Ep. 5 - Reparations as a Climate Solution with Brea Baker

Episode 5 - Reparations are a Climate Solution with Brea Baker

Shilpi Chhotray [00:00:04] This is A People's Climate, powered by Wildseeds Fund, from Counterstream Media and The Nation. I'm your host, Shilpi Chhotray. 

CLIP [00:00:12] A Pew Research poll taken in late 2021 found that by a more than 2 to 1 margin, Americans oppose reparations for African Americans and look at the racial split. Whites overwhelmingly oppose reparations, 80 percent, but the numbers are almost exactly reversed among African Americans who strongly support the idea. 

CLIP [00:00:34] My great-great-grandfather, he fought with the Union Army. Do I get a discount? 

CLIP [00:00:38] No need to grapple with practical questions about the proposal, like how you determine who receives and who pays for the reparations, how much it would cost, whether Nigerians who just arrived here would benefit. 

CLIP [00:00:50] Reparations for me is a matter of truth and justice. You tell the truth about how the nation became the nation. It was on stolen land, stolen labor. 

CLIP [00:01:01] What do we want? Reparations! When do we want it? Now! What do we want? Reparations! What do we want it? Now! 

Shilpi Chhotray [00:01:09] When you hear reparations, you don't normally think climate solution. But Brea Baker is reshaping how we understand reparations today. Her work pushes beyond the surface to address the root problem. Who owns the land determines how it's used. Brea is the author of Rooted: the American Legacy of Land Theft and the Modern Movement for Black Land Ownership. Her book is deeply personal, but it's also a blueprint for how to understand climate resilience today. Reparations aren't just a moral reckoning for the history of slavery in this country. They're a pathway forward, shaping how we think about resources and who gets to define the future. Welcome to A People's Climate. We're so thrilled to have you on this season to talk about something really important, reparations as a climate strategy. 

Brea Baker [00:02:05] Yes, thank you so much for having me. It's like one of my favorite things to nerd out about. 

Shilpi Chhotray [00:02:10] So when we talk about climate solutions, we hear a lot about technology or policy, but your work points to something more fundamental, and for me, something much more practical, and that's land. Why is land the place we need to start? 

Brea Baker [00:02:26] Ultimately, those who own the land get to be decision makers over what happens to the land. They get to decide whether they're gonna frack, whether they're gonna mine. They get decide how deep they're going to dig, how much they're going to pollute, how much are they're going to regulate. But ultimately, I think everyone around the world should be very critical of who owns the land near you. And that will often point you towards why your food systems look the way they do, why the waterways look the that they do and so on and so forth. 

Shilpi Chhotray [00:02:54] I mean, land theft is the inciting incident, right? And there's a couple of statistics here that I learned from you that have sort of blown my mind. And that is Black farmers make up less than 2% of all U.S. farmers, and that's no accident. Between 1910 and 1997, Black Americans lost about 90% of their farmland. And one more stat, the richest 400 Americans are mostly white men, and have more wealth than all 10 million Black American households combined. So talk to me about how land theft was really the original sin. 

Brea Baker [00:03:32] So number one, you don't have the institution of slavery, certainly not as widespread of an industry as it was if it weren't for land theft. The demand for bringing Black people across the Atlantic Ocean and to this continent as forced laborers was because they had freed up enough land for plantations, from genocide and land theft, right? So that's the first version of land theft that we see. And that land theft was violent, not only for the people who were removed, but it was also very violent for the land itself. Those who were stewards of that land before had certain value systems. And so it was always this very conscious understanding that the land is a living thing and we have to be in a right relationship to one another. When Indigenous people are removed from the land, so is that value system. And the people who have replaced them. Have no interest in being stewards of land, they are actually interested in wringing the land dry, like thinking of like a wet washcloth and you're just like wringing it dry and getting as much as they can out of it. There's no idea of giving what I take, no I'm taking as much as possible and trying to give as little as possible. So that's why I think of it as this original sin because what was first done to the land then was done to us as people and we're all suffering from it. 

