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#BlackFarmersEdition PART II

Be #InvestedInUjima | #UjimaWednesdays |#BlackFarmersEdition | Opportunities to Listen | Alternative Currency | Ujima Time Bank | How to Invest in Ujima | Appreciations | Neighborhood Econ. Study Group | Ujima is Hiring | Membership Renewal | Jobs | Upcoming Meetings 

JUNE JORDAN

Last Sunday, we kicked off To Possess Freedom Again with Black Feminist Study Hall with Bilphena Yahwon of the Womanist Reader where we discussed work by June Jordan. There is still time to join Boston Ujima Project and Black Economic Council of Massachusetts (BECMA) for a week of activities to identify and return to a tangible freedom* that our ancestors knew.

7.23 Black on Black Investing Workshop ❖ 7.24 Lectures Aint Dead Organized by Print Aint Dead Featuring Writer | Root Worker Ra Malika Hotep ❖ 7.27. Black Trust w.  Guest Speaker Marie St. Fleur | Visiting Artist Anastasia Warren

SAVE THE DATE!

TONIGHT AT 6PM: CO-OP BASICS WITH USFWC

Our next Ujima Open Meeting is TONIGHT on Zoom – Wednesday, July 22nd, from 6:00pm-8:30pm.

  • 6:00-7:15pm #CoLearning: Co-Op Basics with Matt Feinstein of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives.
  • 7:15-8:30pm #CoCreation: Business Support and Evaluation Member Teams

PLEASE RSVP. Thank you!

Time: Wednesday, July 1st, 6PM | Location: ZOOM

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#CoLearning Recap: CO-OP START UP BASICS W. DANIEL ARRANAGA

Last Wednesday, Daniel Arranaga of the US Federation of Worker Co-ops demystified CO-OP Start Up Basics, join us this week for part 2. Interested in learning more check out links to last week's meeting below:

View the full notes and watch the workshop recording here!

 

Photo: Fannie Lou Hamer serving her Congressional Testimony, 1964. AP Images

#BlackFarmersEdition PART II

Introduction:

Across the United States the uprisings and calls to support Black owned businesses have resulted in an uptick in resourcing for Black farmers. In Durham, NC hundreds waited in line to get into the Black Farmers Market. In Baltimore, and many other cities, urban farming continues to be on the rise. Leah Penniman, co-founder of Soul Fire Farm, was even featured in an online editorial on Vogue.com. In early July, we released the #BlackFarmersEdition of the Ujima WIRE, which unpacked monumental cases like Pigford I and II, reparations and the United States’ modern history of land theft in the Black community.

 

In this issue, we cover the roots of the contemporary farming movement, data and its implications on farming policy, and land reclamation happening across the United States.

 

Fannie Lou Hamer and The Delta: Erasure of the Black Experience as a Political Weapon:

Fannie Lou Hamer was a civil rights activist born on October 6, 1917, one of twenty children. Her parents, Jim and Lou Ella Townsend, were sharecroppers. Hamer grew up on the farm, and continued to work as a sharecropper in her adult life after she was married to her husband, Perry Hamer in 1944. In the summer of 1962, she attended a protest meeting led by civil rights activists James Forman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and James Bevel of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). She became an organizer for SNCC that summer, and went on to found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), co-organize the Freedom School, give speeches across the nation, and co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus. In 1968, she turned her gaze from politics to economic equality and famously began a pig bank, and launched the Freedom Farm Cooperative.

 

 

These roots sowed the seeds of change as Hamer shifted the conversation on voter suppression and land sustainability into the hands of Black southerners, despite the government’s repeated attempts to silence her voice and erase the Black experience—as noted in Monica M. White’s Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement.

 

Data as a construct: The Performative Nature of Neutrality and its Impact on Policy :

A lack of qualitative data has heavily impacted the analysis of Black farmers and land ownership that leads to erasure, misrepresentation of land ownership, and counterfeit records that promote a false sense of equity.

 

The path to dissolving this performative nature of neutrality began with W.E.B. Dubois in his 1904 commentary entitled “The Negro Farmer,” a study which focused on census data from 1900 as summarized by Spencer and Wood in a 2018 publication by the Amercian Sociolgy Association, Emancipatory Empiricism: The Rural Sociology of W.E.B. Du Bois

“He highlighted the limitations of the government classification of farmers in a manner that does not always differentiate between owners and operators. Consequently, he correctly concluded that the number of Black individuals who own their own farms is likely lower than the census data suggests with its broader category of farm operator and that the number of those who work as laborers, croppers, and tenants is likely higher than the data reports...His theoretical concepts surrounding race, such as the color line and the veil, were linked to his personal experiences of racial prejudice in the rural south and later observations of rural spaces (Du Bois 1968). Rural spaces, for Du Bois, were characterized by both the processes of marginalization that accompanied the onset of modernity and the potential economic and social development that Du Bois wished to see Black communities attain. It was in the vast regions of rural spaces that Du Bois first described the foundations of his emancipatory goals of social and economic development and it was in rural spaces that he conducted his first investigations toward realizing these goals.”

