What does a liberated Black food future look like - and what will it take to get there together?
Join CSPI on Wednesday, March 25th from 3pm - 4:30pm ET for "From Seed to System: Black-Led Strategies for Food, Farming, and Community Wealth", an honest, deeply grounded conversation on Black food sovereignty and the community-led efforts reshaping how food, land, and power intersect.
Through lived experience and on‑the‑ground models, expert panelists will explore how Black-led organizations are reclaiming food systems, restoring cultural memory, and building collective power in the face of structural inequities and state violence.
This session will equip participants to: (1) Develop a shared understanding of Black food sovereignty by exploring its meaning, its future possibilities, and the personal and historical roots that shape this work; (2) Recognize what authentic community leadership looks like by examining how Black-led organizations center community power, navigate immediate needs, and uplift community members as decision-makers; (3) Build systems-level awareness of the forces shaping food, land, and economic justice and understand how solidarity economics, cultural enterprise, and policy advocacy reinforce food sovereignty, and (4) Identify pathways toward liberation, healing, and collective action through land-based practices, trust-building in the face of state violence, and concrete strategies for supporting Black-led food sovereignty efforts.
Speakers & Panelists:
Monti Lawson (he/him) is the Founder and Lead Land Steward of Catalyst Collaborative Farm and Site Supervisor and Farmer in Residence at WILDSEED Community Farm & Healing Village in the Mid-Hudson Valley. He is a Black and Gay beginning farmer who has been a community gardener and urban farmer in NYC for over a decade. He graduated from Farm School NYC and is an active member of the FSNYC alumni community. He is also a member of Black Farmer's United of NYS, Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust, NYS BIPOC Grower Support Network, and a member of the Leadership Advisory Committee for the Equity Fund of the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation. For 2023, he was honored to serve as the inaugural representative for Manhattan and Staten Island on the USDA Farm Service Urban County Committee for New York City.
Rebekah Williams (she/her) is founder and Organizational Development & Strategy Lead for Food for the Spirit, a non-profit organization whose networks are based in Buffalo and the Finger Lakes New York, but reach across New York State. Food for the Spirit works in partnership with frontline communities who value food sovereignty, by building solidarity and collective power through creating spaces for visibility, connection, self- and community-care. Rebekah is a strategic planner and community organizer with over 25+ years of experience working to support community leadership, food and racial justice, environmentalism, and the arts.
Apollo Woods (he/him) is a cultural entrepreneur and advocate who uses supplier diversity, storytelling, and land stewardship to close wealth and health gaps in Oklahoma. Through the Bigger Than Food Foundation’s supplier diversity campaigns, he works with public agencies, anchor institutions, and brands to direct more procurement dollars into Black-owned and locally owned businesses. As founder of Growing For Good Farm, a 13-acre regenerative farm in Spencer, Oklahoma, he grows culturally relevant, chemical-free crops while building farm-based enterprises with neighborhood residents. His work links equitable contracts, cultural enterprise, and community agriculture to expand food access in long-disinvested neighborhoods and demonstrate a reproducible model for community-led economic revitalization.
Jaime Swygert (she/her) is a dedicated community leader serving as a Board Member for Food for the Spirit in Buffalo, New York. She is the Founder and Chair of the Juneteenth Agricultural Pavilion for the Juneteenth Festival of Buffalo, where she supports community engagement and agricultural education. Jaime also contributes her expertise as a member of the Community Data Advisory Group at the University at Buffalo’s Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab.
Moderator:
Isaiah Blake (he/him) currently serves as an Engagement Associate at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a food and nutrition policy watchdog that partners with communities to advance meaningful food legislation and strengthen local food systems. In this role, he manages relationships with CSPI’s partners across the Midwest and New York and supports the organization’s lobbying efforts in New York and Illinois. Previously, he served as a coordinator for the Brownsville Hub Cooperative under Central Brooklyn Economic Development Corp (CBEDC), where he helped coordinate several programs aimed at improving the economic mobility of folks in Brownsville and East New York. He has a B.A. in Political Science from SUNY University at Albany. You can find Isaiah at Cooper Street Garden on Saturday mornings, watering the plants and feeding the mosquitos as an urban gardener and volunteer land steward.
This event is hosted as a part of CSPI’s Resource Hub Training Series. We invite organizations and community advocates to join us, as we at CSPI learn alongside our partners and community at large to build power and share knowledge across disciplines on a myriad of social, economic, and environmental justice issues.
Este seminario virtual será en inglés y lo ofreceremos con interpretación y traducción al español en tiempo real.