Damon Williams: Welcome to One Million Experiments.
Daniel Kisslinger (Kiss): A podcast showcasing and exploring how we define and create safety in a world without police and prisons.
Damon: We're back in season two. We're checking the methods, we're reviewing notes and we're hopping in the lab of some of the most beautiful experiments and community around the world. Of course, we cannot do any experiment without our partner in decriminalization. We got Eva back with us from IC. What's up, Eva?
Eva Nagao: Hey guys. Nice to be back.
Kiss: Eva, good to be back in the lab with you. Who are we talking to today?
Eva: Today we're zooming into California where I live to talk to Ali Anderson of Feed Black Futures. Feed Black Futures feeds black mamas and caregivers impacted by the criminal legal system in counties across California by partnering with Black and Brown owned farms and food suppliers in the state. The experiment started out as a crowd funding campaign to feed 20 families for two weeks at the start of the pandemic and blossomed into Feed Black Futures. FBF works to create a world where Black people have access to high quality fresh produce and the means and skills to produce it.
Kiss: It was so cool to model the connections between a resilient sovereign food system and the process of abolition. I think that's a connection that we've alluded to or in our Friendly Fridge episode talked about on the recipient end, but to also understand what does it mean to produce food in a way that makes us less reliant on systems of harm. I think this is a really great conversation that illuminates the way those are inherently linked, but also the way Ali and the FBF team have worked to link those in ways that have created new possibilities.
Damon: It's really a treat to see the interconnections of our movement. This was first time really meeting or getting to speak to Ali, but to see that we come from so many of the same homes and spaces and to learn about so many of the parallels and interconnections in our movement ecosystem. Was really a joy for me personally, but something I also want to encourage listeners to do as you go through One ME episodes is recognize that although these projects are emergent and distinct to their local spaces, there also is a larger framework and a larger ecosystem that is informing all of this. Whenever you can see those connections or those parallels or see your work in the work of folks we're talking to, I think that's really important towards the overall project.
Kiss: You can find out more about Feed Black Futures at feedblackfutures.org. You can support their work and ensure that people affected by these systems of harm have access to the food that will enable them to live and thrive. All right, you all ready?
Damon: Yes, let's do it.
Kiss: Let's hop in the lab with Ali Anderson.
Eva: Let's go.
Damon: All right, we are back at it. We are hopping in the lab. We are going out west and are very, very excited to be talking to Ali Anderson with Feed Black Futures. What's up, Ali? How are you?
Ali Anderson: Good. Thank you for having me.
Damon: We didn't save the sound effect. Come on.
Kiss: We did. Hold on.
Eva: The side effects [crosstalk]
Damon: Rusty Amra. Yes. Let me do that with greater appeal from the one and only Feed Black Futures. We got Ali Anderson here. Now we feel correct. As we always do. We like to start our conversations with a two-part question centered around time and define time, however you will. That could be this hour, this day, this week, this season, this lifetime. In this time, how is the world treating you and how are you treating the world?
Ali: It's a reciprocal thing, relationship, and I am treating the earth well and the earth is treating me well. I do doula work and I'm excited to bring in support or facilitate another baby's journey earth side, another soul's journey earth side. I feel like I get that energy back from the earth and from the world. Doula work, farming work, I pour into it and to her she pours into me.
Damon: Beautiful. This is pertinent information for listeners. Today is actually a due date. We are in the final hours. Even potentially in this conversation, we're not counting on it, but at any moment now you could go and be bringing life into this world. The stakes are higher. Everything feels so much more charged.
Kiss: For the record, we're not going to do it live on air. This is not the type of show.
Damon: We pause and reconvene if need be. We have priorities.
Kiss: I love the way you linked and already speaking to the overlap of those two spheres of your life and your work and how they both pour into you. We're here primarily in the context of Feed Black Futures and I'm excited to get into the specifics of that. In that piece, in that sphere, we have the very clunky science analogy that is at the center piece of this show. As two people who did not do well in science class, we've been tenuously wrestling with it and-
Damon: We're in a second season and we've got no better. We still-
Kiss: We did no research between,[laughter] but we do know that experiments start with the hypothesis. When we talk about Feed Black Futures, before you began this work, what was the hypothesis that you had coming in?
Ali: I tell you my hypothesis. I just thought I was going to feed about 20 folks throughout the summer. I had worked alongside some organizers, Arissa Hall, Delaine Powerful, Betty McKay, incredible Black fems, doing work, getting people bailed out, primarily Black mamas. They ran and stewarded an org called Black Mamas Bailout. I had worked alongside them for many years and was like, "I have time and energy to give, and I work on a farm. How about I get y'all's folks food for the summer for a couple weeks?" That was in April, May of 2020. My hypothesis was that I would do this for a summer, maybe into the fall if I was lucky.
