Land, Liberty, and Bread

After Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in 2017, some towns were left without power for over six months, and 80% of the value of the island’s crops was destroyed. Small-scale farmers mobilized to help one another rebuild, drawing on networks for sharing resources, manpower, and ecological knowledge.

Journalist and book editor Audrea Lim, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, and Dissent, discusses how these “agro-ecology brigades” are just one example of how black, brown, working-class, and indigenous communities—communities often overlooked by the mainstream environmental movement in the U.S. and Canada—are modeling alternative ways of managing, owning, and living off the land. And as climate change intensifies, they are also offering some of our most hopeful visions for the future.