A Message from Executive Director, Dara Cooper

Greetings Family,

It is with incredible excitement and a deep sense of pride that I write to announce that after dedicating many years of service towards building this incredible Alliance of 40+ member organizations including a strong Blackademics arm with over 20+ cultivator members, helping to install a brilliant staff, and stewarding a strong budget that has grown to the millions with incredibly supportive funder partners, I feel it is the best and most opportune time for me to step aside from my position as executive director and make space for the next iteration of the National Black Food and Justice Alliance. Effective January 1, 2022, I will no longer serve as the executive director for the National Black Food and Justice Alliance. 

Over the years, it has been an incredible honor to serve my people and realize the collective freedom dreams of designing and building a space where Black food and land justice freedom fighters can convene, strategize and actualize together. While those years have been both rewarding and incredibly challenging, it is my firm belief that we have built a critical missing component in the movement towards Black liberation that has provided an analysis and contribution towards addressing the myriad ways that Black people experience and resist violence (including and beyond police violence but also through our food system, health conditions, climate, etc.). I believe deeply that our Alliance resists and holds critical solutions. 

Because of our work and our power together, we have been able to accomplish an expansive amount of work in a very short time including:

  • Developing infrastructure to practice  governance as an essential component of self-determination via our member led Mutual Aid Resource Council, where we moved nearly half a million dollars to 55 member and Black food justice organizations in 2021;

  • Playing a key role in drafting critical legislation via the Justice for Black Farmers Act;

  • Developing coordinated media strategies and interventions among the food movement;

  • Launching a Blackademics arm of the Alliance and laying the groundwork for a new Agroecology Center to archive best practices and train the next generation of land stewards;

  • Launching a map of Black farmers, convening and supporting Black food co-ops; 

  • Building a Resource Commons Council to contribute towards a national land reform strategy in solidarity with Indigenous communities;

  • Moving millions of dollars from partner funder groups to Black, Indigenous and POC led groups;

  • Critically intervening in white dominant food spaces to redirect resources to Black, Indigenous and BIPOC led work;

  • And I am most proud of the many, many convenings and dynamic gatherings where we have brought Black leaders together in love, political struggle and freedom dreaming and weaving.

I am VERY proud of our work together thus far, and I am proud of the work to come. In this transition for us, I am excited about and grateful for so many things:

  1. Our current leadership team who is brilliant, fierce, dedicated and committed to carrying on the charge for Black people taking up leadership and space together in this food movement, strategizing and organizing together, dreaming together and actualizing together. 

  2. I am humbled by the staff of the Alliance who invest their hearts, ingenuity and deep love into space-making and strategizing with integrity and moving forward the work and charge of this Alliance. 

  3. And finally, I am beyond excited to see how this Alliance carries forward its mission with a new shape which includes two incredibly sharp, talented, committed and visionary leaders that the staff and leadership team have all unanimously reached consensus around - Dr. Jasmine Ratliff and Cicely Garrett as co-directors.


I am excited to continue contributing to the field and this important movement in whatever ways necessary and meaningful.  I believe with all of my heart that the Alliance has SO much more work to do together for many years to come.

Our work has always been rooted in so much love and I am convinced the leadership team, the staff and the new co-directors will continue to ground this work in love and so much integrity. For that, there can only be so much more greatness to come. 

Cheers to a new iteration of exciting work together of freedom dreaming, scheming, supporting, designing, constructing, manifesting and actualizing all the incredible things our people deserve!  

With so much love,

Dara

 
NBFJA