LIFT Economy

The State of Black America

LIFT Economy’s Next Economy MBA course is designed for entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, students / recent graduates, employees, and folks who want to learn more about transformational Next Economy strategies and businesses. The next course starts on April 13th--register today at https://www.lifteconomy.com/mba! Join the growing alumni network of nearly 250+ alumni who’ve gone through the program and learned essential skills and built lifelong relationships for catalyzing businesses in the emergent regenerative economy!

Join LIFT Partner Ryan Honeyman, Carley Hauck, Dr. Nika White, and Sheryl O'Loughlin for a discussion about "How to be a Conscious and Inclusive Leader" next Thursday, February 25th at 2:00pm PST! More info + register:

Great read from the inimitable Vu Lee / @nonprofitaf: "21 Signs You or Your Organization May Be the White Moderate Dr. King Warned About" https://buff.ly/3qxd80d #BCorp #socent #decolonizingwealth #impinv #philanthropy

https://www.counterpunch.org//black-lives-matter-and-the/

Towards Aware and No-Harm Investing Course Global markets are inherently unsustainable and harmful, and even conscientious individual investors struggle to disengage from the juggernaut of conventional finance. Marco Vangelisti, EK4T founder will teach a 10-week self-paces on-course for financial advisers and individual investors about diversifying away from Wall Street toward impact and regenerative investing based on his experience as investment manager and 100% aware and n...o-harm investor. The course starts on January 18th bit.ly/MQRE21Q1 Towards Aware and No-Harm Investing is an on-line course for financial advisers and individual investors taught by Marco Vangelisti, EK4T founder about diversifying away from Wall Street toward impact and regenerative investing based on his experience as investment manager and 100% impact investor. A growing number of investors are becoming distrusting of Wall Street and of the Federal Reserve's manipulations of financial markets and are looking for ways to truly align their investments with their personal values. Learn how to move beyond Wall Street and towards the future you want. The course starts on January 18th bit.ly/MQRE21Q1 See more

Please support LIFT Client Native Conservancy and sign this petition. Dune Lankard, an Eyak Athabaskan native has endorsed extending the Oil Spill Restoration Boundary, adjusting the boundary to encompass the entire Copper River Delta region, including the Bering River Coalfields, using an ecosystem approach. This will be a huge win for Eyak people and the more-than-human allies. Please sign and share! http://chng.it/ZHGkbYwVPg

The Indigenous Solidarity Network has developed a Rethinking "Thanksgiving" toolkit geared for white folks to discuss settler privilege with family, friends, and broader community. Check it out here: #BCorp #socent #impinv #Whitesupremacy @surjbayarea

Tonnage puns from friends at Zero Foodprint. Please consider support for Solidarity Farm /Pauma Tribal Farm. "We all want a little more climate optimism, but what about a TON of it? You can literally pull a ton of greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere with @zerofoodprint, just by contributing to carbon farming projects at Solidarity Farm /Pauma Tribal Farm zerofoodprint.org/featuredproject Each $48 contribution will help remove approximately one ton of CO2 emissions from the... atmosphere, storing it as healthy soil on the farm." It’s a small price for a tonne of CO2 and a TON of good feelings.

What is your plan when #Trump loses the election, but claims that everything was "rigged"? The period of time between Nov 3 - Jan 19 is critical. This guide explains how we can mobilize to ensure Trump is forced out. Please share widely! #BCorp #BLM

We must end police brutality and defend Black Lives both in the U.S. and across the globe. Join us to demand justice for #EndSARS protestors in Nigeria and call for an international inquiry into the #LekkiMassacre. Sign here: https://bit.ly/31ztXh3

Camille Johnson & Kwaku Osei: Investment Clubs Empower Communities with Cooperative Capital [Ep. 214] https://www.lifteconomy.com/next-economy//next-economy-now Celebrate Next Economy Now Podcast's milestone of hitting our 200th episode with us by joining our Membership Community on Patreon!: http://patreon.com/nexteconomynow

