The Daily Beast
America finally delivers for black farmers – thanks to Raphael Warnock
Photo illustration by The Daily Beast / Getty Georgia is the state that gave the Democrats their senate majority, and one of the two senators who achieved it, Raphael Warnock, must bow with President Biden when the White House tour through the White House a visit to the peach state Friday. Warnock is responsible for alleviating debt for black farmers in the U.S. bailout plan, an issue that has eluded meaningful action for decades, and which he is very familiar with growing up in rural Georgia. It is very unusual for a first-year senator in their first months in office to clinch such a remarkable achievement, but his election to the 50th Democrat made the breakthrough of the $ 1.9 billion package possible. Therefore, a grateful Democratic leadership wants to make voters realize how central he is to the change Biden has promised to deliver. Warnock will be on the ballot next year and the Republican-controlled legislature in Georgia will pass all sorts of barriers to voting to discourage a high turnout that benefits the Democrats – and to ensure they get another result in November 2022, when Warnock is in progress. for the first full term of the Senate. In the massive $ 1.9 billion COVID-19 bill, a provision for which Warnock is directly responsible, creating a $ 5 billion fund aimed at benefiting farmers of color who are historically marginalized and need help has to cover outstanding debt and avoidance avoidance – by the way, help that white farmers regularly receive. A total of $ 4 billion of the total would go to debt relief, and $ 1 billion would provide technical assistance and grants, which were very late in helping to correct a serious historical injustice. ‘Not all pastors do it’: how Reverend Raphael Warnock used his pulpit to fight AIDS “American farming policy has been almost racist since its inception,” said Zoe Willingham, co-author of a 2019 report on black farmers for the Center for American Progress. The government’s documented history of denying federal loans to black farmers led to the loss of about 90 percent of their land between 1910 and 1997, while white farmers lost only about 2 percent. “The first significant action for black farmers is the forgiveness of financial loans in the U.S. bailout plan,” said Willingham, who acknowledged grassroots farmers’ groups and strong progressive leaders such as Warnock had generated support in Congress. “It was exciting to see the leadership he took.” Almost immediately after his arrival in the Senate, Warnock proposed an independent bill, the First Aid Act for Farmers of Color. The most important part of it is forgiveness of loans, and in collaboration with his Democratic colleagues Cory Booker and Ben Ray Luhan, he took the first meaningful action on this long and deep-rooted problem of financial relief for black farmers. “I hope it is lifted by Biden as a big win,” Willingham told The Daily Beast. “He highlighted a forgotten part of America in the countryside, and that is rural communities with color.” Warnock grew up in public housing in rural Georgia, where his mother plucked cotton as a teenager as a teenager. ’40 acres and a mule ‘was the federal government’s promise to distribute land to liberated Blacks after the Civil War. It was a failed promise, and in 1999, 16 years after the U.S. Civil Rights Commission described in detail the discrimination against black farmers, the USDA (Department of Agriculture) settled a lawsuit with black farmers to pay damages. It is known as the Pigford case, named after one of the farmers, and it was a moral victory that fell far short financially. “It was the recognition of the struggle for farmers, but it did not make up for the century of discrimination they suffered,” Willingham said. As a senator, Barack Obama sponsored the Claims Remedy Act for another round of payments. Among the cosponsors was co-senator Joe Biden. In 2010, with both men in the White House, Obama signed the $ 1.15 billion bill, saying it would put an end to what he called “a painful chapter in American history.” Conservatives attacked it as backdoor repairs, and although a billion dollars is nothing, it has done very little to correct the loss of land and the decline of black rural communities. When the U.S. recovery plan with debt relief for black farmers was implemented, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack called to congratulate John Boyd, the founder and president of the National Black Farmers Association. A fourth-generation farmer in Baskerville, Virginia, Boyd, suffered directly from the racist USDA district agents, and after decades of activism, protesting across the country and working for lawmakers, he knows all the players in Washington. Vilsack twice called on him to “calm the waters” as he went through Senate confirmation for a second duty at the USDA. “I told him (Vilsack) that things could not be the same as under Obama. He needs to be more aggressive in facing debt write-offs and debt write-offs. This is the behavior and the culture, which is why we call it (USDA) ‘The Last Plantation’. ‘Boyd (55) grows wheat, wheat and soybeans and has one hundred beef cattle on 114 hectares of land. He has been farming for 38 years, long enough to experience the most blatant forms of discrimination. He described to the Daily Beast how the local agency was’ the next thing for God ‘, and regarded it as the black farmers, and saw them only one day a week and they’ loudly and with great pride ‘as’ boy ‘and committed racial insults. “We called it Black Wednesday,” Boyd says. Of 157 agricultural loans taken out at Boyd’s home in Mecklenburg County, only two were to black farmers. It took 30 days to process loan applications for local white farmers; the same application for black farmers took 387 days. During the Trump administration, Boyd met with Trump’s Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, who told him black farmers should ‘grow up or come out’. Boyd says he replied, “How do we grow up if you do not lend us money?” According to USDA legislation, nearly all of the billions of dollars intended for farmers went to white farmers, according to USDA data. IDP Senator Lindsey Graham characterizes the $ 5 billion fund set aside in the U.S. recovery plan for debt relief for marginalized farmers’ “repairs,” a loaded term Boyd has advocated for Graham’s support over the years, saying the Republican of South Carolina is’ very cordial, but he never did anything about it. ” We’ve been through so much history from slavery to joining Jim Crow, ‘says Boyd,’ and now we have a chance to get help, and he takes pot shots at it. ‘ The debt relief is for Black, Hispanic, Native Americans “and any group that fits the term that they are marginalized”, says Boyd. At the end of our interview he said that there is one thing he wants in this article, and this is his message: “Do not give up especially young people who are doing this work, but keep pushing.” In 2003, he drove his wagon pulled by two mules to Washington, DC to protest. 17 days. He had a sign that said, ’40 acres and Struggles, ‘the name of his mule.’ People laughed at me, and here we’re finally getting some justice. ‘ Read more at The Daily Beast Get your top stories in your inbox every day Sign up now! Daily membership of The Beast: Beast Inside delves deeper into the stories that matter to you. Learn more.