US Politics

After three and a half years living inside a Missouri church to avoid deportation, a Honduran man has finally stepped outside, following a promise from Joe Biden’s administration to let him be.Alex García, a married father of five, was slated for removal from the US in 2017, the first year of Donald Trump’s administration. Days before he would have been deported, Christ Church United Church of Christ in the St Louis suburb of Maplewood offered sanctuary.Sara John of the St Louis Inter-Faith Committee on Latin America said García’s decision to leave the church came after Immigration and Customs Enforcement declared that he was no longer a deportation priority and that the agency would not pursue his detention or removal.García, braced by a hand on his shoulder from a son and fighting back tears, told a cheering crowd of about 100 people that he was separated from living with his family for 1,252 days.“Hi everyone,” García said. “Thank you everyone for showing support for me and my family. Today is the day I’m going to get out of sanctuary after three years and a half.”“We are not done yet,” García said, reading from a written statement. “There is still so much work that has to be done,” he added, noting that he would be fighting for “permanent protection”.In his first weeks as president, Biden has signed several executive orders on immigration issues that undo his predecessor’s policies, though several Republican members of Congress are pushing legal challenges.Myrna Orozco, organizing coordinator at Church World Service said 33 immigrants remain inside churches across the US and that number should continue to drop.“We expect it to change in the next couple of weeks as we get more clarity from Ice or [immigrants] get a decision on their cases,” Orozco said.Others who have emerged from sanctuary since Biden took office include José Chicas, a 55-year-old El Salvador native, who left a church-owned house in Durham, North Carolina, on 22 January. Saheeda Nadeem, a 65-year-old from Pakistan, left a Kalamazoo, Michigan, church this month. Edith Espinal, a native of Mexico, left an Ohio church after more than three years.In Maplewood, emotion spilled out during a brief ceremony marking García’s departure. The church’s bell tolled. Mayor Barry Greenberg’s voice broke as he told García he couldn’t grant him US citizenship, but he could make him an honorary citizen of Maplewood. He presented a key to the city that García’s young daughter immediately took out of the box to play with.“Oh God, we want to burst into song!” Pastor Becky Turner said during a prayer, but noting that prayer “isn’t enough. We have to do the work that we pray for.”Garcia’s exit came just two days after Representative Cori Bush, a St Louis Democrat, announced she was sponsoring a private bill seeking permanent residency for Garcia. Bush said on Wednesday that she will still push the bill forward.“Ice has promised not to deport Alex, and we will stop at nothing to ensure that they keep their promise,” Bush said in a statement.García fled extreme poverty and violence in Honduras, and after entering the US in 2004, he hopped a train that he thought was headed for Houston – but instead ended up in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, a town of about 17,000 residents in the south-eastern corner of the state.He landed a job and met his wife, Carly, a US citizen, and for more than a decade they lived quietly with their family.In 2015, García accompanied his sister to an immigration office for a check-in in Kansas City, Missouri, where officials realized García was in the country illegally. He received two one-year reprieves during Barack Obama’s administration. More

A former member of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration who previously accused him of sexual harassment offered new details on Wednesday, saying he once kissed her on the lips without consent after a private meeting.Lindsey Boylan said that during her more than three years working as an economic adviser in the administration, Cuomo “would go out of his way to touch me on my lower back, arms and legs”, compared her to one of his rumored ex-girlfriends and once joked they should play strip poker.Boylan, a Democrat running for Manhattan borough president, wrote in a post on the website Medium that the kiss happened after she gave Cuomo a one-on-one briefing on economic and infrastructure projects in his New York City office. “As I got up to leave and walk toward an open door, he stepped in front of me and kissed me on the lips. I was in shock, but I kept walking,” she said.“The idea that someone might think I held my high-ranking position because of the Governor’s ‘crush’ on me was more demeaning than the kiss itself.” She confirmed that she had posted the blog, but did not respond to a request for further comment.Boylan, a former deputy secretary for economic development and special adviser to the governor, tweeted in December that Cuomo sexually harassed her, but she didn’t reveal details and declined interview requests.At the time, Cuomo denied that he did anything inappropriate. “Look, I fought for and I believe a woman has the right to come forward and express her opinion and express issues and concerns that she has,” Cuomo told reporters. “But it’s just not true.”Cuomo’s spokesperson, Caitlin Girouard, said on Wednesday that all of Boylan’s “claims of inappropriate behavior are quite simply false”.Boylan said she initially spoke up about her experiences because of reports Cuomo was being considered as Joe Biden’s pick for attorney general. She decided to elaborate, she wrote, because she hoped it would empower other women to come forward. The more detailed account of her allegations against Cuomo comes amid mounting criticism about the work culture around the three-term governor and how he wields his power.The legislature’s two top leaders criticized Cuomo’s conduct on Wednesday as calls grew for an investigation into Cuomo’s workplace conduct.