Celebrating World CLT Day with Black Kin from Canada

My grandmother. My aunt. My son.

The lineage of Black ancestors before me and the generations of Black people to come.

When we hosted a delegation of Black leaders from the Canadian Network of Community Land Trusts this month, we started the day with the question: “What brought you to the CLT movement?”  While the stories were distinct, the essential catalyst was the same. From Vancouver to Nova Scotia, all 16 participants had been moved by a fierce love of Black people and commitment to reclaim and steward land for Black community.

“My grandmother had been dispossessed of our family land, and for 30 years was quietly trying to get it back,” Shekara Grant, a leader with the Weymouth Falls Community Land Trust, shared. “Once I heard her story, I found the people who owned it and sent them a letter. This is our family legacy, I wrote. Would you consider selling it to us? They said they would. I personally bought it in February with the intent for it to become part of the land trust because this wasn’t unique to my family. There’s a bigger picture here.”

This month, that bigger picture was on display as people across the globe celebrated World CLT Day, an annual effort to “spotlight the diverse CLT community, showcase impactful projects to peers worldwide, and celebrate affordable housing, land justice, and community empowerment.” Here at Rondo CLT, we couldn’t have dreamed of a better way to celebrate than welcoming the Liberated Land Trust Tour to learn more about our work.

Even though the community land trust model was born out of Black brilliance and organizing in 1960’s Georgia (read our February blog about that history here!), only a handful of CLTs are led by and center Black people, even in the United States. While the International Center for Community Land Trusts estimates there are at least 600 CLTs across the globe, the sector is still a predominantly white space that too often erases its Black history and fails to leverage the powerful model as a means to actively repair the theft of land and labor from generations of Black people.  

That’s true in Canada, where, at the inaugural National CLT Summit in Toronto last year, a handful of leaders came together for a Black Family Meeting to connect and share their work with each other. Because so many of the projects are in their early stages of development, one of the leaders lifted up the idea of touring more established CLTs to learn from their practices and approaches. That’s how we got a call from Nat Pace, Network Director with the Canadian Network of Community Land Trusts, to be part of the Liberated Land Trust Tour.  

“I first learned about Rondo CLT when the Golden Thyme project was making the news,” Pace said. “I was inspired by the CLT's timely intervention to acquire and transform a legacy neighborhood business, as well as the longer-term strategy to reactivate the Rondo as a Black neighborhood. In Canada, we don’t have many examples of community land trusts involved in commercial property stewardship (yet).”

“The Right to Return Initiative also really piqued our interest,” Pace added. “CLTs are typically governed by members living in their immediate community but the Black-focused CLTs in Canada are typically trying to rebuild and revive a community that no longer lives there. There was interest from the delegation to understand what the community in a community land trust looks like when the community has been displaced.”

“And the Reparative Framework was a major draw, since the purpose of this trip was to study how Black communities specifically are collectively stewarding community-owned lands. In Canada, there’s no public discussion about reparations to Black folks at large, much less within the CLT sector. We were interested to learn more about how these principles are put into action.”

And we were honored to host them.

After all, if you look at the data, Minnesota is a leader in the American CLT movement. Put together all 14 CLTs across the state and they would be the largest land trust in the nation. In 2022, our state housing finance agency allocated more than 50% of its impact funds to CLTs. But look at the culture, and Rondo CLT still stands alone. Not only were we the first community land trust in the state in 1993 and the first CLT to add a commercial component in 2017, but Rondo CLT’s Mikeya Griffin is the only Black Executive Director of any CLT in the state.

As we shared the story of Rondo — the thriving solidarity economy that flourished here before the devastation of the freeway construction — our Canadian guests saw their own communities’ cycles of ownership and displacement reflected back to them. The same stories of building power, spurring innovation only to have it intentionally targeted and destroyed by those who benefit from Black oppression.

“It was like looking in a mirror,” Shekara Grant said. “Our stories are not unique. We think they are when we’re in them, but, when they showed us pictures of Rondo before and after the freeway, that could have easily been Vancouver or Toronto or Halifax. In many ways, Canada is a continuation of the American story—not only those threads of displacement but the history of how we ended up in these communities.”

During their short stay in Saint Paul, we welcomed the Canadian delegation like kin. We celebrated their arrival with food and drink, strolled down Selby to show them around the neighborhood, and candidly shared the details of our struggles and successes. We invited them into space with community at one of our housing orientations, and gave them a behind-the-scenes look at our still-under-construction business incubator. We kicked back for an afternoon ice cream at Two Scoops and stopped by Lip Esteem, where Tameka Jones met us outside to share how the land trust helped her launch a boutique that’s now been featured on an Emmy-nominated television show.

“To be able to walk down the street and visit businesses that are not on land trust land but connected to community was important,” Grant said. “Just going for ice cream and there’s a Black person working there and he’s  the owner; we don’t have that here in Canada. And it was so clear that Rondo CLT isn’t just about its personal interest. It’s actually about community building.”

Over the course of their visit, the leaders asked questions about how we fund projects and how we select program participants. They dug into the finer points of development plans and how our organization is structured. But at the end of the day, it wasn’t about nonprofit nuts and bolts, or commercial bricks and mortar. It was about connection. In a matter of hours, we cultivated a sense of kinship in our shared love and vision for Black thriving—from Saint Paul to British Columbia.

“Day to day, this work can cut to the core,” Djaka Blais said, moved to tears, at the closing circle. “But the way you show up is a mix of strong leadership with love and care and vision. That’s what I’m soaking in. That’s what I want to bring back.”

That sentiment was shared by so many of the participants who, more than anything else, emphasized how welcomed they felt by our staff and community.

I feel like we’re family.

We’re all in the same fight.

We can hold hands across the divide.

Your generosity and kindness affirmed that all I want to believe about the CLT sector can be true.

Learn more about the Liberated Land Trust Tour organizations here!