FOOD JUSTICE ORGANIZING ZINE 2 SNCC & THE COUNTER SITS
Co Authored by Corbin Laedlein & Beatriz Beckford Art & Design Compilation by Miyuki Baker & Beatriz Beckford
For those food, land and water warriors who fight tirelessly each and every day on the frontlines. This is for you. We see you.
INTRODUCTION
Power concedes nothing without demands, and demands without action yield little if any concessions. Direct Action has been a critical strategy for advancing social movements throughout history, and the grassroots leadership of communities of color who have challenged power by employing direct action has contributed to the archive of tactics available to those who lead and engage in social justice organizing efforts across issues and throughout the world. Boycotts, blockades, occupations, sit ins, strikes and all forms of disruptions “create such a crisis and foster such a tension...as to demand a response.” MLK, Letter from Birmingham Jail. Organizing that utilizes direct action strategies becomes more effective at confronting purveyors of oppression. Additionally, direct action in the confronting and shifting of power it forces as a tactic, also creates a reclamation space for healing. Building the capacity for community to engage in tactics that directly confront power, demand clear mechanisms for accountability and restorative/transformative justice allows for deep healing and social change. Further, the vision and hope for this organizing zine is for it to be a resource that pushes us to learn from the challenges, failures, and successes of organizing and actions that have taken place in the past. It is crucial that we utilize the lessons of the past as we continue to push on the levers of change by building collective power and confronting injustice now and into the future. In this zine, we highlight the The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and specifically focus on the sit-ins they often organized. We root that tactic in the development of SNCC as an institution and lift up the dynamic leadership that was cultivated by it. The actions and tactics SNCC employed to the civil rights, and black power movements were strategic and rooted in love and justice. Sit-ins specifically were deeply transformative in that they confronted the status quo and cultural norms by publicly displaying what a different society could look like. While showing a different way of being, they also exposed the deep seated anti-black sentiment that has been entrenched into American society since the creation of American society. Movements since then have used sit-ins as tactics for occupation and resistance, and we seek to encourage the utilization of direct action in food justice movements and beyond. And lastly, we acknowledge that we stand on the shoulders of our ancestors who have fought and won, failed and carried on.
SNCC The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) a civil rights organization made up of students, youth, and adults, organized for desegregation and political empowerment of black communities throughout the Southeastern United States. Formed in 1960 after the emergence of the student sit-in movement to desegregate lunch counters at the invitation of veteran organizer Ella Josephine Baker to organize the sit-ins to Raleigh, North Carolina. SNCC as a formation provided young activists with skills, resources, and space to develop mechanisms to channel the momentum and energy of the sit-ins into a more organized and militant effort for social change. With several organizations working at that time to push for civil rights and equality for black people. Ella Baker urged students to maintain their autonomy, and to not become absorbed into the bureaucracy of another organization. She pushed students to understand that their efforts should reach beyond desegregation. SNCC formed a group-centered structure under Ella’s mentorship challenging a traditional understanding of leadership, and actively resisting even then the pitfalls of following a charismatic individual. Her belief in “group-centered leadership” and in the capacity of all people to contribute and to lead, was incredibly influential in making SNCC one of the most dynamic and unique organizations of that era. In the years that followed, SNCC developed into a decentralized network of local offices that worked on issues of most relevance in their respective areas and informed by their community organizing. By 1965, SNCC has the largest staff of any civil rights organization in the South. In SNCC’s 9-year history, they employed a wide variety of different tactics, such as nonviolent civil disobedience, voter registration, labor organizing, the development of agricultural cooperatives and other alternative institutions such as the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the Lowndes County Freedom Organization. Members of SNCC risked their lives to do this work; many were beaten and jailed, and some gave their lives. SNCC’s tactics, it’s horizontal and democratic approach to organizing and leadership development, and the philosophical contributions of SNCC and it’s members, have deeply influenced and inspired later movements for social justice, activists, and academics.
