker 1: in our communities that automatically have the attention of other
Speaker 1: people simply because of the vibration that they're on, encourage it,
Speaker 1: refine it, and then showed them how the food system
Speaker 1: is part of their home, their reality because sometimes they
Speaker 1: know it, sometimes they don't, but when they find out,
Speaker 1: there's nothing as creative as nature. So nature is bound
Speaker 1: to be an inspiration to the people that we look
Speaker 1: towards for inspiration. Do you feel what I mean? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So that's really where it is. It's like looking at
Speaker 1: the creative people and saying, you're already doing your thing
Speaker 1: to the max. Come out here and see what this
Speaker 1: place looks like you Gene Cook, Yeah, yeah, grow where
Speaker 1: you are. I appreciate your brother. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for coming through Stephen a pleasure and mutual respect. Thanks.
Speaker 1: Good morning. This is Leah. Good morning, Leah. This is
Speaker 1: Steven Saderfield calling from Whetstone. How you doing doing well?
Speaker 1: How are you doing? Doing pretty good? I can't complain.
Speaker 1: The garlic harvest is good. The peach harvest is good,
Speaker 1: all right, garlic and peaches. Love them both, but not
Speaker 1: usually not together. But in the harvesting them in the
Speaker 1: same day it's pleasurable. Definitely, eating them in the same
Speaker 1: fights it's not pleasurable, truly. Um. Welcome back to the
Speaker 1: point of origin today. Leah Penniment, the co founder and
Speaker 1: co director of Soul Fire Farm, which is in Grafton,
Speaker 1: New York, is our guest. Leah is also the author
Speaker 1: of Farming While Black, which is quickly become an indispensable
Speaker 1: handbook for all things land reclamation. Sovereignty. It is a
Speaker 1: handbook and inspirational guide, a historical artifact, and we are
Speaker 1: so glad to have you join us today on point
Speaker 1: of origin. Thank you so much. It's my honor and pleasure.
Speaker 1: So Leah, you have a long history in farming, not
Speaker 1: only in the US but all over the world, and
Speaker 1: as someone who is familiar with your work, I know
Speaker 1: that it's really important for you to ground many of
Speaker 1: your conversations in a spirit of ancestral acknowledgement. So I
Speaker 1: will honor that by giving you the opportunity to discuss
Speaker 1: what it is that brought you to this work. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I so appreciate that. Yeah, there's a story that I
Speaker 1: tell myself every day and tell anyone who will listen,
Speaker 1: which is about my grandma's grandma's grandma and the other
Speaker 1: elders in the Homy region, West Africa in the seventeen
Speaker 1: and eighteen hundreds who were watching their family members get
Speaker 1: snatched up and be forced to board transatlantic slave ships.
Speaker 1: And in the face of that terror that they would
Speaker 1: be next, they gathered up their seed. You know, they're oprah,
Speaker 1: how pete millet, black rice, a goosy melon, moloka, and
Speaker 1: they braided it in their hair and in the hair
Speaker 1: of their children, so that they would have the seed
Speaker 1: wherever they were going. They really believed against odds in
Speaker 1: in a future on the land and that their descendants
Speaker 1: would need to inherit the legacy of these precious seeds.
