Ep. 4: Heal the Soil, Heal Our Economy with Leah Penniman

Written By Nikishka Iyengar
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  • Leah Penniman 0:10

    Our economic system is very focused on quarterly returns, immediate gains. And if we were to copy the soil, we'd be thinking on generational return. A lot of it's about time scale. Shout out to aadrienne maree brown and her beautiful book, We Will Not Cancel Us. I think another way we need to pay attention to biomimicry and our movements is to reject the capitalist, violent notion of disposability. And to really adopt an ecological and indigenous frame of mind that says that no person is bad or disposable, that we call people into circle and into conversation, into relationship, as a way of healing is really hard. It's really, really hard and unfamiliar. And I will say if I were to ever be completely disillusioned, and just not able to continue to be because of those dynamics. Which are... you know, COVID but hard on people, the pandemic's hard on people and so we see a lot of that lateral violence happening right now in our communities and threatening to destabilize the good work that folks have been building. So yeah, I pray that we can copy the earth in that way to not throw anybody away and really work to compost whatever we need to compost and make it better.

    Naima Penniman 1:24

    You ready, we get down to business. Investing in existence. Shifting from a system steeped in extraction that steady sapping our peoples and planet to cash in, slashing widening gaps in our access to land wealth, peace, satisfaction. Imagine basing relations on more than transactions. It's time for new pathways, and we need to shape them. Though our inner landscapes, our relations, our approach our dedication, we're on the road to repair as a commitment to transformation.

    Nikishka Iyengar 1:57

    Welcome to the Road To Repair a podcast exploring our journey out of business as usual economy toward, collective healing and liberation. We are your co hosts, Andrew X,

    Jessica Norwood 2:08

    Jessica Norwood.

    Nikishka Iyengar 2:09

    And I'm Nikishka Iyengar,

    Andrew X 2:11

    and we're very excited for this conversation.

    In this episode on the Road To Repair, I take a good hard look at that road. I felt called to get down on my hands and knees in humility and start talking about soil, about land, about what we can learn from it that we can apply to our lives, to our movements and to the business of repair. I'm still organizing my thoughts with some of these concepts that have been kicking around in my head linking some of my awareness of ecological matters and regenerative agriculture to social enterprise, racial justice, the business of repair. I needed some good company while I planted some seeds and dug around for more clues and insights that hopefully might one day yield a harvest or at least help me, or perhaps some of you, to better understand this road that we walk upon. I was thrilled and deeply honored when my sole sibling Leah Penniman agreed to accompany me on this little walkabout, this exploration, examining the underlying conditions and health that gives rise to the world of living systems and our entire economy. Soil, the foundation, literally and figuratively. Sometimes I can get lost in my thoughts and the theoretical metaphorical and I love Leah's ability to meet me there and also help to ground the conversation in practicality through her deep wisdom and experience and bring me back down to earth. But I haven't yet shared with you who she is. I mean, really, you should already know, but you know, we're canceling cancel culture so I won't shame you too badly. If you don't already know who she is. A badass manifester of dope transformational shit like all the rest of the guests featured on this show, Leah Penniman is a Black Creole farmer mother, fellow soil nerd, author, and food justice activist from Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, New York. She cofounded Soul Fire Farm in 2010 with the mission to end racism in the food system and reclaim our ancestral connection to the land. As co-director and farm manager Leah is part of a team that facilitates powerful food sovereignty programs, including farmer training for black and brown people, a subsidized farm Food Distribution Program for communities living under food apartheid, and domestic and international organizing toward equity in the food system. Leah has been farming since 1996, holds a Master's in Science and Education and a Bachelor's in Environmental Science and International Development from Clark University and is a Manye or Queen Mother – I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly, so forgive me if I'm not. still learning – Manye, Queen Mother in Vodoun. Leah trained at Many Hands Organic Farm, Farm School Massachusetts, and internationally with farmers in Ghana, Haiti, and Mexico. She also served as a high school biology and environmental science teacher for 17 years. The work of Leah and Soul Fire Farm has been recognized by the Soros Racial Justice Fellowship, Fulbright Program Pritzker Environmental Genius Award, GRIST 50, and James Beard Leadership Award, among others. Her book Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm's Practical Guide to Liberation on Land is a love song for the land and her people. I have so much admiration for Leah, and I'm so inspired by her spirit, by her work. She's part of this incredible cadre of black women who are changing the game in the food system and all that connects to it in this country and beyond. I think the stage is set. I'm excited to now share with you this conversation with Leah Penniman

    Sibling, I'm so excited to connect with you.

    Leah Penniman 5:52

    Thanks, Andrew. Let's do it. This isn't just any podcast. This is a very special conversation. I'm excited.

