The Takeaway

A recent study from The New Republic which analyzed historical data from 1920 to 1997, found that the value of stolen Black farmland in that period equates to $326 Billion dollars today.  But Black land has been, and remains a site of Black resistance.

To learn more about the ways Black people and communities use land, farming, and food justice as tools of resistance against racial inequality, we speak with Monica White, professor of environmental justice at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement. 

Then, we hear from one Black freedom farmer in North Carolina about his Black land reclamation project. Kamal Bell, is the founder of Sankofa Farms in Cedar Grove, North Carolina.  There, he grows food on a 12-acre farm, and has an education program working with Black youth and teaching them about food deserts and ancestral history.

Last week, a dozen Black girls and women gathered at Melissa's home for the Black Land Use and Food Supply Summer, an immersive one week living and learning project organized by the New Jersey based Grassroots Community Foundation in collaboration with the Anna Julia Cooper Center. 

We hear from the participants: 

Amina Anekwe (17) from New Jersey 

Nyasah Simmons (11) from New Jersey 

Farida Odumosu (17) from New Jersey 

Ain Dantzler (14) from Philadelphia 

Diya Dantzler (20) from Philadelphia 

Leinad Ra (14) from Philadelphia 

Zolah Ramsey-Francis (13) from Maryland 

Alana Travitt (16) from New Jersey 

And we take a tour with the participants of Green Heffa Farms, in Liberty, North Carolina with owner and operator Farmer Cee about regenerative farming and connections to Black land.

A former high-school dropout from Washington D.C., Carlton McCoy found his calling after attending culinary school.  After working at several of New York City’s top restaurants, McCoy discovered a love for wine.  By 28, he became just the second ever Black Master Sommelier. Today McCoy is the Managing Partner of Lawrence Wine Estates, a collection of Napa Valley wineries, and co-founded The Roots Fund, which is working to diversify the wine world by providing pathways for Black and Indigenous people.

Now, McCoy has his own travel show on CNN, Nomad with Carlton McCoy, in which he explores people, culture, and foods from around the world.

In May, Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed in May while reporting on an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank. An investigation by CNN found that “Abu Akleh was shot dead in a targeted attack by Israeli forces,” but after reviewing investigations conducted by Israel and Palestinian authorities, the U.S. State Department claimed that a damaged bullet prevented the U.S. government from making any conclusions over whether Israeli forces were fully responsible for her death.  

We speak with Shireen Abu Akleh’s niece, Lina Abu Akleh, who is demanding accountability from the U.S. government. She was one of multiple members of the Abu Akleh family who met this week with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

A new startup tournament, LIV Golf, backed by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and financed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign-wealth fund, is dividing the professional golf world by promising players multi-million dollar prizes and attracting some of the best-known names in golf to play in their circuit. And rebranding the game as “GOLF, BUT LOUDER.”

All this is upsetting already established tournaments like the PGA Tour – which is like the NFL of American Football, or the MLB of Baseball – and for nearly a century, it has been pro golf's gold standard tour.

Top golfers including former World No. 1 Dustin Johnson have resigned from the PGA Tour and moved over to LIV Golf. LIV reportedly offered Johnson $100-150 million to play. Six-time-major-winner Phil Mickelson joined LIV Golf with an even bigger reported $200 million contract. Others, like Tiger Woods, who reportedly turned down a nearly $1 billion offer from LIV, have been loyal to the PGA, and has criticized players who have left. 

But LIV’s supporters are also having to address Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, including the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 by Saudi agents.

Former president Donald Trump, who has business ties to Saudi Arabia and has repeatedly downplayed concerns about the country’s record, plays today in a pro-am tournament at his Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, in New Jersey. 

To tee things off for us, we’re joined by Andrew Beaton, sports reporter for The Wall Street Journal.

Republican state lawmakers have introduced a record number of laws this year intended to limits the rights of trans, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people. According to data compiled by the ACLU, they've proposed 162 bills in the first half of this year alone, outpacing the 151 laws considered throughout all of last year. 

These legislative campaigns are largely motivated by a small group of wealthy far-right actors with extreme religious beliefs. They might remain somewhat fringe if not for a network of think tanks and outlets with mainstream credibility laundering their ideas to the public. Peabody-award winning journalist and founder of Translash Media Imara Jones unravels this apparatus in her investigative podcast, The Anti-Trans Hate Machine: A Plot Against Equality. She joins us to explain how the machine works, and how to resist it.

With four months left until the midterms, we check in on Democratic strategy and what the White House is thinking with Basil Smikle, a Democratic strategist and director of the public policy program at Hunter College and Maria Teresa Kumar, Voto Latino’s founding president.

The Oak Fire in Mariposa County, California has scorched more than 18,000 acres since it started last Friday. 

It comes several weeks after the start of the Washburn fire, which is now more than 85 percent contained. But both fires have threatened Yosemite National Park and the communities that surround it.

While the idea that fighting fire with fire might sound counterintuitive, it’s a practice with plenty of history and success in mitigating fire damage.

Yosemite’s sequoia trees, for example, remained relatively undamaged by this month’s Washburn fire. And many experts believe that’s due to the use of prescribed fires.

The Takeaway spoke with environment reporter Manola Secaira about the recent Washburn and Oak fires in California and how effective efforts to limit the damage of wildfires to forests have been so far this year.

The Takeaway was also joined by Scott Stephens, Professor of Fire Science at UC Berkeley, to understand prescribed fires and how they helped in California. 

Multinational corporations from T-Mobile to Jimmy John's to Build-A-Bear have increasingly baited online engagement with "not safe for work" social media posts. Is tweeting about sliding into DMs, launching an OnlyFans, or how hot their "buns" are good for their brands? We talk with Nathan Allebach, Creative Director at Allebach Communications and freelance writer covering internet culture, who dove into the weird and cringy history of this trend for Vulture.

Officials in the city of Houston, Texas say 25,000 people have moved into permanent housing in the city since 2011, a decrease in the homeless population of 63 percent. The city implemented a "housing first" strategy, a model that moves vulnerable people straight from streets and shelters into apartments, without requiring them to enter other programs, like substance abuse treatment or job training, first.

We speak with Mandy Chapman-Semple, the former Special Assistant to the Mayor for Homeless Initiatives in Houston, and James Gonzalez, Director of Program Operations at Coalition for the Homeless of Houston/Harris County, about the program’s implementation, obstacles and successes, and what’s in store for the future.

We also hear from Jayro Garcia Lopez, a young man who was unhoused and received stable housing through the program, and Kenneth Eakins, Director of Housing and Navigation Services for the Salvation Army of Greater Houston, who helped him navigate the process.