Kiss: The thing about the cyclical nature is that there's going to be another summer and another fall. [laughter] you turns out-
Ali: That's if you're lucky and shallow.
Damon: I'm very curious. I would love to know that pivot point. I think in the macro and micro, there are these moments of opening, of pivoting, of heightening, of intensifying. Obviously, for example, the 2020 uprisings in the midst of pandemic was a pivot point for different modalities of radical resistance and movement building. What was that pivot point that opened it up to like, oh, there's so much more possibility and so much more that you obviously have to commit to this work?
Ali: The pivot was financial. I put a fundraiser on GoFundMe for $10,000 and then $90,000 later. About two weeks later and $90,000 later, I was like, "Oh, I'm going to be doing this for some time." It was initially just mutual aid. Getting money and then getting food out from this one Brown undocumented run farm in Southern California. Getting food from those folks to folks that were being bailed out, or primarily moms and caregivers who were supporting folks on the inside and stewarding families and providing support to their communities also while caring for incarcerated loved ones or formerly incarcerated loved ones.
Put out a fundraiser for $10,000 to feed about 20 folks for this summer and $90,000 later, obviously a lot of us were on our phones. April, May, 2020, didn't think we could leave the house or a lot of us didn't leave the house. I still left the house. I was working on a farm, so it was okay. Still needed food and a lot of people had angst and energy and wanted to support. This Canva Instagram flyer got uplifted by Adrian M. Brown, folks at Soul Fire Farm, which is the Black and Indigenous led farm out in New York that I had attended. I had been to and worked.
It got a lot of energy and momentum and we started just with feeding folks. Then we were like, "Soul Fire taught us in order to free ourselves, we must feed ourselves." Supporting folks and growing their own food is critical to our mission too. Started getting folks food. We started expanding to other Black and Brown farmers in LA, South LA, parts of what's called the Inland Empire, which is San Bernardino County, a suburb of LA.
Damon: That's just a wild name for a place.
Ali: Oh, it's.
Damon: They were just the Inland Empire.
Ali: Very imperial. Yes.
Damon: [laughter]. That's actually a really interesting dynamic that I want to unpack of this notion of resources, because this midpoint of $90,000 is a substantial amount of money for just to have [laughter], but in the grand scheme of the needs of communities, particularly impacted communities. by carceral oppression and other forms of divestment. That's a drop in the bucket of the work that's really needed. There's this in between of abundance, but finite resources, like this notion of finite abundance coming in. I think that this experience happens to a lot of people in these pivot moments. Similarly, the organization that I'm a part of started in the Ferguson uprising, wanted $1,000 ended up with $10,000, that same ninefold coming in. It's like, "Oh, we got to do more than what we thought." Now nine years later, we're still chugging.
In that moment, I'm curious the learnings you had, whether it be in building partnership, in creating roles out, in even something as bare bones as accounting or if it also changed the mission of the work. I'm just very interested in that like resource pivot moment and what folks can learn from that.
Ali: Well, it was terrifying to have that much money. That's something that I was like, "What's coming up for me?" Because abundance is great, but it's also new, [laughs] financial abundance. That's new. We had put a GoFundMe fundraiser, but I had also put Linked Venmo and cash out because that's such an easier platform. I had at one point $70,000 in my Venmo. I was like, "The feds are going to come to my door any day." To see an immense amount of resources for me, to your point, that's actually not that much in terms of how much the state has and how much the state owes its people, but it was frightening.
Damon: It's a lot under your Social security number. [laughter]
Ali: Right. Thank goodness I was connected to these other organizers, again, I'll name them, Marissa Hall, Delaine Powerful, who had done so much in the bail space and are familiar with large amounts of money coming in and how to get that out. We quickly got a fiscal sponsor. We had to do some changing of that too, but they were able to make sure everything was above board. I had no idea how to run a mutual aid project that later became a nonprofit. It was a huge trial by fire, as I'm sure everyone uses analogies, building the plane while flying. I don't recommend it. [laughs]
Damon: It doesn't make for the comfy as flight.
Ali: [laugher] Right, it doesn't. I recommend reading Dean Spade's book on mutual aid. There are resources. I didn't think about them until I was already well over my head, but Barnard Center for Research on Women did a really amazing webinar for all of us who were struggling with the accounting and the finance part of this, led by Dean Spade and some other folks. Shout out to them. Also, the fright that comes with having an abundance and knowing that the feds will come for me was a whole thing. They didn't, thank goodness. Everything still is above port. Yes.
