California education law is meant to protect students from experiencing hate speech including the use of racist language, at school. But some students and parents in Anderson Union High School District say the law, and AUHSD policies, aren’t being enforced on their campus. 

After unsuccessfully trying to communicate their concerns to school administrators, a small group of parents reached out to local advocacy organizations for help. About a dozen people from eight different advocacy groups met with parents and students to discuss the issue recently, only days after the new school year started. 

Organizers responding to concerns include representatives from the The Beloved Community, the Islamic Center of Redding, the Sikh Centre, the Anti-Racism Task Force, Shasta County Citizens Advocating for Respect, Affram 2015 and SEIU 2015 as well as the Ethnic Minority and Human Rights representatives of the California Teacher’s Association. 

AUHSD’s policy on hate-motivated behavior prohibits discriminatory statements that degrade an individual on the basis of their actual or perceived race or ethnicity. Students who demonstrate such hate-motivated behavior, the policy says, shall be subject to discipline. The policy also says that the district will provide counseling, guidance and support to both victims and perpetrators as necessary. 

Hate speech is also addressed under California education code, which says that acts of “hate violence” which include oppressing or intimidating others based on their racial identity, may lead to suspensions or even expulsions. 

But parents report that students who have used hate speech in at least one AUHSD school have faced only minimal disciplinary action including being asked to apologize and assigned to short stints of picking up trash at school. Students who have reported hate speech say they’ve also faced retaliation from other students at the school for doing so. 

The District includes Anderson Union High School, West Valley Early College High School, and Anderson New Technology High School along with adult and alternative education programs. 

For this story, Shasta Scout agreed to keep the names of individual students and the specific school they attend within the District, confidential, to address their concerns for further retaliation, something that’s strictly prohibited under California law. 

According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) students and parents can respond to discrimination in school by filing a complaint within six months of the incident, with either the school principal, the District superintendent, or both. Complaints filed at the District level must be responded to by the District within sixty days, in writing. If you’re unsatisfied with your local District response you can appeal to the California Department of Education but must do so within fifteen days of the District’s response. 

AUHSD Superintendent Brian Parker responded to a request for comment from Shasta Scout earlier this week saying that while he can’t comment on particulars without knowing them, he encourages students and families who have experienced discriminatory behavior of any kind to reach out to their school administrators immediately.

“If the student/family does not feel the situation was handled appropriately,” Parker said, “please bring the issue to my attention as soon as possible. AUHSD does not tolerate racist speech.” 

The inter-agency advocacy group that’s responding to reports of racist speech in local schools say they plan to approach Parker and the Board soon with their concerns. They want to ensure that schools are following the District’s policies on hate-motivated behavior. They’re also hoping to encourage using a “restorative justice” model, focused primarily on education rather than punishment, for those who have engaged in hate speech. 

In the meantime organizers hope other Shasta County families will reach out if they are experiencing racism in local schools. You can contact the group at shastaantiracismtaskforce@gmail.com.

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Do you have a correction to share? Email us: editor@shastascout.org.

Editor’s Note: A version of this story first appeared in Mile Markers, a twice monthly newsletter from Open Campus about the role of colleges in rural America. You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article to receive future editions in your inbox.

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David Salinas knows how to approach strangers. He got good at it while in college, working as a photojournalist. And, he knows what to do when they’re shy at first. He mastered that when working as a car salesman. 

He has one question he always turns to in those moments: “Did you ever finish your education?”

And then, he just pauses … and listens. Sometimes people need a second to open up. It gives him time to read their body language, and set them at ease. That’s another skill he picked up, at his last job, working for child protective services. 

He noticed that a lot of people were scared to admit not having finished high school or attended college.

“No?” he finally replies, once they’ve opened up. 

“Well, what if I knew a way for you to get a GED for free?”

People love it when they hear free, he tells me. It’s clear the former salesman has perfected his pitch. 

In fact, it seems like his whole life has prepared him to be a career navigator for UpSKILL Coastal Bend, a coalition of education leaders and community partners working together to help the South Texas communities around Corpus Christi.

The group formed in 2018 with a goal of breaking down barriers to education, fostering open dialogue, and creating “a singular vision to power solutions that prepare our workforce for good-paying middle-skill jobs in high demand across the region.”

It’s a noble mission, if perhaps a bit vague. Such flexibility is important to their model, which depends on having enough wiggle room to address their challenges in sometimes creative ways … for instance, by turning a rural Dollar Store into an economic incubator or convincing a local judge to sentence offenders to a classroom instead of a jail cell.

Then there are the on-the-ground career coordinators. Like Armando Castellano, who covers seven towns yet is never more than a text away from racing to help his clients. Or Aaron Trevino, a city alderman in Falfurrias, a small town known for its famed tribal healer, a curandero, and an infamous border patrol station.

In such remote places, where some towns are a few hours drive from each other, organizers can’t afford to place all their time and resources in Corpus Christi.

“We’ve been really strategic to make sure the navigators are embedded in the communities we serve,” says Ann Vlach, the operations director at the nonprofit community foundation Education to Employment Partners.

David primarily advises residents of Jim Wells County. It is one of 11 counties serviced by the coalition, which includes representatives from local community colleges, the state’s workforce group, and various nonprofits.

Their work has to be holistic, David says. The same person who needs their GED is often making little or no income. They likely are searching for a new job, and may also be struggling to get housing or food benefits they would qualify for. The coalition works together to connect people to all the services they need at once … before they can accidentally slip through the cracks.

That’s why one of the first things David did, after taking the job two years ago, was make friends with Rosie Rodriguez at the Housing Authority of Alice. He gives weekly workshops there, some as simple as how to write a better resume, others about accessing adult education and potential workforce opportunities.

He keeps going, even though it’s an hour commute roundtrip from his home in Kingsville. Even though only a few people typically show up and most are retirement-aged. It’s important to be there. 

“They’ll know either nephews or grandchildren, and that’s one way to get word of mouth out there,” he says.

Jasmine Vegas certainly was glad that he did. The 37-year-old mother of four kids visited the housing authority a month ago, and left her number, after Rosie said she could possibly get her GED for free.

“I got a call from David the next day,” she says.

Jasmine tries to tell her two teenagers that they need to stay in school, even when they don’t want to … and she is tired of them responding by saying ‘Well, you dropped out.’

