Leah Penniman is a farmer and educator in upstate New York. The piece below was written especially for Yes! magazine, a nonprofit publication that supports people’s active engagement in solving today’s social, political and environmental challenges. This is her introduction to some short bios of young black farmers, a still tiny but, after a long decline, expanding demographic. You can read about them by clicking the Yes! link:
A few years ago, while clearing dried broccoli stalks from the tired soil of our land at Soul Fire Farm in upstate New York, I received a cold call from Boston. On the other end was a Black woman, unknown to me, who wanted to share her story of trying to make it as a farmer.
After more than a century of decline, the number of Black farmers is on the rise.
Through tears, she explained the discrimination and obstacles she faced in a training program she’d joined, as well as in gaining access to land and credit. She wondered whether Black farming was destined for extinction. She said she wanted to hear the voice of another African-heritage farmer so that she could believe “it was possible” and sustain hope.
The challenges she encountered are not new. For decades, the U.S. Department of Agriculture discriminated against Black farmers, excluding them from farm loans and assistance. Meanwhile, racist violence in the South targeted land-owning Black farmers, whose very existence threatened the sharecropping system. These factors led to the loss of about 14 million acres of Black-owned rural land—an area nearly the size of West Virginia.
In 1982, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights extrapolated the statistics on land loss and predicted the extinction of the Black farmer by the year 2000.
They were wrong. While the situation is still dire, with Black farmers comprising only about 1 percent of the industry, we have not disappeared. After more than a century of decline, the number of Black farmers is on the rise.
These farmers are not just growing food, either. The ones you’ll meet here rely on survival strategies inherited from their ancestors, such as collectivism and commitment to social change. They infuse popular education, activism, and collective ownership into their work.
And about that woman who called me from Boston? Years after we first spoke, I called her back. Turns out, she is still at it.
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2005—Time for 101st Fighting Keyboardists to enlist:
So why don't they enlist? Is it that they think they're too good to serve with the good men and women in the armed forces? Too middle-to-upper class? Too intelligent? Do they think the nation will suffer from their blogging and punditry absence? That they're doing more for the war effort than they could ever do so with a rifle in their hands?
Or is it merely cowardice?
Except that "cowardice" is too light a word for those who claim to believe in a just cause, but would rather send others to die in the service of that cause.
After Pearl Harbor was bombed, Americans lined up at military recruitment offices to give themselves to their nation in its time of need. That was the true definition of patriotism, those men spoke truth to our national anthem's "home of the brave".
The cowards in the 101st Fighting Keyboardists are the polar opposite. They lay shame to our nation.
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On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin says Generalissimo Francisco Franco wants to know how the GOP is doing, as Bill Kristol attempts to assemble an Acela Party. Sarah Palin has said another thing. Want to change the superdelegate system? Here’s how it’s done, and why it’s done that way.
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