Damon: Because I just want to pull something out of that of just like shout out to the tribe. What I'm hearing from your story is that we are of the same village because these are people that we are connected to, just for folks who want to learn more about some of the folks you named. Dean Spade was episode one of our portal project series and then we also had Delaine Powerful who came to Chicago and organized heavily for the treatment now trauma ordinance and was part one of our treatment and trauma conversation. Both just powerful people. I'm saying that not just to shout out other episodes people should go listen to but-
Kiss: We're shameless.
Damon: We're shameless of that, [laughs] but I really want to pull out what you're naming is the fact that this wasn't random resources you had. The work that you're doing and the community that you're building with is connected to this larger infrastructure that may not always have formal channels or formal names, but there is a multi-space, multi-state, multinational, international, but also local based movement infrastructure that now helped you do the work that is so transformational in your community. I just want to four folks who are listening know that there is this big tent that may not be legible or visible to everybody, but if you find these nodes or these little outposts, the resources that you can get of like, oh, now I know how to deal with all these money and get these feds off my back. Yes. That was just my takeaway. I don't have a question out of that, but just a loving hug of like, oh yes, we know the same people.
Ali: We know people. I came up with Black Youth Project 100.
Damon: Okay. That's what I thought.
Ali: Those are my people.
Damon: As did I. Okay. I thought you looked familiar. Boom, I want to talk about then the language of Feed Black Futures because it is then a continuation from language I'm familiar with of Fund Black Futures. We don't have to compare or talk about the connection, but I just see that arc of 2015 to 2020. Yes, the five-year arc of going from policy platform to now actually being able to put food on table. As you reflect from your experience as an organizer and the language that you're evoking in this powerful project, what do you see in that arc?
Ali: What do I see in that? Thank you for naming BYP and that's, I have the Fund Black Future sweatshirt two feet away from me, and I hit them up. I was like, "How do you feel about this name?" As organizers in that time, shouldn't be responding to emails, spending time on emails, I never backsource, I trust in our Black feminist universe that it's okay, shouldn't be using these names. [laughter] You said you were commenting on the arc.
Kiss: The connection between that work of Fund Black Futures and the trajectory into feeding as a piece of that.
Ali: Yes. I so appreciate Black Youth Project, BYP 100, the call to action with all of our chances and names. We wanted Feed Black Futures to be the same. We didn't want it to be an unclear about what we were doing. We toyed with like, Feed Black Mamas and then thought about how many caregivers there are who might not identify as mamas. We thought Feed Black Caregivers, but we also want to think about our future and how growing food and stewarding land is so integral to that. We wanted to be really clear about what we did, and also wanted to capture the forward nature of this work of land stewardship.
Kiss: Yes. I want to go a little bit into the framing of the work because I think one, it's very akin as Damon was alluding to there are nodes of this direct food sovereignty work, connecting producers and land workers to people who need access to food in ways that operate outside the market. That's happening in a lot of places, but what I think is crystallizing about the work that y'all have built is understanding not just like the intersection of our food system and incarceration, but also the like, unique possibility of how addressing food apartheid can be part of the project of abolition, is what I see from the outside. I'm wondering how do you see that connections? What does the food sovereignty work make possible as we build toward a world without systems of carceral punishment?
Ali: To quote Mirriam Cobain, I can't even find this quote, so I'm sure maybe I saw her-- I think I might have heard her say it and it hasn't been written down, but environmental work is abolition.
[fanfare]
It's true. Creating systems where we can keep ourselves safe and fed and provided with nourishment and healing is abolition. Black folks have such a integral history in creating self-determined communities and thinking about how we have been able to feed ourselves for so long and how obviously our ancestors were captured and taken and enslaved to, and their knowledge used to build the food economy of the so-called United States. I think food and land work is integral to a collective self, a Black self-recovery. We have such a deeper agrarian tradition. I think a lot of that starts with healing and food and land work is so healing.
Part of what led me to this work was my pursuit of healing. I left doing organizing work in New York, doing doula work, working for the public health department, and I moved to the Caribbean. I moved to where my folks are from my ancestors, and started farming every day when I was displaced because of COVID. I moved back to Southern California where I'm from and I was like, "Oh, other people got to get on this." I figured it out. [laughs] Y'all, we got to get our hands back in the soil because it was our knowledge that built the so-called economy. An important part of our sovereignty is knowing how to feed ourselves, again so we can free ourselves.
Damon: I want to guard against myself because I have this passion for going big and I want to come down into some of the mechanics a little bit, and the procedure of we have the farm and we know it ends up in these directly impacted communities that we are working to build deeper relationships for healing, but also for liberatory power. That is the frame. In between that, what are some of the procedures, processes, roles that emerged or that became necessary that then taught you more, whether it's about organizing, whether it's about the mission statements themselves, or about what it really takes in terms of the capacity to be able to meet our people's needs.