SNCC Formation: Group Centered Leadership & Embodied Organizing In an era that was dominated by top-down organizations with bases that were largely guided by charismatic and eloquent individuals, Ella Baker and the young organizers of SNCC demonstrated an alternative vision of how social movements and organizations could organize themselves and develop leaders. Baker believed that social movement organizations should be vehicles for developing leadership in everyone, and be spaces where decision-making processes are democratic, participatory and power is equitably distributed. Baker and SNCC understood that their task was not to mobilize people for a single event or campaign, but to build the capacity for communities to organize. Doing so allows communities to articulate and push for their needs and visions. They believed their task as organizers was to create relationships built upon trust, and come together with community members to make decisions democratically. This approach stemmed from the understanding that the people they were organizing, even though many lacked much formal schooling, had a great deal of knowledge, wisdom, skills and intelligence to contribute. GRASSROOTS WISDOM! Ella Baker’s influence on SNCC in the development of its beliefs and values resulted in what some might call a “prefigurative practice� within the organization; that is, the process of realizing utopian social relations in the present. Members of SNCC were encouraged to organize and work together in ways that disrupted the oppressive social relations and power dynamics of the society at large and model more humane alternatives. For instance, within the organization, many traditional norms of male dominance, white supremacy, and classism were challenged in the daily operation of the organization; white members of SNCC accepted a secondary role in a black organization and male members of SNCC often looked to Ella Baker, a middle-aged black woman, for guidance and direction. Young people with college degrees were to honor the wisdom and take direction from the domestic workers, sharecroppers, and laborers that made up the communities they organized. While this was a highly transformative model, it was not without its challenges. This became clear to many in 1964 when a group of SNCC women presented a position paper
about sexism and the role of women in the organization, as well as by the ongoing debate regarding the role of white volunteers in SNCC, which lasted until SNCC became an all-black organization in 1966. Mary King, one of the authors of the position paper on women in SNCC stated that it was SNCC’s openness to self-critique that allowed them the space to raise such questions.
TIMELINE 1960
February 1: Greensboro Sit-in begins when 4 North Carolina A&T college students sit at the Woolworth’s lunch counter and don’t leave when denied service.
February 27: Nashville’s first sit-ins are organized by students from Fisk University who had been previously training in nonviolent civil disobedience. Mid-April: The sit-ins spread to 78 cities and towns throughout the south by some 50,000 black students and white allies, of which over 3,600 had been arrested. April 16: Veteran civil rights organizer Ella Baker convenes a conference of 120 student leaders in Raleigh, North Carolina, where they discuss the direction of the student movement. By the end of the conference, the students form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
1961
May 4: SNCC members leave Washington, DC to begin their Freedom Rides, a continuation of the Freedom Rides started by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), to pressure the federal government to enforce the desegregation of interstate travel. CORE stopped their freedom rides after the riders were met by extreme violence from the Klu Klux Klan. Freedom Riders are met with violence up until the rides end in Jackson, MS on May 23. By the end of the year, several hundred lunch counters had been desegregated across the south.
1962 August: First voter registration project begins in McComb, MS, but is ended in September after arrests and murders.
1963
August 28: SNCC helps to organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. SNCC leader John Lewis is the Keynote Speaker.
1964
April 26 Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) is launched as a challenge to Mississippi’s Democratic Party, which denied black people from participating.
May 21: Beginning of Freedom Summer, a joint project of SNCC, CORE, and other groups to gather black Mississippians and over a thousand white volunteers from other states in the summer of 1964 to organize a huge voter registration in Mississippi. June 16: SNCC workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner disappeared when driving through Neshoba County, MS. It was later discovered that they had been arrested then released into the hands of the Klu Klux Klan, who beat and murdered them. Their murder gained national attention on Freedom Summer and the white supremacist violence in Mississippi. August 24-27: SNCC delegates attends Democratic National Convention with delegates from the MFDP, but are denied seats. Following protests, they are offered two non-voting seats. MFDP refuses the offer. MFDP leader Fannie Lou Hamer speaks before the convention rules committee.
