The Greene County Democrat

Category: Newswire

  • Newswire : Police killings challenge the mental health of Black Americans

    By Frederick H. Lowe, BlackmansStreet.Today

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    Blacks more likely to be killed by police
    Police killings of unarmed African Americans have a deep psychological effect on the entire black community, causing many who weren’t in the line of fire to feel psychically wounded, according to a study published by The Lancet, a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal.
    Black people are most likely to be killed by police . Source. Mapping Police Violence
    Police killings of unarmed Black Americans add 1 to 7 additional poor-mental health days per person per year or 55 million excess poor mental-health days among black Americans, resulting in their suffering from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the report titled, “Police killings and their spillover effects on the mental health of black Americans: a population-based, quasi-experimental study.”
    The report focused on the number of days in which the person questioned said his mental health suffered noticeably after learning of deadly police shooting of an unarmed black person in their city or state. Police kill more than 300 blacks each year and at least a quarter of them, or 75, are unarmed.
    The list of unarmed black men killed by police is long and continues to grow. These victims include Oscar Grant, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray and Stephon Clark. Most recently, Antwon Rose, Jr., 17, was killed when Michael Rosfeld, an East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, police officer, shot him three times in the back as he ran from a traffic stop.
    In 2017, 25 percent of the people killed by police were black although blacks comprise only 13 percent of the nation’s population. Some were armed and some were not. There were only 17 days in 2017 when the police did not kill someone.
    Following the police murder of Michael Brown, which set off days of civil unrest and demonstrations in Ferguson, Missouri, where the shooting occurred, researchers said blacks reported suffering from high rates of depression.
    Dorian Johnson was walking with Brown when the teenager was shot to death by Darren Wilson, a police officer. Johnson said he suffered from depression following the shooting.
    The study did not address how deadly police shooting in other parts of the country affected blacks who read about them in the newspapers, hear about them on the radio, watched television news reports or read news stories about the deadly shooting online.
    The study also did not report how deadly shootings affected blacks when police are assigned to desk duty but are later are acquitted of all the charges related to the killings.
    The website Mapping Police Violence reported that in 2015 99 percent of cases have not resulted in involved officers being convicted of a crime.

  • Newswire : Supreme Court upholds Muslim travel ban

    by: Frederick Lowe, Northstar News

    Supreme Court.jpg

    U. S. Supreme Court building

    The U.S. Supreme Court handed President Trump a major victory Tuesday by upholding his ban on immigrants and visitors from seven mostly Muslim countries.
    In a 5-4 ruling in the case titled Trump v. Hawaii, the justices rejected the argument that Trump overstepped his authority under immigration laws and that the targeting of mostly Muslim-majority countries amounted to religious discrimination.
    Chief Justice John Roberts who wrote the majority opinion said the ruling concerned the nation’s security.
    Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined by Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the court’s ruling blindly endorsed a discriminatory policy motivated by animosity towards Muslims.
    Sotomayor added that the ruling is a total and complete shutdown of Muslims coming to this country under a façade masquerading as national security measures.
    Trump’s order issued in September 2017 was the third version of the travel ban. It imposed a 90-day ban on citizens from Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia Yemen, North Korea, and Venezuela entering the U.S. Later, the order put a 120-day hold on the admission of refugees.
    “The Supreme Court has upheld the clear authority of the President to defend the national security of the United States. In this era of worldwide terrorism and extremist movements bent on harming innocent civilians, we must properly vet those coming into our country,” Trump said in a statement.
    Following the Supreme Court’s ruling, advocacy and rights groups warned of an increase in attacks against Muslims, reported Al Jazeera.
    Since Trump took office, reports of crimes against Muslims have climbed, Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman of Council on American-Islamic Relations, told Al Jazeera.

