Equity Trust is proud to be co-sponsoring Leah Penniman’s talk and workshop on Land Reparations, part of the Karuna’s Center’s workshop series, Engaging Peace: Reparation and its Forms Fall 2019/Winter 2020
Many people are aware of the deep and pervasive impact that the legacy of racial oppression in the United States has on the present day. The horrors of slavery and racist terror, and the theft of land and destruction of Indigenous communities, are obvious examples that have shaped the economy, environment, social fabric, institutions, education, and politics of this country over the course of centuries.
But what can, and should, be done? As Presidential candidates debate the practicality and moral considerations of federal reparations for slavery, we would like to invite our community to a more local conversation. This fall/winter 2019 workshop series will heighten awareness and action around the many forms that making reparations can take—and the ways in which this can build peace and heal divides in our own community. This series is co-organized with Resource Generation and Western Mass Showing Up for Racial Justice.
Upcoming events in this series (more to follow):
- November 4, 2019 (6:00-8:30pm), Flywheel Arts Collective, Easthampton, MA: Memory Justice – A Debt Owed, with Kent Alexander
This workshop/conversation posits a moral and ethical responsibility for Reparations to African American slave descendants, through the use of a lens that examines the interrelationship between the system of white privileges that enforce the myth of a white race, and the resultant intentional attempt to erase Black humanity.
Kent Alexander is an anti-racism and workplace culture consultant. He currently serves as the Equity and Inclusion Advisor for ValleyCreates.
- December 9, 2019 (talk at 6:00pm, workshop 7:30-9:00pm): Land Reparations, with Leah Penniman
This workshop/conversation will explore reparations and rematriation of land for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color farmers and earthkeepers, discussing the toolkit used by the Northeast Farmers of Color and the Black Farmer Fund to return stolen wealth and territory.
Leah Penniman is the co-director and program manager of Soul Fire Farm and author of the book Farming While Black.
Please register to attend the workshop
- January 2020: Education and Reparations, with Maria Salgado Cartagena (date and venue TBA)
This workshop will explore access to education as a form of reparations, as well as the significance of educational reframing of local history in Holyoke and the Pioneer Valley.
María Salgado Cartagena is known as the “Latinx People’s Historian and Storyteller” of Holyoke. She recently conducted a workshop around reparations and segregation in collaboration with Western Mass SURJ.
These workshops are free and open to the public, but since space may be limited, the organizers are asking people to register for the workshop or workshops you plan to attend. Thank you!