“I have read the reports,” the assembly speaker, Carl Heastie, said. “These are serious allegations. Harassment in the workplace of any kind should not be tolerated.”The state senate leader, Andrea Stewart Cousins, a Democrat, who is pushing to increase legislative oversight over Cuomo’s emergency powers, said Boylan’s account disturbed her.“This is deeply disturbing,” Stewart Cousins said. “Clearly, there is no place for this type of behavior in the workplace or anywhere else.” More

Sign up for the Guardian Today US newsletterCalifornia lawmakers are fighting to protect thousands of residents from deportation with new legislation that would stop state prisons and jails from handing over immigrants to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).California’s controversial practice of coordinating with Ice agents has received widespread scrutiny in past months, including after the Guardian revealed that the state had transferred two immigrant prisoners to Ice for deportation after they had served as incarcerated firefighters on the frontlines – and after they had completed their sentences.Kao Saelee, 41, was scheduled to leave prison after 22 years behind bars in August. But on the day of his release, when his sister was waiting to take him home, California instead handed him over to immigration authorities. He remains in Ice custody in Louisiana. Bounchan Keola, 39, was reported to Ice by California prison officials in October.Both men had served the state as firefighters while in prison and both were threatened with deportation to Laos, a country their families had fled as refugees when they were young children. The two had been locked up since they were teenagers.Assembly member Wendy Carrillo, of Los Angeles, and other lawmakers on Wednesday unveiled legislation that would ensure that immigrant community members eligible for release from state jails or prisons would not be sent to Ice, but instead would be able to re-enter society and reunite with their families.Supporters of Assembly Bill 937, the Voiding Inequality and Seeking Inclusion for Our Immigrant Neighbors (Vision) Act, say that the practice of transferring people from prison to Ice was a cruel form of “double punishment” that indefinitely separated people from their loved ones after they have served their time. “If it wasn’t for where they were born, these Californians would be able to return home,” Carrillo said.California has no legal obligation to report prisoners to Ice, and despite intense backlash last year, Gavin Newsom, the state’s Democratic governor, has defended the policy and allowed the voluntary transfers to continue. The transfers can affect undocumented people and legal permanent residents, who lose their green cards once they are in Ice custody, due to their criminal records.California has a “sanctuary law”, which means local law enforcement is not supposed to collaborate with US immigration and has a mandate to shield immigrants from deportation threats, but the state has made an exception for local jails and prisons.The transfers are one of the key drivers of deportation in the state. The California department of corrections and rehabilitation (CDCR) transferred an estimated 1,400 people from its custody to Ice last year, according to the Asian Law Caucus, a legal advocacy group supporting the bill. In 2018 and 2019, local jails sent more than 3,700 people to Ice.The practice has been especially concerning during the pandemic when Ice jails and CDCR prisons have both suffered massive and deadly Covid-19 outbreaks in their overcrowded facilities.Keola, who suffered a near-death injury fighting wildfires last year, was freed from Ice custody in January and reunited with his family in the Bay Area for the first time in decades. But the threat of deportation still looms.“I want to get on my feet and work and advocate and help people like myself,” Keola told the Guardian after his release, saying he was hoping to start working as a firefighter. “We should all have that opportunity to have that American life. Hopefully Newsom will stop turning over people like myself.”Last week, Bounchan Keola walked free after 22 years behind bars. He was an incarcerated firefighter who California sent to US immigration at the end of his sentence last year.I chatted with Boun + his sister Thong about reuniting after decades apart. LISTEN: (thread) pic.twitter.com/8E9oJY0x0L— Sam Levin (@SamTLevin) February 7, 2021
On Wednesday, Keola spoke at a news conference supporting the bill, urging the governor to also issue pardons to him and Saelee, the other jailed firefighter sent to Ice, so that they would no longer be threatened with deportation due to their criminal records. “At any moment, I could be arrested and be deported to Laos, a country I have no ties to.”Spokespeople for Ice and CDCR declined to comment. More