November A group of SNCC women author a position paper regarding the role of women within the organization and the experiences of sexism.
1965
SNCC works to support the creation of the Mississippi Freedom Labor Union to organize cotton workers March​: SNCC participates in a historic march from Selma to Montgomery, AL against the disenfranchisement of the black population.
November: Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO) formed by SNCC member Stokely Carmichael.
1966
June 16: SNCC member Stokely Carmichael calls for “Black Power” during a rally in Greenwood Mississippi for voting rights. The last white SNCC members leave the organization, resulting in SNCC becoming an all-black organization. This followed long debates about the role of white people in the organization.
1969 Changes name to Student National Coordinating Committee
1972 SNCC disbands
“We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.” -MLK
THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS… *many go unnamed, still here are a few to consider.
Kwame Touré (Stokely Charmichael) Born Stokely Charmichael, Kwame Touré emigrated from Trinidad and Tobago at 11 years old to join his parents in New York City in 1952. In 1960, when he was a senior at the Bronx High School of Science, he was compelled to join the civil rights movement after seeing footage of the sit-ins on television. Touré joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and participated in pickets and traveled to the South to participate in sit-ins. In 1961, as a freshman at Howard University, Touré participated in his first Freedom Ride and was arrested in Jackson, Mississippi and held in jail for 49 days. While in school he remained involved in the civil rights movement, and after graduating from Howard with a degree in Philosophy in 1964, Touré joined SNCC during their ‘Freedom Summer’ campaign. Soon after, Touré was appointed as field organizer for Lowndes County, Alabama. In one year, Touré played an integral role in increasing the number of registered black voters from 70 to 2,600, and in 1965, Touré founded the Loundes County Freedom Organization, an independent political party with the logo of a black panther. After being elected Chairman of SNCC in 1966, Touré’s influence moved SNCC into a new, more radical direction. The role of white people in the organization came into question and eventually resulted in SNCC becoming an all-black organization. In 1966, during the “Walk against Fear” from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi, Touré first used the term “Black Power”, an idea that quickly caught on amongst many young black activists, but proved to be a controversial concept for others within the civil rights movement. As a result of his many experiences being beaten and jailed as a protester, and witnessing widespread violence and assassinations of civil rights activists and leaders, Touré grew impatient and disillusioned with the philosophy of nonviolence. He declared in 1967 that “in order for nonviolence to work, your opponent has to have a conscience. The United States has no conscience.” In 1967, Touré traveled to meet with revolutionary leaders around the world, and upon his return, stepped down from his position in SNCC to become the honorary Prime Minister of the Black Panther Party based in Oakland, California. During his time in the panthers, he spoke and wrote about black nationalism and pan-Africanism, and found himself in disagreements with the Panther leadership over working with white radical groups. In 1969 he left the Black Panther Party and moved to Guinea, where he changed his name to Kwame Touré and devoted his life to Pan Africanism through the All African People’s Revolutionary Party. He remained in Guinea until his deal in 1998 as a result of prostate cancer at the age of 57.
