The Greene County Democrat

Tag: Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ)

  • Will Black farmers ever receive promised debt relief

    Eddie Cotton, 82, Hermanville, MS, clears a field for a fall crop of hay, using a 40-yr-old tractor. He is among thousands of Black farmers denied federal loans in past years. “They took away my ability to provide for my family,” he says of the discrimination. ©Robin Nelson/ZUMA

    A News Analysis by John Zippert, Co-Publisher


    The American Rescue Plan, passed by Congress in early 2021 and signed by President Biden on March 11, 2021, contained sections 1005 and 1006, which promised debt relief and other assistance to Black, Indigenous and other People Of Color (BIPOC) farmers.

    Section 1005 contained provisions for $4 billion of debt relief for all BIPOC direct loan borrowers from USDA’s Farm Services Agency and also relief for BIPOC USDA-FSA borrowers with guaranteed loans with commercial lenders. All farm loan balances as of January 1, 2021 were to be forgiven and farmers could apply for new loans, without penalty. Section 1006 contained another $1 billion for technical assistance to BIPOC farmers; support for 1890, 1994 and Spanish-speaking college and university scholarship programs; and other beneficial provisions.

    This relief was to go to 19,000 borrowers, 3,900 Black farmers, as a response to the lack of COVID and other relief given to the nation’s BIPOC farmers by the Trump Administration and also to remediate decades of discriminatory treatment by USDA’s lending agencies.

    USDA, in early 2021, began sending out letters to BIPOC farmers advising them of their loan balances at the first of the year and asking them to confirm the amounts to be forgiven and advising other farmers who thought they were eligible for relief to submit their requests as well. Conference calls and zoom calls were held with farm advocates to explain the program.

    These letters raised hopes of BIPOC farmers nation-wide that some measure of justice for years of neglect and discrimination was forthcoming from USDA, as part of coronavirus relief. Many farmers began adjusting farm plans, planting schedules, livestock breeding and other steps to respond to the promised debt relief.

    White farmers, encouraged by right-wing legal assistance organizations, began suing USDA and its Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, saying the debt relief offered in Section 1005 of the ARPA was unconstitutional and had “discriminated against white farmers”, who had experienced similar economic hardships as BIPOC farmers. One of these right-wing think tanks was headed by Mark Meadows, Trump’s Chief of Staff and Stephen Miller, Trump’s immigration adviser, who develop the plan to separate children from their parents and place children in cages at border detention centers.

    In all, white farmers filed lawsuits in twelve different Federal District Courts from Wisconsin to Texas. Initially a judge in Wisconsin gave the plaintiffs a victory in a temporary restraining order to stop USDA from providing this debt relief to BIPOC farmers. A Federal judge in Jacksonville Florida issued a permanent injunction against the program. The judge in the Fort Worth, Texas case of Miller vs. Vilsack, made the case a class action lawsuit for “all white farmers” in June 2021 and continued the injunction against the program’s implementation.

    The hopes of BIPOC farmers for debt relief from USDA were dashed by these “white farmer lawsuits” which were motivated by denying any special or compensatory treatment to Black and other people of color under U. S. laws. Many legal experts advised that this was a preemptive strike against any steps toward reparations for BIPOC people, even in a case where there was clear, overwhelming and documented evidence of decades of past discrimination by the USDA, a federal agency.

    The Rural Coalition, Intertribal Agriculture Council, Latino Farmers and Ranchers, and some eighty other groups, assisted by the Southern Poverty Law Center, filed an amicus brief against the claims of white farmer organization, including affidavits from eight individual BIPOC farmers showing continuing instances of discrimination by USDA over the past five decades until the immediate present. The brief also highlighted the damage to BIPOC farmers by enjoining USDA from distributing the ARPA debt relief assistance, authorized by Congress in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

    The Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund, with the help of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, filed a motion to intervene in the Miller vs. Vilsack case to better directly represent the concerns of Black farmers in pushing for the implementation of Section 1005. On December 8, 2021, Federal District Judge, Reed O’Connor, denied the Federation’s motion to intervene and suggested that the organization file an amicus brief on behalf of its farmer members.

    When it became clear that these white farmer lawsuits had significant support and might prevail, the Rural Coalition and other advocacy groups approached the Congressional Agriculture Committees and sponsors of Sections 1005 and 1006, for legislative remedies that might override the injunctive impact of the lawsuits blocking needed debt relief for BIPOC farmers.