Because I know there are a lot of people who have ideals, and dreams of doing land-liberated work, and getting back to the roots, and getting into farm work, and maybe don't understand all that it takes to do something as beautiful as getting a cucumber to the doorstep of somebody who can use it.
Ali: For sure. I started this work, working on a farm, but as this work grew, we started working with individual Black and Brown farmers all up the coast of California. Now, most of my day consists of fundraising, writing grants-
Damon: The fun line to fundraising pipeline. It never fails [laughter].
Ali: -to getting money so we can pay Black food and land stewards who are doing this work. Then getting our folks who are interested in sturdy land into farmer training. There's two farmer training programs, one in Southern California, one in Northern California that folks are enrolled in. Then building gardens at people's homes who want to be able to get that hands-on land experience but can't necessarily go to a community garden because they're caring for a million folks and doing a million things.
Then a political education piece. I think that political education piece arose during the onset of this work because it's so important to tie the physical work to the greater politic of what is food and land sovereignty, why is it important for Black people to do this work? What arose was doing online work for folks who don't have land steward or live in an apartment or what have you, and then also doing those touchpoints of when we do build gardens. We have educational components that go along with this. My work has left the farm, so to speak. I still work at two Black women farms once a week helping pack food and harvesting food, but my work has since transitioned to that of more computer-based, which is hard but sounds like y'all know it.
Kiss: Yes. I could see the proverbial tear rolling down here. One, I love to hear that you're still finding ways to get your hands in the soil. I know how regenerative, forget about regenerative ag in general, just for a person that can be. I'm curious, you're doing this work in relationship with all these farmers across California. I think that's an important piece of understanding the way that our food system works and understanding-- I don't think that type of network couldn't exist in Illinois because of the racist practices of who can farm here. I'm not saying that, of course, that's on the table in California, but in thinking about part of the goals of the show is not for people to be replicating, but if they were to try to build something similar in their space, what would that look like? It got me thinking, what would it mean to build this type of distribution network here?
We have, of course, urban farms. There's great work happening and then there are a couple of farms in Illinois, but because of the way that agriculture is controlled in the Midwest, that wouldn't really be an option in the same way. I'm wondering what have you learned about the way land, food production, the mechanisms of that industry have limited projects like this or where have you seen that butt up against the work that y'all have been trying to build?
Ali: Yes, there's a few ways to answer that question. I can think of a farm mountain in Fresno, Central California. There's a farmer by the name of Will Scott, who is Black farmer, I think 82, 83 around there. I think about the average age of a farmer being I think around 65, 66. He's even on the tail end of that. This is public, but his children work in LA and in the entertainment industry and don't want to necessarily take on farming. I think of the structures and the institutions that have made it so that farming can't be all that lucrative and has to rely on unpaid labor, undocumented labor, slave labor for production, especially in big ag.
I also think about how, frankly, there aren't that many Black farmers in California. That has so much to do with the history of land theft, imminent domain, land banking, grocery store redlining, all the systems we think about. It is hard to farm. It's not lucrative to make a living in food and farming, you have to have so many hustles. What food sovereignty is all about is Black food sovereignty in particular is Black people being involved in what goes into their food, how affordable it is, how accessible it is, and how culturally relevant it is, and how that's been robbed from Black people in California, communities being pushed out.
Like LA was at one point a breadbasket and how structural violence made it, so they chopped it up with freeways and figuring out large-scale warehouses. I'm thinking about in the Inland Empire in San Bernardino where I'm from, how one farm and a school was shut down for an Amazon factory and a Tesla factory. Thinking about the structural violence that goes into Black land loss in California. It's not specific to California, but every place has their own racist laws and policies that have made it so that Black people cannot be involved in the food system.
Damon: I find myself being moved. I had a question that I was going to go to, but I'm really just taking in the way that you name that of one, the dependence upon slave labor, and coercive, and abusive migratory, and other forms of extractive labor systems to produce the food. Then connecting it to the land loss and these supervillains and corporations headed up by Musk and Bezos continuing the trajectory of land theft. This also being in the space, California in the last 40 years just had one of the biggest expansions of a prison system ever, that there's been so much work to push back upon. I just found myself as you were naming that, not overwhelmed, but just feeling the weight of these systems that we are working to free ourselves from. I think I'll take that feeling to go back into celebrating the power and the potential energy that y'all are harnessing.
Through the political education and other relationship-building, how are you seeing the investment into the bigger project? Because from each space, as a Black farmer, it's like, I just want to grow my food. I want to have a sustainable income. I want to be able to have a better quality of life, which is admirable for people who are receiving food. I'm trying to take care of my babies and my family. I'm trying to stay in connection with my people inside and I just want to also maintain a quality of life with dignity. That in itself is an accomplishment, but then there's the bigger connection of you are connecting those two positions for power billing and transformation. How much do you see them seeing and feeling invested to that larger project that their well-being is tied up into?