Fannie Lou Hamer Fannie Lou Hamer was born in 1917 in Montgomery County, Mississippi, as the youngest of 20 children to sharecroppers. She dropped out of school at the age of 12 to work full-time. Because she was literate, she worked as the record keeper for a cotton plantation and continued to sharecrop with her husband following their marriage in 1944. In 1962, at the age of 45, Hamer attended a SNCC meeting in Rulleville, the town where she lived, and soon became an active member. Hamer and a group of other Rulleville residents tried to register to vote, but didn’t pass the literacy test. Hamer was subsequently fired from her job, and faced intimidation in the form of verbal and physical threats, including gunshots fired into the home of a friend. By 1963, Hamer not only had successfully registered to vote, but had become a field secretary for SNCC. That same year, Hamer founded a community development program called the Delta Ministry, and in 1964 she helped found the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party (MDFP), an alternative to the ‘whites-only’ Democratic Party of Mississippi. As the MDFP’s vice chairperson, Hamer travelled to the Democratic Convention Atlantic City to challenge the legitimacy of Mississippi’s all white delegation. After presenting their case to the Democratic Party’s credentials committee. The Party presented them with two delegate seats, with the promise of reform at the next convention. In opposition to the opinions of some other civil rights leaders, the MDFP rejected the token seats and Hamer led the delegation to the convention floor to sing freedom songs in protest. Upon returning to Mississippi, Hamer ran for congress that same year, but lost because the Democratic Party did not allow her name on the ballot, though she got more votes with MFDP ballots. Hamer and the MFDP then challenged congress to not seat Mississippi’s all-white representatives because black people were not permitted to participate, but were unsuccessful. Hamer continued with anti-poverty work, and in 1969, founded Freedom Farms Corporation, a land cooperative that provided poor farmers with land to farm on and eventually own. Hamer also worked with the National Council of Negro Women on projects such as a Pig Bank, in which pregnant pigs were loaned out to poor families and the families were allowed to keep the piglets. In 1970 (1?), Hamer helped to found the National Women’s Political Caucus and in 1971 Hamer ran for the Mississippi Senate, though did not win. Despite her failing health, Hamer continued to organize until she passed in 1977, following a battle with cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.
Ella Baker Ella Baker was born in Norfolk, Virginia in 1903 and grew up in Littleton, North Carolina. Baker’s father worked as a waiter on a steamer line, and her mother worked at home and played a large role in her Baptist Church; all of Baker’s grandparents grew up under slavery, and their stories helped to shape Baker’s desire to struggle against injustice. Baker attended Shaw University and graduated as valedictorian in 1927 and soon after moved to New York City. In NYC, Baker held a number of jobs, including waitress, factory worker, journalist. In 1930, Baker helped to organize the Young Negroes Cooperative League, a coalition of cooperatives and buying clubs around the country, and in 1931 became the group’s executive director. In the 1930s, Baker also taught consumer education classes in the 1930s through the Works Progress Administration and worked with the Dunbar Housewives league on tenant and consumer rights. Beginning in 1938, Ella Baker began working with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and in the early 40s, Ella Baker traveled throughout the South to organize and raise funds for the NAACP’s anti-lynching, equal pay, and job training campaigns. During this time, Ella also became involved in labor organizing efforts. Differences between Baker and the NAACP leadership and the organization’s aversion to grassroots organizing and undemocratic tendencies influenced Baker to resign from her position with the NAACP in 1946. Ella Baker moved back to NYC, where she worked on school desegregation with the local NAACP Chapter, and was eventually elected its president in 1952. Baker resigned a year later to run for City Council on the Liberal Party ticket but was unsuccessful. In 1956, Baker helped to form the In Friendship coalition, a civil rights organization that provided assistance to grassroots leaders and organizers of the Black Freedom Movement. For instance, the organization provided funds to black tenant farmers in Mississippi and South Carolina who were evicted from their plantations for their involvement in civil rights activities. In Friendship disbanded after three years, but in 1957, Baker and fellow In Friendship co-founder, Bayard Rustin, traveled to Dr. Martin Luther King jr.’s Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta to help found Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The following year Baker returned to Atlanta to work as the SCLC’s acting director, organizing nationally on their Crusade for Citizenship Campaign on voting rights in the south. In 1960, following the outbreak of the sit-in movement, Ella Baker organized the Southwide Youth Leadership Conference at Raleigh, North Caronlina’s Shaw University. There she was instrumental in the development of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and influenced the young activists to have a group-centered approach to leadership, organizing, and decision making. Baker’s extensive experience as an organizer allowed her to develop a deep commitment to grassroots organizing and distrustful of hierarchical and authoritarian organizing models based around charismatic male leaders. She encouraged the SNCC youth to organize in a way that reflected their values and commitment to democracy and equality.
