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♥LIGHTWORKERS of THE WORLD Today I learned about a self-sufficient women-only village in Kenya. ♀️ ♀️ ♀️It's a safe haven for women fleeing domestic violence or sexual violence.Thanks INSH for sharing!
Posted by 22 Words Presents on Tuesday, February 6, 2018
February 28, 2018. Harvesting the sun’s rays as they reflect off a mountain.
Read more about Norway: ecowatch.com/tag/norway
Norway is building a hotel that will produce more energy than it consumes
Harvesting the sun's rays as they reflect off a mountain. Read more about Norway: ecowatch.com/tag/norwayvia World Economic Forum
Posted by EcoWatch on Tuesday, February 27, 2018
Good Morning America
Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc., one of the largest retailers of its kind in the United States, is taking new steps to curtail the sale of firearms, including ending sales of assault-style rifles and banning the sale of guns to people younger than 21, the company announced this morning.
“Based on what’s happened and looking at those kids and those parents, it moved us all unimaginably,” company Chairman and CEO Edward Stack said today on “Good Morning America,” referring to the Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that killed 14 students and three educators.
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“To think about the loss and the grief that those kids and those parents had, we said, ‘We need to do something,'” Stack, whose father, Dick, started the business 70 years ago, explained. “And we’re taking these guns out of all of our stores permanently.”
The move follows the revelation that Nikolas Cruz, the alleged gunman behind the shooting rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, bought a gun at Dick’s in 2017. It was not the gun nor the kind of gun used in the massacre, however.
“We did everything by the book,” Stack said of Cruz. “We did everything that the law required and still he was able to buy a gun. When we looked at that, we said, ‘The systems that are in place across the board just aren’t effective enough to keep us from selling someone a gun like that.’”
The new measures go into effect today. Aside from Dick’s, the Pittsburgh-based, publicly traded company also operates stores under the Gold Galaxy, Field & Stream, True Runner and Chelsea Collective banners.
Dick’s announced a temporary suspension of assault-style rifles from its stores after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., that killed 26 elementary school students and educators.
Assault-style rifles were later sold in the company’s Field & Stream stores, Stack said.
When asked whether there is a chance the company will reverse its position on the newly announced ban, Stack replied, “Never.”
“We’re staunch supporters of the 2nd Amendment. I’m a gun owner myself,” Stack said. “We’ve just decided that based on what’s happened with these guns, we don’t want to be a part of this story and we’ve eliminated these guns permanently.”
In light of recent mass shootings, Dick’s, along with other gun retailers and manufacturers, is among the public companies that have come under pressure from some activist stockholders “to report on steps they’re taking to improve gun safety and to mitigate the harm associated with gun products,” Fortune magazine reported last week.
It’s an open question about how this decision will affect the company’s bottom line but it is prepared for any backlash, Stack said this morning.
“We know that this isn’t going to make everyone happy,” he said.
More than a dozen companies, ranging from hotel operators to insurance providers, have announced plans to stop offering discounts and cost-saving programs for members of the NRA in light of the Florida shooting.
Students who survived the attack are lobbying for tougher gun laws, and many have demanded companies stop doing business with the NRA.
Discussing the possible repercussions for Dick’s, Stack pointed to the courage of those students, many of whom are responsible for mobilizing and organizing gun control rallies, marches and social media-inspired boycotts.
“When we take a look at what those kids and the parents and the heroes in the school, what they did, our view was if the kids can be brave enough to organize like this, we can be brave enough to take these out of here,” he said of the guns.
Dick’s became a trending topic on Twitter shortly after it announced the new ban this morning, with more than 180,000 tweets as of this writing.
Some labeled the move by Dick’s a “shameless and obvious attempt at free publicity” and the first step in taking away gun rights.
Others said they would support the retail chain in light of the announcement.
“We do shop at Dick’s on occasion. My son plays a lot of sports,” Meghan Walbert, mother of a 7-year-old son, told ABC News. “If they can take these steps necessary to protect our children, then I don’t care if their prices are a couple of dollars more or website isn’t as user-friendly, they will have my business.”
