Some people want to know

There's apparently quite of a bit of controversy in DC the last few days over a squabble related to Civil Rights complaints in the USDA Earlier this week the Office of Civil Rights, United States Department of Agriculture, ordered auditors from the General Accountability Office to leave its offices. Though the office had apparently been cooperating for months on an audit of Civil Rights complaints, Michael Watts, Acting Director, Office of Adjudication, wrote via email to employees telling them, "You are hereby instructed not to meet with any member of the GAO today, or until this matter is resolved," per the Associated Press. Apparently at issue here is whether or not the Civil Rights office had been providing false information about the progress of things. J. Michael Kelly, Agriculture's deputy general counsel, reported that the GAO investigators were intending to speak to specific employees, that the GAO is a wing of Congress and not criminal investigators with authority to investigate legal matters.

Lawrence Lucas, president of the USDA Coalition of Minority Employees, told the press service that GAO had several people willing to talk to the "independent, nonpartisan investigative
office."

Several from Congress have entered the fray: John Conyers, Bennie Thompson, Artur Davis, Bobby Scott, G. K. Butterfield, and Barack Obama, all Democrats, and all involved in various ways in efforts to fix the controversial outcomes of the Pigford Consent Decree as more than 70.000 Black farmers missed filing deadlines. The lawmakers are accusing the USDA of failing to address these serious complaints of discrimination.

Interesting times and interesting people. Justice Team members and I have met some of these folks, Lawrence Lucas, in Memphis at a land loss conference in Memphis, in January, 2006, and Michael Watts in Whitakers, NC a few weeks back.

Interesting, more than interesting, and these events make the team and me sit back and wonder.......

Here are some links with more information. Try this one. Or, this one. I'm just looking forward to reading the letter.