VOICES PROFILE

On a FARM in Maryland that was once a STOP on the UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, PAULETTE GREENE and DONNA DEAR have created a new model for CLIMATE JUSTICE and found a different kind of FREEDOM

- KAITLYN GREENIDGE

When you visit Paulette Greene and Donna Dear, you have to bring something with you. For our offering, we've chosen cheesesteaks.

Paulette and Donna exploded into the internet's consciousness this past summer after a short documentary about them, The Aunties, premiered at the BlackStar Film Festival in Philadelphia.

The couple have been married for nearly a decade but together for 50 years. They're also stewards of Mt. Pleasant Acres Farms, a 111-acre parcel of land in Preston, Maryland, that they've transformed into what they hope can be a new paradigm for community and climate justice. The farm was once part of a plantation where the abolitionist and activist Harriet Tubman's family was enslaved and that later became a stop on the Underground Railroad. It is, notably, the site of the Witness Tree, a tulip poplar where Tubman gathered those escaping enslavement to pray before beginning the journey to freedom.

Through a mix of workshops, events, and educational programs, Paulette and Donna have established Mt. Pleasant Acres Farms as a model for sustainability and ecological conservation. But they also want the farm to function as a vehicle for restoring the relationship between Black communities and the land. Mt. Pleasant Acres Farms serves as an example of how a place that was the site of violence-the violence of white supremacy and colonialism-can be reclaimed and transformed into something liberatory without erasing that history.

Paulette, an educator, and Donna, an Army veteran, first met at a "do drop in" party Paulette hosted on New Year's Day in 1974.