Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's the week of May eleventh, twenty twenty five, and
this is what's on the people's news. The new pope
brings hope. Student loan borrowers are told to pay up
or else. Texas farmers hurt by the latest trumpion cuts
to the USDA. Artifacts removed from the African American Museum
(00:25):
in DC. All that and more on the People's News.
I'm Steve Gallington. This is the people's News, and the
People's news starts now. The world has a new pope,
Pope Leo the fourteenth. He is from Chicago and is
(00:47):
the first American pope an ally of the late Head
of the Vatican. The sixty nine year old Chicago native
was made a cardinal in twenty twenty three by Pope
Francis and previously oversaw the largest art diocese in North America.
His ministry in Peru and possession of Peruvian citizenship will
enable him to engage with the Spanish speaking world, where
(01:09):
nearly forty percent of the world's Catholics reside. We talked
to Rice University sociologist and religious scholar Craig Considine.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
We have a new pope and he is from the
United States, which we were talking earlier, and I didn't think.
I didn't think a pope from the United States would
get it. A lot of people were thinking of a
Philippine or African pope, but that didn't go our way.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
It did not. We have our first American Pope, our
second pope from the Americas, obviously Francis being the first
from Argentina. Our new Pope also has a lot of
experience in the Spanish speaking world in Peru, and I
think that was one of the big reasons why he
got it, because about forty of all the Catholics in
(02:01):
the world are from Spanish speaking countries. So I think
being an American didn't hurt him, and I don't think
it necessarily helped him either. And perhaps that's one of
the beauties of the Conclave, that they're really going to
character and conduct and merit over any other type of
(02:23):
national affiliation. And we also know that our new Pope
was a relative newcomer to the Vatican. Pope Francis put
him into the College of Cardinals just two years ago.
But in the College of Cardinals and in the Vatican,
he had a very important position as the Prefect of
(02:44):
the Dicasty of bishops, which is basically the bureaucratic leg
of the Vatican that appoints bishops around the world. So
that's a very significant position that he was in. And
I think also we had eighty two of the one
(03:05):
hundred and thirty three cardinals that voted in the conclave
being appointed by Francis, so eighty two. And you can
bet that a lot of these new cardinals from the
periphery of the Church, from countries like Mongolia and Haiti
and even Sweden knew who Cardinal Prevost was because of
(03:27):
his position. So very interesting. Pick certainly surprised a lot
of people, and perhaps Americans more than anything.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Then. His background is, you know, in social justice issues
is also important at this time, and I think I
was thinking in other shows on another station, we're talking
about it. Just now he has a It was kind
of a balancing act of Americans. People look in America
(04:01):
and they look at the US presidency versus now we
look at the pope and what he does in his
issues that he's driving for in the past. Is that
something that made me kind of play in his favor.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Yeah, I think so. What we know of him, as
you mentioned him being Leo Leo connected to Leo the thirteenth,
and Leo the thirteenth was also understood to be like
the People's Pope, the pope on the side of the
of the workers, and he really initiated the social teachings
(04:38):
of the Catholic Church. So I think what we're going
to see with Pope Leo the fourteenth is a continuation
of Francis's emphasis on social justice. I think We're also
going to see a continuation of Francis's work with the environment,
and with immigration and with interfaith dialogue. But this Pope,
(05:04):
I think, is not going to be as progressive as
Francis was when it comes to some social and cultural issues,
so same sex marriage, LGBTQ issues, the ordination of women,
the treatment of divorced people within the church. I think
our new Pope is going to take a much more
moderate approach there. So I think most American Catholics might
(05:30):
like that. The younger generation may not, They may want
someone more like Pope Francis. But I think Leo will
be attractive to a lot of American Catholics if he
can kind of toe the line on some of these
social and cultural issues. Now, it's also important to note.
Yesterday I went through Cardinal Prevost's x account, and he
(05:54):
had recently in February, I believe, retweeted some posts and
articles that were highly critical of the Trump administration and
particularly JD. Vance and their position on immigration. So what
we're going to see with this new pope is likely
someone who would be critical of countries that take a
(06:18):
more draconian, if you want to call it, that approach
to immigration. So it's going to be very interesting to
see the type of relationship that he builds, if he
builds one at all with President Trump. Obviously, right now
everything is off to a good start. President Trump said
this is great, He's an American. But this is something
(06:40):
I think that we all need to pay close attention to.
What kind of relationship might they have because these are
arguably two of the most important people, the most powerful
people in the world.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Does this expand now people, you know, even though the
pope represents the Catholic Church, you think this is a lady
ban the people that are looking for the church for
answers or maybe the expand to the membership of the
Catholic Church.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
I think so one thing to note here that's important
is that Popelia the fourteenth is also an Augustinian and
Augustinian's part of their kind of ethos is missionary work.
They're big into missionary work, and we know that our
new pope did two dozen years missionary work in Peru.
(07:35):
So I think we're going to see a continuation of this,
this kind of outreach to the periphery, speaking to the poor,
speaking about things that are unfolding around us. So I
think we'll see a continuation of much of what Francis
did in terms of reaching out to the periphery and
trying to make the church a bigger tent.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
If that makes sense, Yeah, it does, it does? What
what what happens now? As far as you know what
you see as a future of the Catholic Church, you
know which is yeah, you know, we were looking at
the diversity level and trying to expanding the diversity of
(08:20):
the Catholic Church in a hierarchy. Does this change anything?
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Well, one thing we do know about the church at
the moment, at least with the conclave, it was the
most diverse conclave ever. It was the most non European
enclaves ever as well. I don't know if you watched
them taking their oath in the Systine Chapel, and it
was quite remarkable. You know, every cardinal comes up and
(08:52):
says their oath, and just to see the diversity and
all the different languages and accents. It's a crew represent
presentation of the Church. So we do see the Church
expanding outward and making sure that those periphery communities have
a little bit more representation in the spaces of power
(09:14):
in the Vatican itself, because that's obviously the hub of
the dynamics. I do think one thing that the next
pope has to tackle is the waning Catholic identity of Europe.
So we know historically obviously this has been the epicenter
of Christendom really not just the Catholic Church. Europe has,
(09:39):
you know, centuries of history linked to Christianity. But we
see over in Europe a waning of the faith, and
I think that that may have hurt some of the
European cardinals in the conclave. I think perhaps the cardinals
(09:59):
thought it might be a good idea to have someone
in a from a country with let's just refer to
it as like a stronger Catholic presence. So the numbers
in America are quite interesting. Talk about the future of
like the American Catholic Church. There's a lot of different
types of numbers out there. Some are saying that the
(10:22):
faith is kind of waning and secularization is coming, but
there have been some interesting poles and studies done recently
that shows that the faith is actually growing among the youth.
We're seeing a lot of American young American converts to Catholicism,
and I think one of the reasons why that may
have happened is because Pope Francis, I think, deliberately spoke
(10:47):
on issues that young people, particularly Americans, care a lot
about a lot of these social and cultural issues that
we'd previously discussed. There's something I didn't the first time
I've heard that that the Catholic Church is that growing. Yeah,
it depends like like kind of what you're looking at,
Like it is growing in certain in certain segments, But
(11:11):
then we also have to like consider like what is growing,
Like is this just like people who identify as Catholic
or are we seeing people who are more interes in
their commitment to their faith? You know? So, like when
we're talking about growing, is it just numbers or is
it like impact, Is it involvement.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
The corrupt and criminal Trump GOP is also shutting down
the Department of Education, and they announced that they will
start the process to get back student loan money. Since
the pandemic, federal student loan borrowers have been protected for
most part from the harshest consequences of not paying back
their loans. All that ended on May fifth, the Secretary
(11:54):
of Education says the FEDS will start the process of
taking money from the paychecks of borrowers who've missed their
payments for two hundred and seventy days or more. What
does this all mean. We talked first to Paul Auster,
who is referred to as America's credit repairman. He spoke
on what you can do to save your credit report
and your credit.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
The Department of Education released some numbers last week and
they're staggering. We all know that there's a lot of
student loan borrowers out there that are in trouble, but
here the latest numbers tell us this. There's forty there's
over a little over forty two million barwers that oh
more than one point six trillion dollars in debt. Out
of that forty two million, five million of those borrowers
(12:38):
are at least a year late, and some of them
five six years. There's an additional four million barrowers that
are in what we call late stage delinquency, and that's
your at least ninety days or three months behind. So
you put those those two numbers together, you're close to
ten million borrowers that will be in default within the
(12:59):
next of months. That's almost twenty five percent of the
entire student loan portfolio. That's not good for anybody, the borrowers,
our economy, it's not good for anyone now.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
But on the flipping in of that going in and
taking away they're they're taking away their their paycheck or
or of some of the things I've heard that the
federal government's talking about doing is taking away their paychecks
or their reef the tax refunds, and people are already struggling.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
Yeah, and again that's where the overall economy is going
to suffer that much more if this actually goes through.