The Pennsylvania woman, who is not a gun owner, added: “It stood out to me because it wasn’t just a company supportive or tied to the NRA [National Rifle Association] but a company that actually sells these guns. If you can get more companies saying if no one else will restrict us, we’ll restrict ourselves, that is going to make more of a difference than anything.”
In an open letter to consumers, Stack outlined the new four-point policy for the chain’s 700-plus stores, which is as follows:
– Assault-style rifles, also referred to as modern sporting rifles, will no longer be sold. Stacks noted that the company had already removed them from all Dick’s stores after the Sandy Hook massacre, but they will now be removed from all 35 Field & Stream stores.
– Firearms will no longer be sold to anyone under the age of 21.
– High capacity magazines will no longer be sold.
– And finally, “We never have and never will sell bump stocks that allow semi-automatic weapons to fire more rapidly.
In the letter, Stack explained, “We support and respect the Second Amendment, and we recognize and appreciate that the vast majority of gun owners in this country are responsible, law-abiding citizens. But we have to help solve the problem that’s in front of us. Gun violence is an epidemic that’s taking the lives of too many people, including the brightest hope for the future of America –- our kids.”
Stack is also now calling on elected officials to take action on gun control.
“We don’t want to see the partisan politics where one side espouses their position and another side espouses their position and they actually never do anything,” he said. “We hope that Congress will come together.”
“This is a complex issue. It’s not just about guns. It’s about mental health reform, it’s around background checks,” Stack said. “We hope they come together with the intent of really finding a solution to this problem as opposed to just talking about it, knowing that they’re never going to do anything, just speak to their base.
“If these kids are brave enough to organize and do what they’re doing, we should be brave enough to take this stand,” says DICK’S Sporting GoodsCEO Edward Stack, after the company announced it would stop selling assault-style weapons in all of its stores http://cnn.it/2t66Njk
Dick's CEO discusses decision to stop selling assault-style weapons
“If these kids are brave enough to organize and do what they’re doing, we should be brave enough to take this stand," says DICK'S Sporting Goods CEO Edward Stack, after the company announced it would stop selling assault-style weapons in all of its stores http://cnn.it/2t66Njk
Posted by CNN on Wednesday, February 28, 2018
By Russell Contreras, Associated Press February 27, 2018
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Barriers to equality pose threats to democracy in the U.S. as the country remains segregated along racial lines and child poverty worsens, according to study made public Tuesday that examines the nation 50 years after the release of the landmark 1968 Kerner Report.
The new report blames U.S. policymakers and elected officials, saying they’re not doing enough to heed the warning on deepening poverty and inequality that was highlighted by the Kerner Commission five decades ago and it lists areas where the country has seen “a lack of or reversal of progress.”
“Racial and ethnic inequality is growing worse. We’re resegregating our housing and schools again,” former Democratic U.S. Sen. Fred Harris of Oklahoma, a co-editor of the new report and the last surviving member of the original Kerner Commission created by President Lyndon Johnson in 1967. “There are far more people who are poor now than was true 50 years ago. Inequality of income is worse.”
The new study titled “Healing Our Divided Society: Investing in America Fifty Years After the Kerner Report” says the percentage of people living in deep poverty — less than half of the federal poverty level — has increased since 1975. About 46 percent of people living in poverty in 2016 were classified as living in deep poverty — 16 percentage points higher than in 1975.
And although there has been progress for Hispanic homeownership since the Kerner Commission issued its report, the homeownership gap has widened for African-Americans, the new study found. Three decades after the Fair Housing Act of 1968 passed, black homeownership rose by almost 6 percentage points. But those gains were wiped out from 2000 to 2015 when black homeownership fell 6 percentage points, the report said.
The report blames the black homeownership declines on the disproportionate effect that the subprime mortgage lending crisis had on African-American families.
In addition, gains to end school segregation were reversed because of a lack of court oversight and housing discrimination, the new report said. The court oversight allowed school districts to move away from desegregation plans and housing discrimination forced black and Latino families to move into largely minority neighborhoods.