More than 100 prominent evangelical Christian pastors and church leaders have spoken out against what they call the “perversion” of Christian nationalism and the role it played in enabling the violent insurrection at the US Capitol in Washington on 6 January.In an open letter released on Wednesday, the evangelical leaders say they are speaking out now because they do not want to be “quiet accomplices in this ongoing sin”.They call on all church people to clarify that Christianity is incompatible with “calls to violence, support of white Christian nationalism, conspiracy theories, and all religious and racial prejudice”.The letter, first reported by NPR, notes that the evangelical community in the US has long been susceptible to the “heresy” of Christian nationalism – the belief that the country is fundamentally Christian and run by and for white conservative Americans. The signatories blame that tendency on church leaders accommodating white supremacy over many years.As a result the ideology of Christian nationalism was allowed to flourish and helped to legitimize the 6 January attack by giving participants the false impression that their actions were “blessed by God”, the religious leaders said.The presence of Christian nationalists was evident during the insurrection. Rioters carried signs proclaiming “Jesus Saves” and “In God We Trust”, and crosses were erected among the crowd.A video of the unfolding catastrophe filmed by the New Yorker magazine showed one of the seditionists saying a prayer from the rostrum of the US Senate. He said: “Thank you Heavenly Father for gracing us with this opportunity to stand up for our God-given unalienable rights … and to send a message to all the tyrants, the communists and the globalists that this is our nation, not theirs.”Among the influential figures who signed the letter were Jerushah Duford, granddaughter of the TV evangelical preacher, the late Billy Graham. She told NPR that the events of 6 January had long been brewing. “It felt like this was a symptom of what has been happening for a long time,” she said.White evangelical Christians remained remarkably loyal to former president Donald Trump in both the 2016 and 2020 elections. They voted for him on both occasions by about 80%, exit polls showed.A survey by the American Enterprise Institute earlier this month found that 60% of white evangelicals continue to believe Trump’s “big lie” that last November’s election was stolen from him and that he should have been returned to the White House. More

Al Jazeera’s surprise decision to launch a digital platform for conservatives in the US has left many within the Qatar-based news organisation dumbfounded and confused, staff have told the Guardian.The network has announced the launch of Rightly, a platform that will host programmes and produce online content aimed at “audiences currently underrepresented in today’s media environment”, in this case right-of-centre Americans.It will be overseen by Scott Norvell, part of the founding team of Fox News, who said in a press release that Rightly aimed to show the wide spectrum of the American right.“American conservatism has never been monolithic,” Norvell said. “With Rightly, we are hoping to create a platform that amplifies the voices of an array of personalities that more accurately reflects the racial, cultural and generational diversity of centre-right politics in America than existing outlets.“We aim to bring new Americans, young Americans and Americans of colour together and present conservative ideas that transcend the barriers which identity politics aim to put between us,” he said.The platform’s first show, “an opinion-led interview programme”, will launch on Thursday.The announcement of the new franchise appears to fit awkwardly with a Qatar government-funded organisation that has fashioned itself as a leading international outlet of the global south and an alternative to the western media perspective on regions such as Asia, the Middle East and Africa.“So far the co-workers I’ve talked to are just dumbfounded,” said an Al Jazeera employee who asked not to be named. “They didn’t know it was coming and are confused why they would do this.”An Al Jazeera journalist based outside Qatar said the decision was a shock to staff. “It’s pretty weird,” they said. “I can’t see how it works for them.” Some Al Jazeera staff were calling the new platform Wrongly, they added.A staff member said they learned about the venture from Guardian coverage on Tuesday. “I was convinced there was some new satirical section of the Guardian I didn’t know about,” they said. “It seems like a bad joke or bad dream we’re all waiting to wake up from. Everyone is totally bemused.”Another said it was “worrying” that the network was moving from producing news – albeit from a clear perspective – to trying to promote a political agenda, citing a remark from Stephen Kent, the host of the upcoming interview programme, that he was aiming to “rebuild the right meme by meme”.