This week, Compost, Cotton & Cornrows interrupts our regularly scheduled program. No guest. No interview. No promo assets.

Host Dominique Drakeford offers a short grounded reflection on nervous system care, burnout and the radical necessity of pause as a sustainability practice. In a world saturated with trauma, crisis and constant resistance, this episode reframes rest and re-regulation as political acts of preservation and power - especially for Black women and Black mothers.

This is not an escape from the work, it’s maintenance for the mission.
Because sustainability must center the care of Black women as well as care as an infrastructure. 🌱

Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling!

@Compost_Cotton_Cornrows

In this episode of Compost, Cotton & Cornrows, Dominique Drakeford sits with Kev aka “The Plant Papi”, creator and cultural storyteller known for weaving plant care, mental wellness and radical self-honesty into everyday life. What begins as a conversation about houseplants opens into something deeper: how plant care becomes a mirror. Kev reflects on how tending plants during the pandemic helped him navigate grief, identity shifts, fatherhood and mental health and how he now reads his plants as signals of how he is doing. From moving away from perfection to embracing seasonality, balance and softness, this episode reframes plant care as a living practice of self-check-in.

Together, Dominique and Kev explore representation, history and memory … what it means to be a Black man publicly rooted in wellness, curiosity, humor and vulnerability. Kev traces the ancestral and political journeys of plants across Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas while sharing an insightful example from the Haitian Revolution. The conversation moves fluidly between joy and truth, grief and play, reminding us that sustainability is not just about what we grow but how we show up, who we allow ourselves to be and the freedom found in being fully human. Come for the plants. Stay for the wisdom, the laughter and the reminder that healing doesn’t have to look one way.

Listen now on all streaming platforms and watch the full conversation on YouTube.

Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling!

@Compost_Cotton_Cornrows

In this uncompromising conversation, Dominique Drakeford sits with Maurice Carney, co-founder and Executive Director of Friends of the Congo, to name what the world has been trained to ignore: the Congo is not a footnote to modern life … It is its foundation. From the transatlantic slave trade to King Leopold II’s genocidal regime, from the assassination of Patrice Lumumba to today’s cobalt-powered green energy transition, Maurice traces how African labor, land and intellect have been systematically extracted to fuel global capitalism, while Congolese lives are rendered disposable. He dismantles the colonial gaze, challenges dominant climate narratives that erase Congo, and makes the case that you cannot talk about sustainability, technology, artificial intelligence or climate justice without reckoning with the Congo Basin - the world’s second-largest rainforest and one of its most critical carbon sinks.

But this episode is not only an indictment; it is a declaration of resistance. Maurice introduces the Basandja Coalition and the principle of agro-liberation. It become evident how imperative it is to return to indigenous knowledge, soil, culture and collective ethics as pathways to liberation. He insists on agency over victimhood, naming the organizers, women, farmers and communities who are building power on the frontlines of mines, peatlands and forests. This conversation asks more of us as listeners, consumers and global citizens: to refuse normalization, to understand our complicity and to be found by the side of the Congolese people in the unfinished struggle for a #FreeCongo. A Free Congo is one where Congolese control their land, resources, and future for the benefit of Africa and the world.

CCC COMMUNITY - this is a listening responsibility. Tune in, share this episode, and explore how to support Congolese movements at freecongo.org. Watch or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

https://friendsofthecongo.org/

Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling!

@Compost_Cotton_Cornrows