https://themilitant.com/2020/02/22/swp-candidate-talks-program-with-black-farmers-in-georgia/
SWP candidate talks program with Black farmers in Georgia
article
BY SAM MANUEL
Vol. 84/No. 8
March 2, 2020
MILITANT/SAM MANUEL Rachele Fruit, Socialist Workers Party candidate for
U.S. Senate from Georgia, talks to Kevin Stanley, a U.S. Army veteran
and peanut
farmer. Stanley agreed with Fruit that what matters in the elections is
which class interests a party represents and which class holds political
power.
figure
Rachele Fruit, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Senate from
Georgia, talks to Kevin Stanley, a U.S. Army veteran and peanut farmer.
Stanley agreed
with Fruit that what matters in the elections is which class interests a
party represents and which class holds political power.
MILITANT/SAM MANUEL Rachele Fruit, Socialist Workers Party candidate for
U.S. Senate from Georgia, talks to Kevin Stanley, a U.S. Army veteran
and peanut
farmer. Stanley agreed with Fruit that what matters in the elections is
which class interests a party represents and which class holds political
power.
figure end
ALBANY, Ga. — One of the largest workshops at the Federation of Southern
Cooperatives 37th annual conference here Feb. 13-14 discussed the
challenges Black
farmers face in keeping land they inherited from parents or grandparents
who had not left wills deeding the farms to their children. Under the
Jim Crow
racial segregation of those times, Black farmers faced serious
difficulties getting trusted attorneys to draft wills or just didn’t see
any compelling
need for it.
Rachele Fruit, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Senate from
Georgia, attended the conference to learn more about what working
farmers face and
to introduce them to her campaign.
The federation was formed in a half-dozen southern states by African
American farmers. It assists them in getting credit, legal help to
retain ownership
of their farms, technical training and other services. Many of the more
than 200 conference participants — including both farmers, others who
work with
them or who want to become farmers — were attracted to the SWP platform,
which calls for an alliance of workers and farmers in the face of
today’s capitalist
economic crisis.
“I’m glad I found you,” Ken Webb, 27, who grew up on a farm in Choctaw,
Mississippi, told this worker-correspondent, who accompanied Fruit to
the conference.
Webb currently works on soil and water conservation projects. “My family
has three farms growing soybeans, cotton and other crops.
“Many Black farmers are getting old and a lot of farms and land are
being lost. We need to get more young people farming,” he said.
Manuel told Webb that the party is running Alyson Kennedy and Malcolm
Jarrett for U.S. president and vice president. The party’s 2020 platform
says that
“to put a halt to farm foreclosures, bankruptcies and skyrocketing rural
debt, we demand nationalization of the land.” The campaigners described
how this
was accomplished by workers and farmers in Cuba as part of their revolution.
Webb was interested in books that the SWP campaign promotes by and about
Malcolm X and the Cuban Revolution. “When your presidential candidates
are in
town, just let me know,” he said.
Kevin Stanley, a 39-year-old Army veteran, was with a couple of friends
who are also vets looking to start a farm. According to a 2017
Department of Agriculture
census, 19% of Black farmers had served in the military. Stanley grows
peanuts on his father’s farm.
Fruit asked Stanley what he thought about Iraq. “We should never have
been there,” he said, “but I guess we have to finish what we started.”
“The Socialist Workers Party calls for the immediate, unconditional
withdrawal of all U.S. troops from the Middle East, for an end to the
sanctions against
Iran,” Fruit said. She pointed to protests today by workers and young
people in Iran and Iraq against Tehran’s wars in the Middle East and the
effect on
their lives.
“And ‘we’ didn’t start anything,” Fruit added. “There are two main and
contending classes. The capitalist rulers send us as cannon fodder to
the Middle
East to protect their markets and access to oil. It’s in our class
interests — and those of the toilers in that region — to get out and
turn our attention
to meeting the attacks of the bosses and bankers here.”
“We need younger faces in office to think outside the box,” Stanley said.
Fruit, a Walmart worker, noted that her opponent, Sen. David Purdue, who
is up for reelection, is from a prominent agri-business family in
Georgia and
is a former CEO of Dollar General stores. Working people need their own
party, a labor party, Fruit said.
“The issue isn’t young or Black or female faces,” said Fruit. “It’s a
class question. What matters is whose interests you represent and which
class holds
power.”
“You’re right,” Stanley agreed.
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