A Sacred Pause: Ali Anderson is Going on Sabbatical

Written By Feed Black Futures

From the Feed Black Futures Advisory Circle
June 2025

Beloved Community,

In a world that demands constant motion, we pause to honor the sacred rhythm of rest. Today, we celebrate our Founder Ali Anderson as she embarks on a four-month sabbatical—a profound act of living into the values that Feed Black Futures was born from. The Feed Black Futures Advisory Circle offers our full and complete support and celebration of this profound act of resistance and care. 

As we hold this space for Ali's sabbatical, we are reminded that our fight for land commons, food sovereignty, and collective governance requires us to embody the world we're building. A world where Black femme leaders are held, where rest is sacred, and where our humanity is never sacrificed for productivity.

We are pacing ourselves for the long game, building generational change rooted in love, care, and the unshakeable belief that our communities deserve to thrive.

Living Our Values

As Ali has reflected to us, this sabbatical “really means living out our values and really preventing a moral injury that leads to burnout, which happens to so many of our Black Femme movement leaders." For five transformative years, Ali has poured her vision, heart, and relentless dedication into building Feed Black Futures as a formation rooted in rest, healing, nourishment, joy, collaboration, and liberation. Now, it is time for her to receive what she has generously given.

This sabbatical represents a rejection of our prevailing societal mindset that equates human worth with productivity. As Ali beautifully expressed, "my worth is not dependent on what I produce. Instead, my worth is connected to how much I live in and among my values."

"The moon reveals itself in the water when the water is still."

After five years of devoted work with little reprieve, this is Ali's time for stillness, to see the moon again, to reconnect with herself, her loved ones, and the communities that ground her. She will engage in meditation and spiritual practice, spend time in nature, and do the essential work of pruning: keeping what nurtures, releasing what no longer serves.

Modeling Care for Our Community

This sabbatical creates space for Feed Black Futures to deepen our commitment to collective leadership and community care. We can only serve our community when we are sustained ourselves. Ali's courage to rest models for all of us—especially our young team—what it means to center healing for ourselves and our work.

During Ali's sabbatical, our Co-Executive Director Sophi Wilmore will continue to lead our team alongside our Advisory Circle. Since stepping into this role in February 2024, Sophi has brought a wealth of experience in food justice, abolition, strategic planning, and communications to our collective work. Their experience in community and ecological organizing, combined with their commitment to liberation through food sovereignty, strengthens our capacity to build cooperative systems rooted in solidarity and collective healing. Sophi has been instrumental in creating the strong, adaptive organizational culture that makes Ali's sabbatical possible, building a team capable of right-sizing the work and fulfilling our mission.

We are building the governing power of BIPOC people and farmers to grow the land commons. This work requires leaders who are sustained and rested. With Sophi's continued leadership and our Advisory Circle's guidance, our base-building, education, and ecosystem work will flourish even as Ali takes this essential time for restoration.

How You Can Support

During this sacred pause, you can support Ali and our collective work by:

  • Honoring Ali’s boundary of rest. 

  • Trusting our team to carry forward the beautiful work we share.

  • Sending notes of love and encouragement that affirm rest as resistance.

  • Supporting Feed Black Futures with funds and connections as we continue our base-building, education, and ecosystem work.

  • Reflecting on your own relationship to rest and how you might model care in your communities.

For questions, collaboration opportunities, reflections, or to offer support during this time, please contact our team at info@feedblackfutures.org

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The Return

When Ali returns in October, she will bring renewed clarity, energy, and vision for the next phase of our collective liberation work. This sabbatical is an investment in people’s sustainability within our movement.

Thank you for your care and support,

The Feed Black Futures Advisory Circle

At Feed Black Futures our mission is to nourish communities, advance climate resilience, and build regenerative black food economies as a means of addressing historical harms caused by incarceration and land dispossession. We serve Oakland, Sacramento, and the Central Valley.

Feed Black Futures