https://fordham.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwsf-CrrT0vGtzerRWsJMI4OUvvPKiw5Ff1
Chattel slavery, institutional racism, and government policies alienated enslaved people and their descendants from the land. This continues to result in food insecurity, poor health, and property loss. Today, less than two-percent of working farms are owned by Black Americans.
Activists, gardeners, authors, and farmers are re-discovering Black America’s rich agricultural heritage and its roots in spirituality and religious traditions. They are advocating for a new and empowering relationship with food production and the natural world.One of the leading voices of this new movement is Soul Fire Farm. Located in upstate New York, Soul Fire Farm is “an Afro-Indigenous centered community farm committed to uprooting racism and seeding sovereignty in the food system.”
To mark Earth Day, Soul Fire Farm’s co-director will join us from the farm for a panel discussion to explore these issues and how the audience themselves might work toward a more equitable food system.
David Goodwin, assistant director of Fordham’s Center on Religion and Culture, will moderate a discussion with Leah Penniman, co-director and farm manager of Soul Fire Rarm and author of Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm's Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land, and Rufus Burnett, Jr., assistant professor of theology at Fordham University, who has written about the blues, decolonial theology and the Black American experience.