You're talking about removing because if you have ten million
people that go into default, they have collections and judgments
that are filed against them. Those are ten million people
that you're basically removing from the financing part of the economy.
(14:00):
They wouldn't be able to get mortgages, they wouldn't be
able to buy cars, probably not going to get approved
for a traditional credit card. So this is serious business,
and I feel I can empathize with the borrowers because
it's been a roller coaster. We're going to forgive the debt.
We're not going to forgive the debt. It's a it's
a political football, and it's been confusing. But the reality is,
(14:21):
as of October of last year, they were the borrowers
were told to start making the payments on their student
loans again, and just millions of millions have failed to
do so. So this is a predicament that we have
to get out of this short term situation and ultimately
figure out why are tuitions just so out of control
(14:44):
it I usually liking it to like the healthcare system.
You know, insurance companies are paying that much more out
for a band aid, you know, a tissue, anything like that,
and it gets covered by the insurance companies, but we're ultimately.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Paying for that.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
It's the same thing the student loan servicing companies. The
lenders have just been you know, lending money, they're giving
it away like candy to these borrowers, and they don't
really understand the financial obligation once you graduate. A six
month deferment period is the blink of an eye. I mean,
(15:20):
it's it's literally nothing before they have to start paying
back their student loans.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Yeah. Also the aspect of people trying to get their
life together after graduating, they haven't got they haven't gone
into the economy yet, they've been working yet, and you
spend to say that a loan. And another question I
had was what people I have argued is, you know,
you're being a really stringent on student borrowers who are
(15:50):
even less than I think five percent compared to the
people the corporations that borrowed billions of dollars that they
federal government build out. And so people are kind of
struggling to see the two in the same gain.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
No, absolutely, so it's definitely a catch twenty two. And
again we have to take a step back here. But
the train has left the station. This thing is going
to happen one way or the other. So the barrowers
have to be very very proactive. They cannot just kind
of close their eyes and hope for the best.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Here.
Speaker 4 (16:33):
They have to go to Studentaid dot gov or the
Department of Education. That's the only two resources that a
borrower should go to, because unfortunately, the bad actors have
already entered this time and space because they are going
to prey upon these barrowers who are starting to panic
(16:54):
and they're going to get scammed out of even more
of their hard earned money. So it's GOV or the
Department of Education that is the only two resources that
borrowers should go to. Now, the good news is that
they've taken tremendous steps to streamline the process for applying
for these income driven repayment plans. And believe it or not,
(17:18):
some of those repayment plans are coming out at zero
dollars a month. That's the payment because they're not making
any money. The problem is again with the communications from
the student loan servicers, from the government for the federally
backed student loans and the borrowers. So you gotta go
(17:39):
and get yourself into an income driven repayment plan so
that you can not the fault on the loan not
kill your credit any further. A thirty day late payment
on a student loan could easily cost the borrower fifty
points of their credit score, which then in turn would
cost them that much more money for every other financial transaction.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
We also talked to Alan Collins, who is over Student
Loan Justice says this is all a scam and talked
about the history and how student loan borrowers are stuck
paying back double what they owe.
Speaker 5 (18:16):
The last gas sort of death throws of the federal
student loan program. The fact of the matter is the
entire lenny system is by all rational metrics, it's catastrophically failed.
So two thirds of all borrowers are not paying. Quite frankly,
the pandemic was the nail in the coffin. You know,
(18:37):
even before the pandemic, overhlf of student loan borrowers were
unable to make payments on their loans. And so this
most recent move we see from the Trump administration, it's
really just sort of it's doing an autopsy. You know,
(18:57):
they can try and get blood from a stone. But
the fact of the matter is people just can't pay.
And as we head into a very a very unknown economy,
shall we say, if we head into a recession, even
a mild one, I think we're going to see nonpayment
go from two thirds to something like eighty percent. And
(19:22):
so this is a really, really kind of a vicious
move on the part of the Department of Education and
the entire student loan industry. The government, by the way,
has gotten its money back from the borrowers on these loans.
The one point seven billion dollars outstanding is by and
large interest. You know, this is a predatory, hyper inflationary
(19:46):
loan scam from which bankruptcy protections have been taken, statutes
of limitations have been stripped. You know, that makes these
loans both immortal, and it gives the lenders green light
to hyper and plate loans and engage in all manner
of predatory abuse.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
How do you get past the argument that people make that, well,
I shouldn't have to pay for somebody else's education.
Speaker 5 (20:18):
I love that nobody is paying for people's student loans.
The taxpayers have made back basically every nickel that they
have lent out in student loans to the borrowers. We're
talking about profit, you know, the government does not make
a profit on anything. And even Donald Trump in twenty fifteen,
(20:40):
he was wondering, he said, he said, why is the
government making a profit on these loans? Why do we
see student loans as a revenue source. It makes no sense,
and it doesn't If you look at the cash flows
of the Department of Education going back before twenty twenty,
you'll see that they were getting back in payments from
the borrowers pretty much every nickel that they were lending out.
(21:01):
And so this is a broken, failed loan program. And
people who say that the tax that this is going
to cost, the cancelation costs the taxpayers, they just don't
know what they're talking about.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Where do we go from here, though, you know, because
people are people are scared to death now, people especially
student loan bars, and the Apartment in Education is going
into inactivity as far as the student loan situation.
Speaker 5 (21:32):
Yeah, it's it's the wild West out there. You know,
nobody knows how this is going to go. I urge everybody.
If you can't pay, you really should bulletproof yourself. And
that means different things to different people. Maybe become a
ten ninety nine employee contractor instead of an employee. Uh,
maybe do other things to shield your assets. But it's
(21:55):
gonna get really brutal. The only good advice I have
for anyone out there is to fight and come to
student loans Justice dot Org help us fight for the
return of the constitutionally enshrining bankruptcy rights that should have
never been taken away from these loans. We've got the
student loan borrowers have zero power, and the reason is
(22:17):
that bankruptcy rights which exists for all other loans, all
other borrowers, they've been strict from student loans. We've got
to get our bankruptcy leverage return. Whether anybody wants to
file or whatever, file that, that's not important. We've got
to have that power back. When we have that leverage back,
they're going to handle They're going to have to cancel
student loans very broadly, they're going to have to knock
(22:38):
off interests, they're going to have to do fair negotiated settlements,
et cetera. And that's without anybody having to file. But
we've got to get that right return. Really all, they're
very good reason. The founding fathers called for uniform bankruptcy
rights in the constitution, and this is it. This is
what they were afraid of.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
What do you say to people who are are now
in a situation where the the the the government is
putting everything on their hands for the most part, well,
you know.
Speaker 6 (23:13):
The.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Government's blaming him for all the ills of of the
of the country. As far as we the people are,
the people aren't paying what's due to this.
Speaker 5 (23:32):
Yeah, you know, it's really easy to try and blame
the borrowers, to try and blame the victims of this failed,
blown scam, And that's what they're doing in the media.
They're making this the borrowers look bad and trying to
put a guilt on us. But this is not a
bad borrower problem. This is a failed loan scam. This
(23:53):
is not the borrower's fault. The people who architected this
unconstitutional scam know full well what they were doing. And
I tell people, don't believe the propaganda. This is not
your fault. You know, lending systems fail from time to time.
We saw the subprime home mortgage crisis a couple decade
or so ago. We saw the SNL crisis in the eighties.
(24:17):
The federal student loan program is more catastrophically failed than
either of those. And you know, in the big picture
of things, these are only student loans. This is not
nuclear launch codes or world peace and war. And you know,
it's I think it's been blown a lot out of perspective.
Speaker 7 (24:35):
But you know, it's a scam.
Speaker 5 (24:39):
People shouldn't be cowed and discouraged by all the propaganda
out there when two thirds of the people aren't able
to pay. There's a lot more of us than there
are of them, and they can try and spin it
any way they want, But the fact of the matter
is the loans will not be paid, period, So have
(25:01):
some mathematical fact the loans will not be paid. The
loans absolutely will be canceled. Now, whether that happens sooner
or later, that's really the question. We're fighting for. Sooner,
as soon as we get our constitutional bankruptcy rights return,
that'll happen.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
I'm just saying when you start, when you start scaring
people and they're in garnishing wages and garnishing patients, that
that puts fear in a lot of people that you
know that, hey something, what do I do?
