#farming while Black

[ezilis-respite-farm-sanctuary]

So, this happened. Which is cool, I'm glad for the exposure this provided Black farmers in our area.

Few things. The paper got Naima Penniman's name wrong. The picture does not include Farmer James, who had a lot to say and a lot that needed to be heard. My eyes are closed in the picture and the person most in focus is our (very awesome) white facilitator.

Also, the bill I referenced was about more than outdoor farming but also specifically around outdoor cultivation of cannabis.

I spoke on VT state Bill H549. If they start there, they will continue to other farming operations that "offend sensibilities". The Bill is an impingement on the right of people to be self-sufficient and make a living. 

"Two state representatives, Karen Dolan, D-Essex City, and Lori Houghton, D-Essex Junction, have introduced a bill, H.549, which would prohibit outdoor cannabis cultivation in densely populated areas that are served by municipal water and sewer and have 500 or more persons per square mile" -- from a different vtdigger article than below.

I invite improved editorial involvement in the Montpelier Bridge, including fact-checks and proofreading.

That said, thank you to my fellow farmers, the organizers of the Green Mountain Film Festival, everyone who came to see the documentary "Farming While Black" and those who were able to attend the panel! Amazing experience.

KX

[gotbibs]

[meadowslark]

[sourtomatola]

Happy halloween @perpetual-stardust!

I struggled a little with deciding what to do, but you said you liked Naff's cryptid sightings, so I thought I'd write you a cryptid boys fic ^^

[hydrachea]

Two down, one to go ⚔️🌂🎮

[barklikeagod]

i think fundamentally benson doesn’t really want to hurt anyone it’s just the way he reacts to trauma like he seeks to have that control even while completely out of it but i think francis… is someone who maybe enjoys violence and the power it gives him when he otherwise feels so powerless. i don’t think he’s remorseful at all…

[butcharyastark]

i cant believe this is the second time in my life im watching james flint kiss another man on the lips onscreen in episode on air in my room

[sso-moonchild]

I hate the power this game has over me //referencing to this post they made on ig

[unikornu]

Here we go again, 3rd round buddies, Nybrica, Belcadas (...)

[EU] Unikornu

[lettucedloophole]

dream logic is so funny because sometimes i'll be aware that i'm dreaming but still operate within the logic of the dream? for example i had this dream of like this bloodhound (apex legends) scp thing where part of bloodhounds SOUL or SOMETHING was a tree that had this disturbing face on it, switched between owl like and just .. distorted, and the tree killed people. and i was aware that i was dreaming, so i thought "OMG this bloodhound spooky concept is so cool i need to remember it when i wake up so i can write it and make it real!!!!"

problem is when i remembered it upon waking... i realised that's not that cool 😭 it's just kinda strange LMAO. dreams are so intense because you're living them and stuck in living them, trapped in your mind. this is frustrating because when i describe a nightmare or dream i had it may sound tame if you imagine it, because you can't emphasize the sheer feeling and immersion that goes into dreams.

an interesting thing that happens sometimes in my dreams, mostly nightmares, is that if something particularly disturbing is happening, it will become embedded in the fact of the dream that i'm in a game. either it begins as real life and fades into a game or it's a disturbingly realistic game from the start. this happens a lot with my zombie dreams. for example, i dreamt of playing cod zombies with my dad but it was first person. and not fps, i mean I Was In The Game. i feel my subconsious establishes the fact it is a game in the dream to protect me from feeling more fear, because i can respawn and even if it's scary and it hurts and i die, it's not really real. i think it's neat that my brain tries to protect me in this way.. the benefits of being a Gamer, i suppose.

so if you have nightmares... try gaming to the point where the mechanics embed themselves into your dreams! the positive ones, tho. lol

[yumenosakiacademy]

I suddenly remembered afterl!fe n I never finished it i dont think but I remember watching a LOT of the personal stories n the main story n even having a List of all the deaths/backstories n wishes 2 keep up w all the charas on my old tablet (thts p much out of commission now, so the list is gone)

[geopsych]

7 years ago while I was taking pictures this beautiful black cat appeared on the farm road where I was taking pictures and then slipped back into the weeds. It felt a little magical.

[opencommunion]

"The story of  'John Doe 1' of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is tucked in a lawsuit filed five years ago against several U.S. tech companies, including Tesla, the world’s largest electric vehicle producer. In a country where the earth hides its treasures beneath its surface, those who chip away at its bounty pay an unfair price. As a pre-teen, his family could no longer afford to pay his $6 monthly school fee, leaving him with one option: a life working underground in a tunnel, digging for cobalt rocks.  But soon after he began working for roughly two U.S. dollars per day, the child was buried alive under the rubble of a collapsed mine tunnel. His body was never recovered. 

The nation, fractured by war, disease, and famine, has seen more than 6 million people die since the mid-1990s, making the conflict the deadliest since World War II. But, in recent years, the death and destruction have been aided by the growing number of electric vehicles humming down American streets. In 2022, the U.S., the world’s third-largest importer of cobalt, spent nearly $525 million on the mineral, much of which came from the Congo.

