PRESS RELEASE | FEBRUARY 14, 2025

Black Prosperity Initiative

In honor of Black History month, Conscious Homestead and The Root Social Justice Center are proud to announce the Black Prosperity Initiative. This initiative is a Direct Cash Transfer designed to promote economic stability, prevent houselessness, and provide financial assistance during humanitarian crises. Our initiative will provide monthly stipends to 20 Black Vermont residents across the state to help cover housing costs.

With a substantial donation from Mackenzie Scott to the Vermont Food Bank, the First Step: Black Mutual Aid Board was established. This board, composed of Black leaders from across Vermont, was tasked with distributing the funds earmarked for mutual aid for Black Vermont residents. From this collaboration, Conscious Homestead and The Root Social Justice Center were provided $133,600 each ($100,000 for distribution, $33,600 for administrative costs) to create an initiative where these funds would go directly into the hands of Black Vermont residents. This initiative is a continuation of a repeated call by Black folks across the nation for wealth redistribution from white folks and a call for reparations from the U.S. government.

In an article by Vermont Public, it was noted that Vermont is now ranked 4th in the nation for highest rates of houselessness per capita with “This year’s [2024] count register[ing] a stark racial disparity in Vermont's unhoused population, one that has been persistent in recent years. While Black people make up 1.4% of Vermont’s total population, over 8% of people who are unhoused are Black.”

The Black Prosperity Initiative will provide 20 Black Vermont residents with a total of $10,000 given in monthly increments over the course of a year to be used towards housing costs. All Black folks who live in Vermont qualify for this initiative, however those who live at the most intersections of historical oppression will be prioritized. The goal of this initiative is to not only provide Black Vermont residents with financial assistance to ease the burden of rising housing costs in Vermont, but also to aid in the case for reparations that are owed to Black Americans. We aim to collect quantitative and qualitative data over the course of the initiative from participants to support this case. This data will use the Social Determinants of Health as a baseline to prove how quality of life can be improved with the implementation of a universal basic income and reparations for Black folks in America. During the duration of the initiative, we also hope to raise additional funds to continue this program and we hope this data will inspire white folks across the state and country to consider ways that they can redistribute their wealth.

The Black Prosperity Initiative application will launch in April with a goal to have cash in hand beginning on Juneteenth (June 19th, 2025). The initiative will run Juneteenth 2025 to Juneteenth 2026. To qualify for this initiative you must be a Black Vermont resident who plans to stay in Vermont and does not currently receive Social Security and Supplemental Security Income.

Our organizations felt compelled to do this work, with the support of the First Step Board, because we have experience implementing mutual aid and advocating for wealth redistribution efforts to support local Black and Brown folks who live in the Green Mountain state.

Conscious Homestead is a learning urban homestead in Winooski that centers Black and Brown land-based healing and liberation, community care, and the practice of living consciously with, not over, the land or any of our human, animal, plant, and ancestral kin. Conscious Homestead's three core offerings are: 1) the Community Care Share program which offers 30 BIPOC families free food from local farmers who are predominantly Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), 2) our Flying Fish Gardening Collective which pays 10 BIPOC Vermonters to learn about Afro-Indigenous land stewardship practices, and 3) our Herbal Care Package Program which to date has distributed 550+ packages of herbal mutual aid to BIPOC nation-wide that specifically prioritizes the health needs that impact predominantly communities of color. Additionally, our founder, Candace Taylor, was part of a small group effort of Vermont-based reparations advocates who co-created a grassroots mechanism to facilitate wealth redistribution to Black Vermonters in 2020 - 2021 during the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor Black Lives Matter protests.