SIT INS What is now known as the student sit-in movement took place between 1960 and 1963. However, this was not the first time that sit-ins had been used as a tactic to challenge the white supremacist laws and customs of the Jim Crow South. Members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) held sit-ins at lunch counters and restaurants in Chicago in 1943, and in St. Louis and Baltimore in 1949 and 1953, respectively. These were followed by sit-ins in the late 1950s in 16 cities in and bordering the south, although they did not get nearly as much publicity or have the same impact as the student sit-ins of the following decade. At the time of the student sit-in movement, the prominent civil rights organizations were mainly challenging racist policies through litigation. The young sit-in demonstrators had grown impatient and disillusioned with the painstakingly slow pace of the older, established civil rights groups, that to them did not match the urgency of their situation.
The student sit-in movement of the 1960s was started by four freshmen at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical (A&T) College: 1. 2. 3. 4.
Joe McNeil Ezell Blair, Jr. Frank McCain David Richmond
These young men, all members of the NAACP Youth Council, decided to sit at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave when denied service. The young men sat and were not served, and left that day without incident. They returned the next day with around 15 students, and the third day arrived with 150, and up to around one thousand or so in the days that followed. Soon, through media coverage and the existing student and networks, the sit-ins spread to other cities in the south. By mid-April of 1960, 78 cities and towns in the south and in bordering states had sit-ins, with a total of some 50,000 black students and white allies participating in them. Of those, over 3600 had been arrested. These actions were complemented by picket lines around the chain stores that were targeted. The sit-ins continued and the use of the tactic resulted in many victories. The store owners of the Woolworth’s in Greensboro, NC desegregated their stores after several successive days of sit-ins, and several hundred lunch counters had been desegregated in cities throughout the south. The reason why the sit-in was unique among tactics used in the civil rights movement is because the students were taking direct action. That is, the students aimed to achieve their goals through their own actions, rather than through an intermediary actor or the standard political channels. The student activists didn’t appeal to the management of woolworths through demonstrations, or petitions, nor did they lobby their local officials; the students decided to physically desegregate the lunch counters themselves. This militant nonviolent direct action was confrontational and dramatic, and divided not only whites but also many within the black community. Heads of Black colleges and universities, business owners and professionals, because they had significant political and financial ties with the white elite and the state, tried to temper the protest movement as it unfolded or tried to stop it altogether. For example, four Spelman College students were expelled for participating in the protests, though they were later reinstated following protests from students and faculty.
LETTER TO THE FOOD JUSTICE MOVEMENT Traces of SNCC’s legacy can be seen in many contemporary contexts of social struggle, including what we might call the “U.S. Food Movement”: communities and organizations across the United States who are advocating, organizing, and creating infrastructure to address the violence, exploitation, and injustices that characterize our dominant food system. The movement is made up of farmers, food producers, indigenous people, labor organizations, environmental advocates, and many others, who are resisting exploitive and oppressive food system for those that are democratic, ecological, and provide healthy, culturally appropriate food for all. Understanding the sit-ins within their historical context allows us to understand the tactic as a radical departure from what were considered the standard avenues for social change at the time. It also requires us to look at the current context that the food movement is operating in and look for ways that this tactic—or similar tactics—might be employed strategically. It’s important not to uncritically idealize a specific tactic like the sit-in without appreciating the historical context and the larger strategy of which it was a part. Just because a tactic was radical, effective, or strategic in one circumstance, does not automatically make it so in a different one. With that in mind, we will recap what made the sit-ins effective and strategic in this context. The sit-ins were a form of: ● direct action: physically desegregated the lunch counters by sitting there themselves rather than appealing to going through a third party Successful because they were: ● simple and replicable: allowing the tactic to spread quickly throughout the South, both by seasoned organizers trained in nonviolent civil disobedience, as well as ad-hoc groups of first-time activists. ● militant: confrontational and dramatized the immoral and irrational nature of segregation and white supremacy in a way that no polite demonstration or legal battle could. The tactic was a clear departure from what was seen as the acceptable and respectable avenues of social change at the time.
