For years, Garrett Snuggs questioned why the predominantly white town council of Wadesboro, North Carolina, didn’t reflect its population — 69% of which is Black.

In the rural town of 5,000, about 52 miles away from Charlotte, he noticed that many Black folks, particularly youth and men, were disengaged from the political process. 

That changed in 2022 when the 45-year-old met Cynthia Wallace, co-founder and executive director of New Rural Project, a civic engagement nonprofit. Wallace conducted a rural listening tour and focus groups in the eastern part of the state, and learned that many rural voters there simply felt “unheard and unseen” and didn’t have power. 

The conversations sparked a collaboration between Wallace and Snuggs called the Barbershop Conversations: F.A.D.E (Fruitful African American Discussions on Empowerment), which brought nearly 60 Black men together to discuss their top concerns and voting challenges. It prompted them to attend community meetings and join school boards. Last November, Snuggs, the longtime barber, instructor, and sports bar owner, won a local council seat and garnered the most votes of any candidate. The town also made history in that election, electing its first majority-Black council.

“There has never been more than one African American on our council at one time ever, and we currently have three,” Snuggs said. “We’re getting out there — engaging folk, [and] informing them of just how important and how impactful local politics and government plays into their everyday lives.”

Black rural voters in Wadesboro illustrate the influence that engaged and informed rural voters can have, especially in local and state elections, which matter just as much as federal ones, if not more. While Black rural voters have a desire to become a more influential voting bloc nationally, obstacles exist, including the lack of trust in local and state officials in the red states where many live, misinformation, the Democratic Party’s messaging, and a noticeable absence of candidates actively campaigning in rural areas. 

“The strength of Black rural voters lies in their power on the state and local levels,” said Dara Gaines, rural researcher and visiting professor at the University of Arkansas. “The race at the top of the ticket has inspired a lot of people who were previously planning to sit out, and they are looking for a way to do something. The down-ballot races are going to feel the weight of the rural Black vote.”

Despite their loyalty to the Democratic Party, rural voters often feel overlooked and neglected by both major parties, especially on the national level. While they’re making marginal gains, they still haven’t achieved full political power, meaning the candidates they vote for — often Black or Democrats — don’t get elected. The GOP still has a stronghold in rural counties. This dynamic exacerbates feelings of disengagement, resulting in low voter engagement.

Capital B spoke to rural organizers, candidates, and elected officials in two battleground states — North Carolina and Pennsylvania — as well as in Arkansas and Virginia to discuss the opportunities and barriers facing rural voters.

“Blue dots in a red sea”

It’s often cited that rural voters tend to lean conservative and Republican. Since the 2000s, several rural states shifted their support to the Republican Party on all levels of government, from state houses to Congress. Today, the Republican Party holds a 25-point advantage over the Democratic Party among rural voters, according to the Pew Research Center.  

However, a recent study by Cornell University found that this is not the reality for rural Black voters who, like most urban Black voters, supported Democrats at rates of 90% or more in the last four presidential elections — even though Black support for the party has waned nationally. 

In some places, the diversity of rural America hasn’t been reflected in local and state elections. Paolo Cremidis, former rural caucus chair for the New York State Democratic Party, saw this, and between 2015 and 2020, the caucus was able to elect 85 Democratic candidates (who were either LGBTQ+ or people of color) across upstate New York. 

“We noticed that folks who won were able to lean into their diversity to overcome culture wars and outran the top of the ticket because of it,” he said.

Cremidis and five other Democratic officials from upstate New York started The Outrun Coalition in 2020, which is now a network of over 500 local Democratic elected officials across 17 states, he said. They started the coalition to ensure elected officials better reflect the growing diversity of rural America. In August, the organization hosted a Rural Americans for Kamala Harris call, where thousands joined and raised more than $22,000.

In the 2022 midterm elections, where states saw record high voter turnout, rural voters helped usher in candidates, most notably in Georgia, which elected its first Black U.S. senator, Raphael Warnock; and in North Carolina, where Diamond Staton-Williams, a Black nurse, and Ray Jeffers, a Black farmer, secured seats in the state House. It’s these races that can help “purple states become a lot bluer, and more Democrats get elected to Congress, state legislatures, and local public offices in red states as well as blue ones,” as one author and professor wrote.