    After consulting with Ag Committee staff and the offices of Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ), Raphael Warnock (D-GA), Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM) and Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY), these Senators, with the House Ag Committee’s concurrence, sponsored a section of the Build Back Better Act, to help provide debt relief for economically distressed farmers and ranchers that offered USDA Farm Service Agency debt relief. These provisions were structured to include all of the BIPOC farmers, who would have received relief under the Section 1005 of the ARPA, with a limitation of $150,000 in total loan relief.

    The Build Back Better Act, was passed by the House of Representatives in December and sent to the U. S. Senate, where it has been the subject of negotiations between President Biden and Senators Joe Mansion and Krysten Sinema. The Senate hopes to pass a version of Build Back Better in the new year of 2022, which we hope will include the expanded USFA debt relief provisions. This will restore many of the promised debt relief provisions for BIPOC farmers, albeit a year later.

    There are many reasons to support the Build Back Better Act, which includes many of President Biden’s improvements in the nation’s social safety net for working people. The Act also includes long delayed debt relief for BIPOC and other economically challenged USDA borrowers. We urge the Senate to pass this important legislation, which will fulfill the promises made to BIPOC farmers.

     

     

     

  • Justice for Black Farmers Act introduced in Congress

    National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC), Rural Coalition and Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund applauded the introduction of the Justice for Black Farmers Act in the Senate Thursday, November 19, 2020 by Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY).
    The landmark bill provides long-overdue measures to support Black farmers and other socially disadvantaged producers who have faced discrimination and disenfranchisement, often from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) itself. In a sweeping initiative to restore farmland to the Black community following centuries of land theft, the bill establishes a program of land grants of up to 160 acres to eligible individuals, along with training programs and apprenticeships. The bill also makes structural reforms within USDA, expands funding to a variety of agricultural programs, and protects contract livestock farmers from abuse by meatpacking companies.
    Monica Rainge, Director of Land Retention and Advocacy of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund and NFFC Treasurer, said, “The Justice for Black Farmers Act would make real strides in correcting many of the wrongs that Black farming communities have faced for centuries. Growing the number of Black farmers and landowners through land grants, training, and credit will strengthen all of our communities.”
    NFFC President and retired Wisconsin dairy farmer Jim Goodman said, “National Family Farm Coalition and our member organizations have worked for decades to address structural inequities and systemic racism that have, in many cases, made it impossible for Black farmers to maintain ownership of their land, or in the case of beginning farmers, to gain access to land. The wide-reaching measures of this new bill from Senators Booker and Warren will provide long-overdue equity and justice for Black farmers.”
    Lorette Picciano, Executive Director of the Rural Coalition stated,”This is a strong proposal to redress the decades of historic discrimination and neglect by USDA agencies, commercial lenders and others against Black farmers. The Rural Coalition has been engaged in moving forward these issues on behalf of all people of color farmers and family farmers in general since 1985. We see passage of this legislation as an extension and intensification of work over the years to promote outreach, education, set-asides and other measures in Farm Bills to serve farmers who have faced racial discrimination at the hands of USDA.”
    According to the 2017 Ag Census, 3.4 million U.S. farmers, only 1.3%, or 45,500, are Black, down from a peak of nearly one million in 1920. Black farmers own just one-half of one percent of U.S. farmland, and make an average of $40,000 annually. Following a brief period of post-Civil War Reconstruction and Black landownership, a white supremacist campaign of land grabs and terrorism towards Black farmers and landowners across the South drove many off of land and out of the region. In this context, the trend of corporations increasingly buying up U.S. farmland since the 2008 financial crisis, particularly in regions such as the Mississippi Delta, presents additional land access barriers for new and beginning farmers of color. As U.S. land consolidation continues, NFFC has been a vocal critic of corporate farmland ownership and long called for legislative efforts to keep land in the hands of family-scale producers.
    NFFC board member Savi Horne, Executive Director of the Land Loss Prevention Project, said, “This comprehensive legislation addresses many levels of obstacles faced by Black and other socially disadvantaged farmers. From introducing large-scale programs like land grants to Black farmers to meaningful reforms clarifying important heirs property provisions, the bill levels the playing field to diversify and strengthen the farming sector and our rural communities.”
    The Justice for Black Farmers Act has five components:
    • USDA civil rights reforms. Establishes an independent board to oversee civil rights at USDA and an equity commission to investigate USDA’s legacy of discrimination.
    • Public land grants to Black farmers. Grants 20,000 160-acre plots to eligible individuals annually from 2021 to 2031. A Farm Conservation Corps will be established to train young people from socially disadvantaged groups in agricultural skills and apprentice with socially disadvantaged, beginning, and organic farmers and ranchers.
    • Increased funding for historically Black colleges and universities. Provides $500 million per year to support agricultural study as well as research on regenerative agriculture and market opportunities for socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers.
    • Land retention protections and credit assistance. Establishes further safeguards to keep minority farmers on their land, and expands access to credit and a pandemic foreclosure moratorium.
    • Reforms to USDA and the farm system. These include common-sense provisions to protect contract livestock growers from unfair practices by meatpacking companies; increased funding for the Local Agriculture Market Program; and expansion of conservation and rural energy programs to help farmers and ranchers adopt new practices and respond to climate change.
    More detailed information on the legislation is available from Senator Cory Booker’s office and the organizations listed in the story.