    Andrew X 5:58

    You know, so much has happened since the last time I interviewed you. The Black Farmer Fund was still in the idea phase, and is now fully capitalized organization with an incredible team headed up by Olive Watkins, Karen Washington, and Dennis Derek, and many other incredible individuals. I also had the privilege of visiting Soul Fire Farm at the North East Farmers Of Color first in person gathering. And god there's so much happening now with all of the work that you're continuing to do with Soul Fire and the the ecosystem of organizations around that. There's the legislation for theJustice For Black Farmers Act, and so exciting just to take a moment in Dayenu, in gratitude and reflection of just within this span of time how far you have come, how far we have come. You know, there's so many incredible interviews, including our conversation on the Next Economy Now podcast where you share in depth, the beautiful story of your personal background and the story of Soul Fire Farm. And I want to encourage our listeners to check those out and we'll link to some of those in the show notes. And I'd love to just dive right in and build off some of those previous conversations and also want to just give listeners a bit of context in terms of who you are and what Soul Fire is,

    Leah Penniman 7:14

    I would be honored. And Àṣẹ to how far we've come. I just received this beautiful email from Baba Dennis, Dennis Derryck of Corbin Hill Food Project, celebrating the Braiding Seeds Fellowship that we just launched, which provides ten rising generation farmers with the resources they need to build a life of dignity on land. And Baba Dennis was reminding me about the first lunch we ever had together at the first ever Black Urban Growers conference back in 2010, when the overwhelming feeling was, "oh my goodness, I'm not the only one, like the only black person who cares about the Earth in my community." And now, you know, 11 years from then, Black Farmer Fund, North East Farmers of Color Lands Trust, Soul Fire collaborating with these legacy organizations like SAAFON, and the Federation, to just build a whole new sense of what's possible. So all that to say, you know, by way of background, I'm Leah. I'm one of the founding Co-Directors and Farm Manager at Soul Fire Farm and we're on eighty acres of Mohicans, territory, unceded territory, also known as Grafton, New York. There's ten of us on this team. Shout out to all of them! We are a beautiful unit and all of this is teamwork. And what we do is try to uproot racism and seed sovereignty in the food system. And there's three basic ways we do that. You know, one is we grow a whole lot of food and medicine using Afro-indigenous, regenerative farming practices, and provide that at no cost to the doorsteps of people who need it in our community. The second major thing we do is educate the rising generations. So we have our on-farm programs, our remote programs, we have the Soul Fire in the city urban gardens, we hook people up with a garden bed, we do immersions, where it's a fifty hour course for people who want to learn how to grow. And then the third big thing we're up to is organizing, because you know, as folks hopefully know by now, the food system is super racist and super oppressive and it's not fair at all for farmworkers or Black farmers for the Earth herself. So working on policy, and institution building, and public education to try to have a culture shift so that we really understand how important the land is and the people of the land. That's us in brief, and I'm excited to jump in deeper.

    Andrew X 7:32

    And the fourth thing you're doing is just blessing the world with that sunshine of a smile. I...(laughs)

    Leah Penniman 9:13

    No you can't see smiles on podcasts! But my mom, Reverend Dr. Adele Smith-Penniman has this big tooth, you know, ear to ear grin that she passed on to the three of us her children. So thank you, Mama Adele for the smile.

    Andrew X 9:32

    May not be able to see it, but you can hear it. Building from there, you've been on some incredible podcasts and one of the ones that I loved on Movement Generations "Did We Go Too Far" podcast, you touched on the idea of "ecological humility" and how you feel that this really needs to be part of our conversations around repair, around specifically black land and liberation, but also broadly. And so I just kind of want to begin the conversation there. In that idea of "ecological humility", you know, you touched on the need to be cultivating a whole new art of listening, a whole new art of humility, and taking instruction from nature, taking inspiration from nature. And on this show, we're bringing this lens and framework around "economic biomimicry" as a way to really root our understanding of repair in living systems, and extend that in how we think about our relationship to ourselves, to one another, to our institutions, and to our economy at that, like, personal to systemic – all those scales. And similarly to how land-based ecosystems revolve around the fertility of the soil, how we're in relationship to soil, how we manage the soil to liberate that potential, it then flows through the entire system. And so, you know, we extend the idea of soil health as an organizing principle or point of reference as a sort of metaphorical parallel to our economic systems. And we can get deeper into all of that in a bit. But you're someone who's really connected to the land, to the soil, to community and to institutions that are transforming our economy. And so I'd really love if you could unpack this idea of "ecological humility," why it's needed, and how it informs not just how we relate to the land, but everything we do.