Sit-ins and similar forms of civil disobedience and direct action are still employed fairly widely by social movements, often used to disrupt or halt an activity or process. Recent examples from the Black Lives Matter movement include the use of human blockades to stop freeways or to disrupt operations by blocking entry to buildings connected to targets like the Oakland Police Department. Additionally, direct action tactics such as human blockades have been employed to disrupt the development of fossil fuel infrastructure and prevent deforestation, as well as to defy unjust laws, such as in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where individuals and organizations like Food Not Bombs have purposefully violated ordinances prohibiting the distribution of meals to hungry people in public parks. Examining what made the sit-ins an effective tactic in the 1960s leads us to the question of what lessons food justice activists and organizers might draw from the sit-in movement and what kinds of direct action--sit-ins or otherwise--might be effective.
Like the sit-ins, land reclamations and defense are effective and replicable forms of direct actions. The dramatic and confrontational nature of land reclamation and defense, like the sit-ins in the 1960s, dramatize the injustices the activists are combatting by raising questions such as: â—? Who should have decision-making power over how land is used in our neighborhoods and communities? â—? Why should landowners be allowed to sit on vacant land, when that land could be put towards uses deemed positive by community members? â—? Is it moral or just to treat land like any other commodity that can be bought and sold? What are other ways we might relate to land? Like the sit-ins of the 1960s, land reclamations and defense are only one tactic that fit into a larger strategy for achieving goals. The sit-ins were accompanied by demonstrations, petitions, legal advocacy, community organizing and many of the other creative tactics that SNCC experimented with during its career. Similarly, land reclamation and defense would need to integrated into a larger strategy that includes other tactics, and, perhaps most importantly, be subject to continued open discussion, self-critique, and experimentation, as was the case with SNCC.
SNCC became a way for that energy to be channeled into an organized movement with long-term thinking. That organized direct action and institution building, coupled with the principles and philosophy of horizontalism imparted by Ella Baker, allowed SNCC to become an organization that nurtured leaders and provided space for the democratic and creative experimentation. This in turn resulted in projects such as: 1. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party ​MFDP 2. Lowndes County Freedom Organization 3. The Freedom Schools The US food movement ripe for a similar type of approach. Using sustained organizing and direct action to push on the system pressure point for change. What could bring us there we can’t know, but creativity, experimentation, and asking questions are a start. We hope this zine will encourage people to explore ways food activists can push beyond the current strategies and take more action that reflects the urgency of the crises we face, and challenges us to consider what tactics are necessary given that urgency. We in the food movement need to ask ourselves how can we do our work in ways that are more horizontal and democratic? That actively lift up and follow the leadership of vulnerable communities who are too often on the margins of our movement. How are we centering the leadership of women of color and those affected by abject poverty? How can we better reflect the world we are trying to build in the work we are doing today?
National Black Food & Justice Alliance with Farmers & Organizers at Rid All Farm
FOOD JUSTICE IN ACTION The modern food justice movement in the United States has a rich, albeit somewhat limited history of engaging in use of direct action tactics, still there are some dynamic examples of local communities using direct action as a critical component to their organizing efforts. These act of resistance are also great spaces for broader learning for activists, organizers, and community members fighting for justice, good food and land. One important example took place in the 1970s and 1980s, when there was a proliferation of community gardens in urban centers. Residents of cities like New York City, most of whom were working class people of color, reclaimed vacant and often blighted properties and transformed them into vibrant gardens and green spaces. When traditional means of acquiring access to the vacant lots continuously failed, community members entered and occupied the lots without formal permission to use the space. These actions forced the city to provide mechanisms for residents to gain access to and provide resources for the transformation of vacant lots to the gardens and greenspaces they became. Those same residents formed the New York City Community Garden Coalition. This direct confrontation with government and state agencies is one that still continues in urban and rural communities across the world. Since then community members have continuously had to defend their gardens from being destroyed for real estate development. The New York Community Garden Coalition is engaged in that struggle today and continues to employ a variety of direct action tactics including Among the use of human blockades, sit-ins, occupations, and more recently lawsuits against the city. Learn more at http://nyccgc.org/