In 1988, for example, about 44 percent of black students went to majority-white schools nationally. Only 20 percent of black students do so today, the report said.
The result of these gaps means that people of color and those struggling with poverty are confined to poor areas with inadequate housing, underfunded schools and law enforcement that views those residents with suspicion, the report said.
Those facts are bad for the whole country, and communities have a moral responsibility to address them now, said Harris, who now lives in the village of Corrales near Albuquerque.
The new report calls on the federal government and states to push for more spending on early childhood education and a $15 national minimum wage by 2024. It also demands more regulatory oversight over lenders to prevent predatory lending, community policing that works with nonprofits in minority neighborhoods and more job training programs in an era of automation and emerging technologies.
“We have to have a massive outcry against the state of our public policies,” said the Rev. William J. Barber II, a Goldsboro, North Carolina pastor who is leading a multi-ethnic “Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival” next month in multiple states. “Systemic racism is something we don’t talk about. Systemic poverty is something we don’t talk about. We need to now.”
The late President Johnson formed the original 11-member Kerner Commission as Detroit was engulfed in a raging race riot in 1967. Five days of violence over racial tensions and police violence left 33 blacks and 10 whites dead, and more than 1,400 buildings burned. More than 7,000 people were arrested.
That summer, more than 150 cases of civil unrest erupted across the United States. Harris and other commission members toured riot-torn cities and interviewed black and Latino residents and white police officers.
The commission recommended that the federal government spend billions to attack structural racism in housing, education and employment. But Johnson, angry that the commission members did not praise his anti-poverty programs, shelved the report and refused to meet with members.
Alan Curtis, president of the Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation and co-editor of the new report, said this study’s attention to systemic racism should be less startling to the nation given the extensive research that now calls the country’s discriminatory housing and criminal justice systems into question.
Unlike the 1968 findings, the new report includes input from African-Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and women who are scholars and offer their own recommendations.
“The average American thinks we progressed a lot,” said Kevin Washburn, University of New Mexico law professor and citizen of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma who shared his observations for the report. “But there are still some places where Native people live primitive lives. They don’t have access to things such as good water, electricity and plumbing.”
Like the 1968 report, the new study also criticizes media organizations for their coverage of communities of color, saying they need to diversify and hire more black and Latino journalists.
News companies could become desensitized to inequality if they lack diverse newsrooms, and they might not view the issue as urgent or newsworthy, said journalist Gary Younge, who contributed to the report.
“It turns out that sometimes ‘dog bites man’ really is the story,” Younge said. “And we keep missing it.”
Associated Press writer Russell Contreras is a member of the AP’s race and ethnicity team. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/russcontreras.
By Michael Hiltzik February 23, 2018
For 40 years, right-wing activists and fronts for the 1% have had their knives out for a Supreme Court precedent that protects the ability of public employee unions to represent their members and even nonmembers, and to speak out on matters of public interest.
That precedent faces a mortal threat in a case scheduled for oral argument at the Supreme Court on Monday. Indications are that a conservative majority of justices is poised to overturn it. That would have implications for worker rights, principles of fair compensation and income inequality, none of them good — unless you’re a millionaire.
The case is Janus vs. AFSCME. The issue in the case is the “agency fee,” which public employee unions in 22 states, including California, charge workers who are represented by those unions. The fee is a subset of union dues, which are paid by members. It’s supposed to cover only contract-related union functions such as contract negotiations and enforcement, including grievance procedures.
“The free-rider argument as a justification for compelling nonmembers to pay a portion of union dues represents something of an anomaly.” Supeme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
Through the agency fee, workers in union-represented jobs pay for those services but are shielded from paying for political activities with which they disagree. In those 22 states, the unions are legally bound to represent all workers in jobs under their jurisdiction, even if they aren’t members. The fee obviously is a key to unions’ performing all their functions, for if it weren’t required, many members would quit the union, taking their dues with them and leaving the union without the resources to do its job. That’s what union opponents would like to see.
