Seeding Self Determination

Growing Local Black Infrastructure

Harvesting New Economies

How Reparations Summer Works:

  1. Throughout the year, BLLI coordinates cohort-based programming that supports Reparations Summer organizing including workshops, organizer trainings, and political education sessions.
  2. People with access to wealth apply to be part of Reparations Summer Praxis Program.
  3. Praxis participants commit to 3-5 years of mobilizing resources for Drinking Gourd and are required to recruit their replacement should they choose to take time off or move on.
  4. Praxis participants commit to studying and understanding the history and politics of racial capitalism, the Plantation paradigm, and abolition to shift the lens of “funding” and “solidarity” to one of apprenticing to become an accomplice in Reparations
  5. Praxis participants commit to personal and collective transformative healing work that includes:

    • ancestral lineage healing;
    • cultural lens shift;
    • organizing and mobilizing resources while grounded in integrity; 
    • building communities committed to transformation and accountability;
    • re-membering the values of their pre-colonial origins; and
    • identifying and changing self-talk, community, and philanthropic practices rooted in white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism.

We are a network of Black leaders building a land-based movement and committed to being in our full dignity as we raise the resources we need to plant the seeds of self-determination. 

We no longer desire to acquire resources via the institutional pipeline that holds the bulk of financial resources in this country; instead, we ask that you apply to take part in our work. 

In building Reparations Summer we’ve learned a lot, and we’d like to share more about our folks and our values while also setting a clear boundary that we will not perform or overshare to prove our funding worthiness to the white gaze.