Amanda David is an active community member, healer, grower, mother, teacher and a longtime friend of NOFA. She and Mandana Boushee have run the In Living Color space at the NOFA-NY winter conference for three years, a space designed to center the needs, experiences, and voices of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) by creating an open-hearted and meaningful container to connect, provide comfort, respite and care. Everything Amanda has created and how she treads on the earth is rooted in a synergistic relationship between people and the planet. Despite the systemic barriers for Black and Brown people in our society, especially in land access, she’s devoted her life to regenerative land work and teaching others to heal themselves and the planet in what she calls “liberatory community herbalism.” She runs Rootwork Herbals, including multiple projects such as the Jane Minor BIPOC Community Medicine Garden and the People’s Medicine Institute, which finally rooted on a piece of land Amanda bought in Brooktondale, NY, in 2020. Yet since moving her three children and her herbal programs there, her family has faced continued racial harassment and threats, which are forcing her to relocate for the safety of herself and her family. Please support the GoFundMe Relocation Campaign, gofundme.com/f/help-us-relocate-black-farmerowned-rootwork-herbals.
By Elizabeth Gabriel
In 2020, Amanda David finally achieved a lifelong dream of buying her own piece of land for her family and community. Once settled at her new home in a small town outside of Ithaca, NY, she started a small homestead, herbal medicine farm and place of respite. She started the Jane Minor BIPOC Community Garden, a sanctuary for Black, Brown, and queer people to tend and harvest their own crops.
Now, just a few years later, friends are fundraising to relocate the New York native, who is Black, from her homestead due to continued threats and racial harassment by her neighbor, Robert Whittaker, who is white. David built a fence that Whittaker repeatedly tampered with, and the harassment got so bad that in June this year, she filed a lawsuit against him.
“I have been working hard for many years, never able to afford a home,” David said to the Amsterdam News in June. “I was finally able to afford a home, and as soon as I purchased it, I wanted this to be a place where Black and Brown folks can have access to this little piece of nature, [for it] to be a sanctuary, a place where people can build community and reconnect to the land and all of those beautiful healing things that have been systematically taken away from us.
“To then almost immediately be subjected to this kind of racial harassment—the exact thing that I was trying to create safety around is now happening daily to us. Despite that, we have built a beautiful community. We have classes and events that really bring people together [who] are really healing, but it’s gotten to the point where it doesn’t feel safe to do that anymore.
The lawsuit explains that Whittaker called David and her children anti-Black slurs and remarks, many of which have been captured on video and included threats to beat her son with a stick while referring to him with the N-word. Another incident states that Whittaker fired a gun from his porch when David hosted an event for Black teens.
The Tompkins County Sheriff’s Department arrested and charged Whittaker multiple times throughout the past three years due to harassment against David, which led to two guilty pleas. Yet still, David said, despite multiple orders of protection, he has still continued to harass her. In February, a judge mandated that Whittaker surrender his firearms—both guns and pellet guns—but they have since been returned, according to David.
According to Amsterdam News, while Whittaker faces civil and criminal actions, David’s options remain limited. Sally Santangelo, executive director of CNY Fair Housing, representing David, said most injunctive relief obtained by the organization in past harassment cases comes from landlord-tenant disputes rather than neighbor versus neighbor.
“It’s possible that the monetary damages could be significant enough to force him to sell his property or allow her to move, or the threat of that might be enough,” Santangelo said. “Even if a court couldn’t act directly to force him to sell his property, it’s possible that it could happen as a result of monetary damages.”
Mutual Aid efforts to defend David sprang up following the harassment from local and distant supporters. One member of the organizers of Neighbor Solidarity Network (NSN), and neighboring farmer, Erica Frenay, said Whittaker seems to behave more pleasantly when white people like her are present. “We’ve tried to step in to do things like put up the security cameras along a border of the property that she doesn’t feel comfortable going to,” Frenay said. Other people in the Network help care for the animals when she doesn’t feel comfortable going outside, provide mental and emotional support and help to organize a spreadsheet to document things such as when a police report is filed, when any type of harassment happens, and if the police are called. The Black Farmer Fund, a national not-for-profit that nurtures Black community wealth & health by investing in Black agricultural systems in the Northeast, has also provided support to David.
Nobody should live with this type of fear of their neighbor. David weighed her options but, sadly, despite the tremendous emotional, physical, and monetary cost, believes moving is the best choice.
People of Color own less than 4% of all the land in the US. The town where David lives, not unlike most of Upstate New York, is overwhelmingly white—more than 85%, according to the 2020 Census. These inequities are rooted in the history of land theft and intergenerational wealth on which this country was built and the systemic racism Black farmers have faced for generations, encompassing everything from discriminatory lending practices to violence and intimidation.
In a packed Caroline Townhall courtroom on September 9th more than 100 people showed up to stand in solidarity with David, her family and her work and to witness the proceedings of Robert Whittaker, Junior, who was charged with stalking as a hate crime and criminal contempt on August 30th. According to an NSN press release from September 10th, Judge Gary Reinbolt made the verdict to keep Whittaker in custody, stating, “It is not physical harm, but living under intimidation, particularly when you don’t know when or where the next threat is going to physically be, even if the defendant is making it from his own property.” Reinbolt also noted the defendant’s record of contempt of court orders. “He has twice shown utter contempt for an order issued by this court. Apparently I don’t get his attention just issuing an order of protection,” Reinbolt said. “Apparently, he doesn’t think the court has authority over him. It does.”
The verdict provides at least temporary peace and relief for David as she and her community of support work hard to raise enough money for her relocation. “My children and I should be able to feel safe and secure in our own home, but we don’t. Mr. Whittaker’s persistent and horrendously racist and sexist intimidation and harassment has made that impossible. His discriminatory behavior hasn’t just harmed my family; it has also harmed the entire community of BIPOC gardeners and herbal medicine practitioners that I work with.”
Rootwork Herbals: rootworkherbals.com
Relocation Fundraiser: gofundme.com/f/help-us-relocate-black-farmerowned-rootwork-herbals.
Elizabeth (she/her) is the editor of NOFA's The Natural Farmer newspaper. She's a mom, a farmer, and an activist. Besides working for TNF, Liz is an organizational equity consultant, a member of the Soul Fire Farm Speakers Collective and runs Wellspring Forest Farm with her family in the Finger Lakes,on land originally stewarded by the Gayogo̱hó:nǫʼ Indigenous people and who still reside here today south of and surrounding Cayuga Lake.
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