The groups backing the Janus case like to dress up their quest as a campaign to protect the free speech of teachers, healthcare workers or other public employees. We’ve explained before that it’s nothing of the kind. The cases aren’t about free speech or improving education for children. They’re about silencing the political voice and the negotiating strength of teacher and other public employee unions by cutting off their revenues. The campaign is a prime example of pure political cynicism, garbed with faux principle and backed by billions of self-interested dollars.
The main object of the Janus case and others like it has been to overturn a 1977 Supreme Court precedent known as Abood vs. Detroit Board of Education.
Abood established the principle that while public employees represented by unions couldn’t be forced to support union political positions with their dues, they shouldn’t get a free ride on the nonpolitical activities of unions either.
Thus did the “agency” or “fair share” fee receive the Court’s seal of approval. The implicit idea was to address the free-rider problem — people who received the benefit of union representation but didn’t want to pay.
Anti-union forces rapidly geared up to combat Abood. They pressed for state laws to invalidate agency fees. In California, they brought three anti-union initiatives to the ballot between 2000 and 2016, including a 2005 measure sponsored by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. All three failed.
And they went to court.
The labor-oriented Economic Policy Institute and Mary Bottari of In These Times have documented that the anti-Abood coalition includes right-wing groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, and the State Policy Network. They and other sponsors of these legal cases and related legislative initiatives are affiliated with the Koch brothers, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Mercer Family Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation.
Some operate behind the scrim of umbrella groups such as the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and the Center for Individual Rights. But at heart, they’re a network of right-wing billionaire families. The outfit representing Mark Janus, the Liberty Justice Center, is an offshoot of the Illinois Policy Institute; both have received funding from organizations in this network, including the Charles Koch Institute.
Do you really think these people have the interests of ordinary workers at heart? Me neither.
The lawsuits aimed at overturning Abood have been relentless. In 2012, the Supreme Court heard Knox vs. SEIU, a California case that turned on the type of fee notice unions had to give nonmember employees. The court upheld Abood, but Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the majority opinion, expressed doubts about the precedent. “The free-rider argument as a justification for compelling nonmembers to pay a portion of union dues represents something of an anomaly,” he wrote — “one that we have found to be justified by the interest in furthering ‘labor peace,’ ” but “an anomaly nevertheless.”
Alito implied that he would take a hatchet to Abood if the opportunity arose, giving heart to anti-union forces.
In 2014, Harris vs. Quinn, which had been launched in 2010 on behalf of home healthcare workers in Illinois, reached the Supreme Court. The court didn’t overturn Abood, ruling instead that the home care workers weren’t actually full-fledged state employees so the precedent didn’t apply to them. Alito again wrote the majority opinion and took further potshots at Abood, which he denigrated at length.
That drew pushback from Justice Elena Kagan, who replied that “the Abood rule is deeply entrenched, and is the foundation for not tens or hundreds, but thousands of contracts … across the nation.”
Kagan also pointed out the downside of stripping unions of their financial resources. The agency fee recognizes the special role of unions in public employee bargaining, she observed, because they must represent members and nonmembers equally. “It ensures that a union will receive adequate funding, notwithstanding its legally imposed disability … so that a government wishing to bargain with an exclusive representative will have a viable counterpart.”
Then came Friedrichs vs. California Teachers Assn., a 2016 case, also from California, that took direct aim at Abood. Friedrichs was about to give the court’s conservatives the opportunity they sought to overturn Abood, but an act of God intervened: the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, who was expected to join the anti-Abood majority. That left the court split 4-4, which meant the pro-Abood decision of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco stood. Now that Scalia’s seat has been filled by the even more conservative Neil Gorsuch, the anti-Abood cabal feels even more confident. At its core, Janus is just an Illinois version of Friedrichs.
The backers of these lawsuits have tried to turn the “free-rider” principle on its head, arguing that mandatory agency fees turn nonmembers into “forced riders.” They say that the resistance of some workers to paying even agency fees shows that those workers don’t believe they get any benefit from union representation.