Resmaa Menakem: We Will Never Go Back to Normal [Ep. 213] https://www.lifteconomy.com/next-economy//next-economy-now Celebrate Next Economy Now Podcast's milestone of hitting our 200th episode with us by joining our Membership Community on Patreon!: http://patreon.com/nexteconomynow

LIFT Partner Ryan Honeyman recently had the privilege of interviewing @nytimes bestselling author @ResmaaMenakem about #racism, dismantling #whitesupremacy, and why we are never going back to "normal." Resmaa's words are transformative and powerful! Check out the interview here: #BCorp #BlackLivesMatter

Noran Sanford, Robin Patel, & Norman Garcia-Lopez: "Flip Your Prison" with Growing Change [Ep. 212] https://www.lifteconomy.com/next-economy//next-economy-now Celebrate Next Economy Now Podcast's milestone of hitting our 200th episode with us by joining our Membership Community on Patreon!: http://patreon.com/nexteconomynow

Thanks for the shout out Net Impact!

UPDATE: I'm putting a fundraiser here for an Indigenous focused non-profit in Oregon a friend recommended to me. Since many people are seeing this, I thought it... would be nice to contribute some funds. Kiss the Ground Film Review Note: I worked for the non-profit Kiss the Ground from February 2019 to August 2020 as a contractor. I left the organization for some of the same reasons I outline in the review below. The Kiss the Ground film was in part produced and promoted by the non-profit organization. There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground. This quote from Rumi provides the namesake for the Kiss the Ground film. Unfortunately, the film chooses to ignore 999 of those ways and almost everyone who looks like Rumi, the Persian poet. For any person of color watching this film, its most glaring fault is its utter lack of representation. The film, which presents regenerative agriculture as the solution to climate change, features a series of celebrities and experts showing how this type of farming can sequester carbon from the atmosphere. Of those, only three experts are people of color, and their speaking time in the film lasts for less than 5 minutes of the 84 minute runtime. After the last POC presenter speakers, the audience is then treated to a vomit-inducing scene of white saviorism as white celebrities Courtney and David Arquette teach Black people in Haiti how to compost their own poop. Scenes of the satisfied white lady with smiling Black children abound. Perfect. And that’s just the surface. The racism of this film actually runs much deeperto its foundational concepts and presentations. Let’s start with the basics: What is the cause of Climate Change? The film tells us that it’s carbon in the atmosphere, and if we would just change the way we farm (subtext: don’t change anything else), we could reverse it. Problem solved. But is carbon really the cause of climate change, as this film (and much of our broader society, including most environmental groups) would like us to believe? Or is carbon in the atmosphere, and climate change more broadly, a symptom of a global colonial culture that treats Earth and people of color as resources to be mined? If carbon is the cause of Climate Change, then yes, we can just change the way we farm. Along with that, we can accept much else of our current situation. We can accept that white people own 98% of rural land in America and are the rightful caretakers of that land. We can accept that we live in a country created from the systematic genocide of its Indigenous caretakers. And we can also accept that predominantly white male farmers will be our saviors in the fight against climate change, as the film quietly asks us to do. How can we, as people of color and urban dwellers, participate in this idyllic future? What is our role? Just like Giselle and Tom Brady, we can feed our family pasture-raised meat for $35 a pound while we sip our green juice poolside at our Malibu beach house. Just buy enough expensive meat from white farmers, and it’ll all be okay. Carbon is not the cause of climate change (I’ve written about this before). It is just another symptom of a culture, a society, an economic system, and a political system with racism, rape, and plunder at its core. Yes, our farming practices need to change, but only as a result of much deeper systemic changes. Taking care of the earth we often walk on and grow our food from is tremendously important. We can’t, however, stop there and ignore Earth in her other forms: as farm workers who continue to work in inhumane and often slavelike conditions; as urban people of color who continually experience trauma and often lack access to the healing gardens and forests where we could release this trauma; and as Indigenous peoples who have been robbed of their homelands, forced to forget their languages and cultural traditions, and are now told, Hey, science (read: white people) has now validated what you’ve been doing for millenia; no you’re still not getting your land back. And can we really have a conversation about regenerative agriculture without talking about: moving from private property to communal land management; reparations for Indigenous and Black communities whose bodies were literally raped and pillaged as funding for capitalism; the dismantling of our current economic system which places no value on functioning forests, running rivers, or healthy people? At the very least, when making a documentary about land and people, can we feature for more than fleeting seconds Indigenous, Black and Brown led food and land sovereignty movements that discovered we shouldn’t rape the soil long before Gabe Brown? If you’ve gotten this far in my review, you can probably read how fucking angry I am with this film. My hand is shaking and my blood pressure is rising as I write this. I really don’t understand how such a ridiculously ignorant film could be funded for millions of dollars and be released today. I am also shocked that the production team could be so absent-minded after all that has happened this year, that the film's launch team and the non-profit Kiss the Ground made no effort to address the lack of diversity in the film, issue an apology, or highlight people and organizations that should have been the featured characters of the film. If there is one true message in the film, it’s that there is genuine hope for our future as this Planet, and not because some white farmers are going to save us (sidenote: can we please stop talking about saving things?). I have hope because I found her in the garden of this Earth. I see, in this garden, her ability to heal, and I understand that I have that same ability because I am her. We all are. And this understanding is at the heart of every Indigenous culture. If you haven’t watched Kiss the Ground yet, don’t bother. Watch Gather instead. And if you’re looking for hope, for understanding, for clarity, start gardening.

