Georgia is the state that gave Democrats a majority in the Senate and one of the two senators who got it, Raphael Warnock, should bow to President Biden when the White House’s “Help is Here” tour visits on Friday. the state of peach. Warnock is responsible for obtaining debt relief for black farmers in the American Rescue Plan, an issue that eludes significant action for decades and is deeply known for having grown up in rural Georgia.
It is very unusual for a first-year senator in his first months in office to achieve such remarkable success, but his election as a Fifth Democrat made the $ 1.9 trillion package possible. Therefore, a grateful Democratic leadership wants to make sure that voters recognize the degree of centrality of change that Biden promised to deliver.
Warnock will vote next year and the Republican-controlled legislature in Georgia passes all barriers to voting to discourage high turnout that benefits Democrats and to ensure they get a different result in November 2022, when Warnock will be in operation. for his first full term in the Senate.
Included in the huge $ 1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill is a provision for which Warnock is directly responsible, creating a $ 5 billion fund to benefit farmers. color that have historically been marginalized and in need of help to cover outstanding debts and avoid foreclosure. It helps, by the way, that white farmers usually receive. A total of $ 4 billion of the total will go to debt relief and $ 1 billion would provide technical assistance and grants, a very late aid to correct a serious historical evil.
“Almost since its inception, U.S. agricultural policy has been racist,” says Zoe Willingham, co-author of a 2019 report on black farmers at the Center for American Progress. The government’s documented history of denying federal loans to black farmers resulted in the loss of 90% of their land between 1910 and 1997, while white farmers lost only about 2%. “The first significant action for black farmers is to forgive federal financial loans under the American Rescue Plan,” says Willingham, who credits grassroots farming groups and strong progressive leaders like Warnock for generating support in Congress. “It’s been exciting to see the leadership he’s taken on.”
Almost immediately after reaching the Senate, Warnock proposed an independent bill, Emergency Relief Act for farmers of color. Its central component is loan forgiveness, and by working with fellow Democrats Cory Booker and Ben Ray Lujan, it got the first significant action on this long and deep financial relief issue for black farmers. “I hope this is lifted by Biden as a big win,” Willingham told The Daily Beast. “It has highlighted a forgotten segment of rural America, that is, rural communities of color.”
Warnock grew up in public housing in rural Georgia, where his mother as a teenager picked up cotton as a parchment. “40 acres and a mule” was the federal government’s promise to distribute land to freed blacks after the Civil War. This was a failed promise and in 1999, 16 years after the U.S. Civil Rights Commission described discrimination against black farmers in detail, the USDA (Department of Agriculture) agreed to a lawsuit with black farmers to pay the damages.
It is known as the Pigford case, which bears the name of one of the farmers, and was a moral victory that fell far short of the financial end. “It marked the recognition of the battle by farmers, but it did not in any way compensate for the century of discrimination they suffered,” says Willingham.
As a senator, Barack Obama sponsored the Claims Remedy Act for another round of payments. Among the sponsors was also Sen. Joe Biden. In 2010, with the two men in the White House, Obama signed the $ 1.25 billion bill, saying he would end what he called “a painful chapter in American history.” Conservatives attacked it as a back door repair, and while a billion dollars is nothing, it did very little to repair the loss of land and the degradation of black rural communities.
When the U.S. debt-relief plan for black farmers was approved, 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 has suffered directly at the hands of racist agents in USDA County, and after decades of activism, protesting across the country and pressuring lawmakers, he knows all the actors in Washington .
Vilsack called him twice to “calm the waters” as he crossed the Senate confirmation for a second tour of service to the USDA. “I told him (to Vilsack) that things couldn’t be the same as Obama. You need to be more aggressive when it comes to dealing with discrimination in debt repayments and repayments. It’s behavior and culture, that’s why we call it (USDA) ‘The Last Plantation’ ”.
Boyd, 55, grows corn, wheat and soybeans and has one hundred head of cattle on 114 acres of land. He has been cultivating for 38 years, long enough to have experienced the most egregious forms of discrimination. He described to the Daily Beast how the county’s local agent was “next to God,” sentencing him about black farmers, seeing them only one day a week, and “with voice and boasting” calling them “boy “and pressing racial insults. “We called it Black Wednesday,” Boyd says.
Of the 157 agricultural loans granted to Boyd’s house in Mecklenburg County, only two were for black farmers. Loan applications for local white farmers took 30 days to process; the same application for black farmers took 387 days.
““We’ve gone through so much history from slavery to Jim Crow’s involvement,” Boyd says, “and now we have the opportunity to get help and [Graham’s] throwing pot shots at him ”.”
During the Trump administration, Boyd met with Trump Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, who told him that black farmers should “grow up or go out.” Boyd says he replied, “How are we going to grow up when you don’t lend us money?” Under the CARES Act, nearly all of the billions of dollars earmarked for farmers were earmarked for white farmers, according to USDA data.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham has characterized the $ 5 billion fund set aside in the U.S. recovery plan for debt relief for the “repairs” of marginalized farmers, a busy term. Boyd has lobbied for Graham’s support over the years and says the South Carolina Republican is “very friendly, but never did anything” about it. “We’ve gone through so much history from slavery to subdivision to Jim Crow,” Boyd says, “and now we have a chance to get help and it’s being shot.”
Debt relief is for blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, “and for any group that fits the designation of being marginalized,” Boyd says. At the end of our interview, he said there was something he wanted in this article and that was his message: “Don’t give up especially young people, who are doing this job, you have to keep pushing.” In 2003, he went with his wagon pulled by two mules to Washington, DC to protest. It took 17 days. He had a sign that said “40 acres and fights,” the name of his mules. “People laughed at me, and here we are all these years later finally getting some justice.”