    Leah Penniman 11:26

    That is the everything question. So I'll tell the story that I often tell, because I think it frames it up pretty well. And the story goes back to early 2000s when I was living in Ghana, West Africa, and apprenticing myself to the Queen Mothers, who are these OG spiritual activists that take care of the lands, the orphans, the culture, you know, the history – they're just really badass and amazing. And they like to quiz me about life in the United States, because I thought we were a little strange. And one day they said [Amita De], which was my name there, "You know, is it true that in the US, you all put a seed in the soil and you don't pray, you don't dance, you don't sing, you don't pour libation, you don't even say thank you to the Earth, and then you expect that seed to nourish you?" And so when I, you know, in shamed silence admitted that was true, they said, "That's why you're all sick. Alright, you're all sick, because you treat the earth as a commodity, and not as a relative." And that's been a profound frame for me to take about what would it be to treat the Earth as a relative, and all beings, right, as relatives. And it manifests in a lot of ways. You know, "ecological humility" manifests as seeking permission. What would it be to not assume that we have the right to pillage, we have the right to take, but instead to ask? What would it be like to act in the way that the women of Ghana do where they they build these Africans dark earths, or these super rich composts that is made out of ash from the cooking fires, and scraps from soap making process, and crop residues, and it captures all this carbon, right? And the ethos is that everyone has to contribute to making this compost. So you can actually measure the age of the community by the depth of that soil. Whereas here in the US, like the predominant ethos is just to extract from the soil, like wash it out into the sea and leave it for the next person. The fundamental frame is like we as human beings are the younger siblings of creation. So the mountains, the wind, the deer, the robins, those are our big sisters, and brothers and siblings. And we need to listen to them, to heed their advice, to... yeah, to be quiet, really, and to take in that wisdom that they have been trying to share with us but that we're too arrogant and talkative to be able to absorb.

    Andrew X 13:31

    You know, this idea of ecological humility really underlies being in right relationship to the land, and also extending from that into biomimicry, in a way that it's not appropriating what we observe and learn from nature to serve a paradigm that says that we're separate and superior to nature, but that is rooted in an operating from the humble understanding that we're part of and dependent upon the natural world and that we hold that responsibility of stewardship. And the word even "humility" itself means to be grounded, both literally and figuratively. It literally comes from the word humus, which means soil. So, kind of extending from this idea of ecological humility and grounding our framework of economic biomimicry in soil, as a point of reference, helps to bring our focus to the conditions that underlie our relationships. Many of us might not understand or be grounded in the value of soil, the value of land, ecologically, economically, or culturally. I feel like you really bring a unique and kind of integrated perspective to the space around our connection to soil – the wide ranging value and importance of soil and our relationship to it. And I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about that. and how addressing the underlying conditions that establish healthy soil, and our relationship to the soil ripple through an entire ecology, economy, across generations.

    Leah Penniman 15:11

    That question makes me so happy. I'm a soil nerd. I love soil. So, oh, so many thoughts at once. So one is I want to shout out some wisdom for one of my colleagues, Larisa Jacobson, who pointed out to me that within just one generation of the colonizers attacking the Great Plains with hoe and plow, they released 50% of the soil's organic matter up into the atmosphere as inorganic carbon dioxide. And so we had soil organic matter just drop precipitously. We had the first blip on the graph of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere leading to climate chaos. So this is mid-1800s, you know, before the Industrial Revolution, which is often cited as the beginning of anthropogenic climate change. And so what Larisa talks about is that our work as regenerative and Afro-indigenous farmers is to re-indigenize the soil, decolonize the soil by putting the carbon back where belongs – out of the atmosphere, back into the soil. And that means using our ancestral practices like raised beds, cover crops, low- and no-till, perennial polycultures, terraces – all these beautiful technologies that have enhanced down through our lineages. And in doing so, at Soul Fire, I mean, when we first came to this land and signed white man's papers back in 2006, the organic matter was between two and three percent, the soil was really gray, impenetrable. The US Department of Agriculture agent said "You can't grow food here." And when you stick your hand into the soil now you get that rich lack humus. It's friable, it's rich, produces this abundant food and medicine. And thank you for teaching me that humus and humility have the same root – that makes sense. And that came from not chemical fertilizers, you know, just collaborating with the ecosystem. You know, there's a very practical scientific aspect of what it means to care for soil. I mean, when you put carbon back in the soil, when you renew the soil, that... Soil and water, you know, are our most important insurance for our future. We all need to eat food, we all need to eat food, we all depend on the land, even if we're disconnected by a few degrees of separation. So there's a science to it. But I think there is also a spiritual component to that as well. And I witness that when especially young people come out to the lands when they have been away from lands, maybe their whole lives, maybe generations and put their bare feet on the ground or their bare hands on the ground. And my belief is that Mother Earth, who is an Orisha, who is alive, has been missing her children. We are the color of soil. You know, she has been missing our skin, she's been missing our laughter, our song, and so she will just reach right out and suck out that trauma, the pain, the confusion, the disillusionment, compost it for us, because that's her expertise to give it back to us as that little fire of hope. And that might sound implausible, but I've been doing this work now for twenty-five years, and it's almost without fail. Folks'll roll up, be maybe skeptical, maybe neutral, and then the Earth'll get ahold of them, and make them better people. So we need the Earth. We need the soil for our physical sustenance, but I also very much believe we need the soil for our psycho-spiritual wellness. But there's science about that, too. You know, they say the microbes in the soil, you eat them, and they work better than antidepressants. So you know, you can explain it any frame, any way that you need to to believe, but I will tell you what thousands of folks rolling through onto this land, having that first time experience, the healing is really... it's real.

