Baba Malik Yakini, Founder and Former Executive Director of the Detroit Black Community Food Sovereignty Network, delivered this keynote at the 2025 SAFSF Forum in Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico. Read highlights from his speech or listen to his full remarks below.
“The question remains, what time is it on the clock of the world? What of this moment? This moment of climate chaos from profit-driven human activity? This moment, where more than half of the global population is living under authoritarian regimes? Where nonprofits are scrubbing their websites and literature for any language that might suggest that they work for racial justice, equity, or inclusion?
… What of this moment where farmers and food justice advocates receive terse letters telling them that the funding that they have contracted for and built budgets around has been revoked? What of this moment where police are militarized, emboldened, and empowered to crush dissent and to brutalize and murder black and brown men, women, and children? … What of this moment where aid to mothers and children is not certain, school lunches could be on the chopping block, and even Social Security is a potential target?
We are witnessing an attempt to recenter whiteness; Eurocentric cultural and historical lenses are being uplifted and normalized. The history and culture of those whose ancestors are not from Western Europe are under attack.
Here’s the irony. By suppressing the cultural values, knowledge, and wisdom of the oppressed, the oppressor also denies himself access to the rich, deep well of possibilities alive in the experiences of the oppressed.”
On What We Can Do In This Moment
“[We] can become fierce fighters, organizers and funders for justice, power
and self determination who refuse to be thwarted by any person, group or policy. Our movement has always had a two-pillared approach. One that I call resistance and one that I call building. That is that on one hand, we have the responsibility to fight against those policies and practices that shorten our quality and quantity of life….
We should oppose food policies that center the power to define the food system in the hands of market forces… As our movement has matured, I think we know that it’s equally as important to build the just, equitable, sustainable world that we want to see, not just to call out and oppose those things that we’re against.
Both approaches, resistance and building, are necessary. I would suggest, with limited capacity and dwindling resources, we need to assess, reassess how much time, energy, and
resources we allocate to each of those….
In challenging times where we seemingly have lost control or influence of so many external factors, we must turn inward and ask ourselves, what do we have control of? What factors are working in our favor and who are our friends? It’s critical that we stay focused and centered and not allow ourselves to be thrown off balance by every new executive order.”
Special Message For Frontline Activists
“Some of the things that I think we need to do to move through this time period is to develop deeper and broader relationships, to deepen our collaborations, to reduce and have more targeted consumption, to increase cooperative buying, to practice family, personal and community self care routines, to develop increased mutual aid capabilities, deepen our spiritual practices, deepen our humanity, lean into our values, identify and celebrate victories, identify opportunities to engage more deeply with community, push harder and become more fearless. While we’re doing all this, we have to also maintain the moral high ground. We have to develop and maintain international connections with values aligned people. We have to model new- which are really old- ways of being in relationship with each other and with the earth. And then finally we have to find points of joy in our lives and embrace them and carry them with us in difficult times.”
What Is The Role of Funders
- “We need philanthropy to continue to uphold, uplift, and adequately fund efforts to create racial justice. Honor the language in your mission statements around racial justice and equity and don’t fold to unconstitutional assaults on our freedoms to pursue justice. (citing LIFE).
- We need philanthropy to increase long term funding to grassroots led organizations that are really shifting power, not merely addressing symptoms.
- We need philanthropy to transfer resources into frontline food justice movements going beyond the 5% for a sustained period of time and to continue finding entry points to shift power and resources into community governed hands.
- We need more democratic decision making about funding.
- We need funders to give large pots of funding to community governed funding vehicles who decide who gets it and for what purposes.
- We need less complicated reporting requirements.
- We need philanthropy to be accountable. Genuine accountability means listening to movement leaders, following our lead and stepping back so frontline communities can steer our own resources, decisions and solutions that shape our collective future.
- And finally, we want to encourage funders to think beyond plugging the gaps that have been created by the current government cuts. Yes, plug those gaps, but think beyond this current crisis because the work that we have to do is long term and requires long term robust funding.”