#Black Farmers

[batboyblog]

Things the Biden-Harris Administration Did This Week #29

July 26-August 2 2024

President Biden announced his plan to reform the Supreme Court and make sure no President is above the law. The conservative majority on the court ruled that Trump has "absolute immunity" from any prosecution for "official acts" while he was President. In response President Biden is calling for a constitutional amendment to make it clear that Presidents aren't above the law and don't have immunity from prosecution for crimes committed while in office. In response to a wide ranging corruption scandal involving Justice Clarence Thomas, President Biden called on Congress to pass a legally binding code of ethics for the Supreme Court. The code would force Justices to disclose gifts, refrain from public political actions, and force them to recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have conflicts of interest. President Biden also endorsed the idea of term limits for the Justices.

The Biden Administration sent out an email to everyone who has a federal student loan informing them of upcoming debt relief. The debt relief plan will bring the total number of a borrowers who've gotten relief from the Biden-Harris Administration to 30 million. The plan is due to be finalized this fall, and the Department of Education wanted to alert people early to allow them to be ready to quickly take advantage of it when it was in place and get relief as soon as possible.

President Biden announced that the federal government would step in and protect the pension of 600,000 Teamsters. Under the American Rescue Plan, passed by President Biden and the Democrats with no Republican votes, the government was empowered to bail out Union retirement funds which in recent years have faced devastating cut of up to 75% in some cases, leaving retired union workers in desperate situations. The Teamster union is just the latest in a number of such pension protections the President has done in office.

President Biden and Vice-President Harris oversaw the dramatic release of American hostages from Russia. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, former Marine Paul Whelan held since 2018, Russian-American reporter for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Alsu Kurmasheva convicted of criticizing the Russian Military, were all released from captivity and returned to the US at around midnight August 2nd. They were greeted on the tarmac by the President and Vice-President and their waiting families. The deal also secured the release of German medical worker Rico Krieger sentenced to death in Belarus, Russian-British opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza, and 11 Russians convicted of opposing the war against Ukraine or being involved in Alexei Navalny's anti-corruption organization. Early drafts of the hostage deal were meant to include Navalny before his death in Russian custody early this year.

A new Biden Administration rule banning discrimination against LGBT students takes effect, but faces major Republican resistance. The new rule declares that Title IX protects Queer students from discrimination in public schools and any college that takes federal funds. The new rule also expands protections for victims of sexual misconduct and pregnant or parenting students. However Republican resistance means the rule can't take effect nation wide. Lawsuits from Republican controlled states, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming, means the new protections won't come into effect those states till the case is ruled on likely in a Supreme Court ruling. The Biden administration crafted these Title IX rules to reflect the Supreme Court's 2020 Bostock case.

The Biden administration awarded $2 billion to black and minority farmers who were the victims of historic discrimination. Historically black farmers have been denied important loans from the USDA, or given smaller amounts than white farmers. This massive investment will grant 23,000 minority farmers between $10,000 and $500,000 each and a further 20,000 people who wanted to start farms by were improperly denied the loans they needed between $3,500-$6,000 to get started. Most payments went to farmers in Mississippi and Alabama.

The Biden Administration took an important step to stop the criminalization of poverty by changing child safety guidelines so that poverty alone isn't grounds for taking a child into foster care. Studies show that children able to stay with parents or other family have much better outcomes then those separated. Many states have already removed poverty from their guidelines when it comes to removing children from the home, and the HHS guidelines push the remaining states to do the same.

Vice-President Harris announced the Biden Administration's agreement to a plan by North Carolina to forgive the state's medical debt. The plan by Democratic Governor Roy Cooper would forgive the medical debt of 2 million people in the state. North Carolina has the 3rd highest rate of medical debt in the nation. Vice-President Harris applauded the plan, pointing out that the Biden Administration has forgiven $650 million dollars worth of medical debt so far with plans to forgive up to $7 billion by 2026. The Vice-President unveiled plans to exclude medical debt from credit scores and issued a call for states and local governments to forgive debt, like North Carolina is, last month.

The Department of Transportation put forward a new rule to bank junk fees for family air travel. The new rule forces airlines to seat parents next to their children, with no extra cost. Currently parents are forced to pay extra to assure they are seated next to their children, no matter what age, if they don't they run the risk of being separated on a long flight. Airlines would be required to seat children age 13 and under with their parent or accompanying adult at no extra charge.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced it is giving $3.5 billion to combat homelessness. This represents the single largest one year investment in fighting homelessness in HUD's history. The money will be distributed by grants to local organizations and programs. HUD has a special focus on survivors of domestic violence, youth homeless, and people experiencing the unique challenges of homelessness in rural areas.

The Treasury Department announced that Pennsylvania and New Mexico would be joining the IRS' direct file program for 2025. The program was tested as a pilot in a number of states in 2024, saving 140,000 tax payers $5.6 million in filing charges and getting tax returns of $90 million. The program, paid for by President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, will be available to all 50 states, but Republicans strong object. Pennsylvania and New Mexico join Oregon and New Jersey in being new states to join.

Bonus: President Biden with the families of the released hostages calling their loved ones on the plane out of Russia

[blckbuzinessdistrict]

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@successisus_

[afriblaq]

Domestic (white) terrorism

[akonoadham]

[ezilis-respite-farm-sanctuary]

So this journey into accepting my disability and trying to get the adaptive tech I need to continue farming has been difficult, enlightening, and LOOOOONNNNGGG. I'm not done yet, but thanks to community, I'm well on my way. The gofundme campaign was really successful, and I've got a lot of humble gratitude for the people that keep believing in me and this vision for the Farm.