Speaker 6 (25:32):
Whip me?
Speaker 4 (25:35):
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 5 (25:36):
This is this is lending tieranny. This is government tyranny.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
You know.
Speaker 5 (25:40):
The founding John Adams himself said there are a few
ways to conquer and enslave the country. If one is
by the sword, the other is by debt. And people
are going to a lot of people are going to
be forced to be running around with the tailing between
their legs. I tell people, uh, if you're facing a
wage garnishment, talk to your boss and explain to them
(26:01):
what an unconstitutional scam this is. And tell your boss
to tell the collection goons on the other side of
the phone to come back with the court order. You know,
if employers simply refuse to do the garnishment the collection companies,
they will move on down the list and try and
find an easier target. But it's it's going to be rough.
(26:25):
It's going to be brutal, and that's just a fact.
We saw this coming from quite quite a while, quite
a ways back. But I tell people, don't lose heart,
and remember the founding fathers are on our side, and
we've got to fight for the return of bankruptcy protections.
And people like John Cornyn, for example, are on our side.
(26:46):
John Cornyn, Texas Senator, believe it or not, Republican, he
sponsored a very good bill that would return bankruptcy writes
to student loans. It would class some money back from
the colleges. I think that's pretty but everybody who knows
anything about this student loan program including Cornyn and many
(27:06):
other Republicans. They know this lineing system is failed, they
know it's unconstitutional. They know that they have to return
bankruptcy rights to the loans.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
But they've got to be pushed.
Speaker 5 (27:16):
And that's what we have to do. We have to
push them.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
That was Alan Collins with Student Loan Justice. You can
find them online and on Facebook at Student Loan Justice.
Speaker 4 (27:29):
Hi.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
This is Steve Gallington, producer and host of the People's News.
If you have a story that needs to be told,
come to us. We accept fully produced audio, written material,
or just give us the idea and we will run
with it. Shiny new one hour episodes of The People's
News drop each Sunday on The People's News podcast, hosted
(27:51):
by spreaker dot com and linked to my website Gallington
dot com. Artifacts from the civil rights movement are being
removed from the National Museum for African American History and
Culture in Washington, d C. Reverend Amos Brown, a pastor
in civil rights activist for more than five decades, received
an email from the museum informing him that the Bible
(28:14):
he carried during civil rights protests with the Reverend doctor
Martin Luther King as well as other pieces he donated
would soon be returned to him. The museum opened in
twenty sixteen as part of the Smithsonian. The Corrupt and
criminal Trump administration has accused the Smithsonian that it has
been part of a divisive race centered ideology. Closing the
(28:36):
Smithsonian is part of his March twenty seventh executive order
aiming to correct what he says is truth and sanity
in American history. For more on this, we talked to
professor and human resource management consultant Dante King. His new
book is Diagnosing Whiteness and Anti Blackness.
Speaker 7 (28:56):
Yeah, I think it is tragic what we're seeing as
far as the removal of artifacts from the National Smithsonian Museum,
the African American Museum of History and Culture. And I
think it's just everything that has been experienced in this
country over the last you know, some people say ten years,
(29:20):
some people say thirty, forty fifty, some people say the
last four centuries. It's been leading up to this, a
kind of fascism and anti black hate that has always
existed in the United States of America. I just think
that we're seeing in real time activities that speak to
(29:43):
the nature of anti blackness. And the resentment, the long
held resentment that has been harbored where black people are concerned.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
What brings us up though, I mean all of a sudden,
it has always been this whole, this fear of black
history or not knowing the truth, and a lot of
it's a lot of black history is hidden. Anyway, we
don't talk about the total riots, let alone all the
other riots who went along with with that. Why are
(30:16):
they targeting a Bible which this Disa administration is supposedly
very Christian oriented.
Speaker 7 (30:25):
Well, I think they're doing things such as, for example,
in the press release, it talked about, you know the
contract that I think doctor Amos Brown had loaned the
Bible to the museum, and at a certain point there
was a contract in place regarding the loan and so
(30:46):
it's expiring. So they're using that as the excuse to say, oh,
we're just returning this artifact back to this person because
the contract is expiring. But that's not what this is.
Little by little, they want to decay instruct that museum.
And I believe this administration and supporters of this administration
(31:09):
don't think that that museum a museum that highlights the
experiences of African Americans in this country that they do
not believe that that museum has any place in the
American story and in American history. And they're talking about,
for instance, you know, a museum like that that focuses
(31:29):
on black people's experiences as being something that divides people
by race. And so in that type of thinking, that
type of perverted logic, they are centering the white experience
as the primary and main experience and asserting that anything
outside of the white racial experience has will somehow cause division,
(31:54):
and it would. I think that what is so profound
about that, profoundly ignorant that thinking, and sadistic in many ways,
is that, you know, the history of this country is
rooted in violence and division, and so that somehow the
(32:15):
telling of the violence, the telling of the division, the
telling of how people have suffered injustice at the hands
of the American government, I mean, wide American institutions, that
that somehow is the the impetus for a division. Absolutely not,
absolutely not. But we're living in a time, We're living
(32:38):
in a season where facts do not matter. It's all
about how these very terroristic, sadistic, psychopathic people feel, and
it's about them prioritizing their feelings, that the prioritizing hatred,
prioritizing resentment, and they, you know, control these institutions by
force and have maintained them by force through force, and
(33:02):
so whatever they say and or want to do in
this moment, it is prevailing.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
The aspect of we're not talking about as we as
we remember the Holocaust remembrance, you guys talking about the
same thing, you know that's on. Is that over some
a different level of blackness?
Speaker 7 (33:26):
For sure. I think when we speak about, for example,
the Jewish experience in the United States of America, for example,
where like Israel is concerned, for instance, that experience is
not necessarily highlighting or amplifying the Afro Jewish experience or
(33:50):
you know, the the era Lash Jewish experience. It's it's
prioritizing a white Eurocentric Jewish experience. And that has been
the case really since nineteen forty eight when you had
the establishment of the Jewish state in Israel, or re
(34:10):
establishment as some would say. And so you know, there
is a regard that is held in this country regarding
the white Ashkenazi Jewish experience that is very different than
the regard for Sephardi Jewish experiences, Afro Jewish experiences, and
(34:34):
so we wouldn't I don't believe that we will see
the same energy being directed toward, you know, the Holocaust
Museum of Remembrance in the ways that we are seeing
the African American Museum be targeted. There is an entirely
different regard. And I think you know a lot of
(34:55):
my work and what I explore my book Diagnosing Whiteness
and Anti Blackness is the evolution of the anti black
psychology that develops in this country based on how laws
are implemented to direct people to specifically target black people.
And that has that's evidenced through the colonial period and
(35:18):
also throughout the evolution of the building of the United
States of America. When you look at how state legislatures,
the court system, the federal government, the federal legislature, Congress,
as well as the Supreme Court targeted black people, not
just through the period where black people remained enslaves under
the United States government, but when we talk about Jim Crow,
(35:42):
that is what we're speaking about. And it's not just
the Plus v. Ferguson case, but it is a litany
and an array of court decisions at the state level,
legislation at the state level, court decisions at the Supreme
Court level that specific sickly targeted African Americans said that
(36:03):
they could not go to certain schools, they could not
live in certain homes. That's Corgan B. Buckley, the racial
restrictive covenants and also the racial zoning ordinances and so
on and so forth. Right, the black people, even as citizens,
we're not guaranteed equal economic privileges. And that's under the
slaughter House Cases of eighteen seventy three. So we just
(36:23):
have to understand the reality not just the fascism, but
of a terroristic, genocidal state where black people have been concerned.
And that's why what I believe all of this is
underlied by We're.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Not even taught in our community. Were not even talked
talked about some of the issues that you just treated,
let alone LGBTQ in the community. You know how that
played a historic part in our community. We never talked,
We never talked that, never never even mentioned that. And
(37:00):
that's something that that's something that we don't do ourselves,
let alone in the public schools which is now in Texas,
and they're they're bringing out vouchers and going to private
school that's even less of history that's not being taught.
