Our Roots & Trajectory

Where We’ve Come From

Fifteen years ago, inspired by visits to communities of Brazil’s Landless Worker’s Movement (MST), members of the Justice, Ecology, and Democracy (JED) Collective organized a series of meetings with grassroots activists around the state. What would it look like, they asked, to build a movement for land justice in Maine? How might we simultaneously tackle the challenges of unequal land access, farmland loss, rural community decline, and the lack of inter-generational collaboration to build long-term movements for environmental and social change? A clear idea emerged: create a statewide organization capable of holding land as a “commons” and ensuring its long-term protection while redistributing its use to people and groups who are dedicated to inclusive, community-based changemaking and who would otherwise not have access to secure land tenure (whether due to racism, class inequality, historical dispossession, or other forms of marginalization). It was a powerful idea.

Seeking inspiration and examples of this kind of structure, we found the community land trust (CLT). Born from the visionary work of civil rights organizers Shirley and Charles Sherrod, Bob Swann, Slater King and others, New Communities, Inc. was the first iteration of what would become a powerful and enduring structure for land protection and land justice. Drawing on ideas from political economist Henry George, the Kibbutz cooperative movement, and the Indian Gramdan (“land gift”) movement, the CLT structure is rooted in balanced values of collective liberation and redistribution, community ownership of land, and individual liberty and responsibility–a mix well-suited for Mainers seeking social change.

When the time came, two years later, for the JED Collective to organize the purchase of the land they leased from an elder farmer in Greene, a seed was planted: working with many allies, JED members created the Clark Mountain Community Land Trust (CMCLT), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that subsequently purchased the land through an innovative community financing structure. The intention was that, while fulfilling an immediate need, CMCLT would also be a “living laboratory” from which an expanded future effort could be launched.

This is exactly what happened.

For our first 10 years, operating as an all-volunteer effort, we focused on building the organization from the ground-up, learning-by-doing. Like a caterpillar transforming inside the cocoon, we slowly and deliberately built the foundations of a new organizational stage. We welcomed significant new land into the commons, pursued a number of pilot projects beyond our land in Greene, finalized a 99-year Ground Lease with Wild Mountain Cooperative (formerly JED Collective), built a depth of experience and skill among members of our small, committed, all-volunteer Board, and developed a strategic vision. In the spring of 2019 we hired our first part-time staff person to help lead the process of program and capacity development toward a major new phase. Could we become a state-wide community land trust focused on “commoning” land and redistributing its long-term use in ways that would help to build a more liberatory and resilient world?

Asking this question required us to look in the mirror. As an organization led entirely by white, settler-descended people, many of whom also have class privilege, we were clearly not in a position to decide what “land justice” looks like, much less to lead the process. If Land in Common was to become the catalyst for land justice that we imagined it could be, those of us who created it would need to do a whole lot of listening, relationship-building, and self-transformation–ultimately letting go of our power and handing the future of the organization over to organizers who come from communities directly impacted by land injustice. That is, if these organizers even experience the thing we built as something that could actually serve real community needs.

So we set out to listen, to learn, and to do the best we could to make our vision and organization vulnerable to radical change in the face of difficult questions about what “land justice” might actually mean to people deeply affected by injustice in what is now called Maine. In many ways, we embarked on a process of learning how to dance between holding onto our shared, core values of collective liberation, land decommodification, and the restoration of reciprocity between humans and the land; and letting go of our expectations about what this needs to look like, and of our power to ultimately decide. We are deeply thankful for all of the incredible, brave, BIPOC organizers and visionaries who have been willing to enter these conversations with us and to risk trusting the possibilities of building something beautiful and powerful together.

Where We’re at Now

Now, in 2023, we are deep in the midst of major transformation, and its shape is still emerging. What we know for sure is that our “we” has changed radically.

Over the last three years, the transformation of Land in Common has looked like walking forward with two feet: with one foot forward, we are making deep structural and relational changes to transform Land in Common’s leadership, and with the other foot forward, we’re taking concrete actions to secure land access and return land to communities directly impacted by land injustice.

We’re in a slow and intentional process of building relationships and trust with a group of BIPOC organizers, artists, and visionary change-makers from multiple communities in Maine. These relationships have flowed into the self-organization of a Leadership Council from which we are now taking our core leadership. Our current Board initially imagined that the Advisory Council would become the future Board, but as we continue to work together, Leadership Council is interested in exploring alternative pathways to transforming the organization that give BIPOC strong power AND encourage white allies to stay deeply involved, interface with colonial power structures (like the IRS), and use their resources and connections to support BIPOC leadership. Leadership transformation is unfolding, in time and on terms set by the Leadership Council, from what grows out of the trust and mutual accountability built from shared action.

As we reimagine our leadership, we continue to take concrete steps to restore land justice, and to support the work of Wabanaki and other BIPOC activists calling for land rematriation and land redistribution. The bulk of our current work is partnering with BIPOC-led groups to find and secure permanent land tenure, and returning our wild lands (180 acres, in process) to Wabanaki stewardship. At every steps we seek to balance the need for action–facing the urgency of landlessness and white supremacy’s ongoing violence–with the need for slowing down to do the work in ways that truly build safety, trust, and the possibility for liberatory collective action.