Usually can't haul a hay bale that far worth a lick without a ton of pain, so being able to move that way, even as my arms get used to the impact, was pretty incredible.

Here for Universally Accessible Farming and all it takes to try and keep trying to implement that here on the land. If yr interested in the kind of wheelchair I'm currently using across uneven surfaces, grass and dirt -- see here. Still trying to figure out how to climb and incline well.

All part of the journey.

KX

[pentecostwaite]

I found a wonderful painting yesterday at an antiques mall.

It’s a pretty typical pastoral painting from the 1800s, with one exception: the figures in the painting are all people of color.

From the young man in the foreground watering the cows in the river, to the woman in sunlight on the left, making her way back to the tidy little house under the trees, to the far-off figures in the boat preparing to land on the shore in front of the house—all are people of color.

I especially like the young man. There is something wonderful about his relaxed but confident posture, the way he’s cocked his wide-brimmed hat, his bright red weskit.

So I bought the painting. It’s hanging in our dining room, where we are lucky enough to be able to see it every day. I love it.

[thoughtportal]

Black Farmers

the 1619 podcast has a great episode about Black Farmers https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/04/podcasts/1619-slavery-sugar-farm-land.html?

In the fall of 1864 at the height of the Civil War, one of the most famous Union generals, William Tecumseh Sherman, begins his march out of the city of Atlanta to the sea.

And as Sherman and his men make their way through Georgia, black Southerners are seeing an opportunity.

And so by the thousands, they start to leave the plantations where they’ve been enslaved and are falling behind Sherman’s troops as they make their way to the coast.

But these newly liberated people were not exactly welcomed. Sherman didn’t actually oppose slavery, and so he’s really not that sympathetic to those who are fleeing these plantations, and he also sees them as a drain on his resources. They are families. They are people of all ages, young and old, who need food and care, and they are slowing the troops down.

By December of that year, some of Sherman’s troops are about to approach Savannah, and they come upon a creek that is both too wide and too deep to cross without a bridge. So the troops start building one, and they instruct the black people who are following them to just wait, that the troops need to cross first, but then they’ll be able to come after. But the Confederate Army is on their heels, and once the Union troops cross, they break up the bridge, leaving all those people who had just escaped slavery behind to face either the icy waters or the rebel army that was in pursuit.

It is a massacre. Some of them drown trying to swim across. Others are trampled or shot to death, and those who remain are captured and re-enslaved. When word gets back to Lincoln’s secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, he is outraged. He has Sherman pull together a meeting with 20 black church leaders. There’s a transcript of this meeting, and it shows that these two men, Stanton and Sherman, actually turned to this group of black leaders and asked them, what do you want for your own people?

Speaking for the group, one of the men tells them, “The way we can best take care of ourselves is to have land, and turn it and till it by our own labor — that is, by the labor of the women and children and old men, and we can soon maintain ourselves and have something to spare.”

And what’s remarkable is that Sherman turns that request of those men for land to work for themselves into a government order, Special Order No. 15. It said that the government would take 400,000 acres that it had seized from the Confederacy and split it up among those thousands of newly emancipated people. This becomes what is perhaps the most famous provision of the Reconstruction period, which we all know as 40 acres and a mule. President Lincoln approves the order, but soon after, he’s assassinated. And Andrew Johnson, a Southerner who had once enslaved people himself, takes over the presidency and quickly overturns it. And within a few short months, the small amount of land that had been distributed to black people was returned to white Southerners.

[africanamericanreports]

The National Black Farmers Association (NBFA) is calling for the immediate resignation of Tractor Supply President Hal Lawton following the company's recent decision to cut diversity-focused positions and withdraw its carbon-emissions goals in response to right-wing pressure.

[bumblebeeappletree]

There are so many barriers in place when it comes to growing food in cities, but education and lack of access to space are the hardest to overcome. Yemi Amu has dedicated her life as a farmer to solving this problem, by starting the only Aquaponics farm in NYC. Oko Farms in Brooklyn is both a working farm which provides fresh food to surrounding neighborhoods, while also actively engaging the public in education on how to grow food for yourself in urban environments.

[luvmesumus]

[blackjewels5]

"Tuckered out..."

A farmer and his grandson in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1941.

Ilovethis🖤🖤

[blaqueprep]

Farmers Aren’t Allowed To Reuse Or Save Their Seeds |Tiktok Rants Big Corp

[afriblaq]

Blaine Smith’s family reclaimed the land their enslaved ancestors worked in Sparta, GA, keeping it in their family for generations—now they say eminent domain allowed it to be seized for a spur project. How many more Black families will lose their legacies in the name of "progress"?

[ezilis-respite-farm-sanctuary]

HARVESTING SCAPES!

Mid to late June saw our first garlic scapes. Last year, I didn't realize that trimming the scapes encouraged larger bulb growth. Even though i was able to seed from our own garlic, we did not get the yield that we could have gotten.

This year, we hope to see a better harvest, and last year weren't too bad. If this year proves successful enough to produce for us, close community AND the store, we'll be able to treat garlic as a specialty crop in our area.

garlic head,

KX