“Maybe it was said in jest,” the Doha-based staff member said. “I’m going to reserve judgment until I see the show.”Al Jazeera’s Arabic network was controversial in the US in the years after the 11 September 2001 attacks on New York for regularly airing propaganda videos from al-Qaida leaders including Osama bin Laden. It launched a left-leaning American news channel in the US in 2013, but pulled funding three years later.It has remained a significant presence online with its AJ+ video network and its international channel, Al Jazeera English, remaining popular in the US.Al Jazeera English staff were among those on social media expressing bewilderment and concern over the move.Shutting down Al Jazeera was a key demand of the Gulf Arab states who launched a blockade against Qatar in 2017. Donald Trump, the US president at the time, endorsed the siege, which was finally dropped through negotiations that were clinched on 5 January this year, after it became clear Trump would not serve a second term.Tarek Cherkaoui, the author of a book about international and Arab media outlets, said the launch of the new platform may be “pure realpolitik” on the part of decision-makers in Doha after three difficult years, in which they realised they had failed to build links with the American right.“Decision-makers in Doha knew they had missed something, the coming of Donald Trump to the helm of the White House, but also the fact that [his adviser and media mogul, Steve] Bannon was one of the most prominent people shaping Trump’s worldview, and they had omitted to build bridges to any of these people,” said Cherkaoui, who is the manager of the TRT World Research Centre, part of a Turkish state-funded media outlet.There was logic in reaching out to the centre-right, he added. “They’ve found that they cannot go into the Trump heartland because it’s too hard to play there … They found that this centre-right is very unappreciated and has problems with their narrative and are finding it hard to push against the hardcore Trumpists.” More

“I’m sacrificing myself to deliver a message,” says the composer, multi-instrumentalist and now podcast-maker Adrian Younge. “We aren’t aware enough of black history, nor of the integral role black people have played in building America. There is an educational sterilisation going on and it’s my duty to make people understand that history of racism – something America has pioneered.”With more than 400 years to cover since US slavery began, Younge’s project to educate the public is a vast and complex one. Yet, speaking on a video call surrounded by analogue recording equipment in his LA studio, it is a story Younge believes he has spent his life and career building up to. “This is my What’s Going On project, my record talking about why we are in the place that we are in,” he says. “It’s as if James Baldwin hooked up with Marvin Gaye to make a record produced by David Axelrod. It’s psychedelic soul but it is very professorial at the same time. There’s so many layers to it.”Indeed, there are. The resulting project comprises a 26-track album, written, played and recorded entirely by Younge, entitled The American Negro, a four-part podcast – Invisible Blackness – hosted by Younge – and a short film, again written and directed by Younge himself.Racism is a learned behaviour, one America developed through building its nation on the backs of slave labourSuch auteurship could seem somewhat egotistical but Younge – a 42-year-old musician who has made his name in collaboration with the likes of Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Kendrick Lamar – sees it as necessary. “Pre-Covid, I was travelling the world performing and I was shocked at how little people understood about racism and its history,” he says. “Racism is a learned behaviour and one America developed through building its nation on the backs of slave labour and those economic gains. America is a slavocracy: it is a nation founded on bigotry, and those principles continue today. People might think racism no longer exists because there is no longer a slave system, but they don’t realise the laws that enabled the slave system still put us in a position where we have to jump over insurmountable handicaps to just become equal.”It is an incendiary argument and one that has found an increasing foothold in historical scholarship. The writer Edward E Baptist recently argued that the expansion of slavery during the first decades of American independence was foundational in enabling the country’s modernisation, while film-makers such as Ava DuVernay have convincingly plotted the continual subjugation of African Americans through the legal and penal system.While Younge’s album puts luscious orchestral arrangements and spoken-word interludes to use in creatively unfurling the development of structural racism in the US, it is through the podcast Invisible Blackness that he most comprehensively lays out his thesis. With guests including Public Enemy’s Chuck D, the trumpeter Keyon Harrold – whose son was recently in the headlines after being falsely accused of stealing an iPhone – and Digable Planets rapper Ladybug Mecca, Younge explores how his guests’ creation of socially conscious hip-hop influenced his own understanding of inequality. He also uses his previous career as a professor of law to authoritatively detail the origins of this American “slavocracy”.