    Andrew X 18:25

    There was one thing that you named, I think you said the USDA agent and what they communicated to you about that land and your relationship to that. The land was deemed as degraded, unviable, right? And you had an inherent recognition of the latent potential nested within that soil, within that land, that it's not just degraded land, but that it actually just needs love. And that that looks like assessing and amending the soil, looking at the underlying conditions of the soil, and just want to give you opportunity to share a little bit more about that notion of kind of assessing the underlying conditions. I'm kind of using soil as the metaphor for that – assessing the underlying conditions and amending the soil, and that process, and that relationship – as opposed to the relationship of "this is degraded land and we need to gravitate towards the resource rich areas and just neglect this other land"

    Leah Penniman 19:28

    I mean I feel like your handing on either metaphor for cultural biomimicry here, because, right, we as a people, our neighborhoods, our cultures or languages could be seen as that cast off, potentially cast off soil. It's degraded, it's broken, it's disposable. So we go elsewhere, rather than seeing the need for love investment nurturing. So, I will say I wish that it was that poetic when it started out but it was really highly practical. Land is expensive, and we like so many of our folks don't don't have a trust fund. We don't have wealthy parents or grandparents that are gonna hook us up, you know. And I was working as a public school teacher, my partner was doing odd carpentry jobs. Honestly, we felt pretty fancy that we could buy this land outright because we had saved and you know, land out here is only about $1000 to $2000 an acre, which is much less expensive than other regions. And it was because it was logged. It was because it had been used in the ways that it had. Because it's remote. It's surrounded by people who voted for Trump. You know, that's why it was affordable. But there was still something to be said for it being ours, not in the possessive sense, but in the belonging sense. I'm gonna do a quick throwback to 1865 when, you know, the Emancipation Proclamation is in effect and 13th amendment and all that, and our folks under Reverend Garrison Frazier met with the Union army to start to plan out reconstruction, and they were first tested for their loyalty – they passed the test. And then they were asked well what is it that black people want – they didn't say black people. And they said, "What we need are homes and the ground beneath them so that we can plant fruit trees and say to our children, these are ours." And "forty acres and a mule" ended up being a broken promise. You know, we know that whole story. But over time, black folks did manage to save up enough money to purchase sixteen million acres of lands in 1910. And most of these parcels were two acres, three acres, swamp lands, upland. They weren't great, you know, they weren't great, but they were ours. And we planted fruit trees, and we planted sorghum and cotton and vegetables. And there is an almost indescribable significance to being able to stand on ground and know that you belong there, and that you be damned if you'd be forced off and forced away. You know, we just this past weekend planted one-hundred-ten apple trees on our farm. We're converting some of the annual area to perennials to capture more carbon. And you know, because I'm obsessed with trees. And it was a deeply spiritual experience. I insisted that everyone who was on this land needs to put a tree in the ground, because that anchors them to this land. That makes the land know them over the long term. My arms are still sore, I just cherish that. Right?

    Andrew X 22:10

    It's so interesting for me to kind of toggle back and forth between thinking about the economy of our soils, and the soil of our economies. And the economy of our soils being the actual kind of ecological economy of our soils, and what can disrupt or liberate that. You already referenced, kind of, you know, over tilling the soil and releasing all of that carbon into the atmosphere. You know, where where the economy of soil organisms and soil structure has to start over and over and over again, versus those dark earth soils that you referenced earlier that have for generations on generations, you know, been loved, supported, evolving, that support some of our most biodiverse ecosystems, and the stewards of that, us, the trees, and so forth. That's kind of, like, thinking about the economy of our soils. And then on the other hand, thinking about, in the other direction, the soil of our economy, similarly as like the underlying conditions of our economy and society. Like with the soil, in our environment, generally, we often fragment and compartmentalize our economy and society, but it's deeply interconnected. Many instances of similarities in how people relate to ecologically degraded land and how people relate to economically degraded communities. But of course, the underlying potential is there just waiting to be liberated, we can forget the potential the intrinsic value of degraded land or of oppressed people. And it's really just a matter of amending those conditions so that those people those places can actually thrive and be what they're needing to be. So I just I personally find that economic biomimicry rooted in ideas around soil can be such a transformative frame to kind of like hold an image of our economy of our communities, our culture and relate it to what we know about the living world. In the instance, mentioned, of folks in the era of reconstruction have clarity on, the Malcolm X, quote, "land is the basis of all wealth," and, you know, Fannie Lou Hamer's quote that you always share that I really appreciate, that same kind of rooted self determination in place, having soil, stewarding soil, ourselves, our community, you know, when I say "economic soil," like what what comes up for you what comes to mind when I talk about kind of amending our economic soil, and what would that look like?

