"Environmental Justice mandates the right to ethical, balanced and responsible uses of land and renewable resources in the interest of a sustainable planet for humans and other living things." I feel like this is such a powerful reimagining of land use and the fact that they call for a sustainable planet is not just important for humans but for plants and animals as well because at the end of the day humans needs plants and animals to survive and live in the kind of would we want to inhabit.

" Re-establish our spiritual interdependence to the sacredness of our Mother Earth." I think that it's very interesting and important to note the use of "Spiritual Independence" because I think that is a thing that is rarely talked about when it comes to fights for independence and autonomy. Being spiritually free is just as important as being physically free, and you can't really have one without the other.

As a musician and a melomaniac, I'm deeply conflicted about the fine line between creativity and appropriation. On the one hand, music is meant to be shared and to inspire other people to create music of their own. Many cultures have overlapping musical tendencies that are wonderful and create a more beautiful world. However, on the other hand, the fact that Ed Sheeran can be considered the, "Most important act in black and urban music” by BBC Radio is not great. I have nothing against Ed Sheeran, but the fact that he is being used to overshadow so many other wonderful black artists in this field is not right.

The migration of African Americans from the South was a monumental shift in the constitution of America. Between 1910 and 1970 millions of black Americans migrated in hopes to settle and find a better life in northern cities. This shift helped ignite the sparks of social revolutions such as the Civil Rights movement. However, this exodus of African Americans to urban cities created new negative stereotypes about what it meant to be “Urban” and “Black.” Many times, urban minority communities faced discrimination, power struggles, and complex negotiations, but it also led to acts of solidarity and community building like we saw in the Beyond Diverse article.

Being from Michigan I of course have visited the Motown Museum in Detroit. In the museum, they had a fabulous exhibit about the origins of Motown and black musical traditions both in the Americas and in Africa, and at the end, they had an amazing video about the commercialization and exploitation of black-based music and the erasure of a lot of the original artists who wrote a lot of the famous songs that were then picked up by white artists like Elvis. I don't know if they still play that video, but I highly recommend visiting the Motown Museum if you're ever in the area.

This reminds me of the Anacostia food exhibit when they talked about the importance of a diversity of food and places to get that food. Obviously you have to make sure these vendors etc are safe and all that, but they can be a great source of affordable food that can bring a little slice of home to people.

I think this is a good continuation of my comment from earlier. I definitely agree with this frustration. When my town closed down the main street the restaurants right next to it benefited the most. These restaurants, of course, were wealthier and were generally owned by people who owned two or three other restaurants. Additionally, our city has pretty strict ordinances on food trucks etc. which obviously effects those who can't necessarily afford to buy a whole restaurant etc. However, I definitely think there is a way to create walkable communal spaces that are also equitable for everyone.

This also reminds me of the community planting day in the We Will Not Perish reading. I feel like although these are different circumstances and a different place the importance of these shared community spaces still shines through.

Wow, that's really amazing. I think it's so important to have spaces like this that can be utilized by all people regardless of legal status and ethnicity. I know when I was working at my town's migrant legal clinic it was so hard to reach people. We would set up a booth at big public events and no one would come to talk to us because there were so many cops around.

During Covid, our town opened our main street up to pedestrian traffic and experimented with this sort of thing and it was a huge success. The restaurants along the boulevard saw huge booms in business and people really enjoyed it, and there's been talk about making it permanent. However, it made a huge mess for traffic that was trying to get in and out of Traverse. Overall, I'm very much for it, but I understand why these businesses and people were worried about the negative effects the changes may bring.

This is definitely one of my main critiques of U.S. urban planning. We don't tend to have great communal spaces like you often see in older European cities. This has become even worse with the rise of combative architecture that is meant to make it so homeless people won't sleep/sit there which is a travesty in it of itself. There just aren't a lot of welcoming communal spaces in the U.S. and I think that is a shame.

This is such a common problem across all of the U.S. I actually did my silver award for Girl Scouts on closing a section of road that wasn't being used and making it a thoroughfare that would connect two very popular trails that people have been wanting to be connected for years. However, the amount of red tape and lack of funding was enough to make you go mad, but eventually, we were able to convince enough people and raise enough money to do it, but my god was it difficult.

I think it is really important to keep in mind whenever we talk about a diverse, liberal democratic society that equality does not mean equity, and that is very different than justice/liberation.

Wow. This just goes to show that the entire South was truly built on the backs of black labor. The whole economy, social structure, everything really did revolve around the exploitation and domination of African Americans. It highlights how truly revolutionary and monumental the Great Migration really was. How much change it brought to the South and its entire system.

I think this is a very good point. A lot of these large social movements whether it be civil rights or votes for women have their roots dating a long way back. These movements don't just come out of nowhere. They generally have been festering for quite a while. It's like the quote from the Raisin in the Sun, "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?..Or does it explode?"

I think it's very important to remember that unless you are Native American/First Nations then we are all from somewhere else. That "Irish Need Not Apply" wasn't so very long ago and the pain that is still remembered by many Irish, Italian, and Jewish families is the same pain that is felt by modern immigrants today. That an immigrant family today is not so very different than the immigrant families of the gilded age and beyond. After all, "If you prick us, do we not bleed?"

This is such a shocking statement when you really think about it. The lengths people were willing to go to escape the apartheid of the South. How far modern migrants from Central and South America are willing to go to escape the violence and persecution that they face in their own countries. How the more we think things have changed the more they stay the same.

It's interesting the U.S. has always fashioned itself as a democracy, and in a sense, we always were for some, but I personally hold that we were not truly a democracy until the 1970s when all portions of our population could vote and truly exercise their democratic rights. Before then we were only a partial democracy. No country can truly call itself a democracy if 12% of the population fears for their lives.

I find this to be such an interesting point. In a time and a place where a person of color was unable to show their discontent with the Southern racial caste system leaving was their only option.

This reminds me of a documentary I watched about the great migration of Sicilian Italians to the U.S. and how in some areas "It was only old women and children that remained." And how devastating the great esudu was on the communities and people that remained. Not to mention how hard it was for those who did arrive in the States.

This is such a vivid encapsulation of how the hard work and expertise of enslaved Africans and their descendants were completely erased by white narratives of superiority and "innovation" while completely failing to give credit to those who really built the Americas.

There seems to be a pervasive narrative in the west that Africa is this monolithic hunter-gatherer society that is stuck in a primitive past and unable to feed itself because of its “backward ways.” However, as this paragraph highlights, the varied and complex relationship between food procurement and spirituality in Africa is just as varied and intricate as the people it stems from. It is true that there are many places in Africa where hunter-gatherer and nomadic societies are common, and food insecurity is an issue, however, Africa is not a monolith. Many societies in Africa have been built on agriculture that made even the Romans jealous. The complex spirituality that sprung up around the Nile in Egypt or the coasts of the Great Zimbabwe are proof enough that Africa has been built on the complex interlays of community, spirituality, and nature. Even outside of the great pyramids, and palace complexes, small villages and nomadic groups have set up complex societies often based on gender equality and maternal lineage (though this too varies). The spirituality governing the “Proper way” to harvest food incorporates both a nurturing environment for the soul, and a practical means of sustaining the resources that give these communities life. These practices developed over thousands of years in both the Americas, Africa, and beyond is something that modern agriculture should invest more research into. The exploitative and soullessness that has come to define modern agriculture is not sustainable and pits man against nature in a battle that humanity cannot win. In the end it is humility in the face of nature, and a recognition of one's place among a complex and highly varied ecosystem that will promote a prosperous future for humanity.