  • Newswire: Congress passes historic Anti-Lynching legislation

    By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior Correspondent
    @StacyBrownMedia

    Lynching in a small Southern town


    Sixty-five years after the horrific lynching of teenager Emmett Till, the U.S. House of Representatives have finally passed H.R. 35, the Emmett Till Anti-lynching Act. The legislation would make lynching a crime under federal law.
    “Today, under the leadership of Representative Bobby Rush (IL-01), and three other Members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), the House of Representatives finally passed legislation to address the heinous act of lynching by making it a federal crime. The first bill to outlaw lynching was introduced in 1900,” members of the Congressional Black Caucus wrote in a statement.
    “Lynching was a brutal, violent, and often savage public spectacle. They were advertised in newspapers, memorialized in postcards, and souvenirs were made from the victims’ remains,” the CBC, which is chaired by Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif), added.
    A 1930 editorial in Raleigh News and Observer noted the delight of the audience witnessing a lynching as “Men joked loudly at the sight of the bleeding body; girls giggled as the flies fed on the blood that dripped from the Negro’s nose.”
    “Make no mistake: lynching is domestic terrorism. It is a tool that was used during the 256 years of slavery to terrorize enslaved African Americans and discourage them from rebelling,” Bass said.
    “It was used for almost 100 years after the end of slavery to terrorize free African Americans and discourage them from exercising their rights as citizens. Even today, we hear reports of nooses being left on college campuses and workplaces to threaten and harass Black people,” she stated.
    Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ), Kamala Harris (D-CA), and Tim Scott (R-SC) applauded the passage of the bill, which is identical to anti-lynching legislation the three introduced in the Senate last year.
    That legislation unanimously passed the Senate. “Today brings us one step closer to finally reconciling a dark chapter in our nation’s history,” Booker stated in a release. “Lynchings were used to terrorize, marginalize, and oppress black communities – to kill human beings to sow fear and keep black communities in a perpetual state of racial subjugation.”
    He continued:
    “If we do not reckon with this dark past, we cannot move forward. But today we are moving forward. Thanks to the leadership of Rep. Rush, the House has sent a clear, indisputable message that lynching will not be tolerated. It has brought us closer to reckoning with our nation’s history of racialized violence. Now the Senate must again pass this bill to ensure that it finally becomes law.”
    Harris called lynchings racially-motivated acts of violence and terror that represent a dark and despicable chapter of our nation’s history. “They were acts against people who should have received justice but did not. With this bill, we can change that by explicitly criminalizing lynching under federal law,” noted Harris, who suspended her presidential campaign late last year.
    “I applaud Congressman Rush and the House of Representatives for speaking the truth about our past and making it clear that these acts must never happen again without serious and swift consequence and accountability. I urge my colleagues in the Senate to support this bill’s passage,” she said.
    Scott added that it’s essential to show that hate will not win while Rush compared lynching to the French use of the guillotine, the Roman Empire’s use of crucifixion, and the British use of drawing and quartering as a tool of terrorism.
    “And, for too long now, a federal law against lynching has remained conspicuously silent,” Rush noted. “Today, we will send a strong message that violence – and race-based violence, in particular – has no place in American society. I am immensely grateful to Senators Harris, Booker, and Scott for working with my office on this landmark piece of legislation, and I look forward to it being quickly passed in the Senate and immediately sent to the President to be signed into law.”
    Bass said the last known lynching was as recent as 25 years ago and only then, for the first time in the nation’s history, was the perpetrator convicted and executed. “This is an awful part of our history, but it is our history – our American history – and it is important for us to all know and remember it, especially now that we are facing a resurgence of hate crimes in America under the presidency of Donald J. Trump,” Bass stated.
    “Now there is the National Memorial for Peace and Justice to document the known history of lynching and the many reasons why Black people were lynched, such as for making eye contact with a white person, not moving to the other side of the street, or spitting in public,” she said.
    Further, Bass added that the bill makes “a long-overdue change to our laws by finally addressing the issue of lynching for the thousands of African Americans who suffered this heinous fate and the countless more we’ll never know.”