Back To Black

​About Us

 

​Back to Black is a Cooperative who aims to provide the means of sustaining ourselves and our communities spiritually and physically. Re-establishing the relationship with Nature (our ecosystems) will inform reciprocal and co-dependent relationships between the co-op and community members. Our organization seeks to facilitate this relationship using agriculture, and wellness products as our tool for restorative economic justice and rehabilitation from the systematic oppression of people of color throughout the USA and the world. .

 

Vision Statement

 

The feeling of quiet understanding between a human and other living things in our ecosystems and the subsequent spiritual restitution is invaluable. This symbiotic relationship is Back to Black Co-Operation’s impetus and instructs our collective’s ways of being. Back to Black exists to facilitate holistic relationships with Nature through a focus on research and implementation of indigenous farming, governance, & relationship structures and cultural meaning making practices. We provide comprehensive social justice education, political education (lesson in local, state, and federal governance structures), and leadership training for youth with an emphasis on local and industrial food systems and their impact on communities of color so our students are knowledgeable of navigating the socio-political landscape of food and agriculture. Back to Black stresses the importance of sustainability through community responsibility, inter-generational relationships, and cooperative economics. As such, Back to Black is comprised of a variety of retail opportunities for the maintenance of the co-operation and for participating youth to engage in entrepreneurship.

 

Mission Statement

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Our mission is to partner with POC in an effort to educate, and train people of color to utilize urban agriculture, and the creation of health and wellness products as both a manner of grounding, healing and gaining economic independence within their lives. Our program offers a comprehensive agricultural education program including culinary skills, nutrition, marketing, and the science, technology, and history of agriculture to youth & community members. We document and archive our work in an effort to create a model of sustainable business practices that can be recreated across the world.

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Ultimately we will educate our the communities we work with in Kujichagulia (Self Determination) and Ujamaa (Co-operative economics)  through commercial urban agriculture and social entrepreneurship to provide our community  food security and Ujima (Collective work and Responsibility.)