“I use the phrase of the show’s title to illustrate that we all have invisible blackness, this sense of ‘otherness’ inside us, because we are all descended from the first human being in Africa,” Younge says. “It all means that we are radically equal. And I have black radicals on the podcast, like Chuck D, to find out what he had to go through to educate others about this. We’re all looking at the past to understand what’s happening now, to inform people so they can ultimately make their own opinions with all the knowledge at their disposal.”Lynching was a form of bigotry porn: it is the galvanising of a group by emotion, rather than thoughtIt is a measured approach, yet not one without moments of visceral, emotional charge. Most strikingly, the cover art for The American Negro album is a black-and-white image of Younge being lynched, in the fashion of a “lynching postcard”. “Lynching was a form of bigotry porn: it is the galvanising of a group by emotion, rather than thought, as it’s easier to act without thinking,” he says. “Lynching was a celebratory event, one where people would pay to take ‘souvenirs’ like a thumb or an eyeball and they would then send each other postcards to say: ‘I was here’. So when you look at the album cover, which represents one of these postcards, I want to highlight how we were seen as the symbols of evil in America. And viewing the image now, we symbolise the American problem of racism. I want people to have a personal experience when they see it; I want them to see me as any other person of colour that can be killed with no judicial reprisal. I want people to see that I am real and I want them to see themselves in me.”It is a powerful image, one that calls up the horrors of history while referencing its grim modern iteration: filmed police brutality against people of colour. In fact, the May 2020 police killing of Minnesotan George Floyd occurred while Younge was at the beginning of recording his album. “George Floyd’s death didn’t affect the progression of the record at all and that’s what’s sad, right?” Younge says. “It’s the same thing; before that you had Eric Garner and before that, you had so many black people dying without judicial reprisal. That is what makes the world complacent towards the treatment of black people, because it’s so commonplace.”However, the global Black Lives Matter protests sparked by Floyd’s death did augur something different. “Part of me is happy that Trump was president because, while he has inspired more bigots, his lack of reaction to these police killings and white supremacy has also launched the greatest global protest that we’ve seen regarding race. He’s removed complacency,” says Younge. “I have two daughters and I see how young people are so much more woke than they were before now. There’s 12-year-olds on TikTok explaining racism because of him.”Despite the centuries of ingrained inequality laid out in Younge’s project, is it still possible to hope for a future change? “We’re in a better place now than we have been for decades,” he says. “America has been forced to acknowledge there is a problem but there is a deferred commitment to solving it. Our governments have the power to make those changes and so they need to make it happen – and soon.”Until then, Younge is keeping occupied. “Right now, I am the busiest I’ve ever been in my life,” he says, “but I’m doing something good and so it feels good. I’m giving so much of myself because this is an ongoing fight. This project is something that people could look back on 50 years from now and still have more to say.”The podcast Invisible Blackness is available now on Amazon Music. The American Negro by Adrian Younge is out on 26 February. More

James “Bill” McGill has been a farmer for 40 of his 76 years. He can’t remember the year his 320-acre farm was put up for sale by the same man from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) he’d gone to for a loan to help him keep it. He can sum up the loss succinctly: “The government took it away. It has always been that way for us.”His treatment by the USDA over the years, it turns out, has conditioned him to have an easier time raising 60 or so pigs for slaughter on property in Bakersfield, California, he inherited from his parents. “I don’t get attached to hardly nothing any more,” he said. “So much hard luck over the years as a farmer, you learn.”Most older Black farmers like McGill have stories of being disregarded by the USDA, regardless of the administration, or who holds the title of agriculture secretary. They’re disillusioned to the point that it seems wise not to get too invested in USDA affairs, smart not to hold out hope for change. McGill didn’t even know that Biden had nominated Tom Vilsack, who was confirmed by the Senate on Tuesday. “It doesn’t really mean a whole lot,” he said.A change of some sort would have come if Ohio congresswoman Marcia Fudge, a senior member of the House agriculture committee, was selected, as had been anticipated – she would have been the first Black woman to serve as agriculture secretary (she was instead selected to be secretary of housing and urban development). Vilsack, who has spent the time between his two stints as agriculture secretary in a high-paying job in big ag, is more of the “same ol’, same ol’”, as McGill put it. He served two terms in the same role in the Obama administration. Many of Biden’s cabinet picks have been praised by progressives; Vilsack’s nomination was