Everything starts with land. It can house, shelter, feed, and nurture. But in the States it’s all stolen, parceled, commodified and harder to access—at best.
This month we’re talking about Community Land Trusts and Land Back. One is a movement started in the Civil Rights era to collectively own and provide affordable land to live on for communities of color. The other, the unalienable right for indigenous people to live on the lands stolen from them. Can these movements work together? Or are they at odds?
Here are some places to start:
El Sereno reclaimers on How Community Land Trusts Could Make LA More Affordable and their attempts to do so with a land trust of their own.
A short video on the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act in Los Angeles County
A look at the history of community land trusts in the US and how it’s stripped of radical meaning in Chicago.
First Light, “a bridge between conservation organizations and Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet and Micmac Communities who seek to expand Wabanaki access and relationship to land”.
The Department of Interior’s ‘official’ program for indigenous tribes to buy back land.
The Cheyenne River Sioux’s project to buy back their own land.
The Bomazeen Land Trust, “founded and run by descendants of the Kennebec people”.
And for much, much more, a Land Reparations and Indigenous Solidarity Toolkit.
This meeting will be on Zoom so no amount of distance is an obstacle. All are welcome to join us on June 27th at 11:30 AM, PST. Make sure to RSVP for meeting details.
See you soon.
The Desert Salon is not a class: it rejects the roles of teacher and student. The Desert Salon is radical: it rejects the divisions that the world makes between us based on skin, ableism, sex, gender, or class. Past meetings have discussed things as massive as the the Imperialist White-Supremacist Capitalist Heteropatriarchy and as local as water price changes. Being a radical is not a requirement, but you just might be inspired.