Food, Land, and Freedom

Food, Land, and Freedom

by: The Laura Flanders Show Posted on: January 28, 2016

Editor’s Note: A well-documented land grab is taking place across the globe and the United States—Wall Street is gobbling it up…fast. Never has it been more prescient to fight for Black, Latino and disenfranchised populations’ access to farmland.

“Food has always been very strategic to the struggle for justice,” says Raymond Figueroa in this production of The Laura Flanders Show. Figueroa works with Friends of Brook Park, an alternatives-to-incarceration program in The Bronx. “Land and food,” begins host Laura Flanders, “have been used as a weapon to keep people of color in second class status for centuries.” When slavery was abolished, Blacks were incarcerated and forced to work on plantations—for no pay. And Black farmers faced systematic discrimination from the USDA throughout the Twentieth Century.

It is within this context that Jalal Sabur speaks of “gaining power through land.” His work with Soul Fire Farm and Freedom Food Alliance helps provide much needed transportation from urban centers to jails—so people can visit their families—and begins to address the struggle of gaining access to land for farmers of color. “We’re talking about food access but we’re talking about prison abolition at the same time,” says Sabur.

Later in the episode, the show features the work of a sustainable seaweed farmer with something to teach. Take a look!

This video was produced by The Laura Flanders Show, visit their website: LauraFlanders.com