That notion was challenged in a friend-of-the-court brief filed by 36 moderate and progressive economists. They observed that workers might refuse to pay voluntary fees out of “simple self-interest” — that is, saving the money, even if they appreciated the union’s representation. This, of course, is exactly what union opponents are hoping for.
Addy Baird February 26, 2018
A women wears an “I voted” sticker as she waits the arrival of Republican senatorial candidate Roy Moore for his election night party. Credit: Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Failed Alabama Republican Senate candidate and accused child molester Roy Moore is now haunting the GOP primary in Missouri.
Last Friday, Moore endorsed Courtland Sykes, a Republican who demanded in an official campaign statement last month that his fiancée always have a home-cooked dinner waiting for him.
“I want to come home to a home cooked dinner at six every night, one that she fixes and one that I expect one day to have daughters learn to fix after they become traditional homemakers and family wives,” Sykes said in January. “Think Norman Rockwell here and Gloria Steinem be damned.”
In the same statement, Sykes called feminists “she devils” and said he didn’t want his someday-daughters, bless their hearts, to be “career-obsessed banshees.”
Moore — who lost to Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) last December after eight women came forward during the election accusing Moore of sexual misconduct — wrote in a letter endorsing Sykes that the Trump-styled Republican is a “man of impeccable character, courage, and Christian faith.”
Here are all of the women who have accused Roy Moore of sexual impropriety
“We need men like Courtland Sykes in the Senate of the United States, a leader who will not only say what is right, but also a leader who will do what is right,” the letter said. “If you are tired of special interest politicians and liberal news organizations who seek to control us with ‘fake news,’ then I ask for you to vote for Courtland Sykes in the upcoming election for United States Senate.”
Sykes backed Moore during the special election, saying the judge was a “legendary patriot who stands up and fights no matter what” in a video released last November.
In addition to endorsing Moore’s campaign, the video was a 40-minute “mini-documentary” full of conspiracy theories undermining the women who accused Moore of sexual misconduct and abuse and railing against The Washington Post, which first reported some of the allegations against Moore.
“If the Washington Post has its way with Roy Moore in Alabama, then liberals win any election by liberal media lying, and fake news media returns to control politics in America with propaganda, with fake news like the floozy attacks, until conservative America ends or until America itself is finished,” Sykes said in the video. “And we’re not going to let that happen.”
Watch:
In a release announcing Moore’s endorsement Monday, Sykes reportedly thanked Moore and said it was an honor to be back by one of the country’s “most courageous and legendary conservative figures.”
Sykes is considered a long shot candidate by both Republicans and Democrats in Missouri. The campaign had just $1,800 in the bank at the end of last year, according to The Kansas City Star.
But Sykes isn’t the only Republican Senate hopeful in Missouri running in Moore’s shadow.
Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley (R) is benefiting from donations from businessman Richard Uihlein, who was revealed last November to be Moore’s biggest donor. Through the Proven Conservatives PAC, Uihlein donated $100,000 to support Moore. Now, the mega-donor — who dropped eight figures on 2016 races — has turned his sights to Missouri.
Uihlein has donated $2 million to the Club for Growth Action Missouri super PAC, which is backing Hawley. Uhliein also donated the legal maximum directly to Hawley’s campaign.
Asked whether he’d vote for Moore in the special election last December, Hawley declined to reject the accused predator, saying he “would want to see the evidence.”
Missouri Republican says the sexual revolution caused human trafficking
“At least some of them are allegations of criminal wrongdoing,” he told reporters at the time. “And that I don’t know what the truth is, but Judge Moore does. And I think that if these allegations are true, he should not be running… I would want to see the evidence. It would be the obligation of the ethics committee, if they did undertake an investigation, to gather actual hard evidence, to weigh the facts and make a report on it.”
In a statement in January, the Missouri Democratic party hit Hawley over the remarks.
“Now we know why Josh Hawley refused to denounce Roy Moore — they share the same out-of-state megadonor,” communications director Brooke Goren said. “This revelation is further proof that a small number of millionaires and dark money special interests are trying to buy Missouri’s U.S. Senate seat for Josh Hawley — and Hawley is willing to do what they ask in return.”