 

 

Black Farmers: Reclamation and Roots

In Black communities, urban gardens have long been a part of the culture: from free abolitionist communities, to literary examples like the all-Black town of Eatonville, FL in Their Eyes Were Watching God, to cousins and grandmas raising herbs, tomatoes and sunflowers in their backyards.

 

As a culture, we’ve always kept our connection to the land, and made strides in the scientific development of the field. Even the oft touted George Washington Carver, should be known for much more. “The whole reason Carver wanted farmers to grow peanuts was because he was trying to convince them to plant nitrogen-fixing legumes into diverse crop rotations, which would improve the soil in a region that had been burned by decades of mono-crop cotton farming. Carver also developed a system for disseminating his university’s research to surrounding farmers through workshops and demonstrations, as well as helping them troubleshoot problems they were encountering. Carver’s system would later take form nationwide as the US Department of Agriculture’s extension program,” remarked Leah Penniman in Tom Philpott’s recent Mother Jones article.

 

Penniman, the co-founder of Soul Fire Farm in upstate New York, is a leader in the movement of larger-scale Black farming and education. About her work she says, “[w]e use Afro-indigenous and regenerative practices—fancy words that essentially mean we’re trying to farm using the best advice of our ancestors and we’re trying to farm in a way that actually makes the environment better and not worse,” she says.

 

Elsewhere in upstate NY in the South Catskills, the Black-trans led collective Activation Residency is working to “cultivat[e] collective consciousness... [and] ...are redistributing creative access from elitist structures and meritocratic frameworks to serve marginalized artists and communities,” through an innovative land and art residency project called Farming Futurity. More locally, since 2012, the Mattapan-based Urban Farming Institute operates seven farms around the city of Boston, trains new farmers, educates, and advocates for stronger urban farming policies at the city and state level.

 

Photo: Still image from Baby Boy (2001) directed by John Singleton

As 2020 escalated, from the pandemic to the state of emergency, many of us realized too late that we were wholly unprepared for the crisis. Food insecurity was at the top of everyone’s minds as panic buying threatened supply chains around the country. For many of us, mutual aid became a top priority. Community Supported Agriculture, more commonly known CSAs, saw a spike in membership. And even more of the U.S. began to see food sovereignty as a necessary system for our country. According to the National Family Farm Coalition, “[t]he current food system is dictated by the demands of markets and corporations, reducing food to an internationally traded commodity.” The erosion of our food system in the 1980s coincided with Black communities being torn asunder by the decades of chaos which followed the Reaganomics era. The tangible freedom we dream of is bound up in our relationship to land, and our ability to care for ourselves and others. “I think a big part of the healing and recognition of belonging in the movement has been learning about the history of Black farming beyond and before slavery,” says Leah Penniman, “That narrative was important for me to uplift and teach Black and Brown farmers, to make them understand that it is not only our trauma that connects us to the land.” 

To read the full piece, check out our Medium page.

Organizations and funds you can donate to:

Opportunities to Listen

Opportunities to listen

Join the Ujima Time Bank!

Speaking of alternative currency... The Ujima Time Bank is another way to save money and create community connections while creating a new economy in Boston!

What is a time bank?

A Timebank is a system of exchange where the unit of value is person-hours. When a member of a timebank performs one hour of service for another member, they are awarded one hour of credit in the Timebank, which can then be redeemed for one hour of service from another member. For example: Samantha can fix Jess’s blinds, and then Jess can teach Freddie Spanish, then Freddie later gives Samantha a ride, and the Timebank keeps track so it’s fair.

*Featured Offer: "Garden and/or Chicken Consult" Never expires

"I have been seriously gardening since 2004 and raised chickens from 2007 to 2018. I'm happy to help you get started with gardening/chickens."

*Featured Request: "Time Trade Circle Hour (TTC) Swap" Never expires

“I am a member of both Ujima and Time Trade Circle (TTC). I am getting more use out of Ujima these days, but have a lot of TTC hours. So I am wondering if there might be another member of both banks out there willing to give me some of their Ujima hours for some of my TTC hours. I noticed a lot of TTC'ers seem north of the Charles, so maybe if you have recently moved from Boston to Camberville, this would be good for you. :)“

Join the time bank to respond and see more! Anyone who lives in Boston can join the Time Bank at www.ujimaboston.com/timebank!