“Oftentimes, rural Americans are told they’re blue dots in a red sea. That’s not true. At the end of the day, one blue dot in a red sea might look like one blue dot, but enough blue dots together form an ocean, and enough oceans put out fires that make our reality better for our communities,” Cremidis said. “This isn’t just about making sure Vice President Kamala Harris becomes president; it’s about breaking super majorities in red states.”

If rural areas are making gains, why are rural counties overwhelmingly Republican? Well, the answer depends on who you ask. The number of rural Black voters turning out is not enough to improve the odds for Democrats. White progressive voter turnout would also need to increase for Democrats to win more.

Republicans dominate because of a combination of nonvoting and restrictive voting laws, said Chris Jones, co-founder of Dirt Road Democrats PAC, a political action committee for rural areas. When he ran for governor against Republican Sarah Huckebee Sanders in 2022, about 900,000 people voted — whereas 1.2 million people didn’t, he said. Last year, Arkansas had the lowest voter turnout and registration rates nationwide. 

While voter registration is up by 12,500 across Arkansas, a federal appeals court dealt a recent blow to voters when it reinstated Arkansas’ wet signature rule, a law that mandates voters to submit their voter registration forms with handwritten signatures with pen and ink. This legislation was in response to an online voter tool, created by Get Loud Arkansas, a civic engagement organization that registered hundreds of young voters. Separately, the Arkansas Supreme Court upheld four voting restrictions passed by Republicans, which includes changes to a voter ID law and deadlines for voters to return absentee ballots.

Similar election-related laws have been passed in other states. This year, in at least 21 states, voters will face restrictions they’ve never encountered in previous election cycles, whereas voters in 28 states will face new restrictions that weren’t in place in 2020, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Additionally, Republicans in battleground states have filed multiple lawsuits challenging aspects of mail-in voting, which is popular among rural voters.

Unfortunately, the efforts to stymie Black political power won’t stop, Gaines, the rural researcher, said. For example, in Florida, the state director of elections instructed local officials to investigate voter rolls based on a list emailed from an election denier. Officials in Travis County, Texas, filed a federal lawsuit against state Attorney General Ken Paxton and Secretary of State Jane Nelson for blocking voter registration efforts. And in Arkansas, there was an attempt to completely shut down one of the busiest early voting locations in Crittenden County and only have Election Day voting. 

“If you know you’re a person that has experienced some type of political violence before, or you’ve seen what political violence does in a place like where you might live, then you might be less likely to step out and go vote or step out and be vocal about something,” Gaines said. “We also have to be very aware that people don’t live in these places in a vacuum, right? Everything is connected to the past and what people’s former experiences have been. If we’re serious about supporting and protecting rural Black voters, we have to make sure that they will be protected and supported all the way up from registration to the time they cast their vote.”

Going back to “old school” politics

In the words of Dwan Walker who became the first Black mayor of Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, in 2011, “You got to be in these places in order for you to affect change. You got to go back to old school politics. You just can’t court us in November, and think we’re going to turn out for you.” 

Beaver County, where Aliquippa is, had been a Democratic stronghold, but that changed in 2008. Still, Walker, who served as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, believes Harris and running mate Tim Walz visiting Aliquippa in August will pay off at the polls. This week, both Harris and former president Donald Trump campaigned in Pennsylvania. On Tuesday, Walz formally unveiled the details of Harris’ agenda for rural America at a campaign stop in western Pennsylvania. 

“I can’t remember another presidential [candidate] that ever paid this much attention to rural America as this campaign is doing; it’s a beautiful thing to see because I don’t feel forgotten right now,” Walker said. “[They told us] we want all rural communities to have a seat at the table. And no one has ever invited us in like they’re inviting us in.”