Republicans reportedly have been privately fretting about Hawley in recent weeks, however, after Hawley fell short of expected fundraising goals recently and drew national attention for comments he made linking the sexual revolution to human trafficking.
“We have a human trafficking crisis in our state and in this city and in our country because people are willing to purchase women, young women, and treat them like commodities,” Hawley said in audio first obtained by The Kansas City Star last month. “There is a market for it. Why is there? Because our culture has completely lost its way. The sexual revolution has led to exploitation of women on a scale that we would never have imagined, never have imagined.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story said Club for Growth was backing Sykes. They are backing Hawley.
The Netherlands has become the world’s 2nd biggest food exporter
An agricultural giant.via World Economic Forum
Posted by EcoWatch on Saturday, February 24, 2018
By Kim Baca February 26, 2018
About 10 miles west from the Missouri border in the wooded, lush-green northeastern corner of Oklahoma sits the first tribally owned meat-processing plant in the country.
In addition to processing its own beef and bison, the 4,800-member Quapaw Tribe manages four greenhouses that grow fresh herbs and vegetables and a bee operation that both pollinates its plants and produces honey. The Quapaw people also roast their own coffee, which they package and sell, and earlier this year, they opened a craft brewery.
While participating in greater America’s enterprise system, the Quapaw also use some of what they produce to feed their own people and surrounding non-Native communities. In addition to supplying the steakhouse and restaurants at its casinos with freshly grown food, the tribe distributes bison to senior citizens and at the reservation’s daycare center.
The Quapaw tribe dedicating their meat-processing facility. (Photo courtesy of the Quapaw tribe)
“Our contention is tribes are not sovereign unless they can feed themselves,” said Ross Racine, executive director of the Intertribal Agriculture Council. “But today, $3.3 billion of Native American agricultural products go into the commodity market. [By contrast,] Quapaw is eating what they are growing.”
Although agriculture continues to play a big role in Native life today, the Quapaw’s ability to feed themselves is nearly unique. While the overwhelming majority of farm operators in the U.S. are white, among farmers of color an estimated 30 percent are Native American or Alaska Native, and together they generate $3.3 billion in sales each year. But Native producers have little access to critically important resources such as credit, insurance, or loan programs, and that fact limits their ability to be fully autonomous.
Hoping to ensure that the voices of the nation’s original caretakers are heard, Native American groups have come together to advocate for more inclusion, greater funding, and extensive revisions in the upcoming farm bill, which will replace the soon-to-expire Agricultural Act of 2014. For nearly a year, the Native Farm Bill Coalition—made up of more than 22 tribes, tribal organizations, and nonprofits across the country—has been meeting to craft policy for the $489 billion omnibus bill, which oversees food assistance for more than 46 million low-income Americans, as well as food safety, agriculture insurance and losses, agricultural research, and rural housing and economic development.
“The farm bill holds the potential for tribal governments and producers to feed their own people in their own tribal food systems,” said Colby Duren, co-author of a report commissioned by the Native Farm Bill Coalition, during a recent webinar. “All of this will help spur economic development [and] build critical infrastructure, which is lacking in a lot of communities. [It will] be able to support traditional foods and … improve health, nutrition, food access and food security.”
Native communities’ lack of access to resources is due partly to the status of Native lands, which are held in trust by the U.S. government, making traditional landowner financing difficult to obtain. Without access to capital, much of the food produced on those lands is processed and consumed outside the community. Additionally, while non-Native communities have had access to various U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) programs since the 1940s, only in 1990 were the first Native producers eligible for these programs, Racine said.
“We’re in a phase of catch-up,” he said.
The disadvantages Native Americans face when it comes to land and food access have roots that stretch back centuries. Starting in the late 1800s, the federal government used treaties to force many to convert to a western model of agrarianism and land management. The U.S. government assisted tribes in the transition—offering education, health care, and the right to self-govern, among other provisions—as a way to assimilate and settle Native people, who were seen as culturally inferior, in exchange for their land. Yet tribes already had their own traditional foraging and agricultural systems, and tribal land reduction and relocation destroyed many of those those foodways.
