Troubling My Soul

Few things trouble my soul quite like the challenges the Grant family in Tillery, NC has with holding on to their farm. Their story is well chronicled in many places on the web. Gary has been an activist since he was a youth. His sister, Van, likewise. My wife and I love them and respect them deeply.

Please take the time to read the letter that follows. Pray for this family. Contribute to the cause of this family. Help us to help this family. They have given much to the righeous cause of justice, and justice especially for African American farmers.

This letter is addressed to Eric Holder, Attorney General of the US. Feel free to cut and paste it and send it on under your name.

TO:

The Obama Administration
Attention: Eric Holder, Attorney General
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001


askdoj@usdoj.gov


FROM:
_____________________________________
_____________________________________
_____________________________________

Ph: ____________E-mail: _______________


RE: Matthew and Florenza Moore Grant - (Gary Grant v. USDA)


I am very concerned that the legal case of Matthew and Florenza Moore Grant vs. USDA was recently and unfairly thrown out by a North Carolina District Federal Court.

For over thirty years the Grant family has been fighting for justice and is now being buried once again in legalized minutia, with serious consequences. These are the facts that are not disputed: USDA has played a dangerous and proverbial game of “cat and mouse” offering the Grants, on three occasions, a settlement which never materialized, though never because the Grants rejected it. At the same time not one employee of USDA has been penalized, fired, or denied their retirement benefits. The USDA, whose employees perpetuated all the years of discriminatory policies against the Grants and other Black farmers, remains unscathed.

Now the courts are retreating from addressing these claims as they sense political pressure from right-wing ideologues and right-wing zealots such as columnist Andrew Breitbart and Representatives Steve King (R-IA) and Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who are trying to stop Black farmer settlements by arguing that there is “rampant fraud” among the claimants. Not only are these claims unsupported, but no one has ever made any such claims regarding the case of the Grant family. The “investigations” by Breitbart, King, Bachmann, and others are sadly more racialized witch-hunt than objective fact finding.

There have been many important struggles in the Civil Rights Movement. Discrimination against Black farmers is an important civil rights struggle today. The Grant family has been, and continues to be, part of the Black farmer leadership cadre. In what appears to be an effort to attack the leadership of this struggle, the USDA, Department of Justice, and various courts have singled out the Grant family and other families who have stood as part of the Black farmer leadership by drawing out their cases. Most recently emboldened by a shifting political climate, lower-level courts have single-handedly dismissed the legal demands of several leadership families. This is a stunning and legally unsound tactic that perpetuates the egregious suffering of Black farmers. This is all occurring while no one disputes that these families suffered devastating discrimination at the hands of local USDA officials.

Mr. and Mrs. Grant both died in 2001overwhelmed and broken-hearted because their government had failed them so miserably. As progressive farmers, their land and way of life, and their happiness and well-being had been racially exploited and were in serious jeopardy.

I want to add my influence and voice to support the settlement of the Grants’ legal claims. This tragic outcome can be readily remedied with the settlement they were promised and deserve through your thoughtful and rigorous leadership.

Regarding the struggle for equal treatment of the Black farmer, history will ask…. “What did you do?”

cc: Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC) - http://hagan.senate.gov/contact/

Thanks for the Opportunity

It is a rare occasion on which my wife and I both get to speak of our commitment to the cause of African  American farmers.  This summer at our church, a variety of folks are invited to speak of their vocations or avocations, and the ways in which God is involved.

Charla and I traced the history of our involvement, told stories that illustrate the plight of farmers against the racism of the USDA, and placed all of these issues against the larger context of God's Kingdom Come, and the place that social justice has in the greater threads of the Christian movement.

Frankly, we were reminded once more of how the stories have impacted our lives. We think the audience was more than curious about the Cause.

So, thanks to Eddie Poblete, minister of the Central Church of Christ, Ada, Oklahoma, for inviting us to speak. My prayer is that more activists for the Cause have been found.