My Sentiments as a Prayer

Dear Lord:

You gifted me with words
With words I come before you
With words I bow down
With words I confess my life askew.

When my soul is tormented 
When my spirit is vexed 
When my deepest longings are in disarray
I use words to say I’m much more than just perplexed.

When the wheels of justice grind slow
When the chains of death take my people
When hope is dashed upon the rocks
Sometimes I go to that place beneath the steeple.

I do not all of the time come with words
Sometimes I do not know what to say
With groans understood only by you
Is all I can find to pray.

“I Walked These Days” numbers 365
Blog posts with their words are 59
Prayers in the early morning come to 136
Sometimes they’re prose and sometimes they rhyme.

I’ve sat in many a zoom-like meetings
I’ve written many a first draft letters
My recommendations are even in the Justice Act
Sometimes my words bind me like fetters.

Only you know the focus of many a prayer 
Only you know the many unspoken words
Only you move in ways I do not know
Only you know the burdens our people bear.

Congress sits in places of power
USDA hides behind its doors
Perturb their hearts and shake their bones
And settle the long unanswered scores.

Come into this world I pray
Take off the racist chains
Remove the burdens of dreams deferred
While there is life within our bones.

And so this prayer
Has a lot of words
Beneath are so many groans
That reveal the ache hidden deep within our bones.

Still in You we do trust
Come what may and come what will
Even when you are silent
Even then our hearts will not be still.

Amen

Is Jesus Coming This Year? Reflections on Birth, Loss, and Expectations Unfulfilled

Is Jesus coming this year? It's that time of the year. The 25th is upon us. At church tonight we'll have a candle light service with the traditional songs and readings. My wife and I have watched a few Christmas television shows, Hallmark and all, as well as the history of the song "Silent Night" for the second, or maybe third year in a row. It never gets old. 

Something, though, is different this year. It's difficult to enter into the season's joy when the vicissitudes of life pinch, pull, and poke. Yes, when a divorce is happening in the family, that impacts us all, children, parents soon to be exes, grandparents on both sides, cousins, and aunts and uncles, and friends on both sides. The Christmas tree is up. Presents were wrapped. The three (one I've yet to see face to face, though her grandmother has) walk in with joy and wonder. They walk about the house, looking and touching, and remembering favorite things from last year or the year before. They were here for a few days and then gone again. Within those few days, there were moments of grace, reading to the two year old, hugging and talking to the four year old, and cooking breakfast and watching Mr. A. Game with the six year old. The breakfast was a long time coming and it had to be deconstructed from an egg-o. Took me a while, but we made it. 

Augustine and the Apostle Paul talk about the divided self, and that's what I have with these children and Christmas. Many of you know exactly what I mean. 

That, however, is only part of my wondering as to whether Jesus is coming this year. There is a second one, a large second one. 

Back earlier this year, and back into 2020, and even 2019, we anticipated a Christmas present, so to speak, for African American farmers. "Christmas present" is used facetiously because it really is about justice, at least a modicum of it, being served. Debt relief was in the Justice for Black Farmers Act of 2020 and then 2021, and then it was skillfully placed within the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. We had been led to believe that there were 17,000 Black farmers who would receive debt relief. Come to realize, though, there are only 3,200 or so Black farmers who MIGHT receive debt relief. 

The criteria demand that the farmer has previously received a direct loan. That is a steep hill to climb since many Black farmers had been ruled out of receiving loans of any sort, direct or guaranteed. When we look at the latest census data and realize that there are fewer than 45,000 or so Black farmers, and to realize that only 3,200 of them even qualify for debt cancellation, that is a bitter pill to swallow. 

Another bitter pill to swallow, which makes Christmas a little gloomier this year, is the fact that Secretary Vilsack had about 100 days to get the debts cancelled. Then, unbeknownst to only the most blind of us, white farmers of our country filed frivolous and racist lawsuits which stopped debt cancellation in its tracks. I've written about that elsewhere on these pages, so let it be known once more than I consider those lawsuits ridiculous and a part of the puzzle that makes for white America. We knew from the Biden/Harris transition team back in 2020 that what we wanted, debt relief, was called "unconstitutional" by a senior advisor. Lo and behold, that's exactly what the white farmers have claimed it to be. 

Now, in the current day, hidden within the Reconciliation Bill is a modicum of debt cancellation, not just for socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers, but  for white farmers as well. Again, on another page here in this blog, you'll find my examination of the dollars received by the first six litigants, one of whom is the Agriculture Commissioner for the State of Texas. Those guys received over $523,000 and their counties received over $1.2B. Is that really what you call reverse discrimination when white farmers get all of the advantages? Not as I see it. 

So, the Reconciliation Bill is languishing in the Senate, held up by the Senator from West Virginia. Yes, the one who lives on a yacht in the Potomac and who drives a Maserati, the one who refuses to support a bill that will benefit the people of his state. It has been said that he opposes it because poor families would spend the child support payments on drugs. Shameful. Absolutely shameful. 

So, tomorrow is indeed Christmas Day. All around us people will be celebrating the birth of the Christ child. That is a good thing. Some of us will be in a somewhat different place emotionally. Yes, we can certainly suspend our emotional selves and engage in the joy of the day. Many of us will do just that. At this house, we plan to.