Eldrige Hoy, Choctaw Fresh Produce Farm Market Enterprise, Philadelphia, MS and Bryson Sam a member of the Choctaw Nation seed a high tunnel with Iron Clay peas as a cover crop to improve soil quality. (Photo courtesy of the USDA.
The effects were extremely detrimental to Native American wellbeing. With limits imposed on fishing, foraging, and hunting—and pushed out to rural areas with limited access to a commercial market—many tribal people became dependent on food distribution programs, which often contained processed food. As a result, Native Americans suffer some of the highest rates of diabetes and obesity in the country.
Those new SNAP boxes the Trump Administration proposed to near-universal outrage earlier this month? They’ve been regularly supplied to Native American reservations for 40 years.
Last summer, the Native Farm Bill Coalition published Regaining Our Future, a report detailing their recommendations to better support Native people in each of the bill’s 12 titles, or sections. Their suggestions include extending credit and conservation programs, allocating research dollars to land grant tribal colleges, and providing access to international markets for certified Native American products, among others.
The coalition also calls for tribes to issue their own Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, formerly called food stamps, which makes up 80 percent of the overall farm bill. (Currently, a majority of states manage the SNAP programs on Native American reservations.) Tribes would also like traditional and locally grown foods included in food distribution programs to help curb diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other diet-related illnesses that Native Americans experience at higher rates. In some Native communities, one-quarter of members are participating in a federal food program.
Photo courtesy of The Seeds of Native Health.
As Congress begins the process of reviewing the mammoth bill this spring, staffers with the office of Senator Tom Udall (D-NM) said bipartisan discussions on tribal recommendations that could be incorporated in the omnibus legislation or through supplemental bills are now taking place.
Already, Udall—who serves as vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs—and three other Democratic senators have introduced the Tribal Nutrition Improvement Act, which provides funding and adds federally recognized tribes to the list of governments authorized to administer federal food programs including the National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs, the Summer Food Service Program, and the Child and Adult Care Food Program. The legislation would allow tribes to directly administer school food programs without having to go through state agencies.
Though President Trump’s proposed 2019 budget calls for large cuts to American Indian programs, tribes are still hopeful that their voices may be heard, citing several gains in the last farm bill and support from congressional leaders familiar with tribal issues.
“For too long, Indian Country has been knocking at the door of each new farm bill negotiation, asking for a seat at the table as sovereign governments alongside states and counties,” Udall said. “This year, there is bipartisan support for including Indian Country in the farm bill negotiations and adding provisions to support Indian Country through sections like those on nutrition and economic development to name a few,” he continued, adding that he and Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND) have started discussions with tribes, the USDA, and Congress.
“I’m optimistic that we can continue to make progress,” Udall said. “We all need to come together to push the door open and make room at the table.”
Making progress on food sovereignty is of paramount importance to Racine and other Native leaders. “There has never been a society in the history of the world that has survived without the ability to feed itself,” said Racine during a recent Senate Committee on Indian Affairs hearing on agribusiness in Indian Country. “Agriculture is a tradition on our reservations, not the product.”
Students at Circle of Nations School in Wahpeton, ND gather vegetables that they grew in the school’s garden. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)
This article is part of a series published by Civil Eats in partnership with GATHER, a documentary chronicling the movement for Native American Food Sovereignty.
Top photo courtesy of Seeds of Native Health.
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February 27, 2018
Catholic faith leaders are gathering to pray, sing, and commit acts of civil disobedience at the Capitol today to put pressure on Congress to protect DREAMers from deportation. #Catholics4DREAMers
Catholic faith leaders are gathering to pray, sing, and commit acts of civil disobedience at the Capitol today to put pressure on Congress to protect DREAMers from deportation. #Catholics4DREAMers
Posted by NowThis Politics on Tuesday, February 27, 2018
