Compost, Cotton & Cornrows

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!

@Compost_Cotton_Cornrows

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!

@Compost_Cotton_Cornrows

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!

@Compost_Cotton_Cornrows

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!

@Compost_Cotton_Cornrows

In Episode 31 of Compost Cotton and Cornrows, Dominique Drakeford sits with Ciara Imani May, founder of Rebundle and producer of Reclaimed Beyond the Braid, for a conversation that reframes beauty as a climate and health conversation rooted in agency ownership and truth. What begins as a personal question about what synthetic hair is made of opens into a powerful exploration of sustainability as harmony between our bodies, our communities and the ecosystems that sustain us. Ciara traces her journey from hypothesis to action revealing how curiosity, resourcefulness and community feedback sparked the creation of plant based hair made from banana fiber and why hair has long been left out of mainstream sustainability discourse despite its global environmental and cultural impact.

This episode goes deep into the science storytelling and strategy behind building a regenerative supply chain for a nineteen billion dollar industry while centering Black women as inventors, innovators and rightful owners. Ciara breaks down the cultural significance of securing a patent led by Black women alongside the necessity of legal protection in climate innovation and the future of expanding this model across the global banana belt. Together they name what so many avoid saying out loud that products touching our scalps are environmental justice issues that demand clinical testing accountability and imagination. This is a conversation about claiming space and building what has never existed before. This episode  understands that Black led innovation must be integrated as a central climate solution. 

https://rebundle.co/

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

@Compost_Cotton_Cornrows

In this impact interview, Dominique Drakeford sits with Shani Peters and Joseph Cuillier, co-directors of The Black School in New Orleans, to explore what it truly means to build a Black-led institution rooted in care, love, and collective imagination. Drawing from the wisdom of bell hooks, Malcolm X, Paulo Freire, and the Black radical tradition, they unpack sustainability not as maintenance of broken systems, but as the commitment to making what is good last for our people, our communities, and the land. From their foundational questions “What do you love about your community” and “What do you want to change about your community” to their belief that Black youth are already experts of their own realities, this conversation reframes education as a communal, creative, and liberatory practice

Grounded as a physical schoolhouse in the Seventh Ward, one of the oldest Black neighborhoods in the country, Shani and Joseph speak candidly about generational trauma, Hurricane Katrina, environmental chaos, and the realities young people face stepping into adulthood at this moment in history. They share how The Black School responds with a holistic, constellational approach that connects land, food, art, economics, spirit and joy, alongside tools like the Black School Process Deck that make Black radical frameworks accessible and actionable. This episode is a powerful meditation on building institutions that do not replicate harmful models, but instead protect Black space, honor joy as resistance and invite community ownership as a pathway to true sustainability and self-determination. 

https://theblack.school/

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

@Compost_Cotton_Cornrows

In this episode of Compost, Cotton & Cornrows, Dominique Drakeford sits with Niya Brown Matthews, a self-taught, first-generation farmer and community educator. Niya reframes growing as a practice of awareness and responsibility. The garden becomes a living classroom, teaching us to observe patterns, respect timing and respond instead of control. Sustainability, she explains, is bigger than self. It is legacy, alignment, and community stewardship. When we strip away perfectionism and curated aesthetics, we are left with the essential question: why are we doing this, and can it last? Nature answers when we are present enough to listen.

Niya’s journey reflects range and resolve. She speaks of her pivot from a fast-paced corporate life in Atlanta filled with red bottoms, boardrooms and constant motion to building a farm space alongside her husband during the pandemic with the intention to heal, slow down and restore their relationship to food. That choice reshaped their health, clarified their purpose and deepened their responsibility to the community. Growing food is named for what it is: an urgent and necessary currency. One that builds resilience, restores health and strengthens community power. If we pay attention to the land, the body, and the climate, the future gives us aligned instruction. 