  • Newswire : ‘They’re not welcome anymore, anywhere’ Maxine Waters tells supporters to confront Trump officials

    By JENNIFER CALFAS , Time Magazine

     

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    Congresswoman Maxine Waters

    Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) is calling on her supporters to confront Trump administration officials and staffers in public amid widespread backlash to the President’s zero-tolerance policy on illegal immigration.
    “Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up,” Waters told a crowd in California over the weekend. “If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd, and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”
    Waters’ call to action comes after two Trump administration officials recently faced backlash in public and, in one case, was denied service at a restaurant.
    Last week, protesters confronted Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen while she ate at a Mexican restaurant in Washington, D.C., after she defended the administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said Nielsen was having a work dinner at the restaurant.
    Over the weekend, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted that she was denied service at a Lexington, Virginia restaurant called Red Hen because she worked for President Donald Trump. “Her actions say far more about her than me,” Sanders wrote in a tweet, referring to the restaurant’s owner.

    The owner of the restaurant, Stephanie Wilkinson, later told The WashingtonPost that “there are moments in time when people need to live their convictions. This appeared to be one.”
    Waters’ comments come amid ongoing fallout from Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy, which, before the President signed an executive order curtailing it last week, resulted in the separation of more than 2,300 migrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. Despite Trump’s order, government agencies and foster care organizations tasked with caring for these separated children received little to no guidance on what to do with them.
    The Department of Homeland Security said on Saturday that 522 of the separated children had been reunited with their families. On Sunday, Trump tweeted that immigrants who enter the country illegally must be deported “immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases.”
    “Mr. President: We will see you everyday, every hour of the day, wherever you are, to let you know you cannot get away with this,” Waters said over the weekend.
    “History is not going to be kind to this administration,” she said. “But we want history to report that we stood up. That we pushed back. That we fought. That we did not consider ourselves victims to this president.”
    Other Democrats, like Senate Minority leader, Chuck Schumer of New York were critical of Maxine Waters’ confrontational approach and said it was handing electoral benefits to President Trump and his supporters.

  • Newswire : Lawsuit filed to block Obama Presidential Center in Chicago

    Crusader Staff Report (The Chicago Crusader/NNPA Member)

     

     

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    Obama Presidential Center
    Days before the Chicago Plan Commission approved plans for the Obama Presidential Center, a federal lawsuit was filed to block the proposed $500 million facility that will be built in Jackson Park.
    The 500-acre park is located in Chicago’s predominately Black Woodlawn and South Shore neighborhoods, where former First Lady Michelle Obama, rapper Kanye West and some of the nation’s most prominent Blacks once lived. On Thursday, May 17, the Chicago Plan Commission unanimously approved the blueprints for the Obama Presidential Center, despite emotional appeals from protestors who are concerned that the library will eventually drive up rents in the neighborhoods and force out longtime, low-income residents. The plans now go before the city’s 50-member city council. While those plans are expected to pass that stage, the Obama Foundation faces a lawsuit that may be its biggest hurdle yet.
    The lawsuit was filed on Monday, May 14 by “Protect Our Parks,” a nonprofit organization that seeks a court order to “bar the Park District and the City from approving the building of the Presidential Center and from conveying any interest in or control of the Jackson Park site to the Foundation.”
    In its complaint, Protect Our Parks accuses the Chicago Park District of an “institutional bait and switch.” The organization said the park district transferred public land to the Obama Foundation to house an official federal Obama Federal Library. But that purpose changed when Obama decided his center will not be his official library. Instead, the federal National Records and Archives Administration will run it in another location. In the lawsuit, Protect Our Parks called Chicago’s plan to lease public park space an “illegal land grab.”
    The organization also said the transfer of park land to a non-governmental private entity violates the park district code. In addition, Protect Our Parks said the park district and the city will receive only token rent for the land and the Park District Act law “does not authorize the Park District itself to transfer valuable public trust land for virtually no compensatory return.”
    Protect Our Parks says that city officials are “prohibited by law” from turning over public park land to a non-governmental private entity for private use.
    At a meeting Thursday, May 17, the commission was expected to take up a resolution authorizing a long-term ground lease for 19.3 acres in Jackson Park from the city to the Obama Foundation. In March 2015, Chicago’s city council approved an ordinance for Chicago Park District land in Jackson Park to be transferred to the city of Chicago to lease to the Obama Foundation.
    Protect Our Parks’ lawsuit may force planning officials to rewrite the ordinance.
    Protect Our Parks is being represented by Roth Fioretti; Robert Fioretti is a former Chicago alderman who challenged Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2015 before endorsing Emanuel in the run-off. More recently, Fioretti was defeated in a March Democratic primary bid for Cook County Board president.
    In an emailed statement, Emanuel’s mayoral spokesman Grant Klinzman said, “The Obama Presidential Center is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to invest hundreds of millions of dollars that will create good jobs on the South Side, bring our communities together and honor the legacy of Chicago’s favorite son and daughter. While some choose to stand in the way of progress for the South Side, we are focused on making progress in every community in Chicago.”
    But later that day, Emanuel at an event called the lawsuit frivolous and said that the “notion that somehow this is not a presidential library, because the actual papers will be in New York …to me not only is frivolous, but means the people that filed this don’t understand the 21st century,” he added. “The good news is, the presidential papers will be in two places but there will be only one library, here in Chicago.”
    Emanuel said that the papers will be digitized.
    Juanita Irizarry, executive director of Friends of the Parks, also released a statement, saying officials with the group welcome the Obama Center to the South Side “but disagree with the choice to locate it on public parkland, rather than vacant land across the street from Washington Park.”
    “While we are not involved with this lawsuit in any way, it is an indication of the fact the Friends of the Parks is not alone in our concern about Chicago’s parks being seen as sites for real estate development,” Irizarry said.
    Plans have not gone smoothly for the library since President Barack Obama announced that Jackson Park will be the location of his library in 2016. Residents in Woodlawn and South shore have held numerous protests demanding that the Obama Foundation sign a community benefits agreement as concerns of neighborhood gentrification and rising rents continue to grow. Despite their concerns, Obama has said that a community benefits agreement is not necessary, because his library is an automatic benefit to the neighborhoods.
    This article was originally published in The Chicago Crusader, a member publication of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA). Learn more about becoming a member of the NNPA at http://www.nnpa.org.