Shilpi Chhotray [00:04:51] Well, and this isn't theoretical for you. You are a sixth-generation Black landowner in the South. The first person in your family to own land was your great-great-great grandfather, Lewis W. Baker, after the Emancipation Proclamation. However, much of that land was lost due to predatory government behavior, and you document a lot of this in your book, Rooted. 

Brea Baker [00:05:13] To tell the story of my family's relationship to land. So as you said, my great-great-great grandfather, Lewis Baker, was born and slayed to North Carolina. He was freed through the Emancipation Proclamation. And as a young man, husband, father, pooled his money together, both with church friends and bought some land there, but also bought land with his wife and with his two sons, that became a family farm. And at its height, this was a 600-acre farm. Lewis's children worked that land, their children worked at land, their children work that land. And it became a vehicle for autonomy for our family. And then over the course of my great grandfather's lifetime and my grandfather's life time, it becomes a little over 106 acres. That's through heirs property debt, which is the leading cause of Black land, loss of Black land, that USDA discrimination, predatory debt. There was one point where my family lost two hundred and fifty seven acres all in one swoop over a ten dollar debt that had not been repaid. And the interest on it just balooned out of control and it couldn't be being back. And when my grandfather passed away just before that on his death bed, one of the final things he said, don't sell the land. 

Shilpi Chhotray [00:06:33] That's incredible. I do want to come back to the USDA, because you've named this a couple of times now, and I didn't realize how predatory they actually are. I knew at the high level that they are proponents of using chemicals and pesticides, and someone in the environmental field, we're aware of that. That is not an environmental or climate solution. But you've actually pointed to how they've opened the door to industrial farming, and actually there's been a lot of racism at the county levels through USDA loan programs, and it's all been documented on their website, which is wild, but I feel like nobody's really talking about this. Can you explain how the USDA has been pushing small farmers out? Way more predatory with Black farmers, but with white farmers too, rural white farmers as well. 

Brea Baker [00:07:21] So, number one, you have the Great Migration, which is that Black people are fleeing the South. They're fleeing the white supremacist violence of the South, they're fleeing the labor exploitation and sharecropping structures of the South, and they're seeking better opportunity in the North and the West, primarily. And this is really bad for the South because the South has already lost the ability to illegally enslave in an outright way. So like they're trying to clamor for this agricultural economy because if you remember, America just became the richest country in the world off of its plantation economy. So how do you remain the richest actually the world if you don't have any plantations or any slaves? They're trying to figure that out. And technology becomes an answer. And as the USDA, mind you, which was initially when it was founded was called the People's Department. Because when the USDA was founded, most Americans worked directly in agriculture. And so the People's Agency starts introducing, 'hey, you guys need all this technology and these pesticides, as you mentioned, and it's gonna make us more efficient.' Like good farmers, even non-Black farmers, but a lot of the small farmers are saying, 'that's no, this is bad for the land and this is bad for the food and this isn't how we do things. And also these things that you're telling us to do, these interventions are very expensive. And our ancestral knowledge is saying that you are depleting the soil this way and that's bad for water, and that is bad for us and all these different things. And I just, you know, why are you trying to push this on us?' The USDA, in this marketing attempt, starts to essentially tell people you have to follow their standard. And so they create this new standard that is very industrialized, very chemically heavy, very bad for the environment, very expensive, but it's very good for agribusiness like those like big, big corporations. And at the same time they're doing this, the USDA is one of the biggest distributor of loans because farming is a very up and down field for anyone who is remotely connected to it. If you have one bad season, that could take you out. 

Shilpi Chhotray [00:09:35] Completely out of your control. 

Brea Baker [00:09:36] Exactly. Completely out of their control. And so these loans become a lifeline to survive those sorts of seasons, to explore the new technology, et cetera. And so just as farming is becoming really expensive, just as we're seeing climate change really ramp up, Black people can't access loans. And USDA agents refused to allow Black people to access it. I mean, in one county, white families are able to access loans three to five times as much as the average Black family that say county. So a lot of Black families are both bankrupt and they don't have access to the same relief that white farmers are having access to. And so all small farmers are suffering, but Black farmers even more so because they're being kind of squeezed out of that safety net that is being built out. 