Our very own Rev Dr. Heber Brown!!! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/harvesting-fruits-of-food-just

Rebecca Fisher-McGinty: Strengthening Collaborative Leaders at Round Sky Solutions [Ep. 211] https://www.lifteconomy.com/next-economy//next-economy-now Celebrate Next Economy Now Podcast's milestone of hitting our 200th episode with us by joining our Membership Community on Patreon!: http://patreon.com/nexteconomynow

Samantha Slade: Creating a Non-hierarchical Organization, One Practice at a Time [Ep. 210] https://www.lifteconomy.com/next-economy//next-economy-now Celebrate Next Economy Now Podcast's milestone of hitting our 200th episode with us by joining our Membership Community on Patreon!: http://patreon.com/nexteconomynow

reposting w/ fixed link: Steve Heckeroth: Localizing Food & Energy Self-Reliance with Solectrac's Electric Tractors [Ep. 208] https://www.lifteconomy.com/next-economy//next-economy-now... Celebrate Next Economy Now Podcast's milestone of hitting our 200th episode with us by joining our Membership Community on Patreon!: http://patreon.com/nexteconomynow

reposting w/ fixed link: Holly Ruxin: Financial Tools for Care and Renewal at Montcalm TCR [Ep. 207] https://www.lifteconomy.com/next-economy//next-economy-now... Celebrate Next Economy Now Podcast's milestone of hitting our 200th episode with us by joining our Membership Community on Patreon!: http://patreon.com/nexteconomynow

reposting w/ fixed link: Ian Haney Lopez: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America [Ep. 206] https://www.lifteconomy.com/next-economy//next-economy-now... Celebrate Next Economy Now Podcast's milestone of hitting our 200th episode with us by joining our Membership Community on Patreon!: http://patreon.com/nexteconomynow

reposting w/ fixed link: Doria Robinson & Princess Robinson: BIPOC Community Wealth Building at Cooperation Richmond [Ep. 205] https://www.lifteconomy.com/next-economy//next-economy-now... Celebrate Next Economy Now Podcast's milestone of hitting our 200th episode with us by joining our Membership Community on Patreon!: http://patreon.com/nexteconomynow