The Root Social Justice Center, founded in 2013 by four organizers in Brattleboro, Vermont, was established as an accessible space for social justice groups to gather, organize, and build community. Rooted in a mission of racial justice and centering Blackness, it provides a safe and empowering environment for activism and collaboration. Over the years, The Root Social Justice Center has evolved into a dynamic hub for racial and social justice, driving initiatives that address systemic inequities. Among its flagship programs is the Mutual Aid Supportive Network (MASN), created to address the disproportionate impacts of systemic racism and white supremacy culture on BIPOC communities. MASN was born from community feedback and a recognition of racism as a public health crisis, aiming to provide direct support and foster solidarity. Initially, MASN partnered with Lost River Racial Justice (LRRJ) to build a foundational network addressing immediate needs. This evolved into the Ready Response Team (RRT), which provided timely aid during crises. The COVID-19 pandemic marked a turning point, as MASN stepped up to deliver care packages to BIPOC families, demonstrating its critical role in meeting urgent needs. This work attracted increased community support and donations, enabling further growth. From 2023 to 2024, MASN distributed over $30,000 in $500 grant increments to BIPOC individuals across Vermont, covering essential costs like housing, medical expenses, and car repairs. This milestone underscores MASN’s transformation from a grassroots initiative to a vital resource for Vermont’s BIPOC communities, fostering resilience, empowerment, and mutual aid. As MASN continues to evolve, it remains committed to building connections and nurturing relationships that moves our BIPOC communities from the margins to the center.

With support from Spectrum Youth and Family Services, which also created a Direct Cash Transfer program focused on housing security, we designed our financial model based on an existing and successful pilot that intends to accomplish parallel mission work within our local Vermont communities. Not only are we interested in providing economic relief to intersectional Black Vermonters in hopes of stabilizing their housing, but we also want to document these folks' first-hand experiences during the duration of our initiative utilizing a variety of tools, interviews, and surveys.

We believe in the late Dr. King's 'Poor People's Campaign' and its promise of what he then described as guaranteed income, also known as universal basic income today. We believe in cooperative economics (e.g., Esusu a.k.a Susu/SouSou, Ujamaa, etc.), financial assistance programs, and organizing to redistribute hoarded and stolen wealth to poor and oppressed people. We believe in state-sanctioned reparations for Black people in the United States (and worldwide) due to the illegal and immoral human trafficking, enslavement, and genocide that African and African descendants have endured since the beginning of European colonization to the TransAtlantic Slave Trade and Chattel Slavery to Jim Crow to police brutality and mass incarceration to today's continued racial subordination. We believe in reciprocity, mutual aid, and community care.

Therefore, we want to continue this legacy of advocating for reparations, including ‘Special Field Order No. 15’, also known as ‘40 Acres and a Mule’, issued in 1865, the Black Panther Party's ‘Ten Point Program’ of the 1960s, and ‘Bill H.R.40.’, legislation introduced by John Conyers in 1989, then reintroduced each year over 30 years until his retirement in 2017. Black Americans have been tirelessly advocating for reparations and wealth redistribution for other marginalized people in the United States since times of bondage, hundreds of years too long and overdue. We want to help set a precedent, build a replicable community model, and encourage other institutions, organizations, legislators, and so on to create similar initiatives throughout the state of Vermont and the broader United States to further the reach of economic resources until reparations are achieved to Black people who face disproportionate rates of houselessness, housing insecurity, and structural barriers to home and land ownership, not to mention the nationwide shortage of affordable housing.

Join us in our collective effort to provide year-round non-taxable income to Black people residing in Vermont as a solution to race-based housing insecurity by matching our $200,000 pilot initiative. Anyone who cares about this matter can share resources no matter who they are! However, it's crucial to stress the importance of redistributing resources from white people, particularly those with generational wealth, who should be concerned with this movement, ending white supremacy and hoarding culture, and giving back to Black-led initiatives such as this. With another crowd-sourced tax-deductible donation of $200,000 via our joint non-profit organizations, we can continue this meaningful initiative of paying 40 Black Vermonters to participate and conduct research for another year while, simultaneously, Conscious Homestead and The Root Social Justice Center carry out their routine additional mutual aid offerings to BIPOC people throughout the state of Vermont. Please share this with anyone you know who would like to give to this initiative and who may be interested in applying and participating.

Stay tuned for the ‘Call for Matching Donations’, and please share this with your networks! Applications will go live in April. All Applicants will be considered. Race is not the only determining factor for the distribution of funds.

Learn more about Conscious Homestead and The Root Social Justice Center at their websites: www.conscioushomestead.org and www.therootsjc.org. Also, you can find both organizations on Instagram: @conscioushomestead and @therootsocialjustice.