Kiss: Yes. How are they seeing each other?
Ali: How are they seeing each other? Something really beautiful has happened, especially here in Oakland. We've been building gardens for folks out in East Oakland, West Oakland, Fruitvale, which are historically more Black and Latine communities, folks have been giving neighbors food and learning about what it takes to grow. Also, there's some community-building and healing work that has gone on that. It's hard to even quantify. I have to for grant writing purposes, which is really hard, but I'm thinking of one. [laughter] I'm like, "Oh, I should write this story down," and then think of, "Yes, it's awful."
Damon: 7 to 10 new human relationships quantified…
Ali: I'm thinking of, I'll call her Ms. M. We built a garden for her, and I was in her backyard a few days ago supporting her with weeding. California just had a huge influx of rain, and the storm and did a lot to land, especially in the Central Valley. We were in her backyard. There was the super bloom. What you call when there's a rain and a lot of weeds pop up, as you could imagine, and we were just pulling weeds and putting down mulch to suppress the weeds. Her brother is inside. He had a stroke inside. He has been taken from facility to facility. He had a stroke. They thought it was an overdose. They pumped in full of Narcan, which damaged his brain and health incredibly by not being able to address the stroke and then using Narcan. He called her four times because you only get those 15-minute increments, and hearing that the state was listening to the call, and she was out pulling weeds in the garden and she was just like, "If it weren't for this garden, it'd be really hard to do this." He was on speaker the whole time. She was like, "Ali's in the garden with us," but it was just hearing his pain, hearing her even still say God is good, and that faith that she has that, "How lucky am I? I get to be able to be outside with my hands while my brother is not."
She's his advocate and I'm just like, "At least I can take one thing off your plate…intended, which is getting food to y'all and the five, six people that you have coming around every day and folks you're feeding inside your home as well as community members." Then being able to step away from it as much as one can, as much as one has the privilege, but Ms. M doesn't have that privilege. I think about people getting food, people getting gardens, and reconnecting to the earth and themselves by being able to do this.
This is the house she grew up in. Her mom was a huge gardener, a huge grower. We planted in the same area that her mom, who's no longer with us, was planting in. She was like, "I was never interested in it. Then she passed and now that's all I want to do and reconnect with her." I don't know if I even answer your question but thinking about all the layers and how carcerality is built into the fabric of our communities and how facilitating the feeding and nourishment of folks is so healing, but also community building. I can see the dots on the outside and I have no doubt that they can too.
Damon: As I was just hearing you share that story, I think something we didn't make a very pointed effort to name in season one that's real is in doing this work, the very real process of trauma absorption. Obviously, it's firsthand trauma for him and his body and it means a lot for her as her brother and hearing that, but you also witnessed that. You also held her and like, that doesn't just go away or that wasn't someone else's experience. You are interconnected with the people you are in relationship with. That's in your body as well. Then you got to go quarter day farms and then go write grants. Even in our interviews, we move past to then the next question and then the next learning. I just want to have humility and honor the humanity and show you love for you being there and being present and being able to bear witness to that story and document that of how these systems really do affect our bodies and our families and our lives. I'll pass it from there, but I just wanted to acknowledge where we are.
Ali: Thank you. No, I gave it right back to the earth.
Kiss: That was what I was going to ask. What does that look like for you, that giving it back to the earth?
Ali: It was a cycle. It was this grief and pain and trauma, but she's just here. She's talking to her brother, she's weeding, she's pulling, she's like, "Yes. Let me-- okay. I'll talk to that social worker. Yes. What he did was not right," and we both just gave it right back. What comes in must go out. I do a lot of somatic work to make sure that happens. I, right before this call was on a call with a somatic group out here called Generative Somatics.
Interviewer: Shut out. [laughter]
Kiss: You guys, you're basically becoming best friends with …[laughter]. So much farming for activities here [crosstalk]
Damon: [laughter]
Ali: You should make it.
Damon: I'm not, unfortunately.
Ali: Yes, we just gave it right back to the earth and the earth as it is want to do. We don't deserve her, but she held it for us.
Kiss: As we move toward closing out one, thank you for like Damon said, the willingness, the vulnerability to share that moment. First off, what tools, roles, ingredients in this work have emerged that you were surprised became really important? What pieces of this did you not think would be as central to what the work has become? Then two, what are just the tools in your toolbox or the framings that have been super important that if someone was to try to build something similar where they are, you would want to make sure that they receive from you? What do they need to know?