If candidates, or their representatives, don’t meet directly with rural voters to talk about voting or their vision, those voters may stay home, said Alexsis Rodgers, political director at Black to the Future Action Fund. About 42% of Black urban and rural voters in three states sat out of the 2022 elections because they felt “uninformed about the candidates they were being asked to vote for,” according to a December 2022 report by Black to the Future Action Fund and HIT Strategies. The authors consider this as “another form of voter suppression … the lack of information about elections and the people who are running to represent you.”

“Rural Black voters across the South have the power to deliver the White House. They have shown up in margins before,” Rodgers said. “But, they just don’t feel like they’ve seen the Democratic Party necessarily deliver on the ideas, and they know Republican candidates have been talking about issues they don’t agree with. The real power of Black voters is that they want to see elected officials or candidates deliver on results.”

Showing up is only part of the battle. Messaging is another.

In the case of organizers and candidates, there is a lack of resources to build a strong infrastructure to support Democratic candidates and rural voters.

Jade Harris, a 26-year-old substitute teacher who ran last year as the Democratic candidate for Virginia’s newly drawn 3rd Senate District, agreed it’s difficult for candidates to run without infrastructure or resources. 

Before running for Senate, Harris served as a city council member in Glasgow, Virginia, a 76% white town of nearly 1,400 people. At the end of the term, she ran in a special election to secure a seat for the state House of Delegates. She campaigned for three weeks with limited campaign resources. Although she lost, she performed better than both parties thought she would, she said.  

“Everyone said I was going to underperform, but it turns out that election was kind of the first one post-Dobbs [the U.S. Supreme Court abortion decision overturning Roe v. Wade] and we saw that trend of Democrats overperforming,” Harris said. “I was like, ‘Wow.’ This little special election in rural Virginia gave the nation a forecast of what to expect.”

Following that race, she gained more resources, so she decided to run for Senate, which she lost, but still overperformed for a Democrat. She also served as a delegate at the Democratic National Convention, an honor bestowed on by the state and congressional leaders.

Gaines, the professor and researcher, mentioned the record-breaking $1 billion the Harris campaign has raised, but the funding doesn’t trickle down to the local parties or civic engagement groups. She referenced how people spend resources on registration drives, but “consistently drop the ball” when it’s time to get them to the polls. Additionally, the “show up when it’s time for elections” strategy isn’t working, she said. 

There must be long term strategies to build up viable candidates. 

That’s Wallace’s mission. Whether through front porch talks or Beauty Salon Conversations: C.U.R.L.S (Cultivating Unified Relationships with Ladies for Success), she wants to equip voters with tools and resources to step into their power.

“A big part of the work we’re doing is to empower these rural communities of color to change their own communities and know that they have that power,” Wallace said. “If you’ve been in a town for decades, even though you were the majority that was being led by the minority, you kind of feel, you don’t have power.”

As a citizen, Snuggs is concerned about the potential outcome of the upcoming election. But, he won’t allow the obstacles to stop him from engaging and educating others.

“It’s ridiculous to think that we have arrived as a people and still have work left to be done,” Snuggs said. “The fight is still ongoing, and we got to do something to reverse this.”

Correction: A photo caption in a previous version of this story misidentified Garrett Snuggs.

The post Why the Political Power of Black Rural Voters Is Often Invisible appeared first on Capital B News.

Small-town politics can get uncomfortable when you’re likely to run into a candidate or their relative or a member of their campaign at church or the grocery store.

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

Dozens of people were killed across multiple states this week as Hurricane Helene swept across parts of the Southeastern United States, bringing heavy rains and a 15-foot storm surge.

Coastal towns and cities in Florida were devastated when the Category 4 hurricane made landfall, but communities inland bore a similar brunt as the storm carved a path through North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee.

“Turn around, don’t drown,” North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper urged drivers in a press conference. 

At least 42 people have died from the storm. As of Friday, Florida reported seven deaths. Georgia, meanwhile, reported 15, and South Carolina, 17. In both of the latter states, most of the known fatalities were from falling trees and debris. North Carolina reported two deaths, including a car crash that killed a 4-year-old girl after a road flooded. 