     

  • Newswire: School once named after Confederate general to be renamed for Barack Obama

    By Associated Press

    Barack Obama.jpg
    RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A Virginia city is rebranding its only school named after a Confederate general to honor the United States’ first Black president.
    The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports the Richmond School Board voted 6-1 Monday to rename J.E.B. Stuart Elementary School to Barack Obama Elementary School. Kenya Gibson represents the school on the board and was the lone dissenting vote. Gibson wanted the vote to be delayed and said there was a lack of local names included in the administrations rebranding recommendations.
    The Richmond City School Board revealed the top three possible names Monday night. Northside, Barack Obama and Wishtree took the majority of votes from the students, knocking aside suggestions like John Adams Elementary and Jackie Robinson Elementary. The board estimates it will cost about $26,000 to rename the school.

  • Newswire: These are the immigration bills lawmakers in Congress are set to vote on this week

    By Sarah Ruiz-Grossman

    Protest.jpg
    Protesters demand end to President Trump’s immigration policies

    Lawmakers are expected to vote on two immigration bills in the House this week ― and while neither has garnered Democrats’ support, Republicans may be able to pass one anyway.
    House members plan to vote Thursday on two broad packages meant to address a range of immigration issues. A bill sponsored by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) is considered to be a more hard-line, anti-immigration measure, and one pushed by House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has been sold as a “compromise” between moderate and conservative Republicans.
    Can the bills pass?
    While leading Democrats have said they wouldn’t support either bill ― with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) calling Ryan’s “compromise” bill “doomed to fail” ― Republicans may still have enough votes to pass one of them, since the party currently controls both houses of Congress.
    Even if legislation passed the House, it would still have a long road to be signed into law. First it would go to the Senate, where Democrats have more leverage and lawmakers have repeatedly failed to pass immigration bills, including earlier this year. Then any legislation would have to get President Donald Trump’s sign-off. After Trump initially said last week he wouldn’t support Ryan’s compromise bill, the White House later said the president would sign it.