Speaker 1: So that is the story that keeps me going because
Speaker 1: you know, we're up against a lot of forces that
Speaker 1: are not life affirming, you know, capitals and racism and
Speaker 1: patriarchy and the current administration, all the things, And so
Speaker 1: I always have to think, you know, if my ancestors
Speaker 1: didn't give up on me, then who am I then
Speaker 1: to give up on my descendants? And really being a
Speaker 1: carrier of that seed is ultimately what inspires me to
Speaker 1: get up in the morning and keep going. Absolutely, and
Speaker 1: let's just go ahead and name it right. We are
Speaker 1: talking about a circumstance in which black folks who are
Speaker 1: living in this country, who have worked the land and
Speaker 1: built this country, have been dispossessed from the land and
Speaker 1: now own virtually none of it. What is a message
Speaker 1: that you bring forth in your work that helps black
Speaker 1: folks recalibrate our imagination in relationship to the land. I mean,
Speaker 1: you put that so well, I mean, I really I
Speaker 1: think there's this myth that I know, there's a myth
Speaker 1: that black folks were rounded up and kidnapped for strong
Speaker 1: biceps and so called endurance and such, when in fact
Speaker 1: it was expert agriculturalists who were taken. You know, the
Speaker 1: climate in northern Europe is colds. It's conducive to potatoes
Speaker 1: and wheat and cabbage. You know. The climate in Georgia
Speaker 1: and Florida and Cuba, Brazil is tropical, and it is
Speaker 1: conducive to rice and cattle herding and cotton, you know,
Speaker 1: and that those weren't agricultural skills that Europeans had, so
Speaker 1: the labors went and got folks who knew how to
Speaker 1: do it and built that ten trillion dollar agricultural industry
Speaker 1: on the backs of unwilling people. So we we've never
Speaker 1: recovered from the legacy of that. You know, farm labor
Speaker 1: has always been explained. Did in this country, even after
Speaker 1: the end of slavery, morphed into sharecrafting and convict leasing,
Speaker 1: which twist of brutal irty is on the rise again
Speaker 1: because of the immigration crackdown. You know, it morphed into
Speaker 1: the guessworker programs, and now we have eight percent of
Speaker 1: the labor that's being done on farms being done by
Speaker 1: people of color, yet, as you mentioned, between one and
Speaker 1: two percent of all the farms in the country being
Speaker 1: owned and managed by people's color, which is a really
Speaker 1: a really gross disparity. And you know, as Malcolm X said,
Speaker 1: you know, land is the basis of revolution, of freedom
Speaker 1: and equality and dignity, and so ultimately, if we don't
Speaker 1: have some kind of control over the land, we don't
Speaker 1: have this necessary foundation for our dignity as a people.
Speaker 1: And so you have given us a lot out of
Speaker 1: historical context and grounding context. But what are some of
Speaker 1: your methodologies for ways that black people and other marginalized
Speaker 1: groups can be a part of this reclamation. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: we certainly don't pretend to have the answer, because, as
Speaker 1: my daughter in Issima says, the food system is everything
Speaker 1: it takes to get sunshine onto your plate, and that's
Speaker 1: a lot of complexity in there, you know. But at
Speaker 1: so Fire, we focus on three main things. One is
Speaker 1: growing food using Afro indigenous methods and getting that food
Speaker 1: to our people right, and so we are blessed to
Speaker 1: be able to steward eighty acres of Stockbridge Munty, Mohicans
Speaker 1: territory up in these mountains, cold mountains, and then we
Speaker 1: cultivate that in vegetables, fruits, eggs, meat, herbs, you know,
Speaker 1: and and box that up and bring that to folks
Speaker 1: in the community out affordable prices down to free right.
Speaker 1: So that's that's one thing is really survival program like
Speaker 1: walking the walk, do with the do every day out
Speaker 1: there in the mud, pulling garlic and whatever needs to
Speaker 1: be done. And then the second major thing we're trying
Speaker 1: to do is to educate, inspire and support that returning
Speaker 1: generation of black and brown farmers, you know, the folks
Speaker 1: whose grandparents led the Red clades of Georgia and the
Speaker 1: Great migration and now' saying we left something behind, you know,
Speaker 1: a piece of our culture and our autonomy, and we
Speaker 1: want it back. So we have people coming through for
Speaker 1: training programs. In the wintertime, we go travel and offer trainings.
Speaker 1: And then you know, once folks graduate, we we try
Speaker 1: to hook people up with land and jobs and the
Speaker 1: things they need. And then the final, the third and
Speaker 1: final kind of area we work on is around reparations,
Speaker 1: and reparations is repair. You know. Reparations is to look
Speaker 1: at what's been taken, the stolen labor, the stolen land,
Speaker 1: and to figure out ways to give back what was lost.