Shilpi Chhotray [00:10:24] I mean, this is really the environmental justice side of it, right? You were talking about that period after the Civil War through the late 90s, but this isn't just history. We're still seeing predatory and discriminatory practices today. 

CLIP [00:10:39] But some local organizations are scrambling after the USDA canceled a $300 million grant program meant for underserved farmers because the USDA said it was discriminatory. 

CLIP [00:10:51] The discrimination that I faced at USDA was annual face discrimination. I was called the N-word from the same official. I had my application torn up and thrown in a trash can in front of me. On average, it took 387 days to process a Black farmer's loan request. That's 30 days to process a white farmer's long request. In that particular county, this person would only see Black farmers is one day of the week, so we named it Black Wednesday. 

Shilpi Chhotray [00:11:27] You've talked about this a little bit already. How did land theft really set the stage for today's extractive systems and its industrialization, but also all of the other extractive components that we're seeing. And it's also extractive narratives. 

Brea Baker [00:11:42] Well, now here we are a couple of centuries later, we're experiencing the long-term impacts of that. You know in Louisiana you have areas that used to be plantations and is now become cancer alley because those plantations have been replaced by petrochemical plants and the average resident is being diagnosed with cancer in the early 30s of this community and oh that average resident is Black like none of these things are accidental. 

Shilpi Chhotray [00:12:05] For folks that are newer to what's happening in cancer alley and the petrochemical build out, this is where plastic comes from and every one of us uses plastic so we are all connected in some way. 

Brea Baker [00:12:19] That are being done to the land are going to reach us, even if you don't directly live on it. Again, we're all breathing bad air. We're all vulnerable to bad water. We are all experiencing more frequent and harsher natural disasters. And that's because the people who have owned the land for the last few centuries have made really, really bad decisions. And it's like they need to be evicted, basically. And this is what land back can do. And that is what reparations can do it says, 'Hey, let's restore ownership to those who have historically really cared for and tended to this land, and let's also restore value systems.' 

Shilpi Chhotray [00:12:56] My question is, in a very practical sense, how would reparations be applied to something like these Louisiana parishes? 

Brea Baker [00:13:04] In that specific case, we can't tell that community what to do. I think we need to go in listening. I think, we need prepare for the reality of some people might not want to live there at all. They might want the money and the resources to move altogether. For sure, medical care should be covered for, for every resident of these parishes, whether people have been diagnosed with cancer or not. But then, I think again, we should be thinking of who owns that land. I believe right now that land is consolidated between a few different companies who own all those chemical plants. It's a lot of oil and gas companies. It's lot of oil and gas company. And here's the thing, eminent domain says we are going to seize private property when seizing it will be for public interest. That is often meant we're going to seize Black land to create a highway, Back land to create apartment. Why could we not use eminent domains to say, 'this high concentration of petrochemical plants is a blight on the community. We have to seize the land and the factories themselves and replace them with something different.' And there's a lot of great models for that. There's an organization that I highlight at Rooted that is taking over old prisons and jails and turning them into farms and spaces where youth can learn how to grow. There's lots of eco-tourism opportunities and solar farms, and renewable energy that we could expand it to. 

CLIP [00:14:31] We are flipping this prison in Wagram, North Carolina into a sustainable farm and education center. So that way our program can help other kids who need help just like we did. 

CLIP [00:14:39] We're going to flip this drain field into the largest vermiculture bed in the region. 

CLIP [00:14:43] We're going to convert this P.T. Field into a sports and recreation area. 

CLIP [00:14:48] Over 2,000 acres in Gerard and Goshen Township will be filled with solar panels on reclaimed mine land. The project would make it the largest solar farm in Pennsylvania. According to the solar farm company, this site will provide millions of dollars in tax revenue for the two municipalities while also making a deal with the townships to donate $200,000 for community funds. 

