BREATHE Act

Two weeks ago, Movement For Black Lives’ Electoral Justice Project introduced the federal BREATHE Act. The organization explains, “We are rising up against all the ways that the criminal-legal system has harmed and failed to protect Black communities. The current moment requires a solution that fundamentally shifts how we envision community-care and invest in our society.”

Last month, I wrote about the pressing need for food systems advocates to advocate for defunding police and prisons. Using their invest/divest framework, M4BL links the two issues in the BREATHE Act, as well as an amazingly comprehensive array of other issues, building a new policy framework that honors Black life and divests from current structures that cause harm. The bill really speaks for itself and I encourage everyone to read it and sign on if you have not already.

Below, I have pulled out some of the parts that are most relevant to farm, food and ecosystems. Let’s use these policy proposals as a guide in our advocacy and visioning.

https://breatheact.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/The-BREATHE-Act-PDF_FINAL3-1.pdf

In SECTION 2: Investing in New Approaches to Community Safety Utilizing Funding Incentives

Create federal grant programs that incentivize decarceration and subsidize non-punitive, community-led approaches to public safety. . .Funding must be used to fund non-carceral interventions that improve community safety and are selected through a participatory process. Interventions could include:

Park redevelopment, streetlights, and other infrastructure;
Funding for community-based organizations that provide voluntary, non-coercive health services and healing supports for communities so that they can recover from exposure to violence, abuse, and/or harmful interactions with police;

SECTION 3: Allocating New Money to Build Healthy, Sustainable & Equitable Communities for All People

Establish a grant to promote environmental justice, which:
- Incentivizes States to make specified equity-focused policy changes, such as:
  - Creating a clear, time-bound plan for ensuring that all communities have public access to safe, clean water for housing, drinking, and food production;
  - Creating a clear, time-bound plan for ensuring that all communities have access to breathable air within EPA safety limits; and
  - Creating a clear, time-bound plan for meeting 100% of the State power demand using clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources.
- Provide resources for programs and investments that include:
  - Subsidizing community-owned sustainable energy solutions, including projects by community-based nonprofit organizations;
  - Funding climate resilience in communities so that they can prepare for climate change-fueled disasters (such as hurricanes, floods, and wildfires) that are exacerbated by human fossil fuel consumption; and
  - Funding to support, build, preserve, and restore cultural assets and sacred sites—especially sites and land belonging to the Indigenous community.
- Establish a competitive grant to promote health and family justice, which:
  - Incentivizes jurisdictions to make specified equity-focused policy changes, such as:
    - Ensuring all communities have convenient access to sources of healthy food.
    - Provide resources for programs and investments that include, but are not limited to:
    - Food cooperatives and urban gardens;
- Establish a competitive grant to promote economic justice, which:
  - Incentivizes States to make specified equity-focused policy changes, such as:
    - Valuing the labor of Black and Brown women by extending employment protections for workers—including domestic workers and farm workers—who are in industries that are not appropriately regulated;
    - Establishing the right for workers, in public and private sectors, to organize, especially in “On Demand Economy” jobs; and
    - Establishing a living wage, pegged to inflation, and eliminating the subminimum tipped wage.
- Make direct federal investments in equity, which include:
  - Land grant programs in cities experiencing economic decline and/or hyper-vacancies;
  - A program at the United States Department of Agriculture, which will forgive the debt of Black farmers who were impacted by previous United States Department of Agriculture discrimination;
  - Tools to promote environmental justice, including an Equity Impact Mapping Initiative & Equity Screen and a Green Infrastructure Program;

SECTION 4: Holding Officials Accountable & Enhancing Self-Determination of Black Communities

Require Congress to acknowledge and address the lasting harms that it has caused, specifically through:
- Passing H.R.40 (“Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act”)

Photo: https://breatheact.org/