This journal issue opened with a brief overview of the history, including specific policies and practices that contributed to the current conditions regarding land. In the spirit of Sankofa, this reflection on the past allows us to understand the trends at play and the strategies we are using (and need to further employ) today. 

Colonialism, enclosure, parceling of land, containment, speculative markets, and race based–including anti-Black racism–have all specifically played a role in creating the conditions we see today. Because of this, our resistance must include solutions that specifically counter these trends, including:

• recovering and practicing community governance 
• restoring our expertise in democratic governance 
• resource sharing 
• policy work 
• creating alternatives to safety 
• removing land from the speculative market 
• solidarity building 
• recovering healthier relationships with our foodways 
• cultural reclamation of regenerative/sustainable relationships with the land 

We offer our deepest gratitude (asante sana) to you, our contributors, land stewards, the journal design team, artists, and storytellers that breathed life and love into this issue. Land justice work connects to so many issues and solutions in our communities including safety, democratic governance, community self-determination, healing justice, food sovereignty, climate justice, environmental justice, and so much more. From urban agriculture to rural land stewardship, our comrades in the field of food and land justice are leading some incredibly important interventions together.  

As activist Mariame Kaba stated, abolition is about “breaking with the current order, saying we don’t want this and simultaneously building a new world.” It’s about “rehearsing abolition,” which is exactly what many land stewards and organizations are working towards–rehearsing freedom. 

Black communities have a deep connection to the earth with the land as a source of spiritual, economic, cultural, and communal grounding. Overcoming obstacles and barriers that prevent Black land stewards from engaging in meaningful and impactful work requires both collective effort and support from all of us. Thus the need for deep sustained capacity and resources to collectively #DefendBlackLand and liberate land from the speculative market is imperative. 

“Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice and equality.”- Malcolm X