Brea Baker [00:15:13] And I think that community members should be allowed to both take back that neighborhood if they want to be a part of it, or to say, I'm interested in saving my life and to be able to focus on their health, even if that means they don't want to do with those parishes anymore, which is sad to say because they shouldn't have to leave their homes. 

Shilpi Chhotray [00:15:29] They shouldn't have to, and I know for a fact, a number of people won't, no matter what happens, which is why the point that you made is at least having access to very basic necessities is really like the first step, and then we need to go from there. I want to talk about the skepticism on reparations. 

CLIP [00:15:58] I did not own slaves and you were not a slave. Right. So we are individuals and therefore we cannot be held accountable or should receive something from something that didn't happen to us or something we did not do. 

CLIP [00:16:10] It's practically a non-starter, I mean, in terms of practicality. No one's going to agree on the terms, no one's gonna agree exactly on the eligibility criteria, nobody's going agree on amount, and it's politically very unpopular. 

CLIP [00:16:23] Yeah, I don't think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago for whom none of us currently living are responsible is a good idea. 

CLIP [00:16:31] We can't write a check to a ghost. 

Shilpi Chhotray [00:16:34] There is a poll that you talk about frequently, it's a Reuters poll, and it found that 74% of Black Americans were in favor of reparations, but white Americans who are 74% against need to be swayed for there to be any real chance of restorative justice. This is in 2023, so about a year before your book came out. Tell me a little bit more about this study, this survey, and how you're approaching this data because I agree with you for anyone that feels like slavery was a bad thing, we need to repair and compensate and move towards a more just future. A strategy here is reparations. It's very obvious to many of us, but the data isn't showing that.

Brea Baker [00:17:22] Oh, my gosh. Well, number one, because unfortunately, not enough people are admitting that slavery was bad and happened the way that you know that it did. You know, so many of our problems that we're experiencing in the 21st century is because the Confederacy was not punished enough. If you look at German culture now, it is illegal to even reproduce images of swastikas of heil Hitler salutes. When Elon Musk did that, that was bleeped out of German media. There is a zero -- and I'm not saying that Germany is like, you know, the best on reparations -- but there is zero tolerance for neo-Nazism, right? And that has not been the same here. Those who align themselves with Confederate tendencies are not seen as traitors at all. And so our inability to tell the truth and make that a universal truth is definitely holding us back. But I don't think that that's the majority of white Americans. So how do we get to 74%? 

Shilpi Chhotray [00:18:17] Yeah. 

Brea Baker [00:18:18] What I'm concerned with as far as the 74% of white people against is that I think the average white person just, even if they believe that slavery did happen, they feel like too much time has passed. There's almost like a statute of limitations on what we could have invested in repair and that statute of limitation has passed and in their eyes, it's now our job to just move on because no one alive has been impacted by or shaped it. And I think that's where we have to do better storytelling around the legacy of slavery. It's not just those who were enslaved themselves and what they passed on to their children, but that every generation that we don't repair it, the racial wealth gap widenes. Black land ownership peaked 100 years ago. So we're going back in time. Under Jim Crow South, when the KKK was in full fledge, Black people owned more land and more wealth then than we do now in 2026 while we're recording this conversation. And so that does not happen accidentally. And I think we need people to be more honest with themselves about that. But the last thing I'll say is there's a more interesting gap to me, which is that those 74% of Black people believe reparations should happen, a much smaller number actually believe that it will. 

Shilpi Chhotray [00:19:33] Yeah, they think it's like a unicorn dream. 

Brea Baker [00:19:36] You know, like big swine utopia thing. And that's something that we've got to address. And I understand the skepticism. I think a lot of people look out saying 'you think a country that elected Trump twice is ever gonna invest in reparations?' We have to remind ourselves that there are a lot of things that our ancestors have achieved that were once inconceivable. 

Shilpi Chhotray [00:19:58] I would love to talk a little bit about your mindset, which is much more of an abundance mindset versus a scarcity mindset. And I think that goes into some of the fear-mongering around reparations. Like, there's just not enough to go around. It's like, no, it's a will question. Let's talk about that a little. 

