Grow Food NOT Prisons Campaign
Dearest friends and community,
We invite you to sow SWEET FREEDOM NOW.
Sweet Freedom Farm, a BIPOC and abolitionist led farming project feeding and protecting our Black, indigenous, communities of color, is calling on our dear and beloved community [aka YOU] to help us with our GROW FOOD, NOT PRISONS Campaign aiming to fundraise $200k by July 21.
Over the last decade we have fed and brought hundreds of families to visit their incarcerated loved ones through our Victory Bus Project, reclaimed sweetness by carrying out sugaring as abolition, and have reconnected dozens of young people to the land. When the pandemic asked the world to adapt our strategies for keeping our communities safe, healthy, and free, we dedicated ourselves to seeding a farm. A farm that grows food, not prisons.
Black and Brown people are most impacted by mass incarceration in the United States. The effects of mass incarceration disrupt economic potential for people of color, lead to a breakdown of the social fiber that makes our communities strong and self-determinate, and reverberate throughout our food system.
Mass incarceration affects our community through over-policing. 75% of prisoners in New York State prisons come from just seven neighborhoods in New York City. The communities targeted by over-policing are then subject to ongoing interaction with a correctional system that does not solve violence or crime but rather perpetuates systemic racism and oppression. Prisons continue to take the place of schools, mental health facilities, foster care, and drug rehabilitation, but do not make good on any promises of transforming individual or societal issues. Sweet Freedom Farm aims to transform the reality of our Black, indigenous and communities of color by securing food sovereignty and sustaining safe spaces for reconnecting to the earth and self.
The Grow Food, Not Prisons Campaign supports our capacity to:
Feed 250+ BIPOC families, incarcerated folk & people persecuted by the prison industrial complex
Support 120+ youth alternative-to-incarceration programming
Create regenerative models of both agricultural practices & livelihood of BIPOC farmers
Support the Sweet Freedom Farm Project in seeding a world where we grow food, not prisons, where Black, indigenous, peoples of color, queer & intersectional persons are nourished, where intergenerational community comes together to remember, honor & reclaim our sacred birth right: freedom. Sweet freedom. Sweet freedom in relationship with our oldest elder and everything, the land. Contribute to Grow Food, Not Prisons NOW.
We are launching GROW FOOD, NOT PRISONS on June 9th in honor of our Black freedom fighter & founder Jalal Sabur’s born day.
Here’s how you can support Grow Food, Not Prisons:
Contribute to our fundraiser CLICK HERE or by making out a check out to the Freedom Food Alliance
Promote our campaign on your newsletter, social media platforms & networks between 6/9-7/21 [Feel free to use the attached flyer & language for our campaign]
Fundraise in our honor. Hold a giveaway, dinner, etc and dedicate the proceeds to Sweet Freedom
Share your donors. We are stronger when we support each other, we are stronger when we share our resources. Can you share your abundance with us?
We love you and we need you.
