In this episode of Compost, Cotton & Cornrows podcast, Dominique Drakeford sits in conversation with Antonio Reynoso, Brooklyn’s 20th Borough President and the first Dominican to hold the office in New York City history. Raised in Williamsburg by Dominican immigrants who arrived seeking opportunity, Reynoso reflects on growing up in a neighborhood shaped by poverty, environmental injustice and public health disparities including asthma rates so severe that Woodhull Hospital built one of the city’s only emergency asthma units. From these early experiences, Reynoso developed a deeply human definition of sustainability that rooted in the everyday question: How do we manage the systems we cannot avoid: waste, infrastructure, industry, in ways that protect both people and planet?

Together, Dominique and Reynoso explore sustainability through the lens of birthing justice, public health, and environmental equity. Reynoso shares how Brooklyn’s maternal health crisis, where Black women are up to twelve times more likely to die during childbirth than their white counterparts, became a defining focus of his administration, leading him to invest $45 million into transformative maternal health units across Brooklyn’s public hospitals. The conversation also examines the structural forces shaping health outcomes across Central Brooklyn from food deserts and heat index disparities to underfunded parks and the erosion of the public healthcare system. Bridging data-driven governance with lived experience, Reynoso outlines his ambitious comprehensive planning framework for Brooklyn while calling on residents to participate in shaping their neighborhoods through civic engagement.

At its core, this episode asks a powerful question: What does sustainability look like when we begin at birth and build systems that allow communities to thrive across generations?

https://www.brooklynbp.nyc.gov/

Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling!

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In this episode of Compost, Cotton & Cornrows, Dominique Drakeford sits in conversation with Diamond Spratling, MPH, award-winning Climate DisruptHER, two-time TEDx speaker and founder of Girl Plus Environment, a nonprofit mobilizing Black and Brown women at the forefront of climate solutions. Raised in Detroit, Diamond traces how her childhood—playing in neighborhood green spaces while her family navigated the realities of industrial pollution tied to the auto industry shaped her understanding of sustainability as something far deeper than environmentalism. For Diamond, sustainability means sustaining culture, sustaining community, and carrying ancestral practices forward a living commitment to protecting both people and planet across generations.

Together, Dominique and Diamond unpack the intersection of public health, environmental racism, and economic opportunity from the legacy of pollution in Detroit to the rising threats of data centers, energy burden, and water insecurity across the South. Diamond shares how she built Girl Plus Environment into a powerful sisterhood of over 700 members, proving that Black and Brown women have always cared for the environment even if traditional environmental spaces failed to see them. The conversation also explores the importance of joy, rest, and storytelling in sustaining movements, including Diamond’s children’s book series Sage Sails the World, which inspires young readers to approach climate action with curiosity, hope, and cultural pride.

Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling!

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In this episode of Compost, Cotton & Cornrows, Dominique Drakeford sits in rich conversation with Fredeline “Freddie” Amedee-Benjamin, co-owner of Papa Rozier Farms, a vertically integrated farm-to-store ecosystem rooted in Haiti What began as a mission to sustain Bati School evolved into a 50-acre regenerative farm producing cold-pressed castor and moringa oils that are grown, harvested, pressed, bottled and sold without a middleman in Brooklyn. “We are essentially the farmer and the producer,” Freddie shares. “I can tell you where it came from and how it came to be in your bottle.” Together, they unpack sustainability as the ability to self-sustain and to build something that protects and provides for itself no matter what the world is doing while also challenging the global narrative that reduces Haiti to crisis instead of creativity, ingenuity and legacy.

This conversation is about memory, power and refusing to follow trends that simply circle us back to what our ancestors already knew. From Haiti’s revolutionary roots in 1804 to uplifting women through education and employment (Bati School is 85% women-led), Freddie reminds us that sustainability is cultural. Castor and moringa are not new, but instead  are ancestral technologies, anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial and anti-trend. This is a story about building institutions that outlive headlines, raising daughters who show up unapologetically and proving that when you put enough energy into something, it becomes unavoidable.