Brea Baker [00:20:15] I think that any scarcity mindsets are products of capitalism and white supremacy for sure. In order for there to be a small group of billionaires, and we're about to get our first trillionaire, like, I mean, it's getting real cartoony over here, right? In order for those people to amass that much wealth, they have to box us out of it, but then keep us fighting each other for the crumbs. I think there's enough for all of us. So I get this conversation with people like, well, reparations, well, my people have also endured and I'm like, great, advocate for the policy that changes things for your people. I believe that we should have reparations and land back and student loan debt cancelation and universal health care and guaranteed income and and and. You're not going to you're going to rarely hear the word or or either from me. I'm a big both and person, and I think that we discover this every time the U.S. decides to go to war. Because all of a sudden there's billions of dollars just appear out of thin air that none of us had to be consulted over to bomb other countries, to wreak havoc and create grief and loss and devastation and more problems that we have to fix later. If we hadn't decided to bomb Iran or Palestine or if we hadn't decided to do those things on a random Tuesday, what could we have done with that money? 

CLIP [00:21:35] President Trump is asking for $1.5 trillion in defense spending for the upcoming financial year. That's according to details released by the White House today. The request is more than 40% more than last year's spending and is the largest of its kind in decades. 

CLIP [00:21:51] We're following reports that President Trump could be asking for a payment, a payment of as much as $230 million from the U.S. Government. Money he says he deserves as compensation for the investigations into some of his past conduct. 

CLIP [00:22:06] Okay, the man is asking for reparations for himself, all right, and he's gonna get it. 

CLIP [00:22:10] Put it like this America Just treat Black people like they're f-35 fighter jets. You had 1.7 trillion dollars to throw at that bullshit, throw it at the people who actually built this country. 

Shilpi Chhotray [00:22:24] One of the things you talk a lot about is community self-determination, which is like a really practical way of achieving some of these access questions and you talk about maroon communities. I would love to hear historically, you know, how those communities came up and what those look like today. 

Brea Baker [00:22:47] Yeah. So the word maroon literally means to free oneself. And so historically what this has typically meant in the Americas has been when Black and Native peoples who are facing genocide or enslavement instead flee that society that they're about to be absorbed violently into and create their own more egalitarian society somewhere else. And so many people were just like, I'm gonna free myself, but stay a lot closer to home. They took advantage of terrain that had been labeled difficult. And this is where I just love this about maroon communities because it feels like the land and the environment was conspiring with Black and Native people in this way. Because land that the white settlers and colonizers were saying aren't inhabitable, no one can even get into that swamp, that marsh, that everglade. You can't even grow any food in it. Black and Native people were making their way into there, building shelter, and figuring it out. People didn't want to chase after them into these difficult environments, and they made it work. Not too far from the capital of the Confederacy, there were plantations everywhere nearby, and yet, just a few miles away, you have Black and Native people living their best lives in these swamps and in these marshlands. So in a modern sense, I think the spirit of maroonage, it definitely lives on in other ways. I think any time that you decide this country has said it is not invested in my wellness and I am not going to allow that to mean that I'm unwell. I'm going to achieve things outside of the demands that I have of this nation. That's maroonage. Through the Black Panther Party, we're practicing maroonage. 

CLIP [00:24:36] They were not just people in black jackets carrying guns. They were interested in actually doing something for the community. 

CLIP [00:24:44] The Black Panthers focused more on what they call survival programs, things like food assistance, free education, free legal aid. And one of their top priorities was free community health care. 

CLIP [00:24:54] Most of our civilized countries will provide these services for the people. The Panthers realized that we didn't have a civilized country, we were not providing these services for the people. 

Brea Baker [00:25:06] And there's a lot of filling needs on your own and deciding we don't need those people to provide for us. We will provide for each other and we will keep each other safe. Mutual aid networks that popped up during COVID feels very to me in the spirit of maroonage. How will we support one another, keep each healthy when this government could barely pass out masks? We will create networks of care and that's what maroonage is to me. 