Ali: Gosh, getting Delaine Powerful. [laughter] Listen to that episode. They are an incredibly talented organizer. They're also Jamaican, so we have a tendency to have a lot of jobs [laughter] [crosstalk]
Kiss: We tend to have a strong connection. We [crosstalk]
Ali: We got our Google docs and Google spreadsheets on lock. No, get it delayed [crosstalk]
Kiss: That's so funny.
Ali: That's what I recognize. Know what your strengths are. Minor community building. I am a big picture person and I have had the privilege and ability to be connected to people in many walks of life. I'm just like, "I can't do this, but I know someone who can." Give generously when you have capacity, protect your energy when you don't, and know that it will come back to you, and the right people will show up at the right time. That's not tangible though. I get what you're looking for. You're like, "How can someone replicate this?"
Damon: No, but that's useful.
Kiss: That's useful. Be friends and Jamaicans and know your limits. [laughter]
Ali: Guess some… is on your team. [laughter] Also, I lean heavily into spirituality. Developing a spiritual practice is something that I've done. I live in the East Bay. I was at a community last night for QT by Pat Folks breathing and being in community. I go to church. I was not really raised in the church, but there's this church that I have fellowship with Black elders in my community, and there's a knitting circle [laughs] that I go to.
I love the thought of sharing peace with people that I normally wouldn't meet and breaking bar with people that I normally wouldn't meet. I just take what serves me and leave the rest, which I know is a huge privilege to not have religious trauma. I am outside as much as I can. I am taking a course on the Four Noble Truths right now with East Bay Meditation Center too. I practice with this group called Liberated Life, brought to us by Rev Angel Kyoto Williams, who wrote Radical Dharma. We just sit for 30 minutes a day, and just be quiet at 8:00 AM. I would say I lean heavily on spirituality, and heavily on the logistical prowess of my Caribbean… [laughter].
Kiss: Fantastic advice.
Damon: That is…what encouraged you to continue to reflect, and zoom out a little bit, and reflect on your learnings of abolition. Right? As we've established, we are from a connected village or tribe. Even placing myself in this, 2013, '14, '15, '16, as we're starting to get this language, and we're very passionate and I believe correct [laughs] still, but as I reflected, I'll say this. Personally, I think a lot of our naming was responding and reacting, and a lot of our naming was abstract and ideal. Those abstractions and those ideals are things that I, again, still support and align, but in these years, so many things we named wanting to be part of this project are happening. We said we need more restorative justice work.
More people have been practicing. We need to get back to the farms, we need to house people, we need to figure out new forms of mental healthcare. Those things are being seated. I want to move away from abstract to concrete as the analogy, because concrete is death. It's abstract to grounded into rooted. Now that you've been so rooted in the work, what would you teach your early abolitionist self about abolition now that some of those things have become a little bit more rooted in practice?
Ali: I love that question. There's so many good puns. Early on in my BYP days, I was at every meeting, at every leading actions, I got to co-lead the action that took down the Jay Marion Sims statue in Central Park with Asha… All these amazing incredible people.
Damon: Shout out.
Kiss: Just come hang out all right. Come over, hang out.
Damon: My literal best friend
Kiss: Oh no. Oh yes.
Ali: Yes, they were on core when I was a fledgling, and then I think I took yes, I became membership co-chair. Living free and centering joy is abolition work. I would not have understood that early on in my organizing, and creating spaces of joy, and connection and practicing. Being a free Black girl is abolition. I'm early on would be like, no we got to be out there. We got to be paying folks bail. We got to be on the front lines. Which I have no doubt that I will return to. Still am in some ways but I don't at all feel guilty for watching Drag Race on Fridays, and chilling, and being in community.
I've also developed a writing practice, there's a Black queer writer's community out here that I've just joined, and I think that I wouldn't have said that early on in my organizing and abolitionist practice that I can create spaces for joy and be really intentional about that and be really intentional about rest and still see it as part of an abolitionist practices, because there are people who are not free. Us not living free isn't going to-- they're not mutually exclusive and that was something that I didn't understand early on. I do now which is what actually led me to Jamaica and what led me to farming, but just like a Jamaican I couldn't just sit and farm. I had to start our organization.
Damon: You have to get a bunch of jobs. [laughter]
Ali: Do the work. Do work, consulting work. Yes.
Damon: We could wide out it's our last little formula questions. You've spoke to it, but I just want to frame it again in the context of invitation. That's really what we've learned that the show is inviting folks into the proverbial fire circle. Whether it's small invitations of like you could literally show up and sign up to do this here with Feed Black Futures or the Capital Big We invitation into the work. Is there any invitations you have for somebody who's listened to this, who may not be ready to start their own project or can't get all the toolkit but just wants to step into the space?