Speaker 1: Because history is alive today. You know the fact that
Speaker 1: of the royal land is own white people becaust the
Speaker 1: land is passed down and it was taken originally, So
Speaker 1: there has to be some redistribution, and we work on
Speaker 1: that and the policy level as well as people to
Speaker 1: people level on a regional scale. In terms of like
Speaker 1: the three points that you all are focusing on, a
Speaker 1: soul fire, the R word reparations may be challenging for
Speaker 1: some listeners who feel they were not complicit in the
Speaker 1: stolen land, they themselves weren't there. Maybe they feel they
Speaker 1: haven't directly benefited from that. Can you say what it
Speaker 1: is in the reparations framework that makes that work so
Speaker 1: essential that might not be so readily available for everyone? Sure,
Speaker 1: I mean, and the amazing thing is right now, contrary
Speaker 1: to all my expectations, this is part of a national conversation.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot out there that folks can read,
Speaker 1: which is good. But I'll share a quick story. So
Speaker 1: this is a story that one of my mentors, Ed Whitfield,
Speaker 1: likes to tell. He said, So, imagine that your neighbor
Speaker 1: came over and still your cow, and everybody saw them
Speaker 1: do it. And then after a couple of weeks and
Speaker 1: Abri comes over with tears in their eyes, just the
Speaker 1: morse on their lips and I'm so sorry I took
Speaker 1: your cow. That wasn't right and sort of see the light.
Speaker 1: But don't worry. I want to make it up to you.
Speaker 1: You know, every single week, for the rest of this
Speaker 1: cow's life, I would bring you half a pound of butter.
Speaker 1: And of course you'd be like, I would like my
Speaker 1: cow back. But like unfortunately, a lot of the policies
Speaker 1: that we have right now in the United States to
Speaker 1: deal with this long legacy of the time to deem
Speaker 1: a find of in the business people, of the enslavement
Speaker 1: of the population of you know, redlining and other types
Speaker 1: of white affirmative action, it's just say, oh, well, we'll
Speaker 1: throw a couple of like token scholarships or after script
Speaker 1: programs here and there, which is like the butter, you know,
Speaker 1: when fundamentally you can't run your firm if you don't
Speaker 1: have your cow. And so it's not that we need
Speaker 1: to figure out used to blame and whatnot. This isn't
Speaker 1: This isn't all of issues like how do we take
Speaker 1: the collective wealth of this nation, which we know was
Speaker 1: built on the backs of storm land and stolen over
Speaker 1: and work together to redistribute. Um. I think if folks can,
Speaker 1: you know, step outside of the shame and blame and
Speaker 1: ego and finger pointing and just say, you know, whether
Speaker 1: I directly did it or not. You know, for example,
Speaker 1: I am a Taino and black woman and I live
Speaker 1: on Stockbridge Mount, Mohican land. I didn't personally kick the
Speaker 1: Mohican people off their land. Am I still obligated to
Speaker 1: be in solidarity with them and to make sure they
Speaker 1: have access to this land that I benefit from as
Speaker 1: a settler of course, right, And so there's ways that
Speaker 1: we benefit from this wealth that's been created at the
Speaker 1: expense of others, and that that makes it part of
Speaker 1: our obligations and to be as solutionary. Does it complicate
Speaker 1: the work at all? For you give in the fact
Speaker 1: that the whole premise of land in this country is
Speaker 1: so arbitrary and yet it is so fundamental to our
Speaker 1: own sovereignty. Yeah, I mean it's certainly complicated because since
Speaker 1: the fourteen hundreds, when Europeans introduced the idea of enclosure,
Speaker 1: the idea of private property, and the erasure of the commons.