Atlanta received 11.12 inches of rain in 48 hours, breaking its previous record of 9.59 inches in the same time period from 1886, according to Bill Murphey, Georgia’s state climatologist. More than 1 million Georgia residents also lost power in the storm, particularly in southern and eastern parts of the state. 

In western North Carolina, officials sounded alarms and went door-to-door evacuating residents south of the Lake Lure Dam in Rutherford County after the National Weather Service warned that a dam failure was “imminent.” Emergency crews also conducted more than 50 swift water rescues across the region, with one sheriff’s department warning it could not respond to all of the 911 calls due to flooded roads. The North Carolina Department of Transportation warned on social media that “all roads in Western NC should be considered closed” due to flooding from Helene.

In Tennessee, more than 50 people were stranded on the roof of a hospital due to heavy flooding and had to be rescued by helicopter. Residents of Cocke County in Tennessee were also asked to evacuate after reports that a separate dam could fail, although officials later said the dam failure had been a false alarm. In South Carolina, the National Weather Service said the storm was “one of the most significant weather events… in the modern era.”

The hurricane’s widespread flooding was worsened by climate change, scientists told Grist. Hurricane Helene was an unusually large storm with an expansive reach. After forming in the Caribbean, it traveled over extremely warm ocean waters in the Gulf of Mexico that enabled the storm to intensify more quickly than it may have otherwise. In fact, Helene went from a relatively weak tropical storm to a Category 4 in just two days. Warmer air also holds more moisture, supercharging the storm’s water content and leading to more rapid rainfall and intense flooding. 

“When that enhanced moisture comes up and hits terrain like the Appalachian Mountains,” said University of Hawaiʻi meteorology professor Steve Businger, “it results in very, very high rainfall rates, exceptionally high rainfall rates and that unfortunately results in a lot of flash flooding.”

Shel Winkley, a meteorologist at the scientific group Climate Central, said research has shown that the Gulf’s current extra-warm ocean temperatures were ​​made up to 500 times more likely with climate change. “One of the things that we’re seeing with these big storms, especially as they seem to become more frequent, is that they’re no longer natural disasters, but that they’re unnatural disasters,” Winkley said. “It’s not just a normal weather system anymore.” 

Hurricanes are naturally occuring, of course, but the conditions that led to Helene’s severity — its rapid intensification and heavy rainfall — were partially driven by warmer ocean and atmospheric temperatures from the burning of fossil fuels. “There is a fingerprint of climate change in that process,” Winkley said. 

“This summer was record warm globally and there was a record amount of water vapor in the global atmosphere,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, or UCLA. Both factors contributed to what the Southeastern U.S. experienced this week. “This is one of the more significant flood events in the U.S. in recent memory.”  

Initial estimates for the storm’s damage to homes, businesses, and infrastructure range between $15 billion and $26 billion, the New York Times reported. Businger said he expects the enormous loss to fuel more conversations about the precarity of the existing property insurance system. “The cost to society is becoming extravagant,” he said.

Scientists noted that the fact that the storm’s winds increased by 55 miles per hour in the 24 hours before it made landfall also made it deadlier.

“It was so strong and moving so fast it just didn’t have time to weaken very much before it made it far inland,” Swain said. Rapid intensification is particularly dangerous, he said, because people often make decisions on how to prepare for storms and whether or not to evacuate based on how bad they appear to be initially. 

“It was one of the faster intensifying storms on record,” Swain said. “This is not a fluke. We should expect to see more rapidly intensifying hurricanes in a warming climate.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline After battering coastal towns, Hurricane Helene causes deadly flooding across five states on Sep 27, 2024.

2019 – 2024: An interactive map of five years of school gun violence in Georgia.

The post School violence: Mapping incidents in Georgia appeared first on Youth Today.

Treva Gear doesn’t want the forest in her town of Adel, Georgia, to be the next place “sacrificed” for someone else’s energy needs. However, a new tax credit proposed in the nation’s largest climate spending bill may make it more likely for her community and dozens of others. 

