Freedom to thrive

Dynamite Hill-Smithfield Community Land Trust founder Susan Diane Mitchell is eager to see the Smithfield community embrace a renewed spirit — a spirit she said the community once held close.

“The kind of spirit for creating for themselves,” said Mitchell, the head of one of only two community land trusts in the state, “needs to come back.”

The Smithfield area is a collection of five neighborhoods on the west side of the city, about 10 minutes from downtown and right by Parker High School, made up of approximately 7,100 people. 

It is also known as part of “Dynamite Hill,” a traditionally black area where more than 40 bombs were set off between 1947-65, most of them by the Ku Klux Klan and all of them threatening lives and the fight for civil rights. Still, people in the area were resilient and fought for land. 

“Historically, Smithfield has been a self-sustaining business community,” Mitchell said. “We want to return to that with our cooperative economic model; we want people to thrive, this time in the freedoms of civil rights.”

Mitchell said that even though people keep raving about the growth in Birmingham, she said she doesn’t think every community feels like it is benefiting from it. 

“It’s furthering an elitist culture,” Mitchell said. “This effort is to hold our space [Smithfield] in place. We want it to be better when you put the land in the community’s trust.” 

The Dynamite Hill-Smithfield Community Land Trust (DH-SCLT) was founded in 2015, and Mitchell said they applied for nonprofit status in 2016. It is now an official nonprofit organization established by Mitchell and other Smithfield community members to seek possession and use of empty plots of land for both commercial and residential purposes. The land, she said, will eventually aid the community through asset-based community development.

Asset-based community development is slightly different from what nonprofits usually do, Rev. Majadi Baruti, the community engagement director for DH-SCLT, said.

“A lot of nonprofits and people try to tell us what to do,” he said. “But they also don’t understand the community, they don’t understand what we are. We know ourselves best. We know what our needs are.”

By having the land trust organize the gifts and assets from the community they inhabit, they keep the efforts entirely community-led and based, which is a crucial part of a land trust.

Mitchell and Baruti said they aren’t surprised that the Smithfield community is skeptical of their promises, given that leaders in the community have promised aid in the past without following through. 

“People lie to them all the time,” Baruti said. “But we aren’t going to break their hearts again.” 

WORKING TOWARD PROGRESS

So far, DH-SCLT has adopted eight lots, measuring about 2.5 acres total, from the Birmingham Land Bank Authority. These are vacant, overgrown plots of land at the side of houses or buildings that are uncared for and tax-delinquent. They can be adopted — which means they have been taken off the speculative market and put into the community’s hands to utilize — for two years at a cost of $50. 

“You see, land banks have a disposition problem, and community land trusts have an acquisition problem,” Baruti said.

Since early August, Mitchell, Baruti and a couple of dozen volunteers have spent their weekends slowly and steadily working to clear and ready the eight messy and overgrown plots of land. These volunteers are part of a partner organization, Friends of Dynamite Hill, which is a group dedicated to volunteering support and fundraising to DH-SCLT. 

After the two-year adoption, then DH-SCLT can fully purchase each lot for a flat fee of $3,500 from the Birmingham Land Bank Authority.

Baruti said DH-SCLT is currently getting the local government and city officials on board with the land trust, as well as with buying land for the Birmingham Land Bank Authority. Baruti said he hopes that the city gives them advice, funding and some needed resources.

“Another key thing, one of the more important parts, [is] that cities, governances, are supposed to work with community land trusts,” Baruti said.

Baruti said they are hopeful about working with the city and also plan to fundraise on three levels: connecting with political allies, applying for various grants and pursuing a grassroots effort. 

In the meantime, Mitchell said DH-SCLT is collaborating with the community during the two-year adoption period to use the plots for projects like pollinator and community gardens, open gathering spaces where education can take place and, eventually, permanently affordable housing, which is one of DH-SCLT’s major initiatives.  

Permanently affordable housing means that the community land trust retains ownership to the actual land and leases the land to a home owner for an affordable, nominal fee. This process allows low-income families to be able to afford housing.

“So the community is collectively deciding who to sell property to and how to use it, and that’s the purpose of affordable housing,” Baruti said. 

Currently, they plan for two of the lots to be for affordable housing. 

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

Mitchell said for the last year, she and Baruti have been learning about the housing crisis through working for AmeriCorps, a nationwide civil society program that engages adults in public service work and meeting the needs of communities. 

Last year, she worked for Interfaith Hospital Housing, and Baruti worked for One Roof. Both Mitchell and Baruti recently signed on for their second year of AmeriCorps Birmingham, this time working at Urban Ministry as the workforce and skills coordinator and the volunteer coordinator, respectively.  

Mitchell said she decided to continue so that she could expose herself to the right contacts, learn about the housing crisis and gain the right community training — all necessary information for heading a community land trust.

“It crystallized for me that this work is true and good, and we will one day have permanently affordable housing,” she said. 

Other primary goals for the land trust are to regenerate urban agricultural cooperative and to establish popular education. Urban farming focuses on growing maximum yields from a minimum area of land, while still encouraging biodiversity and sustaining the fertility of the soil.

Baruti emphasized “a democratic form of schooling” in the popular education initiative, involving small groups where everyone contributes knowledge and someone is chosen as the facilitator. This form of schooling comes from a movement called Universidad sin Fronteras. 

GOING FORWARD

Each weekend, they clear another plot. Each weekend, they plant another round of seeds. By spring, there will be sunflowers planted. Mitchell trusts more and more in a renewed spirit of the Smithfield community. 

This year, the Sierra Club gave a $3,000 donation that they have been using in these beginning stages, as well as some other donations by individuals. Mitchell knows soon they will need more money to continue progress.

Their plans are focused on readying the plots for the pollinator gardens and community gathering places, where they can invite vendors and focus an event on food and education about land and the Smithfield community. 

If community members want to get involved, Mitchell said she encourages any and everyone to help. One way she suggests for people to get involved is by coming to one of the work days organized by the Friends of Dynamite Hill. They need not only people’s time and physical strength, but also donations and help accessing tools and equipment.

“So hopefully next time this year, this area will be filled with flowers — sunflowers, other flowers, a symbol of regeneration,” Mitchell said. “Sunflowers have the ability to pull out toxins [from soil]. When I learned that, I knew I would like sunflowers to be our symbol for regeneration. They can be products of the community growth.”

To get involved, go to their Facebook page at Friends of Dynamite Hill. To learn more about the land trust, go to the Dynamite Hill-Smithfield Community Land Trust on Facebook.

This article has been updated to reflect the correct spelling of Susan Diane Mitchell, not Michelle.