    Leah Penniman 24:33

    Damn. That's really deep. I actually want to hear you answer that question, but I'll give it a try, as somebody who thinks about economics less than you. So, well for one thing with regenerative and Afro-indigenous agriculture, the soil is built up in a way that presumes that it needs to continue giving to us for generations to come, right? I'll give an example of that as a sort of contradiction to a colonial mindset. So when I studied environmental science in college, we were taught that indigenous people were an environmental nuisance because of something called slash and burn agriculture, or they just didn't know what they was doing, and were cutting down trees and burning them. And so at the time not knowing any better, I had internalized this racist colonial belief, only to learn later in my adult life that the original rotation of crops, the original cover cropping is actually something called swidden agriculture, where yes, you burn a plot of land, or at least the minerals and nutrients to clear to destroy the pest insect, you go ahead and plant for a couple of years till the soil is just a little bit tired and then move on to a new spot. But you don't come back to that original plot for twenty to thirty years. And in twenty to thirty years, a forest grows up in the forest is the ultimate cover crop because its roots go deep and, like, pulls nutrients out of the subsoil. It provides leaf litter, it stabilizes against erosion and, you know, encourages the proper cycling of water. And by that time, it's ready for you again. Now what happened when colonizers came in is they kept forcing indigenous people into smaller and smaller and more marginal parts of the land. And this is all around the world. And so those rotations had to shrink from 30 years to 15, from 15 to seven, from seven to three. And then of course, you know, that doesn't work anymore, because there isn't time to regenerate the forest. So our economic system in the US maybe globally at this point is very focused on quarterly returns, these immediate gains. And if we were to copy the soil, we'd be thinking on generational returns, the earth itself with no intervention is going to make one inch of humans in a thousand years. And that's just the right pace to sustain things if you're not extracting. So I feel like we can't even conceive of a thousand year timeframe, you know, we can't even conceive some as one generation timeframe in terms of our planning, it's maybe the next election is as far out as folks and get. So a lot of is about scale – timescale. And then I think one other principle that we can draw from soil is, I mean, this might sound cliche and obvious, but there's, there's a closed loop, this is a circle instead of a line, nothing is disposable, in a soil ecosystem. Everything is turned into something new. And, you know, of course, we have in the cradle-to-grave lifecycle of consumer products, you know, in Western capitalism is designed for the dump. Yesterday, I had this... I was brought to tears about confronting my own ideas of disposability that are still inside of me. So I have these beloved Liberty apple trees that are five years old, they just started bearing fruit, they gave us so much food last fall, and then we had a serious vole problem. And they were girdled so badly that I just thought they would die. And it's kind of tragic how they die. So they don't realize their girdled at first. So they go ahead and burst their buds. But quickly, they run out of the stores of sugar that they have above the girdle, and then they start to slowly die. So I'm watching the bud birth and this farmer down the road says, "Hey, have you ever heard of this kind of bypass surgery that you can do for these trees?" And so he was teaching me how to do this helping me with it. And I went down to check on them yesterday and just burst into tears because I was like "I was ready to give up on y'all because this idea of disposability is so ingrained in me that I didn't even think about a possibility of regeneration of restoration. Here's this way that your children essentially are going to save you." You know, this tree. So lets up the grafts take and it all works out and my poetic metaphor will stick. But you know, Nature doesn't give up. There's always a way. There's always a way to keep life going, moving, cycling.

    Andrew X 28:23

    What are principles and practices from regenerative agriculture that we might be able to carry over to, like regenerative economic action that repairs our economic relationships, our economic soil.

    Leah Penniman 28:35

    So I threw out like two kinds of ideas around cycles and timescale but I want to hear some of yours so I can build off of them.

    Andrew X 28:42

    Yeah. And so you know, this is the Road To Repair, so we're feeling the edges of the emergence and walking this path together. So, you know, earthworks, or terraforming, or ecoscaping? Restructuring the land, redistributing large amounts to restructure a place to be in better balance. It can also happen with water, you know, in the case of super flat, degraded land, you know, there's opportunities to create bioswales or on sloped, you know, pieces of land, there's an opportunity to kind of like, similar to a bioswale, there's this Keyline design kind of idea that helps to slow the fast rushing out of water, and to slow it, to sink it, and let it absorb into the soil. And, in a way, I can see how that applies to say, you know, on the one hand, like the space of finance, say, which is like trying to move large amounts of resources into areas that are, you know, that might be depleted or that are not able to function in a self-determining, self-reliant way, but being able to, on a large scale, move that. That's like importing compost, right, into the farm, or importing water into the farm, versus the farm being able to be self sustaining at some point as the ideal and to grow from within, to have what it needs to be able to produce its own compost to produce its own water. And so similarly, it's not just, you know, the reparations framework of like, just giving all of this money out. But it's also balanced with you know, I know we both highly respect and admire Ed Whitfield, and I love his discourse around productive justice – that production unit, that productive capacity, which is the soil, it's the production capacity. So, another concept that I'm kind of fleshing out is in the management of animals on land, is this idea of like the economic keystone species, a lot of times like cows, for example, or buffalo, they are moving across the land in such a way that plays a really pivotal role in the balance of the whole ecosystem of that land. And then the contrast to that is maybe like in a degraded context, where more like predatory or parasitic organisms are the dominant variety stewarding the downward cycle with that, that continues on like an erosion path versus one that is like building soil. Part of how I'm thinking about that in the economic context is like on the economic landscape, these organizations that are playing that type of pivotal role that are that have been missing, or that have been taken off the the scene, and that returning these, you know, our economic heritage on the land. So that was like, No,