Speaker 7 (37:15):
Absolutely, and I would say that it's not our fault
that we don't know this information. I didn't know it until,
you know, I had the time and space in my
life to really sit down and read, and I became
in what's you know, termed as an autodidact, where I mean,
I graduated with a degree in African American studies from
(37:37):
a California college university, and then I went to school,
I further my education. I got a master's degree, you know,
I have an honorary doctor and at one point I
was in a doctoral program until they tried to redirect
my work. But I didn't know, you know, ninety five
percent of the things that I now know, and I
had to really sit down and study, you know, colony
(37:59):
by colony, state by state, and then look in the
federal archives in terms of how the American legal system
really worked intentionally and in a very aggressive manner to
target black people, to target African Americans. And when you
look at, for example, how Ivy League institutions such as Harvard, Columbia, Yale,
(38:22):
william and Mary College, how they all held at one
point academic disciplines where people could go and study black
inferiority and how you know, the white political and legal
system used what they perceived at the time and what
they called at the time scientific philosophies that said that
(38:44):
black people were not intellectually capable of developing fully mentally,
intellectually or morally. The study of phrenology that said that
we had, you know, bumps on our brains that constituted
a particular timidity in in you know, the black body,
that black physiological makeup, that those things should serve as
(39:06):
the justifications as to why we needed to go to
different schools, as to why we needed to live in,
you know, different communities. They used what they called science,
a polluted mindset, a perversion corrupted mindset to justify the
then actions that they then begin to take against African
(39:29):
Americans and black people. And I really don't believe we
fully understand white European attitudes towards black people. From the
minute they are born. They're born into a society where
they are everything around them reinforces that black people are
inferior based on the conditions and the structures that they've
set up in the society. And they have also benefited.
(39:52):
They benefit from what I term in my book as
systems and institutions that run on the basis of wide
affirmative action. All of these institutions were set up by
white people for white people through force. We have to
deal with the facts of this reality. Through force, they
have erected their institutions, instituted their culture, and control everything.
(40:15):
You know. I think it is naive for us to
sit back and not consider the fact that we learn
our education through one language, that is the language of
the people who oppressed us, the religion, the religious doctrine Christianity,
that we subscribe to. That doctrine just so happily, out
of the thousands of languages that exist in the world,
(40:38):
that doctrine just so happens to conveniently be have been
translated into English. We have to call into question all
of the things that have been formed our existence in
a society where our ancestors have been oppressed and where
we still remain oppressed. It is so such an unfortunate situation.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
To the museum, what do you think is going to
happen now?
Speaker 7 (41:03):
Well, I think I mean, as we saw with the
overturning of the affirmative action policies in twenty twenty two
or twenty twenty three, that was the Supreme Court decision
where Ivy League institutions were concerned. We see the attacks
on DEI, which that's really an attack on people who
are not white, who are not male, who are not
(41:24):
able bodied or white women as well. That's what that is.
The DEI moniker or that the pursuit of that is
aimed directly at black people too. There's a huge element
of that that is specifically aimed at black people. So
I think the erosion of access of opportunity for black
(41:45):
people all the way around. I said this two three
years ago when I saw what was happening with that
affirmative Action decision. We are in for such a predicament.
This is reminiscent of what occurred during the eighteen seventies,
eighteen eighties, eighteen nineties into up until the nineteen sixties.
(42:08):
And this is Jim Crow on steroids. And for black
people who don't understand the history, who don't fully understand
where we are in this moment, who have benefited people
like myself, people like you, who benefited from the actions
that were taken by black people throughout the early twentieth
century headed into the nineteen forties, fifties, sixties, people who
(42:31):
put their lives on the line. We are we have
returned to that moment, and there will be political violence.
I believe there will be bloodshed. There's just a lot
that's going to unfold from all of this, and we
haven't even begun to see the fallout just yet. And
it's I'm very fearful of what can happen and what
will happen, And yeah, what is happening? I really am.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
That was Dante King. His new book is Diagnosing Whiteness,
Anti Blackness. As federal support for key USDA programs are
cut without thought by the corrupt and criminal Trump GOP,
small scale Texas farmers warn of the damaging effects on
local agriculture, community health, and school nutrition across the state.
(43:18):
The cuts, both made and proposed, will affect the Local
Food Purchase Assistance program and the local Food for Schools programs.
These are managed by the Texas Department of Agriculture, and
these USDA initiatives connected Texas grown produce directly to schools
and local nonprofits. Their success relied on a crucial partner,
(43:39):
the common market Texas. The common Market Texas worked with
a community and is located here in the third ward
in Houston, Texas. The cuts to the USDA will be
devastating to local farmers in and around Houston. We talked
to Jeremy Logan, executive director of Common Market Texas.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
Can you talk about what had being able to USDA
food program and why it conserves teks As farmers.
Speaker 6 (44:04):
So the USDA canceled the third installment of a program
called LFPA, which is Local Food Purchasing Assistance. We're currently
in the second version of that, and in December, the
USBA announced that there would be a third version that
(44:25):
would start as soon as the second version was over.
The second version was originally meant to end in May
of this year. May thirty first was going to be
the last day, so they canceled the newest version of that.
They've extended the timeframe for the current one, but they
(44:46):
didn't add any money to it. So it's just a
matter of we have more time to utilize those funds.
But particularly here at the Common Market, our model as
a nonprofit is to purchase our food directly from local farmers,
so we source only from within the state of Texas.
(45:07):
Every piece of fruit, vegetable, rice, chicken, ground, beef. Everything
that we purchased comes from the state of Texas. It's
grown and it's produced in the state of Texas full stop.
The other thing that we do is we actually pay
the farmers directly. We pay them full market price. We
don't accept any donated products. We're not a food bank.
(45:28):
We are partners with the farmers and with our distribution
partners who actually help us distribute the food to the
communities here in Texas. So without this additional funding, we
don't really have the resources to be able to support
these farmers. And considering that in December it was announced
(45:52):
that LFPAW five, which was going to be this third
version of LFPA, was approved, started to plan with our
farmers for what the rest of twenty twenty five and
twenty twenty six was going to look like. So we
talked to them about crop planning and talked to them
about investments that they can make into their farm because
(46:13):
we had good evidence that this program was going to
continue and that we all of the money that we
received from this goes into either our operations or paying
the farmers directly. So it's a big hit, no question,
and it.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
Was the reason why USDA is doing this is they
are they talk to you guys at all.
Speaker 7 (46:35):
They have not.
Speaker 6 (46:36):
We work directly with the Texas Department of Agriculture, and
they simply said that the program has been canceled and
that it's out of their hands.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Saturday their hands. But the I know the Trump administration
was saying how great they're support they're getting from farmers
and how much support they're given to farmers, especially local farmers.
Speaker 7 (46:58):
Well, so I didn't say that.
Speaker 6 (47:00):
What I said was the USDA canceled LFPA twenty five,
and without LFPA twenty five, we don't have those resources
that we use to support local farmers. Our mission is
to connect urban communities to local food from sustainable family farms,
so we work directly with those farms. Those farms have
(47:21):
access theoretically to other funding. So if that's what you're
referring to, I don't know anything about that because I'm
not a farmer. We run a nonprofit regional food distribution outlet,
and we utilize LFPA funding, which comes from the USDA
through the Texas Department of Agriculture, to support those farmers.
(47:41):
That's what we use that money for. But we have
other resources that we also use to support those farmers
and to get this food into underserved areas. That is
our mission, that is what we do.
Speaker 7 (47:54):
But LFPA was.
Speaker 6 (47:56):
A great program that really helped support these local and
since we exclusively work with Texas farmers, and we exclusively
work with small and medium sized farmers, oftentimes first time farmers,
that was a huge boon. And now that we don't
have that funding, we're scrambling to find it elsewhere, and
in the meantime, we don't have those resources to be
(48:17):
able to continue to purchase, particularly at the volume that
we were doing before without this funding. If the TDA
comes up with other programs, which they have said they're
working on, then that could help solve that problem. But
LFPA was a great program and the canceling of it
has has significant impacts here in Texas.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
Can you talk about some of the challenges that farmers
in Texas have?
Speaker 6 (48:44):
Yeah, So, climate is a big part of it. We
are a seasonal group here because everything we supply is
and everything we purchase is locally procured. So theonality, the
soil type, the temperature, the weather, those all affect Texas farms.
(49:06):
So this time last year we still had access to strawberries.
Currently we don't because there was too much rain at
kind of the wrong time. This time last year, we
were talking about bringing on watermelons from certain parts of
the state and those just aren't available yet because other
parts of the state are suffering from drought. So our
(49:29):
farmers really need consistent year round support and they need
to be able to know that if there is some
sort of a weather event or if there is some
sort of a drought. There's a relationship between you know,
the southern border of Texas and Mexico in terms of
exchanging water rights, those have not been fully executed, and
(49:50):
in many ways, you know, the Texas farmers suffer because
they don't get the water at the right time. So
those are some serious challenges.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
That we have.
