PRESS RELEASE
Contact: Dana Viloria at dana@movementgeneration.org
Movement Generation Launches Free the Land Campaign to Fund First San Francisco Bay Area Ecological Justice Movement Hub
Capital campaign seeks to raise $1 million for BIPOC- and queer-led Justice & Ecology Center
Berkeley, Calif. (August 16, 2023) — After liberating 43 acres of land in the San Francisco East Bay, the nonprofit collective Movement Generation (MG) is publicly launching today the Free the Land campaign to raise $1 million from individual donors by October 15, 2023 to begin building the Justice & Ecology Center on-site. The first of its kind in the Bay Area and a few miles from Oakland, the center will be an ecological justice movement hub and retreat space where community members can learn about climate change, adaptation and resilience.
“We are in a global ecological crisis that will impact our communities first and worst. Now is the time to mobilize resources for movement hubs like the Justice & Ecology Center—to nurture and restore regenerative relationships with land, hold space for collective governance and mutual aid, and create community-based solutions to the crisis,” says Ellen Choy, Movement Generation co-director and collective member.
The Justice & Ecology Center will empower Black, Indigenous, and people of color, as well as queer, disabled, migrant and low-income communities to build capacity to organize for a Just Transition from the extractive economy to regenerative economies. Impacted communities will be able to participate in MG’s Earth Skills programs to build ecological knowledge and practice, as well as organize responses to climate-related disasters such as fires, floods, earthquakes and utility power shutoffs. MG’s vision for the site includes a resilient foodways garden, community-owned solar power, water harvesting systems and accessible design.
“Whenever I try to explain to people the conditions we are living in and the strategies we need to engage to shift how we think about our economy and relationship to the planet, I absolutely have to reference Movement Generation,” says adrienne maree brown, social justice activist, facilitator and author of Emergent Strategy and Pleasure Activism. “They need a place where as many people as possible, especially those actively trying to change the world, can sit together and learn the truth about what’s happening and what’s possible.”
Since 2007, Movement Generation has engaged over 500 organizations and tens of thousands of community leaders, activists, artists and organizers through intensive justice and ecology retreats, political education, grassroots ecology workshops, campaign development, alliance building, cultural productions and more.
“We need our community’s support to raise $1 million from individuals for the urgent work ahead,” says Quinton Sankofa, Movement Generation co-director and collective member. “And we are calling on foundations to double down on their commitments to social justice and climate justice and contribute $5 million more to help build the Justice & Ecology Center for all of our peoples. This is an investment in climate resilience and biocultural diversity.”
During the quiet phase of the campaign, Movement Generation raised the $2.8 million purchase price for the land on behalf of its partner Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, a Bay Area urban Indigenous women-led nonprofit that facilitates the return of Indigenous land to Indigenous people. Funds raised through the public phase of the Free the Land campaign will support Movement Generation in urgent repairs and renovations, wildland management, energy and water sovereignty, and design to get the space retreat-ready. Community members can learn more and support the campaign at FreeTheLand.net
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For media inquiries, contact Dana Viloria, Movement Generation, at dana@movementgeneration.org.
Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project is a nonprofit collective that inspires and engages in transformative action towards the liberation and restoration of land, labor, and culture. Rooted in the wisdom of our ancestries and the principles of ecological justice, we strengthen our shared politic, practice, and movement ecosystem through political education, movement building, and cultural strategy for a Just Transition.
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