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The post The Man Helping Rural South Texans Get Their GED — For Free appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

Vice President Kamala Harris and running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, stopped for barbecue at the hallowed locally owned Sandfly BBQ for a taste of smoked meat.

The Current is an inclusive nonprofit, non-partisan news organization providing in-depth watchdog journalism for Savannah and Coastal Georgia’s communities.

This is part two of a two-part series. Read part one here.

“You see that new building over there with the roof and red barn?” asks Bob Walton as he guides me through the dirt roads of Isabella County in mid-Michigan, where he serves as a trustee for Isabella Township. “I know of at least three new buildings that were put up for agriculture that are being basically paid for by windmill money.”

Walton took a break from compacting soil recently planted with soybeans to show me the tall structures, blades rotating slowly in the breeze, now visible from every angle on his land and neighboring properties. The silver towers look incongruous next to the red barns and outbuildings that would fit perfectly on a postcard from rural America. It feels almost as if you’ve landed on the set of a science fiction movie—or time-traveled into the future.

It took a while to catch up with Walton, a third-generation farmer, working some 400 acres, mostly on land that once belonged to his grandfather. Now in his 70s, he’s turning the business over to his daughter and son-in-law. That does not keep him out of his tractor, which is where I found him one afternoon in May.

“I feel bad for the people that think they’re so ugly,” he says, looking at the wind turbines near his home. “I just think they’re majestic. I love the red lights at night.”

It was not love at first sight. When a private firm called Apex Clean Energy came calling in 2018, Walton recalls, “Our first thought was, how can we stop this?”

Energy developers and utility companies began breaking ground on a significant number of big wind projects in Michigan in 2008, after a bipartisan agreement requiring 10% of the state’s electricity to be generated from carbon-free renewables. A new law passed last year by Democratic majorities in the state legislature boosted that requirement to 60% by 2035.

Most of Michigan’s early wind turbines were located north of Detroit, on the eastern side of the state that Michiganders call “The Thumb” (because it’s shaped like a thumb on a mitten). Walton and his neighbors got in touch with farmers and residents who had been living with—and collecting revenue from—wind farms for several years.

Eventually, they decided they liked what they heard. One piece of advice was to lock down compensation for any impact to productive farmland.

“If 10 years down the road we find out there’s tile damage, they still have to pay for it,” says Walton, referring the underground system of pipes, called drain tile, that protect crops from heavy rains or floods. “That’s the other thing we learned, you got to write everything in.”

‘We need energy!’

Walton, a Republican, does not often agree with Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat. He is skeptical about electric vehicles, is not vaccinated and did not agree with Whitmer’s enforced lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic, some of the strictest in the United States. Walton’s family property, in addition to hosting a windmill built by Apex, is also home to an oil derrick.

Oil deposits are dotted throughout Michigan farmland. Decades ago, it was common for land agents to canvass local farmers—as wind and solar developers are doing now—and offer lease payments in exchange for siting an oil or gas well on their property. Many of these wells have been capped, but the one on Bob Walton’s family farm is still active, with the revenue going to his sister.

Walton doesn’t see a new generation of energy projects as a threat to rural life. Instead, he sees a steady stream of wind turbine income—free from drought, flood or fluctuations in crop prices—that will help his daughter and son-in-law create a sustainable 21st century farm.

“I called my grandkids, and they all said, ‘Grandpa I think it’s a good thing,’ ” Walton says. “Because we need energy!”

Lawyering up

Walton was first elected trustee for Isabella Township in 2016. “The reason I got on,” he says, “is I didn’t want somebody moving out from the city telling us farmers what the hell we’re going to do now.”

Apex’s proposal to build wind turbines in Isabella and nearby townships surfaced during Walton’s first term. Opponents of the project, working under the banner of a group called Isabella Wind Watch, accused him of a conflict of interest. Walton signed a lease with Apex as a private landowner and also voted to approve the project as a public official.

Activists who wanted to block the turbines, says Walton, “fought us like crazy.” In 2018, he beat back three recall campaigns. “I lawyered up. We stopped them at the county” where recall petitions must be approved for clarity.

Walton stood for re-election in 2020 and won handily, along with other township officials who had backed the wind farm. “They put somebody up against all of us,” he says, “and we beat them two and three to one.” He was renominated for another term in an August 6 Republican primary and will be re-elected in the fall. Democrats are not contesting any Isabella Township positions, as often happens in rural Michigan.

“I’ve told my friend Albert, who’s a liberal, if it wasn’t for us conservatives in this county, they wouldn’t have got this,” says Walton.

That would be Albert Jongewaard, senior development manager for Apex, who is now based in Minnesota. From 2007 to 2010, Jongewaard raised money and managed campaigns for Democratic candidates in the Deep South. In Michigan, he spent several years working for Apex and burned a lot of shoe leather talking to farmers, landowners, residents and local officials in Isabella and Montcalm Counties.

Jongewaard likes to quote Rich Vander Veen, an early pioneer of wind energy in Michigan: “It takes ten-thousand cups of coffee to build a wind farm.”

Getting off the ground in Gratiot

Years of patient, caffeine-fueled persuasion has paid off for several development companies in Gratiot County, located in mid-Michigan just south of Isabella County. The first wind farm in Gratiot County began operating in 2012; there are now six of them, with over 400 turbines generating more than 900 megawatts of electricity. That’s roughly enough to meet the annual energy needs of 300,000 households.  

These big projects pay big taxes on windmills, which cost up to $2 million per turbine. Greater Gratiot Development, Inc., a nonprofit serving Gratiot County, created a spreadsheet showing $93 million in tax revenue collected from wind farms between 2012 and 2023. That’s more than $7 million a year, a significant boost for local governments in a county with just over 40,000 inhabitants.

Jongewaard and the team from Apex also hit paydirt in Isabella County—but not so far in Montcalm County, which sits just south of Isabella and west of Gratiot. In 2022 and 2023, there were 26 successful recall campaigns against local officials who backed solar and wind projects in Michigan. Eleven of them were in Montcalm County, enough to stall a proposed Apex wind project.

“It is true in Michigan there is organized opposition to these projects. That’s a fact,” says Jongewaard. “People are right to ask questions, you should be asking questions.”