    Leah Penniman 31:41

    I mean, your first metaphor that you pulled out, arouse moving massive amounts of resources makes me think about the winds that pull soil minerals from the Sahara every year into the rainforest of South America, and how actually, the rainforest couldn't survive without that input of specific micronutrients. Right? And then the keystone species piece makes me think about while not strictly economic, and certainly related, the way that COINTELPRO and you know, the powers that be worked really hard to take out lack leadership around the time of the Civil Rights Movement, with very much that understanding that if we make sure to terrorize and eliminate the people who are respected, who are the organizers, who are the Keystone, then we can destabilize the movement. And it's taken us almost a generation to start to build back that type of leadership and the strength of our organization. So yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. I think the other one, maybe this is too played out of a metaphor because everyone likes mycelium these days, but, you know, fundamentally, the way that the soil works and the earth works is through cooperation. Cooperation is the primary currency. And we see that very strongly with the forest super organism where trees that get extra sunlight, so they make extra photosynthate actually do not hoard that in bank accounts. They put it down into a mycelial network and share it with kin and non-kin, so that all the trees are strengthened together. And this benefits all of them. Because if they all have similar health, they're able to mast together and masting is when they produce their nuts and seeds. And if they do it all at once they can overwhelm the herbivores and make it more likely to have children. When there are insects coming or disease coming, they warn each other through this mycelial network, because they know that they might need a warning at some point. And so, I know that we're often taught, you know, I studied biology, too, that competition is the primary currency of ecosystems. But as scientists have been diving in with a more objective frame of mind and looking at the evidence, it's become clear that cooperation is more common and more dominant as a form of interaction. So it goes without saying that our economic system is pretty zero sum as it is currently designed with folks able to mass unimaginable pools of wealth, while other people go with a scarcity that is pretty inconceivable. So you know, adopting cooperation, as the way we think about our economic system would be, you know, that'd be a big frameshift.

    Andrew X 34:01

    You know, the economy, even as I say, the economy, right, that means, you know, so many different things to so many different people, but there are natural economies of the soil of ecosystems. And as we sit in that ecological humility, of protracted observation, of checking in, of asking permission, of listening and deriving the important relationships and insights from all of that, from being in relationship in that way, for me, at least, and I'm hoping that this resonates with others that that can help us kind of approach this abstract space of the economy and our organizing. It's really clear to me, how much power perspective spirit that you and all of those around you at Soul Fire Farm and the growing community of institutions that you're working with most closely and how rooted in soil that work is. I know that you're addressing, you know, "who was hurt?" "What happened?" "Where, what are the obligations that follow from this hurt?" "What are the needs that emerge from that hurt?" "Whose job is it actually to address the harm?" And "how do we repair this harm?" And "who needs to be at the table for that to happen?" So can you talk a little bit about how you and the community of practitioners that you work with these institutions are facilitating the business of repair? How you're thinking about this?