Shilpi Chhotray [00:25:33] Well, I think it's also really sweet. Like you actually live on one acre of land with your wife and kids, right? And you grow food and you have chickens. Do you feel like in a way that's your version of a maroonage community? 

Brea Baker [00:25:48] I love that you said maroonage community, because I do think maroonage is about community. The conservative approach is to become a prepper in a very, 'whatever happens for me and my family, that's all I care about.' And it's very individualistic. But the community version of that is, 'I don't have to know how to do everything, I don't need to have a bunker that only fits me and family, but what I do know, I should share. And hopefully my neighbors and my families members and my community members will share with me.' And so, yeah, the more that we can become connected to one another in that way and barter and trade and tap into those older practices, the more we do align ourselves with the spirit of maroonage because it is us leaning on each other and deciding, hey, if the grocery stores are empty, we're not gonna starve. 

Shilpi Chhotray [00:26:40] Very practically speaking, do you think reparations will happen in our lifetime? 

Brea Baker [00:26:46] I absolutely do. I mean, reparations is already happening. It's happening all around us in these various different pilot programs, specifically in states like New York, California, Illinois. 

CLIP [00:26:58] More than a dozen cities from Seattle to Saint Paul, Minnesota, are considering reparations, payments to help repair past injustice. And this week, Evanston Illinois made history becoming the first city in the country to approve reparations for Black residents. The City Council voted eight to one to distribute $400,000 to at least 16 people whose families faced housing discrimination here. Each will get $25,000 toward a mortgage or home repairs. 

CLIP [00:27:29] Writing a wrong a century later, a beachfront property returned to the descendants of a Black family who owned it. 

CLIP [00:27:36] New York lawmakers passed a bill creating a commission to consider reparations to address the negative impacts of slavery. 

CLIP [00:27:43] This bill makes it possible to have a conversation, a reasoned debate about what we want the future to look like. And I can think of nothing more democratic than that. 

Brea Baker [00:27:58] I think it will expand and I hope that we can then dig into this conversation of stewardship because I think there's a lot of people who if they became landowners tomorrow would throw a building right on top of it. But I think ultimately we will think more of the land as its own living breathing entity as a part of this conversation. 

Shilpi Chhotray [00:28:18] Not to continue exploiting. 

Brea Baker [00:28:21] Yeah, exactly. And not continue extracting and exploiting, recognizing that that is how we got here, and it's not going to get us out of this problem either. 

Shilpi Chhotray [00:28:28] Is there anything else you want to leave the listeners with? 

Brea Baker [00:28:32] If you are someone who already knows slavery did happen, it was horrendous and horrible, then there must be retribution for it. There must be. And I think instead of approaching this conversation from a place of shame, think of the opportunity that you get to have, the bragging rights that we get to have as the generation who gets it right. As the generation that says, okay, it stops here. What could the series of programs and policies look like? What could repair look like, and I hope it becomes more exciting than shameful. I hope becomes like, hey, we actually get to be innovative here, think outside of the box of how to make this country safer for Black people. Like, are we not all invested in that? A country that's safer for Black people is safer for all of us. 

Shilpi Chhotray [00:29:16] Thank you so much for joining me today and for the clarity and depth you've brought to this really important topic. 

Brea Baker [00:29:22] Thank you for having me, for engaging the conversation. And yes, just, I just hope that everyone listening in is as curious as you are in all things. 

Shilpi Chhotray [00:29:34] While Brea challenges us to sit with uncomfortable truths, reparations are also about what kind of world we're trying to build. She pushes us to look beyond surface solutions and ask what's really driving societal collapse. So if we're serious about climate injustice, we have to be serious about reparations.

Thank you to Wildseeds Fund for making this podcast possible. This episode of A People's Climate is executive produced by Mindy Ramaker. With engineering and sound design by Dennis Maxwell, theme music by Khafre Jay, additional research by Asia Simms, recorded at Studio 132 in Oakland, California. From Counterstream Media and The Nation, I'm your host, Shilpi Chhotray. Until next time.