On the other hand, there are people that I care about whose Christmas Day will be clouded with unfulfilled promises. For some of us, it will be about family, and for a bunch of us it will be about the unrelenting burden of indebtedness and injustices perpetrated upon people we care about by the USDA. 

These are the things I'm pondering today. 

I hope your day is good and that it brings to you all of the joy that you can imagine. Along the way, please be mindful of those whose day will be a little more tattered. Please, especially remember that large group of farmers across the land, African American farmers, who deserve better than they are getting. Pray for them and for those persons in Congress who could ease their burdens a little. 

Thank you and God bless you. And may God bless our women and men in the military serving around the world. 

Cease and Desist on the Foreclosures: The Ball is in Your Court, Mr. Vilsack

We are living in curious times. Sometimes the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. Sometimes that lack of information is part of a sadistic plan. Sometimes it's incompetence. 

Under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, section 1005 lined out $4B in debt relief to a group known as Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers, a designation that has been around since 1990. Section 1006 prescribed $1.01B for outreach, training, education, technical assistance, grants, and loans as well as other matters. 

Then, the white farmers across the country decided the the designation of "Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers," or 2501 of the 1990 Farm Bill, was unconstitutional. Their lawsuits, some 13 of them at last glance, stopped in its tracks the effort to relieve the indebtedness of historically mistreated farmers. In a recent post on this page, I jumped into the USDA data base and showed how the first six white litigants, including the ag commissioner of the State of Texas, benefited via three pots of money to the tune of over $523,000 and that the counties of those six litigants benefitted to the tune of $1.2B+. They are claiming reverse discrimination when the stats point out how white farmers have always had the upper hand in terms of subsidies, coronavirus relief funds, and the bailout from Trump's failed tariff war with China. 

Provisions of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 were rewritten in the Reconciliation Bill of 2021 such that even white farmers, who have not been historically mistreated, would also receive debt relief. Whites gain advantages off of Black suffering is the way folks say it with whom I hang out. 

Earlier this year a moratorium was placed on debt collections and foreclosures. You can read that release here. 

But now, while we are waiting for the Senate to work its magic on the Reconciliation Bill, and as we wait to see what Manchin out of West Virginia is going to do, several egregious things are happening at the county level. Farms are being foreclosed on, loans are being accelerated, liens are being placed on crops, and other acts of malfeasance. For instance, a Black farmer has loans to plant and harvest his peanut and cotton crops. He owes the USDA some money and knows that he'll find debt relief around the corner, or at least he hopes so. 

In a magic slight of hand, the company buying the Black farmer's crop has placed a lien on it. This is apparently at the request of the local county office. My questions are several. What right was it of this company to know what the farmer owed? What collaborative gig was set up such that the FSA gets the first dibs on the farmer's money. Did the farmer know about this possibility? The local county office has in some way, shape, or form, realized that this particular grain company is going to process that particular farmer's particular crop and found a way to put a lien on. This means that once the farmer has had his crop sold, the money will go not to him, but to the FSA and put against the loan. This smells like a rat. 

So, there is a moratorium. It reads like this: if you  have a direct loan, the USDA will work with you and will not foreclose on you. The USDA will not accelerate your loans. See the final sentence in Senator Reverend Warnock's letter to Secretary Vilsack below. He is quoting USDA that there will be no adverse actions taken upon any farmer who does not make payments while the debt relief thing is being resolved. There you have it. What USDA said in DC, a local FSA office can undermine. How much sense does that make? Who's guarding the hen house? A bunch of foxes? You know what I mean. 

But then, here comes the foreclosure notice, here comes the loan acceleration notice, here comes the lien on your crops. Here comes all manner of things that the USDA said would not happen. Those decisions are being made at the county level. 

We have advised various Senators as to these shenanigans. One of those Senators has written a strong letter to Secretary Vilsack to call off his dogs. Here is what Senator Reverend Warnock writes: 

"In March 2021, President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act into law. This legislation includes targeted debt relief payments aimed at remedying USDA’s well-documented history of racial discrimination. As USDA prepared to implement this legislation, it told eligible farmers that they would not be subject to punishment for failing to make payments on forgivable debts. On a public-facing website regarding the American Rescue Plan Act debt relief payments, USDA states “USDA is not taking any adverse actions on any eligible borrower who does not make payments” on Farm Service Agency direct loans or farm storage facility loans." This letter was signed on December 10, 2021. 

We are also in the process of gathering data across the country. We want to know whether or not this is happening just to Black farmers, and in what counties, and in what states. We want to know what other acts of malfeasance are being done to them. The data is being collected as we speak. 

A lot of people are mad. A lot of people have every right in the world not to trust the USDA. These actions justify that anger and mistrust, if we ever needed more justifications. 

White people, even white employees of the USDA, want to believe these types of actions are sporadic. Wrong. Remember the words, "systemic racism," "systemic discrimination," the system is at fault and the people who stand there with their hands in their pockets. 

And we don't. Plain and simple. Period. Full stop. Period. 

Let Justice Ring: Dear Lord, Please Quiet My Troubled Soul

Let Justice Ring: Dear Lord, Please Quiet My Troubled Soul: Dear Lord, please quiet my troubled soul And may I ever be so bold As to make a plea Worded only to thee To give my weary soul ...