    Leah Penniman 35:28

    I always love an opportunity to shout out the ecosystem of organizations, our comrades, and we do call ourselves an ecosystem because we attempt to each take a niche, we attempt to copy the way that the sacred earth works. And I'll speak specifically about the ecosystem of North East black and brown farming organizations first, because the particular harm that we're attempting to address through self-determination and organizing is the harm of dispossession of indigenous folks from the lands and attempted genocide is the harm of black and brown folks being prevented or kicked off of land that they attempted to own is the harm of not having access to fresh, culturally appropriate, affordable foods in our neighborhoods; of not been able to break out of wage labor cycles when it does come to a relationship to land or tenant farming cycles. So, you know, many other harms. And I think what's unique about this coalition is that it's made up of the people who were harmed, you know, not that we're not all complicit in some way, you know, but primarily, it's the people who've been the targets of these oppressions organizing together and saying, we're not going to rely on the governments or banks, or white-led institutions to solve this problem for us. We'll welcome their support and their accompliceship, but we're going to take the lead. So in the Northeast, The Ecosystem attempts to address the whole food system from sunshine to plate as my daughter Nashima would say. So, you know, the North East Farmers of Color Land Trust is working on land return. You have the Black Farmer Fund making capital available in the form of non-extractive loans and grants. You have the Farm School NYC and Soul Fire farm providing farmer training that's urban and rural, respectively. Black Farmers United New York State is the Advocacy and Policy Branch of our work. Corbin Hill Food Project helps connect the black farmers to markets and to communities who need to eat and access that food, right. And so together, we're able to say to a rising farmer in our community, like "We got you! We got you the whole way – people who love you, who see you, who know what you've been through, like, we've got you the whole way!" And that is super powerful. And increasingly, we're working hard to connect along the corridor of Northeast and Southeast black and brown farming organizations and want to acknowledge that nothing that we do would be possible without the legacy and labor of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives of Land Loss Prevention Project, of SAAFON. Right? These are the elders that have paved the way and continues to take lead and know what's up. So this fellowship, the Braiding Seeds Fellowship is the first major project that I'm involved in that connects the Northern and Southern organizations. It's going to be hot! It's going to... we'll see, you know, it's going to be everything! One other thing I want to say, because when you started talking about harm, you know, it made me think about – shout out to adrienne maree brown and her beautiful book, We Will Not Cancel Us on top of all kinds of other work – but I think another way we need to pay attention to biomimicry in our movements is to reject the capitalist, violent notion of disposability. I think that you know, in many ways through no fault of our own, you know, these ideas of policing, these ideas of incarceration, these ideas of there are good people and bad people, there are people to keep and people to throw away. You know, those get really ingrained in us. Those are heteronormative, Christian ideals, those are colonizer ideals, and so really adopt an ecological and indigenous frame of mind that says that "no person is bad or disposable, that we don't use violence to solve our problems, that we call people into circle, and into conversation, into relationship as a way of healing." It's really hard. It's really really hard and unfamiliar. And I will say the if I were to ever be completely disillusioned and just not able to continue, it'd be because of those dynamics. Which are, you know, COVID been hard on people, pandemic's been hard on people, and so we see a lot of that lateral violence happening right now in our communities and threatening to destabilize the good work that folks have been building. So yeah, I pray that we can copy the earth in that way too: not throw anybody away and really work to compost, whatever we need to compost, and make it better.

    Andrew X 39:23

    Yeah, you just hit the nail right on the head, the disposability of black and brown bodies and very visibly still a systemic issue across this even this kind of progressive space that many of us call the "Next Economy" you know, in all of those these organizations and co-ops and B Corps. And you know, a lot of what we're trying to kind of bring forward through this show, not just like emerging from this toxic business as usual paradigm to the whole "doing well by doing good" thing but actually going beyond that to transforming the conditions, to transforming our relationships. Such a key part of that is that disposability piece. And you know, even in many of the organizations I respect and have experienced myself, oftentimes we don't have the tools or the experience to amend that soil in our interpersonal relationships. And we kind of do that disposability thing there, too. So I really appreciate you naming that. And just how edgy of a space that can feel like oftentimes,

    Leah Penniman 40:30

    Oh yeah, it takes courage. I was talking to sibling, adrienne and they were like, "I get canceled for writing that we shouldn't cancel each other." Takes a lot of courage, a lot of courage to stand up and say, "ya'll, like I claim Patrisse Cullors. She's my homegirl, you know. Maybe people make mistakes, but we don't throw them away. We don't go into the white supremacists. We don't wish death upon them. Like, that's some bull. You know, we don't do that. We don't do that. So it does take courage. But I think it's very, very important that we do that self reflection about the ways that we perpetuate white supremacist patterns of policing and disposability and violence and, and lean into each other as support as we learn new ways of being, you know, transformative justice ways of being and it's gonna take us some time we have to be patient. But yeah, but we got to do it because otherwise we're not going to win.

    Andrew X 41:15

    Yup, "keep them divided and distracted" is the is the strategy. Right? So yeah, definitely presencing that. What inspires you? You do a million things. You're a mom, an educator, entrepreneur, navigating all of these incredibly challenging dynamics – what inspires you to keep going and how do you find yourself resourced in that?

