Free the land. Land is tied to our existence, dignity, and the survival of Black communities. Land provides for Black communities with nourishment, housing, and healing. As a reparative measure, Black-owned land is a legacy taken in tandem with our stolen labor and hundreds of years of skilled, caring, and successful stewardship. Land determines the destinies of our communities—and our right to access and steward unspoiled, untainted, and restored land sets the conditions for all other access rights.
We believe in the reclamation of Black people’s stewardship of the land. As we reimagine land use in a climate crisis, we will rebuild a multigenerational and restorative approach to agriculture.
There must be a schedule for divestment from activities that conflict with restorative and regenerative land practices. We demand national investment in Black stewardship aligned with an acknowledgment of Indigenous ways and practices. The solution is collective, and community control over land use and preservation distribution, while honoring and respecting the rights of our Indigenous family, is our sacred duty. We intend to maintain and strengthen this relationship with the land for the benefit of our future generations.
The Black Hive @M4BL Demands:
- Unspoiled land allotment as reparations for Black communities, with multigenerational lifetime rights to steward the land
- The established right to land that is free of toxic chemicals and pesticides from the U.S. government to Black people
- Multigenerational lifetime stewardship programs for restorative agricultural cooperatives, debt forgiveness for predatory land loss, and land redistribution via community land trusts, all accompanied by a legal guarantee of viable land
- An end to all foreclosures and seizures of Black land
- Federal funding for a national network of Black community land trusts
- An accounting of government-sanctioned takings and eminent domain proceedings, to determine the generational impact of corporate land grabs as a strategy to alienate historically Black-owned land
- Universal basic income for Black land stewards engaged in practices that promote climate mitigation, climate adaptation, healing, and alternatives
- Safe passage and border crossings for climate migrants, with no imprisonment in prisons or detention facilities
- A moratorium on deforestation or other extractive land development for the creation of prisons, immigration detention facilities, and institutions
- Establishment of rights for domestic climate refugees, along with resources and funding for displaced Black communities who have experienced the impacts of the climate crisis
- Dedicated dollars and programs within Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and other agencies, with at least 40% of federal dollars set aside to protect public housing and low-income neighborhoods situated on the “high ground,” to defend against extreme weather events
- Fully resourced and culturally competent research to address the influence of property-led urban growth strategies on creating and exacerbating the modern affordable housing crisis, in the midst of climate emergency
- A national mandate to retain and protect forests and wetlands that buffer and stabilize Black communities, and to restore riparian rights for the same
- Restoration and protection of more than two million acres of coastal wetlands by 2030, to sequester carbon emissions and reduce coastal flooding
- Establishment of priorities within the U.S. Department of Agriculture for healthy, culturally relevant food production and distribution in Black communities
- Culturally significant, health-promoting food in schools, hospitals, prisons, and care facilities
- The creation of a Forest Carbon Reserve System to significantly address the climate crisis by safeguarding existing vast carbon stores and increasing biological carbon sequestration in forests
- A schedule for divestment from practices that conflict with restorative and regenerative land practices
- National investment in Black stewardship aligned with an acknowledgment of Indigenous ways and practices
- Collective and community control over land use and preservation distribution