Speaker 6 (49:59):
But also there are other programs that had been run
by the USDA and by the Texas Department of Agriculture,
like LSS, which is Local Food for Schools, that give
schools access to funds to spend locally. And so if
we're talking about really supporting small and medium sized Texas
(50:19):
family farmers, those programs incentivize in this particular case, K
through twelve public schools to purchase locally. It's a lot
cheaper to buy produce from Mexico or from other places,
depending on the seasonality, it's a little bit more expensive
to buy it locally. And so when there are programs
(50:41):
that help support local and that encourage purchasing locally, that
really drives the Texas farm economy.
Speaker 2 (50:50):
Can you back up a bit, you said that is
cheaper to buy from Mexico and other places, it is
locally correct and why and while with that, you know
it seems like you know, we'll explain it, please sure.
Speaker 6 (51:09):
So again, large farms have the benefit of scale. Farms
in Mexico have the benefit of having a different labor
model than we have here in the United States. They're
different regulations. So small local farms just have to spend
more per acre than large farms or farms in other countries.
(51:31):
So when we when we want to support Texas farms,
we need to be able to create programs that incentivize
schools and other local entities to purchase locally. And that's
what LFS did, That's what LFPA did. The l in
both of those is local, and so we at the
(51:52):
common Market Texas work exclusively in the state of Texas,
and so we by definition, procure only local products. We
by definition you're only directly from small and medium sized
family farms, and we purchase from them. We don't accept
donations from them. We are really invested in those farm programs.
(52:14):
We provide them with technical assistance, We provide them with
pr and marketing materials, all for free. We offer no
interest loans to these farmers that they pay back through
purchase orders. We make long term commitments to these farmers
with our purchase orders, but without the customers to then
buy those products, our model doesn't work. And so when
(52:34):
Local Food for Schools incentivizes k through twelve public schools
to purchase locally, they can then come to us and
we have that direct line and that direct connected, that
direct connection to these local farms.
Speaker 2 (52:49):
What about he kind of he kind of talked about
it a little bit, but he explained how the food
program of fixed students in schools around the state.
Speaker 6 (53:00):
So there's a couple of components to that. First and foremost,
the further any piece of particularly like fresh produce, travels,
the less nutritional value it has when it reaches when
it reaches its destination. Time and distance are the biggest
factors in terms of the nutritional value of fresh fruits
(53:22):
and vegetables. So if they have to come from other
states or even from other countries, that's time and that's
a distance, and so those products just lose some of
their nutritional value, they lose some of their freshness. But
the other part of it is kids are in school
to get an education, and we want to educate them
on what farming looks like in their communities. And so
(53:43):
by connecting them directly with these farms, we really put
a face to the product. As I mentioned, we offer
them technical support. These are the farmers. We offer the
farmers technical support, we offer them pr and marketing materials.
So when we have a school that purchases from us,
we share with them a farmer profile, which is we
have digital and physical copies of it. But it's a nice,
(54:06):
you know, eight and a half x eleven glossy with photos
and with the story of the farm, with the location
of the farm, with the products that they serve, with
their backstory, and we put those we display those in
the schools, and so when the kids come through the
cafeteria lines and they see those Brussels sprouts or they
see those peaches. They then can look up and see
the farm that those came from and they can understand, oh,
(54:28):
I know where Kelgan, Texas is. I know where these
different places are, And all of a sudden they have
that connection of where their food is actually coming from,
and it sparks in them that curiosity. It gives them
that sense of place. It teaches them that food has
grown all over the world, but we grow our own
food right here in Texas and we want to be
(54:50):
able to share that story.
Speaker 2 (54:53):
Can you tell people about that don't know about Common
Market Texas and how they can get involved and how
they and trying to have more information.
Speaker 7 (55:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (55:02):
So we've been around as a total entity since two
thousand and eight. We were originally started in Philadelphia. We
have four regions, the Mid Atlantic, the Great Lakes, the Southeast,
and then here in Texas. We're located in Houston here
in third Ward. But really the best way to get
(55:23):
involved is to work with the school that your kids
go to, or that you work at, the hospital, the
clinic that you go to, the faith based organization that
you attend, or your local elected officials and say we
want more access to local food. We want more access
(55:44):
to fresh, healthy produce. We want to know that our
tax dollars are going to support our local farmers.
Speaker 4 (55:51):
We at the.
Speaker 6 (55:52):
Common Market manage all of the infrastructure. We do first
mile pickup at the farms, We do last mile delivery
to the district US sites to our customers. We have
our own warehouse here in Third Ward. We have our
own drivers, we have our own trucks, we have our
own full time staff. What we need is for people
to be aware of the fact that we are connecting
(56:15):
small and medium sized sustainable family farms in Texas to
these communities that don't have access to fresh fruits and vegetables,
and we want to be able to improve and increase
the amount of impact that we have with these anchor
institutions that are purchasing our food, whether it's through grant funding,
(56:38):
private funding, or through their own mission driven procurements. So
that's the story that we're trying to tell. We can
connect these communities with these great local farms and we
can provide them with a better product, We can provide
them with a more nutritious product, and we can help
tell that story.
Speaker 1 (56:56):
That was Jeremy Logan, executive director of Common Market Tech
the People's News is a production of Steve Gallington and
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(57:18):
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atgallington dot com. Thank you,
It's the week of May eleventh, twenty twenty five, and
this is what's on the people's news. The new pope
brings hope. Student loan borrowers are told to pay up
or else. Texas farmers hurt by the latest trumpion cuts
to the USDA. Artifacts removed from the African American Museum
(00:25):
in DC. All that and more on the People's News.
I'm Steve Gallington. This is the people's News, and the
People's news starts now. The world has a new pope,
Pope Leo the fourteenth. He is from Chicago and is
(00:47):
the first American pope an ally of the late Head
of the Vatican. The sixty nine year old Chicago native
was made a cardinal in twenty twenty three by Pope
Francis and previously oversaw the largest art diocese in North America.
His ministry in Peru and possession of Peruvian citizenship will
enable him to engage with the Spanish speaking world, where
(01:09):
nearly forty percent of the world's Catholics reside. We talked
to Rice University sociologist and religious scholar Craig Considine.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
We have a new pope and he is from the
United States, which we were talking earlier, and I didn't think.
I didn't think a pope from the United States would
get it. A lot of people were thinking of a
Philippine or African pope, but that didn't go our way.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
It did not. We have our first American Pope, our
second pope from the Americas, obviously Francis being the first
from Argentina. Our new Pope also has a lot of
experience in the Spanish speaking world in Peru, and I
think that was one of the big reasons why he
got it, because about forty of all the Catholics in
(02:01):
the world are from Spanish speaking countries. So I think
being an American didn't hurt him, and I don't think
it necessarily helped him either. And perhaps that's one of
the beauties of the Conclave, that they're really going to
character and conduct and merit over any other type of
(02:23):
national affiliation. And we also know that our new Pope
was a relative newcomer to the Vatican. Pope Francis put
him into the College of Cardinals just two years ago.
But in the College of Cardinals and in the Vatican,
he had a very important position as the Prefect of
(02:44):
the Dicasty of bishops, which is basically the bureaucratic leg
of the Vatican that appoints bishops around the world. So
that's a very significant position that he was in. And
I think also we had eighty two of the one
(03:05):
hundred and thirty three cardinals that voted in the conclave
being appointed by Francis, so eighty two. And you can
bet that a lot of these new cardinals from the
periphery of the Church, from countries like Mongolia and Haiti
and even Sweden knew who Cardinal Prevost was because of
(03:27):
his position. So very interesting. Pick certainly surprised a lot
of people, and perhaps Americans more than anything.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Then. His background is, you know, in social justice issues
is also important at this time, and I think I
was thinking in other shows on another station, we're talking
about it. Just now he has a It was kind
of a balancing act of Americans. People look in America
(04:01):
and they look at the US presidency versus now we
look at the pope and what he does in his
issues that he's driving for in the past. Is that
something that made me kind of play in his favor.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Yeah, I think so. What we know of him, as
you mentioned him being Leo Leo connected to Leo the thirteenth,
and Leo the thirteenth was also understood to be like
the People's Pope, the pope on the side of the
of the workers, and he really initiated the social teachings
(04:38):
of the Catholic Church. So I think what we're going
to see with Pope Leo the fourteenth is a continuation
of Francis's emphasis on social justice. I think We're also
going to see a continuation of Francis's work with the environment,
and with immigration and with interfaith dialogue. But this Pope,
(05:04):
I think, is not going to be as progressive as
Francis was when it comes to some social and cultural issues,
so same sex marriage, LGBTQ issues, the ordination of women,
the treatment of divorced people within the church. I think
our new Pope is going to take a much more
moderate approach there. So I think most American Catholics might
(05:30):
like that. The younger generation may not, They may want
someone more like Pope Francis. But I think Leo will
be attractive to a lot of American Catholics if he
can kind of toe the line on some of these
social and cultural issues. Now, it's also important to note.