The credit could accelerate the construction of plants that convert large swaths of American forest into an energy source called biomass that scientists say is dirtier than coal.

A private company is on the verge of building one of the plants in Adel. It would be the largest in the world and emit carcinogenic air pollution. 

“Ultimately, we’re killing the Earth and each other,” said Gear, who began rallying her neighbors after the plant was proposed in 2020 and has a complaint with a Georgia environmental agency. “It’s supposed to be a solution — that’s a lie. It’s a false climate solution that leaves Black and brown communities still bearing the brunt of the damage.” 

For years across the rural South, the forests that Black communities have called home for hundreds of years have been significantly depleted. In the name of “clean energy,” more than a million acres of the nation’s forests, primarily in the South and Northeast, have been cleared by private energy companies, stripped down, and reduced to wood chips. At power plants in the community, the pellets are smoothed into uniform wood pellets and sold to power plants primarily in Europe. The pellets are then burned at power plants for electricity, creating what is known as biomass energy. The industry says it is cleaner than burning coal, but according to a coalition of nearly 1,000 scientists, it actually releases far more carbon into the atmosphere than coal. It also cuts down trees, an important tool for fighting climate change.

For generations, the South’s forests have kept communities afloat, protecting them from floods while also sucking up air pollution, but the wood pellet boom has disrupted that and contributed to diminishing ecosystems and increased flood threats. It comes with little financial or health benefits for the Black communities that depend on the environment and is akin to living next to a perpetual campfire. Stinging eyes and closed throats resulting from the ash and dust caked into everything. 

These plants emit more than 55 air pollutants known to contribute to respiratory illnesses and cancer. With 45% of the nation’s operating or proposed plants located in the South, they’re more than twice as likely to be located in predominantly Black and poor communities than white and wealthy ones.

Georgia and Pennsylvania, which each have nine plants, have more than any other state. Currently, the world’s largest plant is located in Lucedale, Mississippi, which the White House deems disadvantaged because of its high wildfire and flood risks. In another Mississippi town, Gloster, a mill operates just 500 yards away from homes. 

All the while, about 80% of the 9 million tons of pellets produced in America every year are shipped across the Atlantic and burned by utility plants in Europe, meaning the extraction doesn’t help alleviate any of the energy burdens of these rural communities. The South uses the least energy nationwide but has the highest energy bills and the dirtiest energy sources. 

Biomass supporters say the industry’s growth is just the product of the world’s increasing energy demand and the need to keep the lights on as the use of fossil fuels declines. The argument relies on the belief that a large-scale transition to solar and wind power is not feasible. 

But researchers and advocates say the growth of wood pellet plants and exports is another last-ditch effort by American and European energy companies to make immense profits from a cheap, pollution-intensive energy source before the mass transition to solar and wind power. (Biomass is cheaper to produce than coal and gas, but actually more expensive than solar and wind.) 

Even with stricter pollution regulations in the United Kingdom, European Union, and United States, many companies have evaded scrutiny by underreporting emissions or by just paying the multimillion-dollar fines levied on them for surpassing limits.  

Understanding the “predatory nature of this clean energy source”

Gear and others say it is another example of America’s Black communities being exploited by global trade. 

“They’ve created sacrifice zones for profit, for ‘economic progress,’” said Gear. 

Belinda Joyner, an environmental activist in North Carolina, says the increase in the biomass industry should be treated like a mental health crisis in addition to an environmental one. In her state, there are six wood pellet plants. 

“We have log trucks bumbling down our streets constantly making noise 24/7,” she said. “We’re not getting proper rest, which can affect you in a lot of ways, especially when we get up and work so hard every day to pay for our homes. It’s disrespectful because these people know they wouldn’t put these facilities in their community.” 

Adel, Georgia, is a small, rural town of 5,000 people marked by its deep agricultural and forestry roots and a close-knit community. Surrounded by farmlands that were once the economic engine for the region, it’s a place where tradition holds strong. 

