Naomi Davis’ dream is not too different from the one that took her grandparents from being sharecroppers in Mississippi to living on the South Side of Chicago: the vision of being a part of an autonomous Black community. 

Utilizing millions of dollars in grants, including $10 million from the federal government’s Justice40 initiative, Davis’ organization, Blacks in Green, is working toward building a “sustainable square mile” in Chicago’s West Woodlawn neighborhood. The enclosed community will have a solar micro-energy grid, farm, botanic garden, composting program, and affordable housing. The blocks of land she is slowly procuring include Emmett Till’s childhood home, which the group is turning into a museum. 

“With this walkable village, over an arc of time, we’re going to see how this can increase Black households’ incomes, and we’re going to experience how we can build resilience against the harms of the climate crisis,” Davis says. Chicago’s South Side is notoriously burdened by flooding and air pollution, and is at the mercy of increasingly expensive energy bills. 

Her program is the exact kind of program that the Biden administration has banked on through its Justice40 initiative by taking an unprecedented approach to supporting racial equity within climate and environmental policies. But it also highlights the administration’s challenges in building support for its new initiatives — support it quickly needs after announcing that $2 billion of similar grants will be doled out to communities this year.

The program is meant to ensure that at least 40% of federal climate change and environmental investments reach communities that the White House has deemed “disadvantaged.” But the success of Biden’s hallmark environmental program hasn’t been made clear at the national level after the administration missed several major deadlines for implementation and watching some elements of funding being stalled by Republicans.

Read More: Biden’s Big Plan for Environmental Justice May Actually Increase the Racial Pollution Gap 

At the local level, some leaders of small community organizations believe Biden’s program unfairly favors organizations that are already well established. This is despite a unique grant process implemented by the administration.

The onslaught of funding has underscored decades-long debates between Black community groups: Is it better to work within established systems or outside of them?

For the first time, the money and resources related to environmental programs are being handled by nongovernmental organizations, including several Black-led ones. In theory, Biden’s program cuts out much of the bureaucracy that has defined the federal grant-making process by employing a handful of universities and nonprofit groups as middlemen between smaller community groups and the federal government. 

Davis’ group is one of those chosen to help spread the cashflow for community organizations across the Midwest. Groups like hers are expected to have a deeper understanding of local issues and more direct connections with communities, allowing them to ensure that the most impactful programs are being funded. 

“I ask other environmental leaders all the time: What will you do with your Biden Billion?” Davis says. “We’ve got a trillion dollars waterfalling; it’s gonna rain, whether you catch any of it or not. Where will it go? That’s up to you. You better get your pails out.”

But it has been evidently harder to feel the drastic “waterfalling” of support for smaller community organizations like the Rev. Michael Malcom’s environmental justice organization Alabama Interfaith Power & Light. He says this is because a “Black face within the same system” doesn’t automatically change the system. 

Malcom believes that longer standing organizations have a leg up in receiving funding because they have stronger relationships with the newly appointed intermediaries. 

Malcom’s organization received $25,000 from the program; less than 1% of Blacks in Green allotment. His group’s goal is to educate Alabama’s faith-based congregations through seminars and to help lower their carbon footprints through clean energy initiatives like solar panels. 

But he feels like the funding has “dried up” for organizations like his. 

“The model of distribution didn’t change,” Malcom says, “you’re still going through intermediaries; you just set it up where it looks different.”  

Black communities, particularly across the South, have “felt like they’ve been abandoned,” says Malcom, making it harder for them to trust the intention of these new programs — even if they’re meant to solve the very issues plaguing them, like lowering air pollution from power plants, removing lead drinking water lines, and installing new wastewater systems. 

“The climate crisis and environmental injustices that we face are driven by the self-interest of the political establishment,” Malcom says. “It makes sense for some of us to be wary of this new intense windfall of support, even with Black faces in high places.” 

“A disconnect between intent and actuality”

Davis’ vision is driven by the “profound hope” she watched flow through her community and the Black community writ large after the Great Migration and Civil Rights Movement. Hope, she says, was quickly dashed.

“As a child of the Civil Rights Movement, I witnessed such courage and genius. We had the ear of the world, we had that courage, we had cash flow, and we were super-organized. It was historic,” says Davis.

But over the past five decades, she says, Black Americans “pretty much lost everything — we lost the church, we lost the family, we lost the schools, and we lost the community.” 

She argues that this loss stems from a disconnect between the intention of government programs to curb the financial and opportunity gaps between Black and white people and the actual outcome of these programs: maintaining the gap. Today, for example, the income gap between Black and white households is virtually the same as it was in 1950.

The historic problem, Davis argues, is that the struggles of Black communities helped “subsidize” the jobs of those purportedly working to solve the issues, both in the government and nongovernment sectors. But with this new model of funding distribution, with people directly impacted by the issues helping to give out the money, people will be more inclined to solve the crises because they’re not profiting from the issues being prolonged. 

Still, for Biden’s approach to work, trust between all the actors at play must be strong. 

“I think one of the tragedies of programs — this one, too — is that there has always been a disconnect between intent and actuality,” says Lenwood V. Long Sr., who has worked in community economic development for over 30 years. 

“All the time, we say that these programs are for the community, but sometimes the vehicle to ensure that the community base comes together actually works to make sure that the community does not come together,” he says. 

Davis understands why some Black environmental groups across the country are not as enthusiastic about Justice40, but she hopes it won’t stop people from attempting to utilize it. 

It’s true, Davis says, “white people have never solved the problems of Black people.” 

“When white people, the white establishment, are in charge of money meant for us and are saying what our solution should be — we never get free,” she says.

“We’ve always wanted our own money directly, and we’ve wanted to manage it because we can do it as efficiently and as profoundly as anybody else can. This is our chance. If you believe that — if you don’t believe it — still give it a shot.”