The issues raised by Montcalm County Citizens United, a group opposing the project, included a decline in property values, sleep deprivation from turbine noise, “damage to wildlife, domestic and farm animals, bat and bird kills, [and] massive government handouts.”

Jongewaard insists there are solid answers to these and other objections. “These projects aren’t dangerous,” he says. “They don’t have adverse health impacts. We know that through science and lived reality.”

Such arguments carried the day in Isabella County, where Apex won approval to build 136 wind turbines spread across 56,000 acres and seven townships. In 2021, Apex sold the project to DTE for an undisclosed sum. The press release announcing the sale projects $30 million in tax payments to local units of governments over the next 30 years, along with a whopping $100 million in lease payments to some 400 farmers and landowners.

That works out to about $250,000 for each leaseholder over the next three decades, an average of more than $8,000 a year. The actual payment varies, depending on how many turbines and transmission lines are sited on each property. Don Schurr was director of Greater Gratiot while wind farms were being constructed and began operating there. As one farmer told him, the annual lease payment from turbines “pays my taxes, pays my insurance and it [pays for] a nice vacation.”

Thanks to taxes paid by Michigan wind and solar farms, rural police and fire departments are getting new equipment and adding new shifts. Schools are being upgraded, and local roads are finally getting long-needed repairs. Farmers, meanwhile, are driving new pickups, building new barns and repairing and replacing aging farm equipment.

While all households can benefit from increased public spending, private payments to leaseholders are not universally distributed. The 400 farmers and landowners receiving lease payments from the Isabella wind farm, for example, are just a fraction of the more than 4,000 households in the seven townships where the project is located.

Sarah Mills, an associate professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning, has closely studied the siting of renewable energy projects in rural communities. Energy developers, she says, have started to use “good neighbor” agreements, which provide at least some payments to everyone in the footprint of a project. The compensation, she says, is “for access to wind that blows over your property.”

“There are townships in the Thumb where 85% of the property owners are participants in a wind farm,” says Mills, even if some of them have no turbines or transmission lines on their land.

Big money, big headaches

The recent influx of energy developer dollars—lots of them—into Michigan’s rural communities has real benefits, but also causes real headaches. According to Colleen Stebbins, a longtime official of Winfield Township in Montcalm County, wind farm opponents “were so afraid if I put a turbine on my property, I’d make a million, while they, with a little piece of lake property, would get nothing.”

While serving as township clerk, Stebbins declined to sign a lease with the company on her personal property, seeking to avoid any conflict of interest. Seeing benefits for the township, she voted to approve Apex’s bid to site a wind farm. As a result, opponents of the project organized a recall election and won a majority to remove her from office in November 2022.

Stebbins eventually did sign a lease with Apex, she says, “after I got recalled.”

The politics of energy production in Michigan has played out differently in three adjoining counties. Isabella, Gratiot and Montcalm are all home to hundreds of small farms, averaging a few hundred acres each. The population is overwhelmingly white—88% or more—in all three counties, with a tiny share of foreign-born residents. Donald Trump won all three counties in 2016 and again in 2020.

So why did conservative township voters in Gratiot and Isabella accept renewable energy projects, while Montcalm voters joined a rebellion against them?

Farmers vs. lakers 

One factor could be geography. Montcalm has more interior lakes than either Gratiot or Isabella. That means more homeowners own lakeside, non-farm holdings and would not receive the windfall in lease revenue from wind turbines or solar farms, sometimes by choice.

“This is just not a land use they think is appropriate, and it’s not worth it to them,” says the University of Michigan’s Sarah Mills. These homeowners, who often relocated precisely to enjoy a peaceful rural environment, are especially sensitive to disruptions that may be caused by utility-scale energy projects.

Ryan VanSolkema was elected supervisor of Winfield Township in rural Montcalm County in November of 2022, during the heart of the controversy over Apex’s proposed wind project. He won a recall election during the same 2022 campaign which saw Colleen Stebbins lose her position as township clerk. He is running, unopposed, for another term this year.

“I had just moved up here and bought a house on the lake,” says VanSolkema. “I wasn’t looking to lose 30% of the value of the home I just purchased.” Nobody wants to buy a home, he says, that looks out on 600-foot-tall wind turbines—and he’s not convinced there is any need to burn less carbon while generating electricity.

“Climate change is a hoax,” he says. “It’s just a way for government to spend money and regulate. Almost 50 years I’ve been alive, what has changed? Literally nothing.”

The intense opposition to wind and solar farms that developed in Montcalm County is far from unique. “We’ve had projects blocked all over the state,” says Ed Rivet, executive director of the Michigan Conservative Energy Forum, a group that supports an “all-of-the-above” free market approach. The group receives backing from foundations and energy developers through the nationwide Conservative Energy Network. Rivet estimates that in the past five years, as much as two gigawatts of solar energy production in Michigan has been blocked by local activists. That’s the equivalent of two nuclear power plants worth of energy. 

Pushback is by no means confined to the state of Michigan. Researchers at Columbia Law School have found nearly 400 “laws and regulations to block or restrict renewable energy facilities” in 41 different states, with hundreds of projects encountering “significant opposition.”

Turning the tide

In Michigan, players on all sides of the controversy are recognizing the changed reality created by Public Act 233, part of a package of clean energy laws passed by Democrats and signed by Gov. Whitmer last November. It puts final siting authority for large-scale solar and wind projects in the hands of the three-member statewide Public Service Commission (PSC).

“Local authorities don’t have any impact,” says Kevon Martis. “You’ll see fewer recalls of local officials.” A home remodeler and county commissioner in Lenawee County, Martis has been involved in campaigns against renewables since he blocked a wind project in his community of Riga Township back in 2009.

After an unsuccessful petition drive this year to overturn P.A. 233 by statewide referendum, Martis is ready to try again in 2026.

On August 6, he was renominated by GOP voters for a second term as county commissioner and will face no Democratic opposition in the fall. Martis’s primary opponent, Palmyra Township Supervisor David Pixley, was endorsed by Private Property Rights PAC (PPR PAC) a new independent expenditure committee, or Super PAC.  

This summer in Michigan, PPR PAC endorsed 20 local candidates in Republican primaries in Montcalm, Ionia and other counties where there has been controversy over siting solar and wind projects. Nine of their endorsed candidates won their primary elections, some by small margins.