Another example is in West Oakland, California, is Afrika Town, a community garden operated as part of the Qilombo community social center. The lot that the garden occupies remained vacant and full of refuse for over a decade, until late 2014 when a group of community members and volunteers organized to clean up the space and make it into a community garden. Soon after the garden was completed, the owner of the property came with a bulldozer to destroy the garden and evict the community members. Members of the garden and neighborhood residents defended the garden by standing in the way of the bulldozer and prevented the garden’s destruction. At the time of the publication of this zine, the Afrika Town community garden is still there and providing food and programs for the community members. However, the property on which the Qilombo community center and Afrika Town Community Garden stand has recently been acquired by a real estate company and they are being threatened with eviction. Although we cannot predict the future for Qilombo and Afrika Town, their existence so far is a great example of how direct action, in the forms of land reclamation and human blockades, can be used effectively to access space for growing food and community organizing. Learn more at http://qilombo.org/
INFOSHOP Readings ● Kissinger’s 1974 plan for food control genocide http://www.larouchepub.com/other/1995/2249_kissinger_food.html ● Black Farmers Pigford Case and Settlement http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/black-farmers-settlement/ ● Black Farming and Land Loss: A History http://www-tc.pbs.org/itvs/homecoming/pdfs/homecoming_history.pdf ● “Youth Food Justice Zine” http://issuu.com/whyhunger/docs/youth_food_justice_zine ● “Radical Farmers Use Fresh Food to Fight Racial Injustice and the New Jim Crow”http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/radical-farmers-use-fresh-food-fight-ra cial-injustice-black-lives-matter ● Black Farming, Self Determination and Resilience http://www.kzoo.edu/praxis/blackfarming/ ● Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice http://www.geo.coop/collectivecourage ● A Dream Foreclosed: Black America and the Fight for a Place to Call Homehttp://www.zuccottiparkpress.com/lauradreamforecl/ ● Occupy the Farm www.occupythefarm.org ● The SNCC legacy Projectwww.sncclegacyproject.org Films/Videos “Homecoming” http://www.pbs.org/itvs/homecoming/history.html “Banished” http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/banished/ Soul Food Junkies http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/soul-food-junkies/ “Life and Debt” http://www.lifeanddebt.org/ Detroit Urban Agriculture Movement Looks to Reclaim Motor City: http://www.kzoo.edu/praxis/detroit-urban-agriculture-movement-looks-to-reclaim-motorcity/ ● Fault Lines: For Sale: the American Dream https://youtu.be/S3rzN42HE00 ● ● ● ● ●
● Taking over, Taking back https://vimeo.com/74478220 password “homes”
Organizations ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
Malcolm X Grassroots Movement https://mxgm.org/ Detroit Black Community Food Security Network www.detroitblackfoodsecurity.org Farms to Grow http://www.farmstogrow.com/ Cooperation Jackson http://www.cooperationjackson.org/ Black Urban Growers http://blackurbangrowers.org/ Black Oaks Center for Sustainable Renewable Living http://www.blackoakscenter.org/ Southeastern African American Farmers Organic Network www.saafon.org/ Black Land Loss Project http://landloss.org/ Federation of Southern Cooperatives http://www.federationsoutherncoop.com/ Southern Grassroots Economies Project http://sgeproject.org/ Qilombo: A Radical Community Social Center www.qilombo.org
Additional References ● Bond, Julian (2000) “SNCC: What We Did”, Monthly Review. Vol 52, Issue 5 (October) <https://monthlyreview.org/2000/10/01/sncc-what-we-did/> ● Carson, Clayborne (1995) In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s. Boston: Harvard University Press ● Greenberg, Cheryl Lynn (1998). A Circle of Trust: Remembering SNCC. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press ● Hampton, Henry and Steve Fayer (1990) Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s through the 1980s. New York: Bantam Books ● Ransby, Barbara (2003). Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement. University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill. ● Zinn, Howard (1965). SNCC, The New Abolitionists. Boston: Beacon Press