About the tour + participants
From May 4th – 11th 2024 the Canadian Network of Community Land Trusts led a 17-person delegation of five emerging Black-led, Black-serving, and Black-focused (B3) Community Land Trusts (CLTs) on an educational tour across the United States. This initiative, dubbed the Liberated Land Trust Tour, aims to expedite the work of Canadian CLTs with learnings from established US-based Black organizations with shared values. The Tour was designed to expose the Canadian organizations to examples of operationalized Black-led CLTs in the US with two main learning goals in mind:
- Identifying successful practices and lessons learned as it pertains to community growth, movement building and organizational development.
- Replicating or adapting successful Black-led and serving CLT models and practices for development in Canada.
Weymouth Falls CLT was joined by delegates from four other B3 CLTs from across Canada. These organizations included Hogan’s Alley Society (Vancouver, BC), Little Jamaica CLT (Toronto, ON), Upper Hammonds Plains CLT (Halifax, NS), and Down the Marsh CLT (Truro, NS). Each of these organizations are place-based, directly addressing the needs of Black communities in different contexts throughout Canada. African Nova Scotians are well-positioned to catalyze the CLT movement by using ancestral land-based survival strategies to enact innovative solutions to displacement and address the housing crisis.
Our first stop of the Tour was Oakland, California, the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. Oakland is known to be a Black hub and is the home of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. Oakland’s history of Black organizing is seen and felt throughout the city. This was made clear throughout the story telling of artwork and monuments throughout the city as well as our interactions with local land trusts in the city.
Oakland CLT
Our first stop of the tour was with Oakland CLT’s Community Studio in the city’s Highland Park neighbourhood. Oakland CLT was founded in 2009 at the height of the foreclosure crisis in Oakland. The organization is the outcome of a strategic collaboration between Urban Strategies Council and ACORN Oakland; these groups came together to catalyze community control in response to predatory lending and a high foreclosure rate. Since then, Oakland CLT has acquired an impressive housing portfolio of permanently affordable residential and commercial units that they steward throughout the city of Oakland.
Delegates from the Liberated Land Trust Tour had the opportunity to connect with Oakland CLT staff, residents, and board members at Hasta Muerte Coffee Shop, a worker cooperative and one of the land trust’s commercial mixed-use properties. Located at 2701 Fruitvale Ave, the former landlord wanted to sell the building which put the worker-owners and the two affordable units upstairs in jeopardy. Haste Muerte had the foresight to include a Right of First Refusal in their lease and with support from Oakland CLT, the worker-owners were able to acquire the building and avoid displacement. This strategic initiative is just one example of community solidarity and land-based organizing the delegates were able to see during our time in Oakland.
East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative
Next, we had the opportunity to meet with East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative (EB PREC) at Esther’s Orbit Room, one of their properties located in Oakland’s 7th Street Corridor, a historically Black business corridor. EB PREC is a Black-women led organization that supports BIPOC communities to cooperatively organize and steward properties using a Just Transition Framework. EB PREC operates as a cooperative rather than a land trust, so the decision making power rests with the membership instead of the board. EB PREC’s work is largely inspired by guerrilla organizing tactics common in East Africa and South America. They empower their resident-owners, who live and work in EB PREC properties to cooperatively organize, manage, and steward the properties.
EB PREC’s work was especially inspiring for many of the members of the delegation, as the context and history of Black displacement in West Oakland is one that is too familiar to us in Canada. EB PREC aims to buy and preserve real estate to prevent further Black displacement in the East Bay. Spending the day with EB PREC was inspiring for all involved, not just in learning about the work they do but also how they work together.
A message from the Weymouth Falls delegates
“Oakland stands as a testament to the power of the people! Where resistance and struggle have always been unapologetic. Reminding us that real change comes from the ground up, fuelled by a community that refuses to back down!” – Germaine Langford, founder of the Langford Heritage Community Council
“Being in Oakland helped me see the thread that continues to exist between African Americans and African Nova Scotians. The unapologetic nature of EB Prec’s work has really grounded my thinking into our right to have adequate communities that meet our needs as determined by us. The spirit of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was unmistakably present in every story on every street in Oakland, and their contributions to Nova Scotia, including the role they played in forming the Black United Front, have left me hopeful that our connection to Black organizers in Oakland will remain steadfast.” – Shekara Grant, founder of the Weymouth Falls Community Land Trust
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This entry was written by Jane O’Brien Davis, a CLT Specialist with the Canadian Network of Community Land Trusts. Jane supports Black-led CLTs in developing resources for organizational capacity building, facilitating knowledge mobilization, and supporting community engagement. Jane’s expertise centres community-based planning practices and grassroots movement building. She holds a MSc. Planning from the University of Toronto.