The PPR PAC website makes no mention of solar, wind or renewable energy. The group backs candidates, it says, who support “policies that reduce excessive regulation and oppose broad governmental overreach into property rights.”

Cabell Hobbs, treasurer of PPR PAC, is also treasurer of the Apex Clean Energy PAC. He has served in similar roles for GOP candidates, including George W. Bush, Ted Cruz and John Bolton.

Apex PAC’s election filings show contributions to Republican and Democratic candidates, a $2,500 donation to the Pennsylvania Solar PAC in 2021 and a $5,000 donation to the D.C.-based Community Solar Action Fund in 2024. There is no record of disbursements in Michigan. 

Apex’s Albert Jongewaard says he is not familiar with PPR PAC, nor are his colleagues currently working on the company’s Michigan projects. An email to PPR PAC resulted in an automatic reply from Rural Economic Development PAC (R.E.D. PAC), a Texas-based super PAC which also touts protecting private property among its top priorities.

R.E.D. PAC, where Cabell Hobbs is also treasurer, has received over $1 million from Conservatives for a Clean Energy Future (CCEF). Larry Ward, CCEF’s president and CEO, is a former political director of the Michigan Republican Party. The group was formed, he says, as the advocacy arm of the Conservative Energy Network.

“We like a whole list of energy sources,” he says, including advanced wind, solar and nuclear technologies. What his organization doesn’t like, he says, is government—or angry neighbors—“telling farmers what they can and can’t do with their property.”

CCEF is organized as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit. Donations to the group are not tax deductible, and it is not required to disclose its donors. “Everyone who contributes to us,” says Ward, “would rather it be that way.”

This is the topsy-turvy world of renewable energy in Michigan. Republicans backing the conservative cause of private property rights are using a dark money loophole to help farmers and landowners participate in green energy projects, a liberal priority supported by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. These strange bedfellows, plus a few others, may now be finding a way to live together.

Although the state’s PSC has the final say to site renewable projects, utility and energy developers still have the option of trying first to work directly with local authorities. That’s taking place now—in Montcalm County, of all places. DTE Energy broke ground there in June on a 554-acre solar farm.

At a public hearing on the project last December, Evergreen Township Supervisor Andy Ross observed that with P.A. 233 in place, local governments are better off getting involved with renewable projects to make sure local concerns are addressed. These include issues like setbacks from adjacent properties, noise limits and a $5 million bond secured by DTE, which guarantees funding to decommission the project.

“If we were to deny their [DTE’s] application and they went through the state siting process, our restrictions are tighter than the state’s,” he told the Montcalm/Ionia Daily News. “What we’re working together on is way better than what the state siting would be.”

“I think there is a path forward for developers to work with local governments,” says PSC chair Dan Scripps, an energy attorney and former Democratic state representative from Northern Michigan. He was appointed to the commission in 2019 by Whitmer, who named him chair in 2020.

“I’m not going to be disappointed,” he says, “if we never get a case.”

The post Signs of a Ceasefire in Michigan’s Energy Wars appeared first on Barn Raiser.

Close to 400 people working for the Federal Emergency Management Agency are delivering aid to flood-affected Vermonters, following President Joe Biden’s approval last week of a major disaster declaration for seven Vermont counties hit by the remnants of Tropical Storm Beryl in mid-July.

Alongside Republican Gov. Phil Scott and other state officials, FEMA’s Federal Coordinating Officer William Roy told reporters at a Wednesday press conference that the agency has already opened three disaster recovery centers — located in Barre, Plainfield and Waterbury — and a fourth, to be located in Lyndonville, is expected to open soon.

At the disaster recovery centers, residents will be able to meet with FEMA staff, who can help guide them through the application and documentation processes for seeking federal aid. Roy said that FEMA aims to open centers in all seven counties where people are eligible to receive individual assistance under Biden’s major disaster declaration: Addison, Caledonia, Chittenden, Essex, Lamoille, Orleans and Washington. Orange County was recently approved for public assistance, which reimburses municipalities and other public bodies part of the cost to recover public infrastructure.

According to Roy, 370 FEMA personnel are currently deployed in Vermont to aid in the state’s natural disaster recovery. As in the aftermath of last July’s floods, FEMA officers are going door-to-door to offer assistance to Vermonters in flood-stricken areas. Out of 375 Vermonters who requested that FEMA inspect their homes for flood damage, 235 inspections have already been completed, Roy said.

And as of Wednesday morning, Vermonters had applied for individual assistance, Roy said, and more than $1 million in grant dollars are “going out the door.”

However, the current disaster declaration only encompasses damage from the storm that hit Vermont between July 9 and 11. 

Scott announced in a press release late Wednesday afternoon that he had submitted a request for another declaration to cover the July 30-31 storm for Caledonia, Essex and Orleans counties. An initial federal assessment found that 85 homes were damaged or destroyed in that storm, while public infrastructure withstood more than $3.7 million in damages. The release also noted that the governor had requested a separate declaration last week for Lamoille and Caledonia counties, which were hit by an earlier bout of flooding that began June 22.

“It’s important to remember, while these federal and state resources are essential and will help, we know it’s not enough,” Scott said at the press conference. “It’s not going to make people whole, or cover all the costs. I know this repeated flooding has taken a toll on municipal and family budgets, especially for those who have been hit multiple times just in the last year.”

In an effort to help fill those gaps — at least for business owners — the state will relaunch last year’s Business Emergency Gap Assistance Program. The program offers interest-free grant dollars to business owners to help cover the cost of flood damage to their businesses, or to make up for lost revenues due to the floods.

Scott and legislative leaders earlier this month approved an additional $7 million for the program to help business owners recover from this year’s multiple bouts of flooding. That comes on top of $5 million that the Legislature greenlit for the program during the legislative session, Scott said Wednesday.

The application portal for businesses to apply to the state for BEGAP funds opens Thursday. According to Commissioner of Economic Development Joan Goldstein, businesses that qualified for the funding after last year’s floods may apply for 2024 funding, as well. Businesses, nonprofits, landlords and farms may receive grants for up to three physical locations per flood event.

Businesses hit by this summer’s floods have until Nov. 15 to apply for BEGAP funding. Those grants will cover 30% of net uncovered damages up to $100,000 per business location.

And businesses impacted by last year’s floods that could still use help can also apply for BEGAP aid by Sept. 30.