    By all reports, the House “moderate” immigration bill is hardly moderate at all. It would cut legal immigration dramatically and punish Dreamers.
    It’s hard to believe that so-called House Republican moderates could vote for such a party line bill that is doomed to fail.
    What would the bills do for Dreamers?
    Both bills are meant to address the status of so-called Dreamers ― young undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and whose protections have been at risk since the Trump administration announced last year that it was ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The DACA program’s fate has been caught up in the courts ever since, leaving hundreds of thousands of young immigrants at risk of losing deportation relief.
    While Goodlatte’s hard-line measure would give only temporary protections to Dreamers, as well as significantly cut down legal immigration, Ryan’s bill would provide Dreamers with a gradual route to a more permanent status ― though it would also cut back legal immigration and dedicate billions of dollars to funding construction of Trump’s border wall. (More details on each bill below.)
    What about family separations?
    The vote comes amid growing outrage over the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, which refers all migrants crossing the border illegally for criminal prosecution, leading to at least 2,000 immigrant kids being separated from their parents at the border since mid-April.
    Both Republicans and Democrats have expressed opposition to the family separations and have proposed separate bills to end the policy. But the White House has insisted that Trump would only support more comprehensive legislation on immigration, including priorities he’s long pushed, like funding the border wall, limiting asylum seekers and reducing visa programs.
    When it comes to family separations, the compromise bill from House Republican leaders includes a fix, but it’s one not likely to satisfy Democrats. It would let immigrant families stay together by allowing the government to keep both children and parents in federal detention until cases were resolved ― which can take weeks, months or even years.

  • Newswire: African who saved child from fall gets French citizenship

     

    Mamoudou Gassama.jpg

    Mamoudou Gassama

    May 28, 2018 (GIN) – A migrant from Mali who scrambled up the side of a building to save a 4 year old child dangling from a fifth floor balcony was thanked this week by President Emmanuel Macron and offered citizenship.

    Mamoudou Gassama had been living without papers in France when the incident took place.

    “ You have become an example because millions of people have seen you,” Macron told the 22 year old young man. “It is only right that the nation be grateful,” adding that his immigration status would be “put in order.”

    During the meeting, Macron also proposed that Gassama, who received a medal and certificate for bravery, join the French fire service.

    A video of the daring rescue was viewed millions of times online after which Gassama was received by Macron at the presidential palace.

    The act of heroism was the top news item for most French websites and television channels. But it comes as French lawmakers debate a controversial bill that would speed up the deportation of economic migrants and failed asylum-seekers.

    Even President Macron mentioned the usual French policy towards migrants. “We can’t just give papers to everyone who comes from Mali, from Burkina,” Le Parisien reported Macron as telling Gassama. “We’ll grant them asylum if they’re in danger, but not for economic reasons.

    “But you did something exceptional. Even if you didn’t think about it, it’s an act of bravery and strength that has drawn everyone’s admiration.”

    The Socialist mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, was among the politicians who lined up to phone Gassama to thank him for his selfless act. “He explained to me that he had arrived from Mali a few months ago dreaming of building his life here,” she said.

    Gassama, who made the dangerous boat crossing to Italy before arriving in France last year, was impressively modest (“It’s the first time I’ve ever won an award”), but his experience underscores how hard it is for people like him to gain acceptance in French society.

    “Macron’s attitude sends the message that you can only become French if you do something so extraordinary that the vast majority of French people would never even attempt it,” wrote author Steven Poole, on the Guardian’s opinion page.

  • Newswire : Government agency hits Wells Fargo with $500 million penalty

    By Dr. John E. Warren (San Diego Voice and Viewpoint/NNPA Member)

    Wells Fargo logo.jpg
    As federal agencies expand their investigation into the business practices of Wells Fargo & Company, the fines and penalties for the financial services institution, with $1.9 trillion in assets, continue to rise.
    While many saw the news about the $1 billion fine against Wells Fargo, the real story was not in the amount of the fine, but rather who fined the bank and why.
    The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) assessed a $500 million penalty against Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. “and ordered the bank to make restitution to customers harmed by its unsafe or unsound practices, and develop and implement an effective enterprise-wide compliance risk management program,” according to a press release about the fine.
    The press release continued: “The OCC’s action was closely coordinated with an action by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which through a separate and collaborative approach assessed a $1 billion penalty against the bank and credited the amount collected by the OCC toward the satisfaction of its fine.”
    The press release said that, “The OCC took these actions given the severity of the deficiencies and violations of law, the financial harm to consumers, and the bank’s failure to correct the deficiencies and violations in a timely manner. ”The OCC found that the bank had violated Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Act.
    The OCC also reported that Wells Fargo, “engaged in unsafe and unsound practices relating to improper placement and maintenance of collateral protection insurance policies on auto loan accounts and improper fees associated with interest rate lock extensions,” the press release said. “The OCC penalty will be paid to the U.S. Treasury.”
    The order also modifies restrictions placed on the bank in November 2016 relating to the approval of severance payments to employees and the appointment of senior executive officers or board members, the press release said.
    The press release continued: “The original restrictions related to severance payments applied to all employees, which unnecessarily delayed severance payments to employees who were not responsible for the bank’s deficiencies or violations.”

