In her interview with Anderson Cooper a couple of weeks ago, Shirley Sherrod made the following statement about Andrew Breitbart:
I think he would like to get us stuck back in the times of slavery. That's where I think he would like to see all black people end up again.
http://www.youtube.com/...
Shirley Sherrod and her husband Charles operated a farming cooperative ("New Communities, Inc.) in the 1970's and early 1980's. In 2009, New Communities received $13 million from the USDA as a settlement for alleged racial discrimination in loans processing by the USDA. The Sherrod's personally received $150,000 each for "pain and suffering".
Ron Wilkins, a former organizer with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, wrote yesterday at Counterpunch that he was hired on to the New Communities farm in 1974:
The 6,000 acre New Communities Inc. in Lee County promoted itself during the latter part of the 1960s and throughout the 70s as a land trust committed to improving the lives of the rural black poor. Underneath this facade, the young and old worked long hours with few breaks, the pay averaged sixty-seven cents an hour, fieldwork behind equipment spraying pesticides was commonplace and workers expressing dissatisfaction were fired without recourse.
The unfortunate story of Mrs. Annie Hawkins and her family in particular is instructive. Persuaded by NCI that their lot would be improved, the Hawkins family stole away from the Georgia plantation that they had called home. After suffering abuse meted out to them and others at NCI, Mrs. Hawkins sadly stated that,
"We stole away from one plantation, but just ended up on another."
http://www.counterpunch.org/...
According to Wilkins, now a professor of Africana Studies at Cal State Dominiquez Hills, the workers eventually launched protests and strikes against the New Communities farm, and the United Farm Workers union stepped in to help protect the workers' rights. The September 28, 1974 issue of the UFW's newspaper, El Macriado, tells the story:
Not only must they work behind machines spraying lethal pesticides, but there is no definite pay scale . . . management pays each workers whatever they please, according to personal preference. Strikers say they must put in unnecessary overtime, on a half hour's notice, at ungodly hours because the farm is poorly managed.
. . .
Robert Johnson, one of the employees, finally organized the current strike, but was promptly fired.
. . .
Though several of this Black cooperative's funding organizations are pressuring Charles Sherrod, the farm's manager, to reach a settlement with the strikers, he remains unwilling to negotiate.
http://www.farmworkermovement.org/...
Wilkins notes the irony of the Sherrod story in retrospect:
It is bitter irony that the Sherrods have succeeded in being awarded $300,000 following a discrimination lawsuit, while Mrs. Hawkins and other impoverished NCI black laborers whom NCI exploited were never adequately compensated for their "pain and suffering".
While it is true that loan discrimination and relentless creditors can be cited for the eventual demise of New Communities Inc. in 1985, NCI’s unfair labor practices and poor leadership, were equally, if not more, to blame.
http://www.counterpunch.org/...
"People who live in glass houses . . ."