The federal Small Business Administration also offers low-interest disaster loans to businesses and homeowners impacted by the floods. Anita Steenson, a spokesperson for the administration, said Wednesday that the deadline to apply for those loans to help with repairs related to the early July flooding is Oct. 21.

Read the story on VTDigger here: FEMA gets to work helping Vermont recover from remnants of Tropical Storm Beryl.

Bernice Atchinson, an 85-year-old advocate from Alabama, has been fighting for more than 40 years on behalf of her fellow Black farmers. She even represented them in the landmark case Pigford v. Glickman, a class-action lawsuit alleging the U.S. Department of Agriculture discriminated against Black farmers from 1983 to 1997 when they applied for federal financial assistance, and failed to respond to complaints of discrimination.

While it’s been challenging for past administrations to address the ongoing concerns of Black farmers, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris recently issued $2.2 billion to 43,000 farmers who have been discriminated against. The funds will be administered through the USDA.

But, Atchinson says it’s still not enough. 

“I testified before Congress on Nov. 18, 2004, and we are just getting an award assistance, not a settlement,” she wrote Capital B in a statement. “We are looking for something better.”

Despite the limited progress, Atchinson still feels that Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, “will be a good team” to help Black farmers.

“This is my 40th year of working for our people … walking the streets of Washington, visiting … [Capitol] Hill. I’ve went and spoke, now who shall speak for me at 85? My hope is that Vice President Kamala Harris will,” Atchinson said. “There is always hope for us. How can I have faith in someone [former President Donald Trump] who has been convicted on 34 counts by his own peers?”

Atchinson is one of many Black farmers who are hoping that Harris and Walz make it to the presidency. It’s partly due to the lack of resources they received during Trump’s tenure in the White House. He handed out historic levels of pandemic-related funding, but less than 1% went toward Black farmers. 

While many Black farmers are on board to usher the two into the White House in November, there are concerns that the new administration might not deliver the relief they’ve been seeking for decades. Additionally, there’s uncertainty about whether changes will be made within the USDA, which has historically discriminated against Black farmers.

One of those people: Todd Western III a sixth-generation farmer from Iowa who works on the 200-acre heritage farm that has been in his family for more than 160 years. 

“To be honest with you, I think they [Harris-Walz] care about [issues with Black farmers], but it’s so low on the totem pole for them,” he said. “In my opinion, they would care about it when it bubbles up. But to be proactive? I don’t know that they’re going to do that.”

Western referenced how earlier this year, a white farmer from Minnesota filed a federal lawsuit against Walz and the commissioner of the state’s Department of Agriculture for alleged discrimination in one of its grant programs. The program aimed to give financial assistance to “emerging farmers” who were defined as women, veterans, persons with disabilities, American Indian or Alaskan Natives, members of a community of color, young, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, or asexual (LGBTQIA+), or urban.

The farmer claimed his application being denied was a violation of his civil rights. Though he was picked ninth in the grant lottery, he claims he was pushed down the list because he was a straight, white male, according to AgWeek. In July, Walz signed the legislation, but removed the reference of “emerging farmers” in the language. The lawsuit was dismissed.

“If white farmers can win in liberal Minnesota, and this is under the Biden-Harris administration, if Trump gets in, it can only get worse,” Western added. “If Biden and Harris are protecting us now, she’s not gonna do any better in the next administration if she wins.”

Western is focusing his efforts on building support for the farmers in his state. Recently he co-founded the Iowa Farmers of Color Conference to connect Black farmers — fewer than 45 in the state — with local, state and federal resources to help sustain their operations, but also keep their land. 

Could Biden’s loss be a Harris-Walz gain?

What’s happening in Minnesota follows a similar issue after Biden was elected into office.

When he signed the American Rescue Plan Act into law, it included a $4 billion debt relief program for socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers — which included Black communities. The program would have offered up to 120% of the outstanding indebtedness.

In June 2021, the same month the USDA planned to start loan payments to eligible borrowers, a judge issued a restraining order on the program in response to a lawsuit brought by a group of white farmers alleging that the debt relief program racially discriminated against them. After white farmers and banks fought back against the program, it fell through.

Rather than implement the existing loan forgiveness program, the Inflation Reduction Act replaced it with a $2.2 billion Discrimination Financial Assistance Program for all farmers and ranchers who experienced discrimination in USDA farm loan programs prior to 2021.

Representatives with the USDA Coalition of Minority Employees, an organization formed in 1994, and Justice for Black Farmers Group called out the Biden-Harris administration in an Aug. 14 letter for its race-neutral approach with the discrimination assistance.

“Those who deserved to be compensated for their actual losses received little to nothing. On top of that, Mr. President, those few Black farmers who have had their debts full or partially forgiven will now face the onerous task of dealing with … hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes,” the authors wrote. “Due to having to pay taxes, we think, many will be at risk to lose their land, houses, and property. Additionally, we are of the opinion that the ‘process’ for addressing discrimination by farmers is flawed and inadequate.”

That wasn’t the only incident of reverse discrimination.

Two months ago, U.S. District Court Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, a Trump-appointee in Texas, issued a preliminary injunction on a USDA emergency relief program for socially disadvantaged farmers after a group of white farmers sued.

John Boyd Jr., founder of the National Black Farmers Association, told Capital B that putting Harris on the ticket was the right thing to do to motivate Black people, but there are still a number of issues plaguing Black farmers that need to be addressed, like removing Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who has a decades-long fraught relationship with Black farmers and ensuring full debt relief.

“We didn’t get the debt relief under this administration … so I’ve been reaching out to the Democratic Party and Harris’ campaign to see if I could have a conversation about that,” Boyd said. “She’s motivating the base, but we need answers. We shouldn’t be losing land and farmers. We lost 40,000 Black farmers under this [Biden-Harris] administration.”

Farmers like Boyd are optimistic that Harris will have a listening ear. 

With Walz’s background in agriculture and farming, the duo could serve as a benefit for Black farmers. Walz helped shape farm policy during his time as U.S. representative in Congress in a Republican district. According to Politico, he helped draft and pass the 2008, 2014, and 2018 Farms Bills, the largest piece of legislation for food and farming that is passed every five years. He was the top-ranked Democrat on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee and served on the House Agriculture Committee for 12 years, where he oversaw rural conservation and energy programs. 