    Leah Penniman 41:35

    I mean, I'll be real with you, there are times when I don't know and I am thinking I'll go work for the post office. But, I'm sure that's hard to I'm sorry for the postal workers out there being like, "you don't even understand my life." And really, truly what keeps me going is the Earth undeniably. So when I get outside and prune some raspberries, or throw down some wood chips, or plant you know, some cherry trees, or whatever it is, you know, what I was talking about earlier about how the Earth grabs hold of her children and just sucks the negativity out of us and gives us back just what we need in that moment. 100% every time that's what I need to do because I do, like I'm a human, we're all human. So I get discouraged, I get dissolutioned. I get mad tired. And then I just know it's time to go back out to the Earth so that she can juice me up. I have a lot of people who I respect, admire, and learn from and whenever an elder is willing to give me some time I try to take it. So the person who comes to mind right now is my neighbor Jun San. She's a Japanese Buddhist monk from the Nipponzan Myōhōji order and is incredible. I mean, she's dedicated her life to indigenous sovereignty, to ending war. I'll tell you a quick Jun San story that illustrates her deal. And so mind you, she's walked literally across the globe several times banging her drum for peace. And so I was like "Jun San, I'm struggling with sitting meditation. I get bored or I fall asleep. You know, can you give me some tips?" And she just was laughing at me. She said Leah San, you think I meditate? Meditation is boring. I chop wood. I carry water. I drum for peace. That's my meditation." That's Jun San. Mama Ira Wallace, Mama Savi Horne, Mama Karen Washington, Mama Gail Myers, Mama Claudia Ford – just these amazing Black women in my life, who every word out of their mouths just helps me be a better person. Music-wise, I have to say I usually listen to silence or the Earth, but the artist that's really speaking to me right now – and I feel like if we'd be good friends, so Rhiannon Giddens if you hear this, maybe we can be friends – but she just has a way of calling into the heart the voice of our ancestors. I can't even describe, but I feel stirred. I feel deeply stirred by her work.

    Andrew X 43:41

    You know, I want to kind of invite in this Octavia Butler quote this "All that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you." Curious how you have witnessed yourself change in this work of repair?

    How I've been changed? In every way. In every way. In every way. I think the only thing that has stayed the same is heeding a calling to be of service to the planet. But I have learned to be more humble. I have learned to be more courageous. I've learned to listen, I have learned to collaborate. You know, just so many things. I grew up... oh, I don't want to end on a bad note... let's say my childhood was much rougher than you might imagine. So there's been a lot of healing to get to a place where I can be in community and trust folks and be vulnerable and tell the truth. You know, it's taken some time. So thanks everyone for being patient with me as I grow and keep growing.

    Thanks everyone for being patient with me as I grow and keep growing too. I resonate with that so strongly. Yeah, that totally resonates. And that artist that you mentioned Rhiannon Giddens.

    Leah Penniman 44:45

    Yeah. MacArthur Genius Award winner, banjo player, prophet. She's amazing.

    Andrew X 44:53

    Yes! I'm excited to listen. I just want to give you the last word here if there's anything... I know I took us on a really nerdy circuitous path to try and root, this framework that we're sharing in this show, and really appreciate your perspective and expertise that you bring and all of that. And yeah, just want to give you space to share. You know, I know that, like you mentioned, there's the Braiding Seeds work. And I mean, it could be about the work and anything that you're really excited to share about or just, you know, whatever else is coming up for you. Just want to give you some space for that.

    Leah Penniman 45:25

    Well, maybe I'll bring it from the metaphorical into the practical because, you know, a lot of this work of ecological biomimicry is translating what the earth is telling us into the frameworks that govern our society. So even though it doesn't sound like it, you know, initiatives that are happening, like the Justice for Black Farmers Act, the initiatives like the Reparations Map of the North East Farmers of Color Land Trust that helps match up people with resources to black and brown led projects, initiatives, like the Fairness For Farmworkers Act that will give the most basic dignity to the people who grow our food. These are translations of what the earth is telling us to do as far as cooperation, long-range thinking, return of resources. So for folks who want to, you know, do right to get right, you can check out www.soulfirefarm.org. under "Take Action," and we have a whole bunch of ideas of ways that people can engage and try to help heal the food system and heal the land and take us closer to the people we want to be.

    Andrew X 46:19

    So much gratitude to you Leah. I'm always so honored to be in conversation with you. Thank you so much for taking this time. Thank you. Thank you so much. And I really hope and pray to continue to build relationship with you in this work of repair.

    Leah Penniman 46:36

    Àṣẹ. I have the same prayer.

    Jessica Norwood 46:43

    Thank you for joining us on the Road to Repair. Our greatest hope is that this show will have a transformative impact for those of you tuning in. The Road to Repair podcast is produced by Andrew X, Nikishka Iyengar, and Jessica Norwood with amazing post-production support from FRQNCY Media. Music for the show was produced by Andrew X in close collaboration with artist and sound designer Zachary Seth Greer, and the luscious vocals and original poetics of Naima Penniman shout out to Sofahood for all the amazing artwork. You can check out more of their great work on our website, you can find the links at www.theroadtorepair.com. We always love the social media shout outs and you can help this message ripple out to those who might really benefit from it by rating this show and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. And if you feel so called, you can make a donation to support the show at www.theroadtorepair.com. Thanks again for tuning in and stay tuned for our next episode.

    Naima Penniman 47:51

    We stand with the land. We are far more than a commodity. We join with the water. Our bodies are not property. We're reclaiming our shared sovereignty and shaping an economy based on reciprocity, cooperative, accountable groundin' justice and ecology. The empire is toppling. Who want to be about this prophecy? We've been summoned to the summit. Trust we here for something. What is now possible? Who are we becoming?

Nikishka Iyengar
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