How to Become a Co-Investor in the Ujima Fund

Another Boston Is Happening. Now You Can Invest in It.

www.ujimaboston.com/invest

  1. Read Ujima's Offering Memorandum. This document describes the risks, regulations, and background of the fund. The Offering Memorandum should be read in it's entirety, with careful attention to the Risk Factors (page 11), Description of Notes (39), and Subordination Agreement (77).
  2. Consult the personal finance worksheet if you are unsure of how much to invest.
  3. Invest online (multiple payment options available):
    1. Choose the option next to the type of investment you are making.
    2. Complete and sign all forms via Docusign (Investment Agreement, W-9, and Demographic Information).
    3. After submitting, select your payment option. (You will see instructions on how to send a check if that is your preferred payment.)
  4. OR: Invest via mail:
    1. Choose the option next to the type of investment you are making.
    2. Select the print option on Docusign.
    3. Complete and sign all forms manually (Investment Agreement, W-9, and Demographic Information).
    4. Write a check, payable to the Fund, for the amount you wish to invest in the applicable Notes.
    5. Send the Investment Agreement and your check to the Fund [PO BOX 180310 Boston MA 02118].
  5. Email invest@ujimaboston.com or call 617-446-3863 with any questions

Please contact invest@ujimaboston.com with any questions or issues that arise!

#UjimAppreciations

Thank you to...

  • Whole Body Literacy and Education, Inc. and Black History Mini Docs, for inviting Ujima to discuss our model on their podcast!
  • Print Ain't Dead, for kicking off To Possess Freedom Once Again with a phenomenal Black Feminist Study Hall with Biphena Yahwon!
  • Our To Possess Freedom Once Again CoHosts: The Collier Connection, Boston Impact Initiative, CommonWealth Kitchen, Foundation for Business Equity, Matahari Women Workers' Center, King Boston, U.S. Haitian Chamber of Commerce, Amplify Latinx, Boston Teachers' Union, LISC Boston, North American Indian Center of Boston, Print Ain't Dead, and New England Blacks in Philanthropy, for inviting the businesses in their networks to to our second Business to Business Assembly and helping to spread the word!
  • All of our new members who have joined Ujima!
    • Richard
    • Christina
    • Mercedes
    • Nick
    • Patrick
    • Johann
    • Jensyn
    • Moey
    • Manuel
    • Eve
  • All of the members who have renewed their Ujima memberships!
    • Mabel
    • Maria
    • Aginah
    • Valerie
    • Lubov
    • Rachel
  • To Peers, Partners, and Community Members who are doing their part to keep us informed, safe, and loved during this time. 

Ujima Neighborhood Economics Study Group

We are excited that the Ujima Neighborhood Economics Study Group is underway, continuing to explore the feasibility of projects that address our community-wide needs. The group meets the second Wednesday of the month, and the next meeting is next Wednesday, August 12th. This study group is co-coordinated by Ujima members and staff. Some participants will focus on a specific area of study and some writ-large. The group will build on the learnings from the exploration that Ujima members have already done, and will carry this research forward to get even closer to implementation and investment in projects that meet our needs.

The topics include:

  • Community Land Trust
  • Community Owned Internet
  • Community Owned Energy
  • Urban Farming
  • Creative Economic Placemaking (Black Market)
  • Community Space
  • Arts/Cultural Organizing Space
  • Childcare

There is also space for members to coordinate study groups on additional topics of interest. Please email lynchcasey2@gmail.com if you are interested in getting involved or want more information!

Internship Opportunities

We need your help to find great interns to grow our team. Ujima is offering these internship opportunities on an ongoing basis. Please share widely!

To apply, email nia@ujimaboston.com to express interest and get further information. 

Ujima Membership Renewal

Renew your Ujima Membership today. We need dedicated members to build a just future. Our goal is to reach 95% member renewals, while growing our overall membership to 650. Help spread the word about our network and activities!

Jobs in the Ujima Network

Upcoming Ujima Meetings

We hold Open Meetings every Wednesday at 6pm, on ZOOM! Check out our June Calendar below! #UjimaWednesdays are always held and recorded online via Zoom in addition to being held in person. We've always provided a Zoom option to accommodate community members who are not able to join us in person for any reason.

6:00-7:15 - Community Building + Financial and Political Education.
7:15-8:30 - Member Team Meetings (Based on rotating schedule; See calendar above)

www.ujimaboston.com

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