Even after his time in Congress, his commitments to agriculture continued. In Minnesota, he created the Governor’s Committee on Safety, Health, and Wellbeing of Agricultural and Food Processing Workers.

Trump’s record with Black farmers

With excitement for Harris and Halz, it seems the Trump-Vance ticket hasn’t won over most Black farmers. U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance’s recent comments during an Aug. 11 interview on Face the Nation didn’t help. After condemning attacks on his wife, Vance went on to talk about the $2.2 billion financial assistance program, suggesting the program is racist against white farmers: 

“I do think that there’s been this thing in America where we’ve said that we should judge people based on their skin color, based on their immutable characteristics, based on things that they can’t control. I frankly think that unfortunately, a lot of people on the left have leaned into this by trying to categorize people by skin color and then give special benefits or special amounts of discrimination. The Harris Administration, for example, handed out farm benefits to people based on skin color. I think that’s disgraceful. I don’t — I don’t think we should say, you get farm benefits if you’re a Black farmer, you don’t get farm benefits if you’re a white farmer. All farmers, we want to thrive, and that’s certainly the President Trump and J.D. Vance view of the situation.”

Boyd called out Vance and demanded he issue an apology to Black farmers for his “racist, inaccurate, and anti-Black comments.”

“This was not a ‘farm benefit’ based on skin color given to Black farmers,” he said. “Decades of discriminatory behavior by the USDA have contributed to significant economic differences between white farmers and farmers of color that directly impact their access to credit.”

Despite Vance’s latest derogatory remarks, neither Trump nor Vance has laid out clear policies for helping Black farmers. But, under Project 2025, a transition plan created by The Heritage Foundation for the next Republican president, proposes to eliminate important federal conservation programs and cut spending to crop insurance subsidies.

During his tenure in the White House, Trump didn’t do much for Black farmers. Despite the historic amounts of emergency relief under his administration, the money didn’t flow to the pockets of Black folks.

Under his administration, government assistance reached a record $46 billion in 2020 — and $26 billion of that came from the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program, which kept some producers afloat. With that pandemic relief funding, only 0.1% went to Black farmers, according to Vilsack — just $20.8 million. 

“We saw 99% of the money going to White farmers and 1% going to socially disadvantaged farmers, and if you break that down to how much went to Black farmers, it’s 0.1 percent,” he told The Washington Post. “Look at it another way: The top 10% of farmers in the country received 60% of the value of the COVID payments. And the bottom 10% received 0.26%.”

The year before, farmers received $22 billion, the highest in farm subsidies in 14 years. One of the subsidies was the Market Facilitation Program, which was designed to help farmers directly affected by foreign retaliatory tariffs from China. Nearly 100% of the bailout payments disproportionately benefited white farmers, according to The Counter.

Biden still has time left to make changes 

Despite who wins in November, some farmers are calling on Biden to finish what he started before he leaves office.  

In the letter to Biden, Lawrence Lucas and Waymon Hinson with the USDA Coalition of Minority Employees and Justice for Black Farmers Group asked Biden to “do good for our Black farmers and others suffering at USDA, especially when there is lingering skepticism about USDA and your support of USDA Secretary Vilsack.”

They included a partial list of demands for Biden, including:

• remove the indebtedness from Black farmers;
• cover their taxes;
• root out racism, sexism, and violence from USDA, especially the Forest Service, Western Division;
• eliminate the County Committee system;
• put a firewall between the Office of General Counsel and the Office of Civil Rights;
• settle the many unresolved cases within the Office of Civil Rights; and
• endorse a program that puts land back into the hands of Black farmers who have had their land stolen from them because of a failed civil rights process. 

“In short, Mr. President, we, Black farmers and advocates, are seeking accountability, transparency, and justice. USDA, until these factors are included, will continue to be labeled ‘the last plantation,’ because, indeed, Secretary Vilsack runs the agency like a plantation, and it has been that way for decade after decade.”

If Biden acts on the list of demands, the farmers feel the support for Harris-Walz will increase.

The post Justice Has Been Delayed for Black Farmers, and They’re Looking to the Next President for Answers appeared first on Capital B News.

In early August, Vice President Kamala Harris and her newly selected running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, swept through the Southwest, holding massive rallies in Phoenix and Las Vegas and energizing Democratic voters just before the party’s national convention, which concluded yesterday. Now, as the official Democratic presidential ticket, they need the staunch support of a few key voting blocs in Arizona and Nevada, crucial swing states that will help determine the outcome of the November election.

Christian Solomon, Nevada state director for the nonprofit Rise Free, which works with college-age voters, described the diverse, ecstatic crowds at Harris and Walz’s rallies. “Everybody’s life is just kind of exploding with this,” he told High Country News.

Arizona and Nevada are now reliably purple states, in part due to the influx of Democratic voters to metropolitan regions over the last decade. President Joe Biden, who stepped down as the Democratic candidate late last month, narrowly won both states in 2020, but recent polls suggested that he was losing support in his attempt at re-election, especially following a poor debate performance against former President Donald Trump. Ever since Harris stepped up, she has reinvigorated major demographics in the party’s base — including women and minorities — and she’s making noticeable inroads among independents.  

“Everybody’s life is just kind of exploding with this.”

Recent polls from the research firm Focaldata and the New York Times/Siena College are showing Harris with a slight edge over Trump. Her gains in western swing states are at least partially attributable to her choice of her running mate. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., who had also been under consideration, would have been more recognizable to Arizona voters, but Walz has shown a surprising ability to generate support among young people and independents.

Last year, voters who do not identity with a political party outnumbered Democrats and Republicans in both Arizona and Nevada. In Nevada, their numbers have risen consistently for more than a decade, aided in part by the state’s new automatic registration system. In Arizona, nearly half of voters under 30 are now registered as independent.

Thom Reilly, professor and co-director of the Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy at Arizona State University, said that independent voters are notoriously difficult to predict, but that they do tend to favor new candidates over incumbents. Nationally, they seem to switch every so often: In 2016, Trump’s success among independents helped vault him to the White House, but Biden recovered enough of their votes to win in 2020. This year, independents were trending toward Trump again until Harris reset the map. As of this month, she is polling nine points ahead of Trump among non-party-affiliated voters.