Speaker 1: We've just had a real struggle to be able to
Speaker 1: decolonize and reindigenize our relationship to land. So you know,
Speaker 1: even here at so Fire, we're trying, you know, we
Speaker 1: created this co op and nonprofit structure and all of
Speaker 1: these legal structures to try to fit the square peg
Speaker 1: of white man's law into you know, the round expanse
Speaker 1: of the way that indigenous folks understand shared land. You know,
Speaker 1: when Northeast Indigenous communities were so called selling their land
Speaker 1: to European settlers, their idea wasn't all you fence it
Speaker 1: and you're excluded. It's a use right. The land can't
Speaker 1: be owned. The land is stewarded by us on half
Speaker 1: of generations to come. And so there's a fundamental mismatch
Speaker 1: between the comments that I aspire to and some of
Speaker 1: the legal tools that we have to use to to
Speaker 1: get there. What has the response been, as you will
Speaker 1: have deep in your relationship to the indigenous communities in
Speaker 1: your area. Yeah, I mean it's been a big lesson
Speaker 1: for me in humility, because I think as a person
Speaker 1: of color as a non binary person, there's ways that
Speaker 1: I am more accustomed to helping folks with privilege understand
Speaker 1: the ways they can be in solidarity and be good
Speaker 1: allies or complices. And so it's really important to be
Speaker 1: in a space where I've got to do the listening
Speaker 1: and practice when I've preached. And you know, there's so
Speaker 1: much generations of hurt and mistrust that the dividing conquer
Speaker 1: strategies of the colonizers have been quite effective, and dividing
Speaker 1: Black communities from Indigenous communities from Latin X communities and
Speaker 1: so forth. So all that to say, I feel really
Speaker 1: really honored that anybody, any the original people here would
Speaker 1: take the time to build a relationship with us, And
Speaker 1: I really want to thank Warren and Molly and Bonnie
Speaker 1: of the Mohican community for building a friendship. We do
Speaker 1: some seed exchange, we work on some campaigns, and China
Speaker 1: draft a cultural Respect Easement which would guarantee when he
Speaker 1: can folks for generations to come be ability to gather
Speaker 1: medicines here in the land. And I'm just grateful that,
Speaker 1: you know, I was welcomed out to the reservation to
Speaker 1: visit with people and to learn about the history, and
Speaker 1: we keep part of our farm as a Mohican style
Speaker 1: three Sisters garden and incorporate a lot of the traditional
Speaker 1: varieties in an attempt to make sure this land is
Speaker 1: continually used in the way that it was intended. And
Speaker 1: collective farming is actually very much a part of the
Speaker 1: Black tradition. Absolutely, yeah. Can you can you talk about
Speaker 1: the relationship between our African American ancestry and cooperative for me? Sure?
Speaker 1: I mean there's so many different kinds of co ops
Speaker 1: and to full non exploitative economic relationships that have come
Speaker 1: out of the Black community, like the CSA, in particular
Speaker 1: with the idea of book Or T. Watley, professor at
Speaker 1: Tuskegee University in the mid nineteen hundreds, who noticed that
Speaker 1: wholesale just was not making ends meet for black farmers.
Speaker 1: They were excluded from the best markets and so forth.
Speaker 1: So he said, you know, forget all that, We're going
Speaker 1: to do direct consumer marketing. People will be members of
Speaker 1: your farm, switched to diversified horticulture at a pick your
Speaker 1: own operation, and create newsletters and other things to make
Speaker 1: people feel connected to the farm. Right, So that all
Speaker 1: sounds really familiar to us. So the cis a pick
Speaker 1: your own farm to the table, know your farm or
Speaker 1: all that stuff really came out of the innovation of
Speaker 1: black farmers in Alabama. And you know, of course it's
Speaker 1: just one kind of coop. You know, food hubs, which
Speaker 1: are started out as church sheds in the black community
Speaker 1: back in the early nineteen hundreds, or places where farmers
Speaker 1: would aggregate their produce, put in a truck and bring
Speaker 1: it up to Chicago. You know coops themselves, where farmers
Speaker 1: share tools and resources. There's a whole Federation of Southern
Speaker 1: Cooperatives that has hundreds of black led co ops. So
Speaker 1: we've kind of figured out the working together thing in
Speaker 1: our community for a long time, and it's good that
Speaker 1: society is just starting to catch on definitely, and you
Speaker 1: all have, i mean, are hugely impactful in your local community.