  • Newswire : Supreme Court rules in favor of Ohio ‘voter purge’

    By Lydia Wheeler, The Hill

    A sharply divided Supreme Court on Monday upheld a controversial voter purge policy in Ohio, one of several voting disputes the court is expected to settle in the coming weeks.
    In a 5-4 decision, the court upheld Ohio’s “use it or lose it” policy, known as the supplemental process.
    Under the state policy, voters who have not voted in two years are flagged and sent a confirmation notice. Voters who fail to respond to the notice and don’t vote within the next two years are removed from the rolls.
    The process is one of two methods state officials use to identify voters who are no longer eligible to vote due to a change of residence.
    Critics claimed the policy violates a federal law that bars states from removing people from the voter rolls for failing to vote. But a majority of the high court rejected that argument.
    The court’s five conservative justices, led by Justice Samuel Alito, voted in the majority, with the court’s four liberals, led by Justice Stephen Breyer, dissenting.
    In delivering the majority opinion, Alito said the state’s process does not violate the National Voter Registration Act’s failure-to-vote Clause or any of the law’s other provisions.
    “The notice in question here warns recipients that unless they take the simple and easy step of mailing back the preaddressed, postage prepaidcard — or take the equally easy step of updating their information online—their names may be removed from the voting rolls if they do not vote during the next four years,” Alito wrote.
    “It was Congress’s judgment that a reasonable person with an interest in voting is not likely to ignore notice of this sort.”
    Demos and the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the lawsuit on behalf of Ohio resident Larry Harmon and two other groups, argued the policy specifically targets minority and low-income people, two groups that traditionally have lower voter turnout.
    In a fiery dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor agreed. She said Congress enacted the National Voter Registration Act specifically to fight state efforts to disenfranchise these communities.
    “The Court errs in ignoring this history and distorting the statutory text to arrive at a conclusion that not only is contrary to the plain language of the NVRA but also contradicts the essential purposes of the statute, ultimately sanctioning the very purging that Congress expressly sought to protect against,” she said.
    Justice Stephen Breyer in a separate dissent joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sotomayor, argued that a voter’s failure to respond to a notice “is an irrelevant factor in terms of what it shows about whether that registrant changed his or her residence.”
    “To add an irrelevant factor to a failure to vote, say, a factor like having gone on vacation or having eaten too large a meal, cannot change Ohio’s sole use of ‘failure to vote’ into something it is not,” he said.
    Six other states — Georgia, Montana, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania and West Virginia — have similar practices that target voters for removal from the rolls for not voting, but Ohio’s is the most stringent.
    In a statement, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted (R), said the state’s process can now serve as a model for other jurisdictions. “Today’s decision is a victory for election integrity, and a defeat for those who use the federal court system to make election law across the country,” he said.
    “This decision is validation of Ohio’s efforts to clean up the voter rolls and now with the blessing [of the] nation’s highest court, it can serve as a model for other states to use.”
    But voting rights advocates warned they will fight other states that try to enact similar voter policies they see as discriminatory.
    “If states take today’s decision as a sign that they can be even more reckless and kick eligible voters off the rolls, we will fight back in the courts, the legislatures, and with our community partners across the country,” Stuart Naifeh, senior counsel at Demos, said in a statement.
    Naifeh argued the case on behalf of Harmon, who was removed from the rolls under the state’s process, as well as the Philip Randolph Institute and the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless.
    The court has other voting issues on its docket. The justices are still grappling with two partisan gerrymandering cases challenging voter maps in Wisconsin and Maryland.

