At the Membership Convening, CJA membership elected five new incredible members to the Steering Committee! We asked them to introduce themselves a bit more for those who couldn’t join us in Albuquerque —
Kirtrina Baxter – Black Dirt Farm Collective
1. Tell us a bit about yourself!
2. What Just Transition work do you do in your community and region?
3. Why are you excited to start your work with the CJA Steering Committee?
4. Anything you’d like CJA membership to know?
NEW STEERING COMMITTEE
At the Membership Convening, CJA membership elected five new incredible members to the Steering Committee! We asked them to introduce themselves a bit more for those who couldn’t join us in Albuquerque —
Kirtrina Baxter – Black Dirt Farm Collective
1. Tell us a bit about yourself!
As a spiritual being who is a mother, farmer and organizer, my family, friends and comrades are generally centered around earth-based resistance. I am in community with those people who understand that our struggle exists under the conditions of a white supremacist construct. Folks who know that the development of capitalism and agribusiness, land dispossession and state-violence, coupled with aggressive destruction and exploitation of the land and the places we live, keeps us in chains.
One of the many blessings in my life is the ability to build with wonderful agrarian folk who are dedicated to food and land justice through stewardship of the land, as well as, through organizing and community education work, which is required to mobilize folks onto the land within a liberatory framework. My communities in formation are Soil Generation and Black Dirt Farm Collective. We sit in community together to heal, grow, resist, love, and sustain each other through the work and in service to other Black and Brown communities because we deeply know and feel the link between the destruction of our mother earth and the exploitation and destruction of black and brown bodies.
2. What Just Transition work do you do in your community and region?
Soil Generation and Black Dirt Farm Collective, are a vital resource among Philadelphia and the mid-Atlantic’s land, environmental and food landscape. We recognize that modeling systems of power that are alternative to dominant ones, grows us as individuals and organizations, it prepares us for the future. Black and Brown leadership, and economic power is essential to forwarding these ideas, not as trends, but as essential foundational practices to grow historically disenfranchised communities out of their default position in a broken capitalist system. We see this as an expanded cycle of culture shifting, a just transition.
Because agroecology, and racial and economic justice are two of Soil Generation’s pillars, we have been studying cooperative business models and are piloting our first 2 business collectives; our “Agroecology School”, and a business administrative hub for our member organizations. We will continue to work with consultants and partners who have willingly dedicated their time and knowledge in business and cooperative development. These services will benefit the community with an understanding of the social and environmental impacts that threaten us, while providing living wage jobs and worker-owner opportunities, along with providing our member organizations with administrative services that better position them to be more sustainable. Ultimately we desire self-determined and reliant, earth-conscious, politically active, resource heavy, Black and Brown communities, economies and organizations.
3. Why are you excited to start your work with the CJA Steering Committee?
All the work that I do is interconnected and this experience at CJA will support my continued work by providing me with resources and networks to strategize for our ensuing growth, connectivity and successful movement forward.
4. Anything you’d like CJA membership to know?
I am really excited about this opportunity and to be a part of understanding and participating in a National Alliance that truly support grassroots organizing at the local level. To growing our understanding and practice of relationship building, allyship, and restorative justice, as well as racial, climate and economic justice. I look forward to building the future together!