Speaker 1: And one of the great things about your text. For instance,
Speaker 1: I was just in Amsterdam last month and met a
Speaker 1: sister there who was checking out our magazine and she
Speaker 1: was like, Oh my god, it's so fire Farm. They're
Speaker 1: so amazing. I'm obsessed with everything they're doing. She had
Speaker 1: your book too, So it's really cool that in your
Speaker 1: text your ideas have spread not just in the country,
Speaker 1: but are spreading all over the world in practice. How
Speaker 1: are you all thinking about transferable elements to underserved communities,
Speaker 1: especially in these food apartheid areas that you might not
Speaker 1: be able to directly reach or impact through something like
Speaker 1: a C s A. That is such a good question.
Speaker 1: We've been thinking hard about that because what capitalism would
Speaker 1: say is, you know, grow bigger, franchise, have a national office,
Speaker 1: you know all of this, and it isn't right. That's
Speaker 1: not the right model for us. I think one of
Speaker 1: the beauties of sulfire is that it is such an intimate,
Speaker 1: family sized organization. So we get to be humans together
Speaker 1: and we all have our relationship with this land in
Speaker 1: a tangible, not theoretical way. So we look to the forest,
Speaker 1: We look to nature anytime we don't know what to do.
Speaker 1: And so what does nature do If one tree have
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of sugars that it's making because it's
Speaker 1: got extra sun, extra strength, right, it doesn't just grow
Speaker 1: three times as tall as the other trees. It actually
Speaker 1: puts those sugars and minerals into a network of fungi
Speaker 1: in the forest floor to distributes to the other trees.
Speaker 1: So that they can grow big together. And in a
Speaker 1: similar way, we have a train the Trainer a program
Speaker 1: for folks who want to start similar educational models to
Speaker 1: Soul Fire. We created a manual for farmers about how
Speaker 1: to do a low income c s A like hours
Speaker 1: and we go around and do workshops. And so the
Speaker 1: idea is not that like everyone says the same thing
Speaker 1: as soul Fire, right, but that we share all the
Speaker 1: tools as best we can. I mean that's what the
Speaker 1: book is about, right, Like just share whatever we figured
Speaker 1: out and then people adapt that to the needs of
Speaker 1: their local community. Have you had a chance to connect
Speaker 1: with people who have not maybe formerly been a part
Speaker 1: of your programs and and here like I did from
Speaker 1: a stranger about how your work has rippled out. It's
Speaker 1: been really powerful and surprising because I tell you, when
Speaker 1: I started farming in the nineties, there was nothing cool
Speaker 1: about it, and nobody in Amsterdam would be telling you
Speaker 1: we're about your farm, you know. So it's just I
Speaker 1: just laughed at myself every day, but I'm Probably the
Speaker 1: most exciting stuff prize feedback that I got was when
Speaker 1: Taj Mahal, the you know, world's famous blues musicians, sent
Speaker 1: me a little video of him holding up the book
Speaker 1: and saying what a treasure it was. And I hadn't
Speaker 1: known that he was a farmer before he was a musician,
Speaker 1: and so he was saying how important it was, like
Speaker 1: food and music are the things that are going to
Speaker 1: save our world. And so I get to spend some
Speaker 1: time with him when I was out in California and
Speaker 1: visit him, and and that was just super affirming to
Speaker 1: have this elder say that it meant something. That's one
Speaker 1: of the things that I think about so often is
Speaker 1: in this dispossession, you know, these even though the story
Speaker 1: began for us hundreds of years ago, Like and it's
Speaker 1: not even just in the red lining or in urban areas,
Speaker 1: which I feel like we know a little bit more about,
Speaker 1: but black farmers in rural areas, you know, who are
Speaker 1: our grandparents who themselves fought so hard to sustain not
Speaker 1: only their families, but the generations of their families who
Speaker 1: never got to benefit from the land. Can you talk
Speaker 1: about the legacy, specifically the Pickford versus Glickman versus the U.
