Monthly in our News & Resouces funder newsletter one staff shares a few media pieces that they have been reading, watching, or listening to. March featured “picks” from finance associate Ian McHugh.
A Green New Deal for Agriculture: the financial arithmetic of a modern food system depends on a permanent exploitation of soil, atmosphere, and labor. at the moment, those who want to farm with dignity in the web of life plead a case for which there is no business logic.
As We Have Always Done by author, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and this Pacific Standard article featuring her led me to this question: scientific empiricism is associated with combatting climate change, but should it be? Seems like a lot of other knowledge systems have safeguards that would have stopped us earlier. “Indigenous peoples have witnessed continual ecosystem and species collapse since the early days of colonial occupation,” says Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, an activist/scholar from the Nishnaabeg nation and author most recently of the book As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance. “We should be thinking of climate change as part of a much longer series of ecological catastrophes caused by colonialism and accumulation-based society.”
The vertical farming bubble is finally popping: Great article on one of the more hubristic tech models of the era.
Indigenous and Black Communities Find Common Cause for Land Justice: shares that “historically, Indigenous and Black folks have been turned against each other by colonizers and enslavers”. Read and listen to stories of how communities are now banning together to learn from one another and find solidarity in efforts to reclaim stolen lands.
Black Food: Liberation, Food Justice and Stewardship with Karen Washington and Bryant Terry discussing how Black Food culture is weaving the threads of a rich African agricultural heritage with the liberation of economics from an extractive corporate food oligarchy. The results can be health, conviviality, community wealth, and the power of self-determination.
The podcast Food and Capitalism includes a panel discussion featuring Jessica Gordon Nembhard, Raj Patel, Rafaela Rodriguez, & Kesi Foster. Together, they discuss how what we eat connects to labor rights, health, culture, and more.