CAN’T STOP! WON’T STOP! 

https://paparozierfarms.com/

Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling!

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In this episode of Compost, Cotton & Cornrows, Dominique Drakeford sits in powerful conversation with Catherine Coleman Flowers - MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient, founder of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice and one of the foremost architects of modern environmental justice. From her upbringing in Lowndes County, Alabama where rows of cotton met front doors and families engineered their own sanitation systems  to advising the White House on federal environmental policy, Catherine reframes sustainability as “building something that’s lasting” in a nation designed for planned obsolescence. She unpacks how civil rights organizing shaped her advocacy, why environmental injustice is not a “Black issue” but a systems issue, and how storytelling, data, and local political power shape who gets protected.

Together, they confront the rising tensions of our time: water-hungry data centers and what Catherine calls America’s “disaster economy” a system that profits from neglect and rebuilds only after harm. Yet this is not a conversation rooted in despair. It is grounded in stewardship, spirituality and the radical belief that if we “do the work again,” change is not only possible, it is inevitable. This episode is a masterclass in resilience, policy literacy and the sacred responsibility we all carry as environmental stewards.

https://www.catherinecolemanflowers.com/

Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling!

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In this episode of Compost, Cotton & Cornrows, Dominique Drakeford sits with Christa Barfield, aka FarmerJawn - regenerative agriculture powerhouse, James Beard Award winner, and founder of the largest Black woman-owned regenerative farm in the United States. From managing 128 acres across Pennsylvania to building markets for heritage crops like Nigerian spinach, Christa breaks down what sustainability actually means when you remove the romance and face the reality: profitability. She unpacks why true longevity in farming requires economic power, why undercapitalization is one of the biggest threats to land stewardship and how her company’s decision-making is rooted in a three-pillar framework of environmental, social and physical health. This is a masterclass in building systems that nourishes financial legacy and wellbeing. 

Together, they explore regeneration as a lifestyle ethic from letting soil rest to letting ourselves rest. We unpack how “Food is Medicine” is an overused slogan in mainstream agricultural spaces, but for Christa, it’s a real strategy for public health transformation. Christa shares hard-won wisdom on funding pathways, building a protective business trinity (lawyer, accountant, insurance), navigating spaces where you’re the only one and why she’s done being “poor and popular.” The conversation stretches into lineage, land inheritance, family wealth models and her bold new pay-what-you-wish corner store designed to restore dignity and nutrition access in one of Philadelphia’s most underserved neighborhoods. This episode is a financial sustainability blueprint! 

https://www.farmerjawn.co/

Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling!

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In this episode of Compost, Cotton & Cornrows, host Dominique Drakeford sits with Heather McTeer Toney, executive director of the Beyond Petrochemicals campaign, 2025 Forbes Sustainability Leader, former mayor of Greenville Mississippi and former Regional Administrator for EPA Region 4. Together they explore what sustainability looks like when it begins with Black life, cultural memory and lived experience rather than policy jargon or extractive frameworks. Drawing from Heather’s leadership in cultural organizing, this conversation reframes environmentalism as something deeply familiar and rooted in the stewardship and wisdom of people who have always lived closest to the land.

From petrochemicals and plastics to fast fashion, beauty culture and agriculture, Dominique and Heather unpack how industries built on extraction continue to harm Black and brown communities while selling convenience as progress. Heather traces the lineage from plantations to petrochemical corridors, challenges loud definitions of wealth and calls for a quieter, more intentional vision of luxury grounded in health, longevity and collective care. This episode is both a reckoning and a love letter, reminding us that storytelling is our most underutilized renewable energy source. This is a joyous call to action to listen differently, consume intentionally and claim our role as architects of the futures we deserve.

https://www.beyondpetrochemicals.org/

Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling!

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In this episode of Compost, Cotton & Cornrows, Dominique Drakeford sits with Latham Thomas, renowned birth justice advocate, cultural theorist and founder of Mama Glow, a global maternal health and education platform transforming how birth, healing and care are practiced across communities worldwide. Known for pioneering a model of birth work rooted in Black feminism, spirituality and justice, Latham has shaped a generation of care workers. Together, they reframe sustainability as a living principle: regeneration grounded in lineage, community and the moral intelligence of Black women.