Yesterday I went through Cardinal Prevost's x account, and he
(05:54):
had recently in February, I believe, retweeted some posts and
articles that were highly critical of the Trump administration and
particularly JD. Vance and their position on immigration. So what
we're going to see with this new pope is likely
someone who would be critical of countries that take a
(06:18):
more draconian, if you want to call it, that approach
to immigration. So it's going to be very interesting to
see the type of relationship that he builds, if he
builds one at all with President Trump. Obviously, right now
everything is off to a good start. President Trump said
this is great, He's an American. But this is something
(06:40):
I think that we all need to pay close attention to.
What kind of relationship might they have because these are
arguably two of the most important people, the most powerful
people in the world.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Does this expand now people, you know, even though the
pope represents the Catholic Church, you think this is a lady
ban the people that are looking for the church for
answers or maybe the expand to the membership of the
Catholic Church.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
I think so one thing to note here that's important
is that Popelia the fourteenth is also an Augustinian and
Augustinian's part of their kind of ethos is missionary work.
They're big into missionary work, and we know that our
new pope did two dozen years missionary work in Peru.
(07:35):
So I think we're going to see a continuation of this,
this kind of outreach to the periphery, speaking to the poor,
speaking about things that are unfolding around us. So I
think we'll see a continuation of much of what Francis
did in terms of reaching out to the periphery and
trying to make the church a bigger tent.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
If that makes sense, Yeah, it does, it does? What
what what happens now? As far as you know what
you see as a future of the Catholic Church, you
know which is yeah, you know, we were looking at
the diversity level and trying to expanding the diversity of
(08:20):
the Catholic Church in a hierarchy. Does this change anything?
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Well, one thing we do know about the church at
the moment, at least with the conclave, it was the
most diverse conclave ever. It was the most non European
enclaves ever as well. I don't know if you watched
them taking their oath in the Systine Chapel, and it
was quite remarkable. You know, every cardinal comes up and
(08:52):
says their oath, and just to see the diversity and
all the different languages and accents. It's a crew represent
presentation of the Church. So we do see the Church
expanding outward and making sure that those periphery communities have
a little bit more representation in the spaces of power
(09:14):
in the Vatican itself, because that's obviously the hub of
the dynamics. I do think one thing that the next
pope has to tackle is the waning Catholic identity of Europe.
So we know historically obviously this has been the epicenter
of Christendom really not just the Catholic Church. Europe has,
(09:39):
you know, centuries of history linked to Christianity. But we
see over in Europe a waning of the faith, and
I think that that may have hurt some of the
European cardinals in the conclave. I think perhaps the cardinals
(09:59):
thought it might be a good idea to have someone
in a from a country with let's just refer to
it as like a stronger Catholic presence. So the numbers
in America are quite interesting. Talk about the future of
like the American Catholic Church. There's a lot of different
types of numbers out there. Some are saying that the
(10:22):
faith is kind of waning and secularization is coming, but
there have been some interesting poles and studies done recently
that shows that the faith is actually growing among the youth.
We're seeing a lot of American young American converts to Catholicism,
and I think one of the reasons why that may
have happened is because Pope Francis, I think, deliberately spoke
(10:47):
on issues that young people, particularly Americans, care a lot
about a lot of these social and cultural issues that
we'd previously discussed. There's something I didn't the first time
I've heard that that the Catholic Church is that growing. Yeah,
it depends like like kind of what you're looking at,
Like it is growing in certain in certain segments, But
(11:11):
then we also have to like consider like what is growing,
Like is this just like people who identify as Catholic
or are we seeing people who are more interes in
their commitment to their faith? You know? So, like when
we're talking about growing, is it just numbers or is
it like impact, Is it involvement.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
The corrupt and criminal Trump GOP is also shutting down
the Department of Education, and they announced that they will
start the process to get back student loan money. Since
the pandemic, federal student loan borrowers have been protected for
most part from the harshest consequences of not paying back
their loans. All that ended on May fifth, the Secretary
(11:54):
of Education says the FEDS will start the process of
taking money from the paychecks of borrowers who've missed their
payments for two hundred and seventy days or more. What
does this all mean. We talked first to Paul Auster,
who is referred to as America's credit repairman. He spoke
on what you can do to save your credit report
and your credit.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
The Department of Education released some numbers last week and
they're staggering. We all know that there's a lot of
student loan borrowers out there that are in trouble, but
here the latest numbers tell us this. There's forty there's
over a little over forty two million barwers that oh
more than one point six trillion dollars in debt. Out
of that forty two million, five million of those borrowers
(12:38):
are at least a year late, and some of them
five six years. There's an additional four million barrowers that
are in what we call late stage delinquency, and that's
your at least ninety days or three months behind. So
you put those those two numbers together, you're close to
ten million borrowers that will be in default within the
(12:59):
next of months. That's almost twenty five percent of the
entire student loan portfolio. That's not good for anybody, the borrowers,
our economy, it's not good for anyone now.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
But on the flipping in of that going in and
taking away they're they're taking away their their paycheck or
or of some of the things I've heard that the
federal government's talking about doing is taking away their paychecks
or their reef the tax refunds, and people are already struggling.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
Yeah, and again that's where the overall economy is going
to suffer that much more if this actually goes through.
You're talking about removing because if you have ten million
people that go into default, they have collections and judgments
that are filed against them. Those are ten million people
that you're basically removing from the financing part of the economy.
(14:00):
They wouldn't be able to get mortgages, they wouldn't be
able to buy cars, probably not going to get approved
for a traditional credit card. So this is serious business,
and I feel I can empathize with the borrowers because
it's been a roller coaster. We're going to forgive the debt.
We're not going to forgive the debt. It's a it's
a political football, and it's been confusing. But the reality is,
(14:21):
as of October of last year, they were the borrowers
were told to start making the payments on their student
loans again, and just millions of millions have failed to
do so. So this is a predicament that we have
to get out of this short term situation and ultimately
figure out why are tuitions just so out of control
(14:44):
it I usually liking it to like the healthcare system.
You know, insurance companies are paying that much more out
for a band aid, you know, a tissue, anything like that,
and it gets covered by the insurance companies, but we're ultimately.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Paying for that.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
It's the same thing the student loan servicing companies. The
lenders have just been you know, lending money, they're giving
it away like candy to these borrowers, and they don't
really understand the financial obligation once you graduate. A six
month deferment period is the blink of an eye. I mean,
(15:20):
it's it's literally nothing before they have to start paying
back their student loans.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Yeah. Also the aspect of people trying to get their
life together after graduating, they haven't got they haven't gone
into the economy yet, they've been working yet, and you
spend to say that a loan. And another question I
had was what people I have argued is, you know,
you're being a really stringent on student borrowers who are
(15:50):
even less than I think five percent compared to the
people the corporations that borrowed billions of dollars that they
federal government build out. And so people are kind of
struggling to see the two in the same gain.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
No, absolutely, so it's definitely a catch twenty two. And
again we have to take a step back here. But
the train has left the station. This thing is going
to happen one way or the other. So the barrowers
have to be very very proactive. They cannot just kind
of close their eyes and hope for the best.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Here.
Speaker 4 (16:33):
They have to go to Studentaid dot gov or the
Department of Education. That's the only two resources that a
borrower should go to, because unfortunately, the bad actors have
already entered this time and space because they are going
to prey upon these barrowers who are starting to panic
(16:54):
and they're going to get scammed out of even more
of their hard earned money. So it's GOV or the
Department of Education that is the only two resources that
borrowers should go to. Now, the good news is that
they've taken tremendous steps to streamline the process for applying
for these income driven repayment plans. And believe it or not,
(17:18):
some of those repayment plans are coming out at zero
dollars a month. That's the payment because they're not making
any money. The problem is again with the communications from
the student loan servicers, from the government for the federally
backed student loans and the borrowers. So you gotta go
(17:39):
and get yourself into an income driven repayment plan so
that you can not the fault on the loan not
kill your credit any further. A thirty day late payment
on a student loan could easily cost the borrower fifty
points of their credit score, which then in turn would
cost them that much more money for every other financial transaction.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
We also talked to Alan Collins, who is over Student
Loan Justice says this is all a scam and talked
about the history and how student loan borrowers are stuck
paying back double what they owe.
