English In this blog post Jo Kamal and Katherine Wall reflect on the initial phases of the LWA’s Learning History project around racial justice.
For some people, it is difficult to understand why racial justice is central to our movement. What does agroecology have to do with racial justice? What does land have to do with race?
We cannot begin to discuss agroecology and land justice without discussing colonialism, empire and racialization. We cannot begin to talk about the history of land use and landwork without talking about legacies of empire, the present continuation of the colonial project, histories of slavery, the plight of migrant workers, or the entrenched racial inequity which exists in the farming, horticultural, forestry and landwork sectors. And we cannot truly honour the grassroots peasant movement which birthed the fight for food sovereignty without recognising its basis in Majority World (mostly BIPOC – Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour) resistance against wealthy white oppressors’ ideas for economics, farming and land-use.
Racial injustice is deeply connected with all other forms of oppression – from capitalist exploitation to patriarchy, transphobia to ableism. These oppressions are intersectional as we have learned from Black feminist leaders – especially Kimberly Crenshaw who coined the term. Many of these forms of oppression will be named and raised up in conversations around racism because they are linked. In this Learning History project we chose to specifically ask about work done on racism and racial justice to try to understand what the LWA has been trying to do on this issue, whilst acknowledging its connections in many ways to everything else.
In the last few years, a few Black-led organisations have been leading the way in highlighting the connections between racial justice, food justice and land justice. Land in our Names have been building communities of Black people and People of Colour who are food growers and landworkers; they have been demanding land as reparations for slavery and colonialism; and they have been educating the land and food justice movements about the intersections of these issues through speaking at events, speaking on podcasts, creating zines and through collaborating with organisations like the LWA to widen understanding and awareness. Through collaborating on two key reports – Rootz into Food Growing a Jumping Fences, a number of other individuals and organisations working at the intersection of land, food and racial justice have been highlighted.
This is deeply relevant to our work in the LWA. In fact, it must form the foundation of our work. Food sovereignty and land justice are not just about the futures we are fighting to achieve. It is also about the present – the ways we are working, the way we talk about what we do, the ways we try to prefigure the futures we long for. Racial justice, and all forms of liberatory work, are central to this. What does it look like to practise racial justice within our staff team, coordinating team and wider membership? What barriers are there to racial justice and liberation being directly addressed within our organisation? How can we centre racial justice as a foundational pillar of work in agroecology, food sovereignty and land justice in the UK? And what does it mean to practise racial justice work in a way which incorporates, and goes beyond, an organisational racial justice strategy?
In 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, the LWA released a statement of solidarity and a commitment to racial justice work building on the leadership and work that BPOC in the LWA – particularly Jyoti Fernandes and Dee Woods – had been doing for years. Since then, the staff team has undertaken training in racial justice and anti-oppression with Yassine Senghor. The wider organisation has also been experimenting with a range of practices to put racial justice into practice. Some of these practices include: funding and supporting the BPOC Growers Retreats, collaborating with Black-led organisations like Land in Our Names at the Land Skills Fair, and standing in solidarity with international struggles for land, food and farming – including with the Indian Farmers Movement.
This year, we decided to reflect on the work we have been doing as an organisation on racial justice, to understand where we are at and what might be needed going forward, knowing the answers would not necessarily come quickly, easily, or without complexity. With the help of Katherine Wall, an active and valued member of the land justice movement and a current PhD researcher looking into the role of emotions in racial justice work, we began to reflect on the past 10 years of the LWA – on what we have done well and what could have been better in our internal organisation, events, outward communications, international solidarity work and more. We wanted to look with honesty and humility, and were prepared to receive answers that were not easy to hear. Here began our work building a Racial Justice Learning History with Katherine Wall’s support and expertise.
A Learning History for the Movement
A Learning History is a process of reflection about how an organisation has practised something over time. It is a research methodology in the action research tradition, drawing on theories of learning inspired by Paulo Friere, understanding of participatory research in support of social movements developed by Orlando Fals Borda, and a particular way of creating a learning history document generated by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. These learnings are often shared back with the organisation to reflect on and shape ongoing work in the area highlighted. Our aim was to conduct a learning history about the LWA’s racial justice practise so far, which would support us to build next steps in incorporating anti-oppression and liberation into the heart of what we do.
We didn’t go straight into drafting a racial justice strategy for two reasons. The first was we did not want to rush into doing this without taking a moment to pause and hear the opinions from a diverse range of people involved in the LWA to inform our understanding of our work so far. The second was that Katherine came to us with a proposal to put together the learning history as a part of her PhD research, offering us vital capacity with which to get the ball rolling on this piece of work which we may not have had otherwise.
It is important to note here, that whilst acknowledging the value of the capacity and research knowledge that working with a PhD student can bring, both Katherine and the LWA acknowledge some of the flaws of mainstream academia – the ways it privileges certain ways of knowing, the platforms it gives to people with particular identities and systemic advantages, and the ways it can also perpetrate the upholding of racism as well as other systems of oppression. Holding this scepticism alongside and in tension with the value of working with the academy has been part of this process.
What work has been done so far?
Having secured grant funding from Unicorn as well as funding from the Transformational Governance programme, we started by holding a co-design process with a group of 10 staff and member organisers in May. We used this process to outline the aims of the learning history, the methods with which to achieve those aims, and how to acknowledge the difficulty of the subjects we were going to be asking people to talk about and what care and support we wanted to offer and put in place for participants.
From late August to the end of October, 9 interviews and two focus groups were conducted to answer the questions that the co-design team formed. Some of these questions included:
- What work has the LWA been doing on racial justice that you know of? What has gone well with this, and what has not gone so well?
- In what ways has the LWA practised good “co-conspiratorial” or solidarity-based politics?
- How does it feel trying to do racial justice work within the LWA?
- What would you like to see the LWA doing with racial justice work in the future?
The interviews were insightful and varied, and we were grateful to have been able to speak with a wide range of Member Organisers, staff members, Coordinating Group members, as well as Black people and People of Colour leading in racial justice work within the agroecology, food justice and land justice movements externally to the LWA.
Where are we now?
The interviews have now been completed, and Katherine is now drafting the Learning History document which will draw together the themes of learning shared by all the participants in this process. This will then be shared with the co-design team and interviewees for review before sharing with staff and wider membership. Some of the findings from the Learning History will then go on to inform Katherine’s PhD research.
Once the Learning History document has been completed and reviewed, it will begin to be disseminated and reflected on, and in 2024 the process of integrating the learnings and forming next steps will take place. This is an intentional ongoing process; we recognise that liberation work is never ‘done’ and requires us to hold both urgency and slowness in order to create the world we want to create.
We will keep updating our wider membership and all those involved in the LWA with this process. If you have any thoughts, comments, feedback or ideas on this work, please feel free to fill out this form. We regret that due to capacity we cannot respond to every submission but we will incorporate your thoughts and opinions into our discussions on the next stages of this work.
Thanks for reading this update on the Learning History process we have been going through. To practise agroecology, to realise food sovereignty, to work towards land justice, we have to tend to the histories and presents of oppression in all their forms. This project to understand more about how we practise racial justice is part of this wider work. We look forward to sharing more with you as the learnings emerge from this work next year and how we intend to integrate them into our practice as an organisation and share what we have found with a wider movement.