Ali: Yes. I guess if you're here in Oakland you can come work with me on Wednesdays at Acta Non Verba Farm, a Black woman ran farm out in East Oakland and pack produce and harvest. If you're not, gosh, we need so much social media support and figuring out how to craft messaging. There's an abundance of projects and they all deserve money and funds and resources, but elevating our platform and working on that is something that I hate doing. I hate being on social media.
Damon: Oh sure.
Ali: I'll invite anyone who loves it to come on through, which I don't imagine there are a lot of.
Damon: I think Gen Z folks are going to get irritated with our intergenerational as, you could make a reel and TikTok for our project. [laughter] We need some intergenerational support. Can you come help us make this well?
Ali: Intergenerational friendships and for me it's so important. I invite you to go to Soul Fire. I know the wait list is really long and I got in before. I think they popped off in many ways, and I invite you to go to your farmer's market and find the Black person selling food and go and purchase from them. I invite you to think about where your food comes from.
Damon: Harold's, no I'm sorry. [laugher] Excuse--
Kiss: Grounded Damon. I'm sorry, little…[laughter]. No, no, no.
Ali: Yes, that's what you can do. Go to your farmer's market and find your Black, Brown queer farmer and buy from them as much as you can.
Kiss: Are there ways that you would like you and the work of Feed Black Futures to be found as well?
Ali: Yes, we're on everything at Feed Black Futures. Not everything, we're not on Twitter. [laughter] We're on Instagram, Facebook, speaking of intergenerational we're on. You can type Feed Black Futures into your browser or…
Damon: We always try to get teenagers to run our TikTok's. Nobody's hitting up aunties to run people's Facebook. Your auntie will get your little spread this message so God will bless you, viral little joints. We're the Black aunties to do Facebook social media management. That needs to be a whole new song.
Kiss: It's also an art form to make graphics that look that weird. That's a skill too. I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to make something that fuzzy.
Ali: Font
Damon: Or that glitzy invitation to the lounge for the 67th birthday party. I don't how to do it. All right. I feel like we've done it but for the sake of format, I'm going to ask it, but we enter with your hypothesis. When you do an experiment, there is often a conclusion. From this hypothesis of what getting connected to the land means from our freedom as someone who's been doing that work. Are there any, even if it's just temporary for this moment, are there any conclusions that you want to offer to this One Million Experiments audience?
Ali: Nothing ends. You put an orange in your compost, it can become soil, it can become something else. I hope Feed Black Futures will not be around forever. I hope Black people will be able to steward land, and grow food, and start co-ops and continue to feed each other there. A lot of this work has already been done has been done for generations, but I don't plan on doing this forever. I don't want to. I'm very okay for this idea to compost and become something else.
Damon: That's so beautiful, that's so beautiful. All y'all work we should see it as future soil. Sometimes we're so precious or so conservative about our little shrines or our little legacy projects and it's all to fertilize.
Ali: I so appreciate the experiment framing of this because experiments lead to movements. I can't stress enough how important storytellers are at this present moment, so thank y'all.
Damon: Thank you. Thank you for all the work that you do.
[music]
Kiss: Big thanks to Ali Anderson for taking the time to chop it up with us and teach us all about Feed Black Futures. If you listen to the show, you know what time it is. It is time for the one and only peer review.
Damon: Hoping I don't offend all my peers.
Kiss: Let's welcome our pal back into the convo. Eva, welcome back into the lab. What jumped out to you from this conversation?
Eva: What feels so nutritious. Just I feel so fed after this conversation, is because it's for me talking about food and community, it's hand in hand. I remember early, early on as an organizer one of my mentors just sitting you down and saying, "If you can't share a beer in community with people, what are you even doing? Who are you organizing with? Where are you going? How are you going to get there?" I will extend that to include all of the tasty snacks and things that we're able to break bread over.
I think Ali talks about the pathways and the channels and the connectivity. It's hard not to feel connected or want to be connected to that work since food is so much a part of our everyday lives, but I think also just it's how we build community where I'm from at least.
Damon: The centrality of food in life and then therefore organizing is so profound. I wonder, are there other essential needs that we can parallel the dynamic of? We told the story of her receiving and supporting the impacts of carcerality and folks struggling inside. The way she responded of just putting it back in the soil, and so that double benefit of what work can we find that literally feeds people or literally meets people's needs or has an essential quality to it but also is inherently regenerative, inherently healing? I feel like we often are choosing between the two of like, "Oh, my healing work is over here," and then I serve the people "over there" and like, I need to make space and bifurcate the two. What processes can we find that are creative, that are regenerative, that are so essential to people's lives? It's like a lesson I'm trying to take with me.
