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Vol. 74/No. 36      September 27, 2010

 
Black farmers organize
for protest in Washington
 
BY JACOB PERASSO
AND LISA POTASH  
AMERICUS, Georgia—“We don’t get the loans, grants, and subsidies that our white counterparts get. I’m mad at the institution that is mistreating us and lying to us,” said Robert Binion, an Alabama farmer and interim president for the Southeast region of the National Black Farmers Association (NBFA). He was speaking to the Georgia chapter of the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association (BFAA) here September 4.

Binion said he and others are organizing Black farmers from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Arkansas to get involved in protest activities in Washington, D.C., September 21-23. A demonstration is planned in front of the U.S. Department of Agriculture September 23 to press for settlement of long-standing claims of USDA discrimination against Black farmers. The Georgia BFAA chapter, made up of farmers from Sylvester, Americus, Oglethorpe, Buena Vista, and Valdosta, held a special meeting the week following Binion’s presentation. In addition to working to bring people to the D.C. action they decided on a financial contribution toward the effort.

Binion traveled to Atlanta September 4 and joined Rachele Fruit, Socialist Workers Party candidate for Georgia agriculture commissioner, on a panel at the Militant Labor Forum. Fruit explained that “workers and farmers are natural allies and need to fight together for state power and a government that will carry out policies that benefit those who produce all the wealth on the land and by our labor.”

Most working farmers bear an unpayable debt, Fruit said, “and farmers who are Black face the worst situation because of the racist practices that are bred by the capitalist system.”

Binion explained that farmers who are Black have a long road ahead, facing a federal government that continues to discriminate against them. “The further the case goes, the worse it gets," he said.

Although President Barack Obama stated earlier this year that all outstanding claims to the Black farmers would be quickly resolved, Binion explained that all of the meetings and communications between government officials and the Black farmers have not resulted in the promised compensation.

Several people at the forum came as a result of meeting socialist campaigners at the Decatur Book Festival earlier that day. One young woman, a graduate of Spelman College and Emory University, asked if it would help the farmers if she could get students to volunteer to help them pick their crop. Binion said that the main thing that was needed was to get people to the actions in Washington.

The woman said she would spread the word to students on both campuses about the rally.

Several young workers attended the forum. Fredy Huinil, a grocery store worker, said afterward that it was important to recognize the way in which both the workers and farmers are exploited under capitalism—workers as wage slaves and farmers as debt slaves.  
 
 
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