Speaker 5 (18:16):
The last gas sort of death throws of the federal
student loan program. The fact of the matter is the
entire lenny system is by all rational metrics, it's catastrophically failed.
So two thirds of all borrowers are not paying. Quite frankly,
the pandemic was the nail in the coffin. You know,
(18:37):
even before the pandemic, overhlf of student loan borrowers were
unable to make payments on their loans. And so this
most recent move we see from the Trump administration, it's
really just sort of it's doing an autopsy. You know,
(18:57):
they can try and get blood from a stone. But
the fact of the matter is people just can't pay.
And as we head into a very a very unknown economy,
shall we say, if we head into a recession, even
a mild one, I think we're going to see nonpayment
go from two thirds to something like eighty percent. And
(19:22):
so this is a really, really kind of a vicious
move on the part of the Department of Education and
the entire student loan industry. The government, by the way,
has gotten its money back from the borrowers on these loans.
The one point seven billion dollars outstanding is by and
large interest. You know, this is a predatory, hyper inflationary
(19:46):
loan scam from which bankruptcy protections have been taken, statutes
of limitations have been stripped. You know, that makes these
loans both immortal, and it gives the lenders green light
to hyper and plate loans and engage in all manner
of predatory abuse.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
How do you get past the argument that people make that, well,
I shouldn't have to pay for somebody else's education.
Speaker 5 (20:18):
I love that nobody is paying for people's student loans.
The taxpayers have made back basically every nickel that they
have lent out in student loans to the borrowers. We're
talking about profit, you know, the government does not make
a profit on anything. And even Donald Trump in twenty fifteen,
(20:40):
he was wondering, he said, he said, why is the
government making a profit on these loans? Why do we
see student loans as a revenue source. It makes no sense,
and it doesn't If you look at the cash flows
of the Department of Education going back before twenty twenty,
you'll see that they were getting back in payments from
the borrowers pretty much every nickel that they were lending out.
(21:01):
And so this is a broken, failed loan program. And
people who say that the tax that this is going
to cost, the cancelation costs the taxpayers, they just don't
know what they're talking about.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Where do we go from here, though, you know, because
people are people are scared to death now, people especially
student loan bars, and the Apartment in Education is going
into inactivity as far as the student loan situation.
Speaker 5 (21:32):
Yeah, it's it's the wild West out there. You know,
nobody knows how this is going to go. I urge everybody.
If you can't pay, you really should bulletproof yourself. And
that means different things to different people. Maybe become a
ten ninety nine employee contractor instead of an employee. Uh,
maybe do other things to shield your assets. But it's
(21:55):
gonna get really brutal. The only good advice I have
for anyone out there is to fight and come to
student loans Justice dot Org help us fight for the
return of the constitutionally enshrining bankruptcy rights that should have
never been taken away from these loans. We've got the
student loan borrowers have zero power, and the reason is
(22:17):
that bankruptcy rights which exists for all other loans, all
other borrowers, they've been strict from student loans. We've got
to get our bankruptcy leverage return. Whether anybody wants to
file or whatever, file that, that's not important. We've got
to have that power back. When we have that leverage back,
they're going to handle They're going to have to cancel
student loans very broadly, they're going to have to knock
(22:38):
off interests, they're going to have to do fair negotiated settlements,
et cetera. And that's without anybody having to file. But
we've got to get that right return. Really all, they're
very good reason. The founding fathers called for uniform bankruptcy
rights in the constitution, and this is it. This is
what they were afraid of.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
What do you say to people who are are now
in a situation where the the the the government is
putting everything on their hands for the most part, well,
you know.
Speaker 6 (23:13):
The.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Government's blaming him for all the ills of of the
of the country. As far as we the people are,
the people aren't paying what's due to this.
Speaker 5 (23:32):
Yeah, you know, it's really easy to try and blame
the borrowers, to try and blame the victims of this failed,
blown scam, And that's what they're doing in the media.
They're making this the borrowers look bad and trying to
put a guilt on us. But this is not a
bad borrower problem. This is a failed loan scam. This
(23:53):
is not the borrower's fault. The people who architected this
unconstitutional scam know full well what they were doing. And
I tell people, don't believe the propaganda. This is not
your fault. You know, lending systems fail from time to time.
We saw the subprime home mortgage crisis a couple decade
or so ago. We saw the SNL crisis in the eighties.
(24:17):
The federal student loan program is more catastrophically failed than
either of those. And you know, in the big picture
of things, these are only student loans. This is not
nuclear launch codes or world peace and war. And you know,
it's I think it's been blown a lot out of perspective.
Speaker 7 (24:35):
But you know, it's a scam.
Speaker 5 (24:39):
People shouldn't be cowed and discouraged by all the propaganda
out there when two thirds of the people aren't able
to pay. There's a lot more of us than there
are of them, and they can try and spin it
any way they want, But the fact of the matter
is the loans will not be paid, period, So have
(25:01):
some mathematical fact the loans will not be paid. The
loans absolutely will be canceled. Now, whether that happens sooner
or later, that's really the question. We're fighting for. Sooner,
as soon as we get our constitutional bankruptcy rights return,
that'll happen.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
I'm just saying when you start, when you start scaring
people and they're in garnishing wages and garnishing patients, that
that puts fear in a lot of people that you
know that, hey something, what do I do?
Speaker 6 (25:32):
Whip me?
Speaker 4 (25:35):
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 5 (25:36):
This is this is lending tieranny. This is government tyranny.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
You know.
Speaker 5 (25:40):
The founding John Adams himself said there are a few
ways to conquer and enslave the country. If one is
by the sword, the other is by debt. And people
are going to a lot of people are going to
be forced to be running around with the tailing between
their legs. I tell people, uh, if you're facing a
wage garnishment, talk to your boss and explain to them
(26:01):
what an unconstitutional scam this is. And tell your boss
to tell the collection goons on the other side of
the phone to come back with the court order. You know,
if employers simply refuse to do the garnishment the collection companies,
they will move on down the list and try and
find an easier target. But it's it's going to be rough.
(26:25):
It's going to be brutal, and that's just a fact.
We saw this coming from quite quite a while, quite
a ways back. But I tell people, don't lose heart,
and remember the founding fathers are on our side, and
we've got to fight for the return of bankruptcy protections.
And people like John Cornyn, for example, are on our side.
(26:46):
John Cornyn, Texas Senator, believe it or not, Republican, he
sponsored a very good bill that would return bankruptcy writes
to student loans. It would class some money back from
the colleges. I think that's pretty but everybody who knows
anything about this student loan program including Cornyn and many
(27:06):
other Republicans. They know this lineing system is failed, they
know it's unconstitutional. They know that they have to return
bankruptcy rights to the loans.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
But they've got to be pushed.
Speaker 5 (27:16):
And that's what we have to do. We have to
push them.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
That was Alan Collins with Student Loan Justice. You can
find them online and on Facebook at Student Loan Justice.
Speaker 4 (27:29):
Hi.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
This is Steve Gallington, producer and host of the People's News.
If you have a story that needs to be told,
come to us. We accept fully produced audio, written material,
or just give us the idea and we will run
with it. Shiny new one hour episodes of The People's
News drop each Sunday on The People's News podcast, hosted
(27:51):
by spreaker dot com and linked to my website Gallington
dot com. Artifacts from the civil rights movement are being
removed from the National Museum for African American History and
Culture in Washington, d C. Reverend Amos Brown, a pastor
in civil rights activist for more than five decades, received
an email from the museum informing him that the Bible
(28:14):
he carried during civil rights protests with the Reverend doctor
Martin Luther King as well as other pieces he donated
would soon be returned to him. The museum opened in
twenty sixteen as part of the Smithsonian. The Corrupt and
criminal Trump administration has accused the Smithsonian that it has
been part of a divisive race centered ideology. Closing the
(28:36):
Smithsonian is part of his March twenty seventh executive order
aiming to correct what he says is truth and sanity
in American history. For more on this, we talked to
professor and human resource management consultant Dante King. His new
book is Diagnosing Whiteness and Anti Blackness.
Speaker 7 (28:56):
Yeah, I think it is tragic what we're seeing as
far as the removal of artifacts from the National Smithsonian Museum,
the African American Museum of History and Culture. And I
think it's just everything that has been experienced in this
country over the last you know, some people say ten years,
(29:20):
some people say thirty, forty fifty, some people say the
last four centuries. It's been leading up to this, a
kind of fascism and anti black hate that has always
existed in the United States of America. I just think
that we're seeing in real time activities that speak to
(29:43):
the nature of anti blackness. And the resentment, the long
held resentment that has been harbored where black people are concerned.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
What brings us up though, I mean all of a sudden,
it has always been this whole, this fear of black
history or not knowing the truth, and a lot of
it's a lot of black history is hidden. Anyway, we
don't talk about the total riots, let alone all the
other riots who went along with with that. Why are
(30:16):
they targeting a Bible which this Disa administration is supposedly
very Christian oriented.