  • Newswire : Diverse rural farmer and community groups praise bipartisan Senate Agriculture Committee Farm Bill

    Two national organizations representing thousands of rural farmers and communities today commended the Agricultural Improvement Act of 2018 released by the Senate Agriculture Committee on Friday. The Rural Coalition and National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC) applaud the Committee, Chairman Pat Roberts, and Ranking Member Debbie Stabenow for the bipartisan bill. While the bill stops short of fundamental changes to provide a fair price to all producers, it contains important provisions to address the dairy crisis; protects and expands equity for tribal, historically underserved, veteran, and beginning farmers and ranchers; and preserves the integrity of nutrition programs. The bill also makes two critical updates to farm credit programs to benefit family farmers.

    At a moment when dairy farmers are receiving prices as low as 30 percent below the cost of production, the Senate farm bill takes an important first step towards improving those prices for by establishing a Class 1 Fluid Milk donation program. The program will provide $5 billion per year to reimburse dairy farmers who make donations to non-profit feeding programs.

    Wisconsin dairy farmer and NFFC board president Jim Goodman noted, “The inclusion of a fluid milk donation program in the Senate farm bill will help two groups of people in need: dairy farmers who have been trying to survive on milk prices that are well below cost of production and people who cannot afford to put food on the table. Many people struggling with food insecurity are working, many are children – and some are farmers themselves. The dairy donation program will provide significant relief to all of these populations.”

    Two credit provisions in the Senate bill will bring further relief to farmers facing today’s credit crisis. The provisions offer new favorable loan servicing options to help farm families preserve farmland and avoid foreclosure, as well as expanding eligibility for emergency loans following a catastrophe such as a drought or flood.

    “NFFC and Rural Coalition have fought for equitable farm credit since our work on the 1987 Agricultural Credit Act, which slowed the 1980s farm crisis,” said Savonala Horne, Executive Director of the North Carolina Association of Black Farmers Land Loss Prevention Project, a board member of both organizations. “These critical but common sense changes to the law will keep more family farmers on the land through the challenges rural America is again facing today.”

    The bill also strengthens equity for tribal farmers and food systems and invests in programs supporting the nation’s historically underserved, veteran and young farmers and ranchers. It is notable for measures to strengthen and fund programs to assist small farmers and grow local food and farm systems. Among these is the Outreach and Assistance for Socially Disadvantaged and Veteran Farmers and Ranchers Program (OASDVFR), which has struggled for funding since it was first authorized in 1990, and since military veteran farmers and ranchers were added in 2014. The Senate bill links OASDVFR with the Beginning Farmers and Ranchers Development Program and strengthens and provides permanent authority to both programs. Under the new bill, the programs would equally share permanent direct funding of $50 million.

    “We have been working hard for decades to bring equity to the farm bill in terms of treatment for Black farmers and other farmers of color to build cooperatives and to uplift low-wealth communities. The Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 addresses continuing inequities and supports the quality hands-on assistance needed to make sure the 2018 farm bill reaches everyone,” said Rural Coalition Chairperson John Zippert, based in rural Alabama.

    Rural Coalition and NFFC further commend Senators Roberts and Stabenow for a farm bill package that, unlike its counterpart in the House of Representatives, takes a strong bipartisan stance on ensuring food access for all communities, by retaining funding and authority for the crucial Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. It also increases support for the Food Insecurity Nutrition Incentives program and related initiative to strengthen local food systems.

    For additional commentary and analysis on the Agricultural Improvement Act of 2018, visit http://www.nffc.net and https://www.ruralco.org/.

    The Rural Coalition/Coalición Rural is an alliance of farmers, farmworkers, indigenous, migrant, and working people from the United States, Mexico, Canada, and beyond working together toward a new society that values unity, hope, people, and land.

    NFFC unites and strengthens the voices and actions of its diverse grassroots member organizations in 30 states to demand viable livelihoods for family farmers, safe and healthy food for everyone, and economically and environmentally sound rural communities.