As America’s dependence on the Congo has grown, Black-led labor and environmental organizers here in the U.S. have worked to build a transnational solidarity movement. Activists also say that the inequities faced in the Congo relate to those that Black Americans experience. And thanks in part to social media, the desire to better understand what’s happening in the Congo has grown in the past 10 years. In some ways, the Black Lives Matter movement first took root in the Congo after the uprising in Ferguson in 2014, advocates say. And since the murder of George Floyd and the outrage over the Gaza war, there has been an uptick in Congolese and Black American groups working on solidarity campaigns.

Throughout it all, the inequities faced by Congolese people and Black Americans show how the supply chain highlights similar patterns of exploitation and disenfranchisement. ... While the American South has picked up about two-thirds of the electric vehicle production jobs, Black workers there are more likely to work in non-unionized warehouses, receiving less pay and protections. The White House has also failed to share data that definitively proves whether Black workers are receiving these jobs, rather than them just being placed near Black communities. 'Automakers are moving their EV manufacturing and operations to the South in hopes of exploiting low labor costs and making higher profits,' explained Yterenickia Bell, an at-large council member in Clarkston, Georgia, last year. While Georgia has been targeted for investment by the Biden administration, workers are 'refusing to stand idly by and let them repeat a cycle that harms Black communities and working families.'

... Of the 255,000 Congolese mining for cobalt, 40,000 are children. They are not only exposed to physical threats but environmental ones. Cobalt mining pollutes critical water sources, plus the air and land. It is linked to respiratory illnesses, food insecurity, and violence. Still, in March, a U.S. court ruled on the case, finding that American companies could not be held liable for child labor in the Congo, even as they helped intensify the prevalence. ... Recently, the push for mining in the Congo has reached new heights because of a rift in China-U.S. relations regarding EV production. Earlier this month, the Biden administration issued a 100% tariff on Chinese-produced EVs to deter their purchase in the U.S. Currently, China owns about 80% of the legal mines in the Congo, but tens of thousands of Congolese work in 'artisanal' mines outside these facilities, where there are no rules or regulations, and where the U.S. gets much of its cobalt imports.  'Cobalt mining is the slave farm perfected,' wrote Siddharth Kara last year in the award-winning investigative book Cobalt Red: How The Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives. 'It is a system of absolute exploitation for absolute profit.' While it is the world’s richest country in terms of wealth from natural resources, Congo is among the poorest in terms of life outcomes. Of the 201 countries recognized by the World Bank Group, it has the 191st lowest life expectancy."

[fatehbaz]

was thinking about this

To be in "public", you must be a consumer. Or a laborer.

About control of peoples' movement in space/place. Since the beginning.

"Vagrancy" of 1830s-onward Britain, people criminalized for being outside without being a laborer.

Breaking laws resulted in being sentenced to coerced debtor/convict labor. Coinciding with the 1830-ish climax of the Industrial Revolution and the land enclosure acts, the "Workhouse Act" aka "Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834" forced poor people to work for a minimum number of hours every day. The major expansion of the "Vagrancy Act" of 1838 made "joblessness" a crime and enhanced its punishment. (Coincidentally, the law's date of royal assent was 27 July 1838, just 5 days before the British government was scheduled to allow fuller emancipation of its technical legal abolition of slavery in the British Caribbean on 1 August 1838.)

---

"Vagrancy" of 1860s-onward United States, people criminalized for being outside while Black.

Widespread emancipation after slavery abolition in 1865 rapidly followed by the outlawing of loitering which de facto outlawed existing as Black in public. Inability to afford fines results in being sentenced to forced labor by working on chain gangs or prisons farms, some built atop plantations.

---

"Vagrancy" of 1870s-onward across empires, people criminalized for being outside while being "foreign" and also being poor generally.

Especially from 1880-ish to 1918-ish, this was an age of widespread mass movement of peoples due to mass poverty and famine induced by global colonial extraction and "market expansion", as agricultural "revolutions" of monoculture/cash crop extraction resulted in ecological degradation. This coincides with and is facilitated by new railroads and telegraphs, leading to imperial implementation or expansion of identity documents, strict work contracts, passports, immigration surveillance, and border checkpoints.

All of this in just a few short years: In 1877, British administrators in India develop what would become the Henry Classification System of taking and keeping fingerprints for use in binding colonial Indians to legal contracts. That same year during the 1877 Great Railroad Strike, and in response to white anxiety about Black residents coming to the city during Great Migration, Chicago's policing institutions exponentially expand surveillance and pioneer "intelligence card" registers for tracking labor union organizing and Black movement, as Chicago's experiments become adopted by US military and expanded nationwide, later used by US forces monitoring dissent in colonial Philippines and Cuba. Japan based its 1880 Penal Code anti-vagrancy statutes on French models, and introduced "koseki" register to track poor/vagrant domestic citizens as Tokyo's Governor Matsuda segregates classes, and the nation introduces "modern police forces". In 1882, the United States passes the Chinese Exclusion Act. In 1884, the Ottoman government enacts major "Passport Nizamnamesi" legislation requiring passports. In 1885, during the "Tacoma riot" or "expulsion", a mob of hundreds of white residents rounded up all of the city's Chinese residents, marched them to the train station, kicked them out of the city, and burned down the Chinese neighborhood, introducing what is called "the Tacoma method".