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

@Compost_Cotton_Cornrows

Jordan King steps into Compost, Cotton & Cornrows as proof that climate science does not have to be sterile, inaccessible or stripped of culture to be credible. Jamaican-born and trained in Marine Environmental Sciences and Biology, Jordan reframes the Everglades not as a distant wetland, but as a living system under siege by climate change, unchecked development, and disrupted freshwater flow. From flocculent organic matter to the importance and impact of carbon, Jordan translates complex ecological processes into truth you can feel, making it painfully clear how one shift in the system sets off a chain reaction that touches everything downstream including us.

But this conversation is not just about science. It is about who gets to be a scientist. This 23 year old with a beautiful nature inspired grill weaves rap, fashion, art and cultural expression into research, rejecting the idea that brilliance must look buttoned-up to be valid. We talk about free graduate education, fieldwork waist-deep in Everglades water and why Gen Zers are hungry to engage with climate work when they can finally see themselves reflected in it. This episode is about advocating for ecosystems, telling the truth about climate systems and using every tool available to reach people where they are. 

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

@Compost_Cotton_Cornrows

Jazmin Duke enters this conversation like a wellness renegade dismantling everything we thought we knew about our bodies, our cravings and the colonial food systems that dictate them. She traces her journey from a painful menstrual cycle to a plant-powered lifestyle rooted in ancestral science, exposing the violent parallels between animal agriculture and slavery and asking a searing question: If our ancestors turned scraps into soul food under captivity, why are we still eating what they were forced to eat - now that we have the freedom and knowledge to evolve? As a longtime vegan, Jazmin breaks down the genius of Black herbal lineage, menstrual sovereignty and the radical truth that women’s wellness is not new, it really is memory. And she does it with unapologetic cultural flair that’s reminding us that Black women have always been the blueprint, always been the botanists, and always been the ones remixing survival into brilliance.

But Jazmin doesn’t just remember, she is unapologetically building. In a landscape where the women’s wellness industry is overwhelmingly white and clinically sterile, she conjures Kitty Coo - a luxury women’s wellness brand that refuses to flatten femininity into beige minimalism. Her products feel like ancestral alchemy dipped in neon: vibrant packaging, playful design and her girly-girl aesthetic that is as scientific as it is spiritual, as joyful as it is rebellious. From okra’s hidden legacy as an ancestral aphrodisiac to the microbiome as a blueprint of liberation, Jazmin reveals how pleasure, period health and sexual literacy are political acts and why Black women cannot be erased from an industry they created. This is most certainly a cute conversation about self-care but it’s also a reclamation of knowledge, power and divine intelligence that feels like someone finally turned the lights back on.

https://kittycoowellness.com/

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

@Compost_Cotton_Cornrows

Sherrell Dorsey enters this conversation with the certainty and clarity that sustainability is a return to our original intelligence and is the design lab where climate tech, capital, innovation and narrative control decide who gets to build tomorrow. In this episode she traces the ways climate action becomes transformative when rooted in storytelling, culture and technological fluency. Sherrell breaks down how fashion, beauty and wellness shaped her early understanding of systems and how those nonlinear experiences led her into the climate tech landscape. She explains that sustainability demands a deep reconnection to self and to the earth and insists that we already possess the regenerative solutions we need. The real barrier is not innovation but access and subsequently the power that money brings. Sherrell details the importance of learning how technology moves, who funds it and how narratives create entire worlds that shape our desires, economies and sense of possibility.

As the conversation unfolds Sherrell reveals the urgent need for Black communities to unapologetically show up with precision in policy rooms, funding environments and climate negotiations. She examines the emerging universe of green tech investments, the rise of climate funds and the limitations of venture capital for long term climate solutions. Sherrell offers a strategic framework for negotiating community benefit agreements, building institutional power and moving from reaction to proactive civic engagement that’s also rooted in care. She argues that AI and climate technology will determine economic mobility for the next decade and warns that the train has already left the station. This episode calls listeners to build relationships, become fluent in the language of power and step into rooms that were not designed with us in mind. It is a masterclass in understanding sustainability as an ecosystem of storytelling, infrastructure and political strategy.

https://www.sherrelldorsey.com/

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

@Compost_Cotton_Cornrows