Speaker 1: S d A, and the aging legacy of black farmers
Speaker 1: here in the US that maybe didn't have an opportunity
Speaker 1: to see the interest that you are now getting to
Speaker 1: experience with your book. For instance, that's so real. I mean,
Speaker 1: at the peak of black farmland ownership, are folks had
Speaker 1: acquired accumulated approximately sixteen million acres of land, and almost
Speaker 1: all of that has gone, not because black folks don't
Speaker 1: want to farm anymore, but really because of the government
Speaker 1: discrimination as you mentioned, in terms of access to loans
Speaker 1: and insurance and crop allotments. And this was exacerbated during
Speaker 1: the Civil Rights movement when you know, these U s
Speaker 1: d A programs are really sharpened into a weapon to
Speaker 1: punish any type of voter rights activity. As a farmer,
Speaker 1: you'd just be denied if you were an ub A
Speaker 1: CP member whatnot. So we had that as well as
Speaker 1: as outright racist violence. You know, the klu Klux Klan
Speaker 1: would burn people's houses and lynch them for being too up,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to stop the sharecropper life and having
Speaker 1: their own farm. There's four thousand people who fell victims
Speaker 1: to that. So that great migration to the North was
Speaker 1: really a refugee crisis, not a search for opportunity as
Speaker 1: it's often portrayed. And and now black farmers are dealing
Speaker 1: with another big challenge. Mama Savvy Horn explained to me
Speaker 1: so well. She said that when a black elder doesn't
Speaker 1: leave a will, in many ways, what they're doing is
Speaker 1: thinking about their land as a family commons, which is
Speaker 1: how it's always been ancestrally. It's not about choosing a
Speaker 1: certain air or trying to mess with any legal paperwork.
Speaker 1: Land just stays in the family. But that doesn't match
Speaker 1: with white Man's law in most states, because what happens
Speaker 1: is that one air, even if there's a hundred airs,
Speaker 1: one air can essentially force a partition sale of the
Speaker 1: entire land, and the land can be lost. And that's
Speaker 1: the number one driver black land lost right now. And
Speaker 1: people know how to take advantage of that, the developers
Speaker 1: and so forth. You know. So there's a lot, there's
Speaker 1: a lot. And I'm so proud of the folks who
Speaker 1: beat the government in the Pigford case and one the
Speaker 1: largest civil rights settlement in the history of the US.
Speaker 1: I know it was too little, too late. I know
Speaker 1: it's mostly a symbolic victory, but they really gave our
Speaker 1: generation the inspiration to say they were holding on to
Speaker 1: that agrarian tradition just long enough for us to see
Speaker 1: their example and to pick up the mantle so we have.
Speaker 1: We're deeply indebted to them. Okay, well, I will let
Speaker 1: you get back to the business of farming and liberation
Speaker 1: on the land. It was really such a pleasure to
Speaker 1: talk to you, and the next time in New York,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna hit you up. We gotta break bread so
Speaker 1: we can go all the way in. I would love
Speaker 1: to have you on the land and share some of
Speaker 1: this bounty with you. Um and if any listeners want
Speaker 1: to get involved with soul Fire, contribute to the repper
Speaker 1: rations map or rock with us in any way. Our
Speaker 1: website is super dense with all the info. It's soulfire
Speaker 1: Farm dot org, soulfire Farm dot org and also on
Speaker 1: the gram two right, Yes, we're on the ground, soul
Speaker 1: Fire Farm. All one word, all one word, all right.
Speaker 1: That was Leah Pennament of soul Fire Farm. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for joining us on Point of Origin. Thank you,
Speaker 1: take care all right you too. H m h h
Speaker 1: h h h h h h h h h h
Speaker 1: h h h h. And that's it for this episode.
Speaker 1: Point of Origin is a podcast from my Heart Media
Speaker 1: and wet Stone magazine executive produced by Christopher Hasiotis and
Speaker 1: hosted by me Steven Saderfield. Special thanks to Cat Hong
Speaker 1: for editing, supervising producer Gabrielle Collins, and a very special
Speaker 1: thanks to my business partner, wet Stone co founder Melissa
Speaker 1: she who helped produce this podcast. Thanks mel and thanks
Speaker 1: to all of you for supporting wet Stone and listening
Speaker 1: to the Point of Origin podcast for all of the
Speaker 1: latest on all things point of Origin. You can follow
Speaker 1: us on Instagram at wet Stone Magazine or online at
Speaker 1: wet Stone magazine dot com. We'll see you next week
Speaker 1: at the Point of Origin.