In general, voters crave economic policies that directly affect their quality of life, an area where Walz’s record is particularly strong. As governor, he has locked in policies for free school meals, child tax credits and increased labor protections for gig workers.

He also appeals directly to independents who are disillusioned by the polarized party system, according to Sondra Cosgrove, a history professor at the College of Southern Nevada and executive director of the civic engagement nonprofit Vote Nevada. Walz authorized the expansion of ranked-choice voting across Minnesota, a type of electoral reform that increased voter turnout in the Twin Cities. By allowing for some expansion without enforcing it statewide, Cosgrove said, Walz signaled a spirit of pragmatism and compromise. “I’m hoping that this is going to be a Tim Walz moment, where he can say, ‘I hear you. Let’s work on this. Let’s figure out,’” she added.

As for Harris, she has secured support from critical groups, such as the endorsement of Nevada’s powerful Culinary Local 226, a union that represents service industry workers in Las Vegas. She is polling well among women in both Arizona and Nevada, driven in part by her strong support of reproductive rights. As vice president, she has made multiple trips to Nevada, touting the importance of gun control in the wake of the University of Nevada Las Vegas shooting last year. She has also regained some of Biden’s 2020 support among Latino voters, who comprise a quarter of Arizonans and one-fifth of Nevadans.

Trump still has significant support in the Copper and Silver states. Many Arizona residents want to see tougher action on immigration, and the former president has made securing the border one of his top issues, while repeatedly criticizing Harris on this front. As vice president, she supported President Biden’s mission to address the root causes of immigration by working with the governments of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. While instances of illegal crossings from the three countries has decreased, they increased overall under Biden, until the administration’s recent cap on asylum. Harris has defended her record with the more recent policy, which border officials say reduced crossings over the summer.

Most polls have Trump and Harris essentially tied, and neither can be certain of the support of independent voters. Reilly, from Arizona State, noted that two-thirds of registered independents in Arizona failed to vote in 2020. This year, the voters he surveyed in June said they were more likely to turn out for down-ballot issues like abortion or water conservation than on behalf of either party. Still, it’s impossible to discount the dramatic shift in favor of Harris.

Nancy Gomez, 64, a retired administrator at Arizona State, came away from the Vice President’s Phoenix rally impressed at the energy generated by Harris and Walz. She supports the Biden administration’s policies generally, but this election, for her, is about leaving behind the last nine years of Trump. “People are tired of being angry at each other,” Gomez said, “There’s a level of excitement that I haven’t seen in a long, long time.”

The post Arizona and Nevada edge toward Harris and Walz appeared first on High Country News.

Experts are finding ways to encourage climate-resilient farming and living for producers.

Robert Hafley liked to eat lunch in his patrol car.

The other state troopers in Wythe County that August day 10 years ago went to a Subway in Wytheville; Hafley pulled into the median along Interstate 81 near Exit 72 and chowed down on a baloney sandwich.

His eye spotted a car with illegal window tint headed north. Bingo. Hafley pulled out and turned on the flashing blues.

The driver was a 30-year-old man from Texas with a fedora perched on his head and a gold chain around his neck. The man was quite polite, but the car smelled of marijuana. Today, that wouldn’t have made a difference. When Virginia legalized personal possession of small amounts of cannabis in 2021, it removed the smell of pot as a probable cause reason to search a vehicle. But that law was still seven years in the future on this day in 2014. Hafley had sufficient reason to search the vehicle. He called for backup, standard protocol for a vehicle search.

The other troopers in Wythe weren’t happy with him at the time, Hafley recalls. They’d just sat down to lunch. He told them they’d have to pack up their subs and bring them along. The search couldn’t wait.

The troopers popped open the trunk. The first thing they saw was a guitar. The driver — whose home address was in Irving, Texas, just outside Dallas — said he had left Nashville and was on his way to try to score a record deal. The driver asked if he could have it. Hafley saw no harm in that, so he handed over the instrument. The driver sat on the grass bank strumming the six-string and singing a song. Hafley says he remembers this clearly because “it was just funny, I’d never had anybody playing the guitar while searching.” When the troopers pulled out a suitcase, the guitar-playing driver “immediately” switched to Willie Nelson’s “The Party’s Over,” Hafley recalls. That was the first sign that troopers were onto something.

“We unzip the suitcase; it has 6 pounds of marijuana,” Hafley says — actually 6.6 pounds, to be precise. The threshold for a marijuana trafficking charge — a felony — in Virginia is 5 pounds. “Now it makes sense why he changed the song,” Hafley says. This much pot would bring two felony charges, one for distribution, another for transportation.

Hafley took the driver off to the New River Valley Regional Jail. At the magistrate’s office, the driver tried to explain that the suitcase full of marijuana was “medicine” and that he had a medical prescription for the weed. The magistrate was skeptical. “Six pounds?” he asked incredulously.

Hafley remembers the driver’s response: “He just kind of dropped his head at that point.”

Unlike some suspects, the Texas man was unfailingly polite throughout the process. “He was good during the whole stop,” Hafley says. “He was obviously nervous and scared of what would happen, but he was never rude. He was respectful.” Hafley says the man was “a good sport about it,” so much so that “when I pulled away from the jail, I thought ‘I hate that happened to him.’”

With that, one Matthew Charles Crockett entered the Virginia criminal justice system with two felony counts and possible prison time hanging over him. At the time, he was a nobody, just another unlucky pot dealer with a colorful tale. Today, he’s better known as Charley Crockett, a breakout country music star with 15 albums to his credit, and that 2014 bust on the interstate figures in one of his newest songs, “Good At Losing,” an autobiographical account of his life before he became famous.

The key verse for us:

Lawmen they caught me in Virginia
No need to tell you what I done
Make sure you get your act together
Before you roll up 81

Actually, Crockett has talked quite a bit about the case in interviews, although few of those stories (mostly in the music press) have said his famous arrest took place in Virginia, and none say it happened in Wythe County. The court case that followed was pivotal to Crockett’s subsequent music career because, had it gone a different way, that music career may never have happened. The maximum sentence for the sale, manufacture or trafficking of more than 5 pounds of marijuana is 30 years in prison. In theory, Crockett could be sitting in a cell in Red Onion State Prison and not striding stages across the country (including recently at FloydFest).