met with confusion at best, disappointment and anger at worst.In what could be seen as a response to the backlash, Biden nominated Jewel Bronaugh, currently Virginia agriculture commissioner, as Vilsack’s second-in-command. If confirmed, she would be the first woman of color to serve as deputy secretary of the department.Black farmers peaked in number in 1920 when there were 949,889; today there are only 48,697; they account for only 1.4% of the country’s 3.4 million farmers (95% of US farmers are white) and own 0.52% of America’s farmland. The acreage they have managed to hold on to is a quarter the size of white farmers’ acreage, on average. All of this is the result of egregious discrimination from the USDA that Black farmers faced for decades.Vilsack’s first term should have offered some hope – he was appointed by the first Black president, who also oversaw the 2010 $1.25bn settlement of Pigford II, the second part of a 1999 class-action lawsuit that alleged that from 1981 to 1997, USDA officials ignored complaints brought to them by Black farmers, and that they were denied loans and other support because of rampant discrimination. Instead, a two-year investigation by reporters at the Counter found that during Vilsack’s eight-year tenure under Obama, fewer loans were given to Black farmers than during the Bush administration, and the USDA foreclosed on Black farmers who had discrimination complaints outstanding, despite a 2008 farm bill moratorium on this practice.Many of those complaints were left unresolved. The report states that from 2006 to 2016, Black farmers were six times as likely to be foreclosed on as white farmers.This disappointment is compounded by Vilsack’s kneejerk firing in 2010 of Shirley Sherrod, a longtime Black farmer advocate and civil rights activist who was serving as the Georgia state director of rural development for the USDA, when a deceptively edited clip that made her appear racist towards a white farmer was circulated by the rightwing propagandist Andrew Breitbart. Vilsack later apologized and offered her a different high-level USDA role, which she declined.About an hour east of Oklahoma City in Wewoka, George Roberts farms 500 acres with his two brothers. A third-generation farmer, he was pulling for Fudge. “She could have understood what we were up against, she’s walked in our shoes. Pretty sure Vilsack never has,” he said.Roberts is familiar with why many Black farmers call the USDA the “last plantation”.“Because we are still answering to ‘boss’. Can we do this, can we do that? They still have their hand over us, saying: no, you can’t.”His father tried a few times for USDA loans, but “he didn’t have much luck,” Roberts said. “You get tired of getting slapped in the face. Hate beggin’. The more you beg the worse they treat you.”Roberts got a USDA loan of about $80,000 in 1982 – “That was rare especially back then. I was one of very few,” he said, referring to the chances of a Black farmer getting a loan. Today, instead of “going through all that red tape” and facing disappointment, he has set up a GoFundMe to hire labor for work he and his brothers, now each in their 60s, can no longer do. Meanwhile, they’ll keep farming one way or another, “because land is something they don’t make any more”, he said.Older Black farmers who mentored Thelonius Cook when he was just starting to farm in 2015 cautioned him against expecting any government help.“They told me don’t waste your time. And I get it,” he said of the older generation’s disillusionment. Still, Cook utilized USDA grant programs to help him purchase high tunnels and hoop houses, among other essentials, for his 7.5-acre plot of land in Virginia.“The younger generation is more willing to seek out what is available. I’ll take my reparations any way I can,” he said. “It’s never going to be enough. Aside from giving us land after so much was taken. That’s the ultimate goal. That’s how we can balance that deficit.”Karen Washington, who co-founded Rise & Root Farm in Chester, New York, six years ago, also understands the disappointment experienced by previous generations. “Older Black farmers have been hurt,” she said. “They’re throwing their hands up and saying, they’ve never done anything for us in the past, why would the Biden administration change anything?”But she said it was important to hold Vilsack accountable; she suggested he start by making amends with Sherrod, whose firing Washington said she felt personally betrayed by. “He needs to offer her a position,” she said. “Then, sit down with Black leaders to hammer what they want, not just what they need – which is capital for machinery, land, money to expand their operations,” she said. “Then put the resources and money – I mean millions – behind that.”In a prepared statement to the Senate agriculture committee, Vilsack wrote he would “take bold action” to address discrimination across USDA agencies and root out systemic racism, but failed to say how, nor was he pressed on it by any member of the committee during his hearing on Tuesday.Vilsack said in his opening remarks: “It’s a different time, and I’m a different person.” A new set of eyes will be watching for proof.“The younger generation of Black and brown farmers may have to carry the elders here,” Washington said. “Our numbers may be small, but our voices can be huge.” More