New Communities and Community Land Trusts in Movements for Black Lives, Land and Liberation
The LISC Institute hosted a conversation with Shirley Sherrod and community land trust (CLT) leaders from Baltimore, Houston, New York City, and Seattle, reflecting on how CLTs can help combat Black land loss and displacement, build community wealth, and strengthen community health and care, and the support needed to scale and sustain this work over multiple generations.
Overview
The LISC Institute held a conversation with Shirley Sherrod, co-founder of New Communities, Inc., and leaders from Baltimore, Houston, New York City, and Seattle, to uplift the ongoing significance of New Communities and community land trusts (CLTs) to movements for Black lives, land, and liberation. Founded in 1969 in Albany, Georgia to prevent displacement and promote Black economic prosperity through community-owned land, New Communities is widely recognized as the nation's first CLT, and has since inspired the formation of over 289 CLTs across the country. Drawing on this legacy, communities are organizing CLTs as a tool for promoting racial, economic and environmental justice, and repairing a long history of violence and discriminatory public and private sector policies. In this session, panelists reflected on how CLTs can help combat Black land loss and displacement, build community wealth, and strengthen community health and care, and the support needed to scale and sustain this work over multiple generations.
View recording
Moderators
- Athena Bernkopf, Project Director, East Harlem El Barrio CLT
- Julia Duranti-MartÃnez, Program Officer for Capacity and Research, LISC
Presenters
- Shirley Sherrod, Co-Founder, New Communities, Inc., and Executive Director, Southwest Georgia Project for Community Education, Inc.
- Dr. Ashley Paige Allen, Executive Director, Houston CLT
- Carlos Sanchez, Youth Leader, and Meleny Thomas, Development Without Displacement Director, South Baltimore CLT
- Danise Jones-Dorsey, Chair, Share Baltimore, Inc.
- K. Wyking Garrett, President, Africatown CLT
- Debra Ack, Board Secretary, and Albert Scott, Board President, East New York CLT
Additional Reading
- Baltimore Land Trusts Plug Away at Vision for Development Without Displacement
- Building Trust
- How a Black Farming Community Found Justice
- In Seattle, Protests Over Racial Equity Turn to Land Ownership
- Supporting the East New York Community Land Trust: A Tool to Increase and Protect Affordable Homeownership
- We Shall Not Be Moved: Collective Ownership Gives Power Back to Poor Farmers
Community Land Trusts & Community Development: Partners Against Displacement
A white paper from the LISC Research and Evaluation team examines how partnerships between community land trusts and community development institutions can scale up and sustain land trusts so as to begin to impact displacement at the neighborhood level.