Crockett’s representatives didn’t respond to Cardinal, but in an interview last year with Texas Monthly, Crockett gave a fairly extensive account of his marijuana-dealing exploits. He’d grown up in Texas and drifted all over the country and around the world, even spending time in France, Spain and Morocco — he has a colorful biography of playing on street corners and riding in boxcars. Eventually, Crockett wound up in California, working on a cannabis farm in Mendocino County and looking for a way to self-fund the album he wanted to record. Farm work wasn’t going to cut it, but selling weed would. He told Texas Monthly he’d only started selling marijuana about a month before his Wythe County arrest and quickly found out how easy it was to make money. He pocketed $1,500 from a simple two-hour drive to San Francisco. “That was a lot of money, and it was thrilling,” he told Texas Monthly. “But there was a lot of fear, driving with all that in your trunk. I didn’t even have a license. I was living so far outside society that I forgot myself. I forgot the risk.” 

A state trooper in Virginia who happened to prefer a baloney sandwich in his car to lunch at Subway reminded him of that risk.

Crockett gave a more dramatic account of the Wythe County stop than the one Hafley told:

“They pulled me out of the car … and I knew I was going to jail,” he said. “They were making fun of me, these cops.” When they asked where he was headed, Charley said he was en route to a gig. The law didn’t buy it. “They were like, ‘Yeah, boy, you’re a country music singer. I’ll bet you are. Why don’t you play something for us right now?’ ” He grabbed his Telecaster — and froze. “I pulled out that guitar, nervous as hell, and I swear to God the only song I could think to play was [Willie’s] ‘The Party’s Over’ ” — he strummed an air guitar and started singing, “Turn out the lights, the party’s over”—“and they were like, ‘That’s a fitting song, boy.’ Then that dude busted the suitcase open and [found] a bunch of medicinal plants.”

In that Texas Monthly interview, Crockett said he had funded the cross-country trip by selling weed — he’d left California with 50 pounds. “That was his plan to fund his first record, running dope to cities where he’d busked,” Texas Monthly reported. That matches what Hafley recalls Crockett telling him: “He actually had more than that when he started. I think that’s how he was paying his way to New York.” 

Crockett wound up spending about a month at the New River Valley Jail until he was released on bond. Austin Monthly says he spent that time doing some hard thinking and realized he needed to get more serious about his music career. He walked out of the jail convinced that the only way out of his drug charges was to establish himself in the music industry and hope that would earn him some leniency. He went back to California and recorded his first album — ironically, in a cabin at a cannabis farm. In an interview posted on the Sunset Sound recording studio site, he told an interviewer: “Had I not gotten busted, I’m sure I wouldn’t have made ‘Stolen Jewel.’ I would have probably kept going and gotten in a whole lot more trouble than I did … So getting busted made me take recording more serious.” 

It was March 2016 — three months shy of two years since his arrest — that Crockett was finally sentenced. By the time he appeared before Circuit Court Judge Josiah Showalter, he’d been busy. His first album, “A Stolen Jewel,” was something he did on his own, without the benefit of a record label. He paid for 5,000 compact disc copies, which he then set out to sell at as many shows as he could book. He played lots of shows, landing gigs as an opening act for the Samantha Fish, Lucero, the Old 97s, Shinyribs and the Turnpike Troubadours, a who’s who of acts that weave back and forth between the lines of country and the blues, both genres that Crockett makes use of. That record won him some acclaim — the Dallas Observer Music Awards named Crockett the Best Blues Act. He landed a deal with an actual record label, Field Day Records, a small but respected indie label in Dallas. He had a new album, “In the Night,” nearly finished, with more shows lined up. He also had a big-name attorney: Jimmy Turk of Radford, whose reputation stands tall in Southwest Virginia courtrooms. Some of the legal proceedings were handled by one of the other attorneys in Turk’s firm at the time, Naomi Huntington, who later went on to serve on the Radford City Council. (She referred all comments on the case to Turk, who did not respond to multiple inquiries.)

Crockett pleaded guilty to the distribution charge; the transportation charge was “nolle prosqui,” legal language for it simply went away. Crockett was given a 10-year suspended sentence and fined $10,000. Other than having to check in with a probation officer, Crockett was free to go.

Some accounts in the music press say that Crockett sent the judge a copy of “A Stolen Jewel,” and the judge was so impressed he gave Crockett a break to spare him from prison. The Austin Monthly credits Crockett’s “disarming megawatt smile” and the CD with winning the judge over. That may be somewhat embellished. David Saliba, who prosecuted the case and is now in private practice in Harrisonburg, says for one thing it’s well-known in court circles that Judge Showalter doesn’t like country music. For another, Saliba says the eventual sentence is fairly standard for that type of marijuana charge. “It wasn’t meth, it wasn’t Oxycontin,” Saliba says. “I don’t think he had any prior record. It was on the lower end of a lot of those interstate cases. They pull U-Hauls over every now and then that are loaded up.”

Whether Crockett actually sent his record to the judge as some accounts claim is unclear — the judge did not respond to a Cardinal News inquiry; judges typically don’t comment on the cases they’ve handled. However, Saliba does remember a CD being mentioned or shown in court, along with Crockett’s need to be able to travel to pursue his career, but otherwise, his memory of the case is hazy. It just didn’t make that much of an impression at the time. There are lots of drug cases off the interstate. Neither Saliba the prosecutor nor Hafley the state trooper made the connection between that case a decade ago and Crockett’s current fame until Cardinal contacted them.

Crockett’s own account is fairly straightforward: “I showed him I’d made strides over the two years it took to get to trial,” he told Texas Monthly. He told the Sunset Sound interviewer that the judge “saw I had something else I was doing and not just paying ’em lip service and wasn’t going to be right back into it — relapse.” Whether routine or not, the lack of a prison sentence allowed Crockett to continue his music career. He’s since racked up a bunch of honors — and when his new album, “$10 Cowboy,” came out earlier this year, he was back in the New York that he’d been headed to that day in 2014. Except this time, instead of busking on the street, he was playing on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” Crockett’s drug arrest in Wythe County may have given him a good verse in “Good at Losing,” but right now, he seems pretty good at winning. 

See also: “We need more stories about Interstate 81.”

The post How a drug bust in Wythe County pushed Charley Crockett into a country music career appeared first on Cardinal News.