Growing up, Gear, who is in her 40s, remembers playing stickball in the streets of Adel with her brother and friends after school and riding her bike across town to the library to spend hours reading. 

“It was the kind of place you want to raise your kids in,” she said, but that all changed after Georgia granted Spectrum Energy Georgia permits to construct and operate a wood pellet plant in the community. Spectrum Energy did not respond to Capital B’s request for comment.

The White House already considers the small town “disadvantaged” because of its poor health outcomes. Yet, the tax credit proposed by the Biden administration through the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest climate spending bill ever, may help intensify the community’s health problem. The credits would help subsidize the construction of these kinds of plants or new facilities that would help offset the environmental impact of the plants by sucking carbon emissions out of the air. 

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Read More: The Country’s Largest Climate Bill Threatens to Leave Black Communities Behind

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The Biden administration, mainly the U.S. Treasury Department, is now sifting through competing claims about the environmental risks and benefits of burning wood. America’s forests are actually one of the country’s most important climate tools. Domestic forests absorb around 11% of our greenhouse gas emissions each year.

Later this year, the Treasury is expected to decide if it will allow biomass companies to reap tax breaks worth hundreds of millions of dollars over the next decade. Former President Donald Trump’s administration first declared the forest biomass industry as renewable, the same as solar or wind power, opening the floodgates for the industry to utilize federal clean energy tax credits. 

While the Biden administration isn’t to blame for the initial framing of the practice as “renewable,” Gear questions how, despite the administration’s big investment in making sure communities of color don’t remain disproportionately harmed by pollution and climate change, “industry is still allowed to walk through the back door into our communities.” 

Last year, Gear brought a Title VI civil rights complaint against the Environmental Protection Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. The complaint alleges that the state’s air quality program does not do enough to identify and protect the most vulnerable Georgians. As Capital B has reported, the environmental civil rights complaint process is under attack by Republican attorneys general, so it is unclear what success she might find.

“The attorneys generals that we pay with our tax dollars attempting to roll back our civil rights to clean air and water is unconscionable,” she said. 

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Read More: The Court Ruling That Guarantees a Future of Environmental Racism

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Earlier this year, a coalition of U.S. representatives sent a letter to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel in opposition to the tax credit. And in April, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey introduced a bill requiring the Environmental Protection Agency to be more stringent in tracking pollution from these types of facilities. 

A recent study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the National Wildlife Federation found that wood pellet manufacturing plants tend to underreport emissions, and facilities generating electricity from biomass can emit more pollutants than fossil fuels or even coal. The industry’s green claims largely rely on wood pellet companies replacing the razed forest growth with new trees, but young trees aren’t as good as sponges as the old ones they’ve replaced. 

Additionally, many wood pellets are “co-fired” alongside coal in traditional power plants, allowing companies to get green energy credits while still burning coal.

Adam Colette, program director with the Dogwood Alliance, a North Carolina-based environmental nonprofit, has said the Biden administration’s climate bills are actually “one of the biggest emerging threats to southern forests.” For each pound of wood pellets produced, 12 acres of forest are destroyed. Forty pounds of pellets are needed to heat an average-sized European house during the winter. 

Since the advent of U.S. colonization, the country has destroyed 95% of its old-growth forests. With fewer trees, that means more greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. As the “wood basket of the world,” the South’s forests are already being razed for other industries, providing as much as 20% of the world’s paper and other wood products. 

In Gloster, Mississippi, an 80% Black community where homes border a pellet plant, the average resident earns $15,000 annually. The community has no local schools and a single small health clinic with no full-time physicians. About a third of the town’s residents report having poor health, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“This is real. Visit our communities and see the conditions of life for folks. Come see the sawdust raining on people, and talk to them and hear their stories about their medical issues, breathing issues, and dependence on oxygen tanks,” said Gear. “Then you’ll understand the true predatory nature of this ‘clean energy’ source.”

You can leave a public comment for the IRS here regarding their proposal to extend the biomass tax credit.

The post America’s Rural South Is Paying the Price for Europe’s Energy appeared first on Capital B News.

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.

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.