Black Land and Power (BLP) is building a land-based movement for Black liberation. BLP is developing interdependent strategies that move us away from extractive economies dependent on the violent enclosure of land, labor, culture, power, wealth and spirit. We assert a fundamental right to the resources required to create our own productive, dignified and sustainable livelihoods through direct control of our own labor and self-governance. Land is a critical resource to achieve this vision. Our membership-based network is actively creating strategies for transformation that are grounded in a long-term vision, shaped by resilience, culture, and creativity of our ancestry, and rooted in our collective liberation. These are strategies that we can begin putting into practice NOW.
Who We Are
BLP is building infrastructure to provide and share technical skills, resources, legal support and organizing strategies to connect our network. Together we are taking land off of the speculative market and into the commons, thereby building power and creating spaces for:
- Healing and Health Systems
- Agroecology Farming and Food Systems
- Education and Organizing Spaces
- Arts and Culture
- Sanctuary and Sacred Space
- Community Safety and Security
Black Land and Power is a project of the National Black Food Justice Alliance (NBFJA) which is anchored by more than 30 networks and organizations building aligned vision, story, collective decision-making and strategy. NBFJA is a coalition of Black-led organizations advancing Black leadership, building Black self-determination, building Black institutions and organizing for food sovereignty, land and justice. NBFJA seeks to achieve this by engaging in broad based coalition organizing for Black food and land, increasing visibility of Black-led narratives and cultural strategy work, advancing Black-led visions for just and sustainable communities, and building capacity for self-determination within our local, national, and international food systems and land-based rights work.
NBFJA’s members are primarily located in the North American South, however we have members in every bio-region in the contiguous United States. Our network represents thousands of acres of Black stewarded land.
Never forget where we came from and always praise the bridges that carried us over
What We Believe
Our Values
We believe that transforming land ownership, building interdependent economies, and building power for Black self-determination in tandem with indigenous sovereignty will set us free. We center Black Radical Feminism, Abolition, Decolonization, and Radical Afro-Ecology. We are working towards a vision rooted in collectivism and cooperation, deep democracy, and intergenerational leadership. Through our practice we intend to build community accountability, power, regenerating wealth, and self determining economies.
We stand on the shoulders of movement leaders and organizations that came before us. Fannie Lou Hamer, Marcus Garvey, Huey Newton, Queen Nanny of the Jamaican Maroons and Malcolm X are a few of the movement ancestors we look to. From Slave rebellions, to The Black Panther Party, from the work of the Alabama Communists and the Harlem Cooperatives during the Great Depression, to the visionary and grounding work of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, we build on a legacy. We also have wisdom to ground in from more recent decades such as developments in the Abolitionist movement including Transformative Justice and leaders like Mariame Kaba who have offered resources and theory for our praxis. Many of our members have been in the work for decades. Many of our land stewards continue a land legacy and have been in relationship to the land they steward for multiple generations.
A Land-based movement for black liberation