Punished for being Chinese in San Francisco. Punished for being Korean in Japan. Punished for crossing Ottoman borders without correct paperwork. Arrested for whatever, then sent to do convict labor. A poor person in the Punjab, starving during a catastrophic famine, might be coerced into a work contract by British authorities. They will have to travel, shipped off to build a railroad in British Kenya. But now they have to work. Now they are bound. They will be punished for being Punjabi and trying to walk away from Britain's tea plantations in Assam or Britain's rubber plantations in Malaya.

---

"Vagrancy" amidst all of this, people also criminalized for being outside while "unsightly" and merely even superficially appearing to be poor. San Francisco introduced the notorious "ugly law" in 1867, making it illegal for "any person, who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or deformed in any way, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object, to expose himself or herself to public view". Today, if you walk into a building looking a little "weird" (poor, Black, ill, disabled, etc.) or carrying a small backpack, you are given seething spiteful glares and asked to leave.

"Vagrancy" everywhere in the United States, a combination of all of the above. De facto criminalized for simply going for a stroll without downloading the coffee shop's exclusive menu app. "Vagrancy", since at least early nineteenth century Europe. About the control of movement through and access to space/place. Concretizing and weaponizing caste, corralling people, anchoring them in place (de facto confinement), extracting their wealth/labor.

You are permitted to exist only as a paying customer or an employee.

[skelet-bone]

in my humble opinion, minecraft has plenty of material to make a movie out of, it just has to be an artistic movie that is damn near silent all the time. also animated

like imagine a man wakes up alone not remembering who he is, he’s scared but ultimately finds a way to live, getting a dog, building a farm etc. one day while exploring he finds that he’s not the only person alive, he finds alex who’s been living with villagers.

imagine the movie deals with themes of mortality and immortality and being higher level beings. why are steve and alex different from villagers and pillagers? why are there lost civilizations? and what’s with the other dimensions? who were these old beings? are they one of them?

it could be a beautiful movie about purpose and how to live. especially with that end poem. the take away is you make you’re own meaning. or something like that

but no. we have jack black building blocks and shit.

[thehauntedetheral]

Yan Tribe X Reader

Requests are open!

• You were a camera woman for discovery channel. You loved your job. After all you get to travel world with your crew, see and explore the most interesting wonders, and get paid to shoot all of that in camera. What more can you ask for? Yeah your love life sucked because you were never at a one place for long. But who cares? You have your camera and your passion.

• Your crew has been assigned to shoot a new show by channel which is showing and telling people about the tribal life and community of an x forest. You were excited.

• You shooted and captured all the things about the tribal community. The people were friendly once they warmed up to your team. They showed and told you everything about their community, about forest, their lifestyle through a member of yours who knew their language and translated everything.

• You got to know about many tribal traditions, rituals, festive, their beliefs, their worships, hunting, farming style but what caught your attention was a certain tall, muscular young tribe man.

• He would always be with your crew even if he is not needed. You were shooting a particular episode on the womens in tribe? He was still there silently just observing you all especially you in a way you didn't notice.

• Your crew tried fishing for some fun in break time. And as usual your clumsy self would trip and ruin everything embarassing yourself. He would later leave a basket full of fish for you silently.

• You noticed that he was kinda good looking. Okay not kinda but a lot good looking with his huge built, dark black tribal tattoos covering his tan arms and chest, his sharp bone jewellery giving all Tarzan vibes with his long black hair tied in half bun that many women in community wished to be his mate. Also because he was a excellent hunter.

• You once told someone in community casually that you wished to taste raw natural honey from honeycombs like other tribals but were scared due to honeybees and he heard it. Well next day he gives you a huge piece of honeycomb anonymously ,freshly teared by him even though it caused him serval stinks from honey bee because this was not the season to collect honey but he would do anything for you.

• Their community had a practice where once in a year men would wear their best dresses, jewellery trying to impress womens and get their attention. This was a special episode that you weren't shooting but the other cameraman was doing because you were on the other side of forest with a few crew members shooting some shots of forest for another episode as your time of departure were close and you have to finish your work fast.

• You finished your shots. And walked a bit around the forest a little more to explore while your fellow mates moved back to see the celebration.

• You saw yan tribe sitting all alone under a tree. You felt sad seeing him all alone like this instead of being in the celebration with others. Well might be the women whose attention he is trying to grab chose someone else in competition you thought.

You tried to console him by speaking in your broken fluency in their tribe language which you have learned by staying with them for months. You were scared that you might have said something offensive to him unconsciously due to the language barrier because his expressions didn't change but became serious.

He only looked up at you and held your hand in his and said "MATE". You knew your speaking and listening skills towards his language were below average but you were 101% sure what mate word that he said means. And that scared you to dead because seeing his big strong hand holding your fragile one tightly made it clear that he is not going to let you leave at any cost.

Want part 2? Let me know through comments.

Requests are open!

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