Free the Land: Land Tenure and Stewardship Reimagined
ABOUT THE EVENT
The NYU Environmental Law Journal (“ELJ”) and the NYU Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law present Free the Land: Land Tenure and Stewardship Reimagined.
The expression “free the land” is derived from Black social movements of the 1960s, whose leaders like Fannie Lou Hamer and Frantz Fanon saw land and liberation as one in the same. By freeing the land — tending land through common property arrangements — they hoped to secure the bread and dignity that their communities needed to thrive.
As evinced by settler colonialism, chattel slavery, exclusionary zoning and redlining, and environmental racism, land has long been an instrument of degradation. Yet land has also figured heavily in freedom dreams, whether it is “40 acres and a mule,” “land back” or the call to “free the land.” This tension is the point of departure for ELJ’s symposium.
Free the Land will examine environmental and socioeconomic inequities, critique the legal structures that foment these inequities, and amplify new, bold approaches to land tenure and stewardship with the potential to reverse them.
Join us for a conversation that explores land and liberation, the many connections between land and racial justice; land decommodification, opportunities to remove land from the private market and foster permanent affordability and shared use; and land rematriation, Indigenous land return and restoration initiatives that work to initiate the decolonization process.
Free the Land is funded in part by an NYU Office of Global Inclusion Faculty Innovation and Anti-Racism Microgrant.
AGENDA
Keynote: Land Theft and the African Diaspora
Bernadette Atuahene, Chicago-Kent Law
Moderator: Margot Pollans, Pace Law
Panel: Practitioner Perspectives on Land, Law, and Social Justice
Akilah Browne, New York City Community Land Initiative
Mychal Johnson, Mott Haven / Port Morris Community Land Stewards
Sateesh Nori, Legal Aid Society
Çaca Yvaire, Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust
Leo Figueroa Helland, New School Tishman Environment and Design Center
Moderator: Maggie Blackhawk, NYU Law
REGISTRATION AND CLE INFORMATION
Register here: https://nyu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_NBGEJejxS7CRkqwx8P9aNw
This event has been approved for two New York State CLE credits in the category of Areas of Professional Practice. The credit is both transitional and nontransitional; it is appropriate for both experienced and newly admitted attorneys.
NYU School of Law is an accredited provider of CLE in New York State. If you are seeking CLE credit for a different state, we recommend you consult with your state’s CLE Board to ascertain regulations on reciprocity.