Kiss: Yes. I think the answer that often you hear is art making or creative work in that way, and there's so much similarity between that and growing food, like both the connection of creativity and process and diligence and care and the time that it takes. Yes. I don't know. The people who I know who have their hand in the soil tend to be the ones who have an understanding of time in a way that's useful for all of us.
Eva: …when you're talking about food and food systems and land, it's not something that we've delved into hugely, but hearing Ali talk about land sovereignty, hearing Ali talk about how Black farmers were expelled from Los Angeles, how that land was taken over. I'm really curious and it's something I'm interested in looking into more and researching, but you know there's such an interplay at the turn of the century and then in World War II with the Black and Japanese communities in Los Angeles, and how little Tokyo in Los Angeles where I spent a lot of time is a place where Black community thrived during and after World War II. Santa Monica, where I live, is a place where a Black community thrived when Douglas Aircraft was a huge employer for a large Black population, and now is predominantly Asian and still a lot of Japanese people in the space, and so I'm super interested in the histories of Black and Japanese farmers in this area.
Actually, where I live, I'm surrounded by this used to all be nurseries. There's these cool pictures decades ago where all this land was just Mexican and Japanese farmers building nurseries for all the hill people. I'm interested to delve more into ideas of land and land sovereignty this season. I think it's something that Ali gave us now to chew on, and she said something during the interview that I thought she was like, this is how it happened in California, but it happened where you are, [laughs] so just like go to your farmer's market, find your Black farmer and get hip to the history. I think that there's a lot of invitations in this episode to find out how food systems work where you are to make some of those connections as best you can, I think is a great invitation to leave with.
Kiss: Eva, I'd like to invite you to make that podcast that you just described, which sounds really interesting and I look forward to listening to it.
Damon: [chuckles]
Kiss: That's like what a great project to take on. Maybe when we're done with this one.
Eva: Sorry. Yes, I know who I'll call.
Kiss: [laughs]
Damon: I just really want to shout out Feed Black Futures. The lesson that Ali provided is again, that like the work builds on itself and the work leads to the work. For people who are hearing about these amazing projects and like, "Oh, I want to do something that powerful," the idea of participating over time, building up to that capacity is so valuable, so the history of some of the direct actions participated in the Mama's bailouts on Mother's Day, like being ready to respond when the pandemic hit. This is always the lesson like the folks who have been doing the work are then prepared to do the new work that is needed and are able to innovate and connect and you can't skip those steps.
For all the people that we are inviting in the lesson that feels to continuously present itself to us is, the work leads to the work and so just like get off the sidelines and participate and support when and where you can, and that will teach you so much more than even listening to this podcast, but please listen to the next episode. [laughter]
[music]
Kiss: One amazing way to plug in that Ali mentioned is through the work of Soul Fire Farm, which is a farm in upstate New York that does Back and Brown farmer emergence. Some of it is for folks who have experience farming, some of it is for people who haven't put their hands in the soil before. They also have amazing resources including a land reparations map, which is a way for Black and Brown farmers to gain access to land, and of course, a lot more. We'll put the link to Soul Fire in the show notes, but yes, on a more immediate term, like what does getting active mean? It can mean joining a community garden, finding your hands in the soil, growing something on the back porch, sharing what you grow with a neighbor. That's like definitely an entry point.
Damon: As always, if y'all picked up on anything, hit us up.
Kiss: If any seeds [crosstalk] anything starting to grow.
Damon: I feel that something's sprouting.
Eva: We're ready to get our hands dirty. Just give us a call. [chuckles]
Kiss: You can reach us at Million Experiments. Get into with the work of Interrupting Criminalization. Eva, how can they do that?
Eva: You can always find Million Experiments on Instagram @millionexperiments. You can also follow Interrupting Criminalization by going to interruptingcriminalization.com or on all the socials @interruptcrib.
Kiss: Make sure that you subscribe to One Million Experiments wherever you get your podcast. You can find our other show, ergo @airgo on your podcast apps or @ergoradio on all socials. Damon, you look like you have something you want to say.
Damon: Yes, I did a little anti plug a minute ago, so I'm going to balance that out with a super plug. Something that we started to see from listeners is them organizing conversations and passing along these episodes to folks in their community, so feel free of if you are really chewing over or wrestling through some of these ideas. Start yourself a little listening group. You can do some complimentary readings on the side, and we are starting to get some really great feedback from folks that are taking a deeper dive in community. That is one of the greatest ways to experiment and jump in the lab with us. We'll take the listen back. [laughs]
Kiss: Absolutely. What the hell not. All right, friends, we'll be back in the lab with you next month with another wonderful experiment.
Damon: Much love to the people.
Kiss: Peace.