What follows is a powerful meditation on care as resistance. Latham names how carceral systems - medicine, media, immigration enforcement  and state violence extract from Black bodies while denying dignity and why refusing the spectacle of Black pain is itself an act of protection. Drawing from Black matriarchy, Afrofuturism and ancestral technologies, she offers a blueprint for building futures that cannot be destroyed because they are encoded, relational and quietly revolutionary. This episode is an invitation to slow down and  build with intention. She unapologetically reminds us to remember that Black women have always set the moral and spiritual standard for what survival, sustainability and freedom truly mean.

https://mamaglowfoundation.org/

Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling!

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This week, Compost, Cotton & Cornrows interrupts our regularly scheduled program. No guest. No interview. No promo assets. 

Host Dominique Drakeford offers a short grounded  reflection on nervous system care, burnout and the radical necessity of pause as a sustainability practice. In a world saturated with trauma, crisis and constant resistance, this episode reframes rest and re-regulation as political acts of preservation and power - especially for Black women and Black mothers.

This is not an escape from the work, it’s maintenance for the mission.
Because sustainability must center the care of Black women as well as care as an infrastructure. 🌱

Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling!

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In this episode of Compost, Cotton & Cornrows, Dominique Drakeford sits with Kev aka “The Plant Papi”, creator and cultural storyteller known for weaving plant care, mental wellness and radical self-honesty into everyday life. What begins as a conversation about houseplants opens into something deeper: how plant care becomes a mirror. Kev reflects on how tending plants during the pandemic helped him navigate grief, identity shifts, fatherhood and mental health and how he now reads his plants as signals of how he is doing. From moving away from perfection to embracing seasonality, balance and softness, this episode reframes plant care as a living practice of self-check-in.

Together, Dominique and Kev explore representation, history and memory … what it means to be a Black man publicly rooted in wellness, curiosity, humor and vulnerability. Kev traces the ancestral and political journeys of plants across Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas while sharing an insightful example from the Haitian Revolution. The conversation moves fluidly between joy and truth, grief and play, reminding us that sustainability is not just about what we grow but how we show up, who we allow ourselves to be and the freedom found in being fully human. Come for the plants. Stay for the wisdom, the laughter and the reminder that healing doesn’t have to look one way.

Listen now on all streaming platforms and watch the full conversation on YouTube.

Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling!

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In this uncompromising conversation, Dominique Drakeford sits with Maurice Carney, co-founder and Executive Director of Friends of the Congo, to name what the world has been trained to ignore: the Congo is not a footnote to modern life … It is its foundation. From the transatlantic slave trade to King Leopold II’s genocidal regime, from the assassination of Patrice Lumumba to today’s cobalt-powered green energy transition, Maurice traces how African labor, land and intellect have been systematically extracted to fuel global capitalism, while Congolese lives are rendered disposable. He dismantles the colonial gaze, challenges dominant climate narratives that erase Congo, and makes the case that you cannot talk about sustainability, technology, artificial intelligence or climate justice without reckoning with the Congo Basin - the world’s second-largest rainforest and one of its most critical carbon sinks.

But this episode is not only an indictment; it is a declaration of resistance. Maurice introduces the Basandja Coalition and the principle of agro-liberation. It become evident how imperative it is to return to indigenous knowledge, soil, culture and collective ethics as pathways to liberation. He insists on agency over victimhood, naming the organizers, women, farmers and communities who are building power on the frontlines of mines, peatlands and forests. This conversation asks more of us as listeners, consumers and global citizens: to refuse normalization, to understand our complicity and to be found by the side of the Congolese people in the unfinished struggle for a #FreeCongo. A Free Congo is one where Congolese control their land, resources, and future for the benefit of Africa and the world.

CCC COMMUNITY - this is a listening responsibility. Tune in, share this episode, and explore how to support Congolese movements at freecongo.org. Watch or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

https://friendsofthecongo.org/

Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling!

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