Speaker 7 (30:25):
Well, I think they're doing things such as, for example,
in the press release, it talked about, you know the
contract that I think doctor Amos Brown had loaned the
Bible to the museum, and at a certain point there
was a contract in place regarding the loan and so
(30:46):
it's expiring. So they're using that as the excuse to say, oh,
we're just returning this artifact back to this person because
the contract is expiring. But that's not what this is.
Little by little, they want to decay instruct that museum.
And I believe this administration and supporters of this administration
(31:09):
don't think that that museum a museum that highlights the
experiences of African Americans in this country that they do
not believe that that museum has any place in the
American story and in American history. And they're talking about,
for instance, you know, a museum like that that focuses
(31:29):
on black people's experiences as being something that divides people
by race. And so in that type of thinking, that
type of perverted logic, they are centering the white experience
as the primary and main experience and asserting that anything
outside of the white racial experience has will somehow cause division,
(31:54):
and it would. I think that what is so profound
about that, profoundly ignorant that thinking, and sadistic in many ways,
is that, you know, the history of this country is
rooted in violence and division, and so that somehow the
(32:15):
telling of the violence, the telling of the division, the
telling of how people have suffered injustice at the hands
of the American government, I mean, wide American institutions, that
that somehow is the the impetus for a division. Absolutely not,
absolutely not. But we're living in a time, We're living
(32:38):
in a season where facts do not matter. It's all
about how these very terroristic, sadistic, psychopathic people feel, and
it's about them prioritizing their feelings, that the prioritizing hatred,
prioritizing resentment, and they, you know, control these institutions by
force and have maintained them by force through force, and
(33:02):
so whatever they say and or want to do in
this moment, it is prevailing.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
The aspect of we're not talking about as we as
we remember the Holocaust remembrance, you guys talking about the
same thing, you know that's on. Is that over some
a different level of blackness?
Speaker 7 (33:26):
For sure. I think when we speak about, for example,
the Jewish experience in the United States of America, for example,
where like Israel is concerned, for instance, that experience is
not necessarily highlighting or amplifying the Afro Jewish experience or
(33:50):
you know, the the era Lash Jewish experience. It's it's
prioritizing a white Eurocentric Jewish experience. And that has been
the case really since nineteen forty eight when you had
the establishment of the Jewish state in Israel, or re
(34:10):
establishment as some would say. And so you know, there
is a regard that is held in this country regarding
the white Ashkenazi Jewish experience that is very different than
the regard for Sephardi Jewish experiences, Afro Jewish experiences, and
(34:34):
so we wouldn't I don't believe that we will see
the same energy being directed toward, you know, the Holocaust
Museum of Remembrance in the ways that we are seeing
the African American Museum be targeted. There is an entirely
different regard. And I think you know a lot of
(34:55):
my work and what I explore my book Diagnosing Whiteness
and Anti Blackness is the evolution of the anti black
psychology that develops in this country based on how laws
are implemented to direct people to specifically target black people.
And that has that's evidenced through the colonial period and
(35:18):
also throughout the evolution of the building of the United
States of America. When you look at how state legislatures,
the court system, the federal government, the federal legislature, Congress,
as well as the Supreme Court targeted black people, not
just through the period where black people remained enslaves under
the United States government, but when we talk about Jim Crow,
(35:42):
that is what we're speaking about. And it's not just
the Plus v. Ferguson case, but it is a litany
and an array of court decisions at the state level,
legislation at the state level, court decisions at the Supreme
Court level that specific sickly targeted African Americans said that
(36:03):
they could not go to certain schools, they could not
live in certain homes. That's Corgan B. Buckley, the racial
restrictive covenants and also the racial zoning ordinances and so
on and so forth. Right, the black people, even as citizens,
we're not guaranteed equal economic privileges. And that's under the
slaughter House Cases of eighteen seventy three. So we just
(36:23):
have to understand the reality not just the fascism, but
of a terroristic, genocidal state where black people have been concerned.
And that's why what I believe all of this is
underlied by We're.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Not even taught in our community. Were not even talked
talked about some of the issues that you just treated,
let alone LGBTQ in the community. You know how that
played a historic part in our community. We never talked,
We never talked that, never never even mentioned that. And
(37:00):
that's something that that's something that we don't do ourselves,
let alone in the public schools which is now in Texas,
and they're they're bringing out vouchers and going to private
school that's even less of history that's not being taught.
Speaker 7 (37:15):
Absolutely, and I would say that it's not our fault
that we don't know this information. I didn't know it until,
you know, I had the time and space in my
life to really sit down and read, and I became
in what's you know, termed as an autodidact, where I mean,
I graduated with a degree in African American studies from
(37:37):
a California college university, and then I went to school,
I further my education. I got a master's degree, you know,
I have an honorary doctor and at one point I
was in a doctoral program until they tried to redirect
my work. But I didn't know, you know, ninety five
percent of the things that I now know, and I
had to really sit down and study, you know, colony
(37:59):
by colony, state by state, and then look in the
federal archives in terms of how the American legal system
really worked intentionally and in a very aggressive manner to
target black people, to target African Americans. And when you
look at, for example, how Ivy League institutions such as Harvard, Columbia, Yale,
(38:22):
william and Mary College, how they all held at one
point academic disciplines where people could go and study black
inferiority and how you know, the white political and legal
system used what they perceived at the time and what
they called at the time scientific philosophies that said that
(38:44):
black people were not intellectually capable of developing fully mentally,
intellectually or morally. The study of phrenology that said that
we had, you know, bumps on our brains that constituted
a particular timidity in in you know, the black body,
that black physiological makeup, that those things should serve as
(39:06):
the justifications as to why we needed to go to
different schools, as to why we needed to live in,
you know, different communities. They used what they called science,
a polluted mindset, a perversion corrupted mindset to justify the
then actions that they then begin to take against African
(39:29):
Americans and black people. And I really don't believe we
fully understand white European attitudes towards black people. From the
minute they are born. They're born into a society where
they are everything around them reinforces that black people are
inferior based on the conditions and the structures that they've
set up in the society. And they have also benefited.
(39:52):
They benefit from what I term in my book as
systems and institutions that run on the basis of wide
affirmative action. All of these institutions were set up by
white people for white people through force. We have to
deal with the facts of this reality. Through force, they
have erected their institutions, instituted their culture, and control everything.
(40:15):
You know. I think it is naive for us to
sit back and not consider the fact that we learn
our education through one language, that is the language of
the people who oppressed us, the religion, the religious doctrine Christianity,
that we subscribe to. That doctrine just so happily, out
of the thousands of languages that exist in the world,
(40:38):
that doctrine just so happens to conveniently be have been
translated into English. We have to call into question all
of the things that have been formed our existence in
a society where our ancestors have been oppressed and where
we still remain oppressed. It is so such an unfortunate situation.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
To the museum, what do you think is going to
happen now?
Speaker 7 (41:03):
Well, I think I mean, as we saw with the
overturning of the affirmative action policies in twenty twenty two
or twenty twenty three, that was the Supreme Court decision
where Ivy League institutions were concerned. We see the attacks
on DEI, which that's really an attack on people who
are not white, who are not male, who are not
(41:24):
able bodied or white women as well. That's what that is.
The DEI moniker or that the pursuit of that is
aimed directly at black people too. There's a huge element
of that that is specifically aimed at black people. So
I think the erosion of access of opportunity for black
(41:45):
people all the way around. I said this two three
years ago when I saw what was happening with that
affirmative Action decision. We are in for such a predicament.
This is reminiscent of what occurred during the eighteen seventies,
eighteen eighties, eighteen nineties into up until the nineteen sixties.
(42:08):
And this is Jim Crow on steroids. And for black
people who don't understand the history, who don't fully understand
where we are in this moment, who have benefited people
like myself, people like you, who benefited from the actions
that were taken by black people throughout the early twentieth
century headed into the nineteen forties, fifties, sixties, people who
(42:31):
put their lives on the line. We are we have
returned to that moment, and there will be political violence.
I believe there will be bloodshed. There's just a lot
that's going to unfold from all of this, and we
haven't even begun to see the fallout just yet. And
it's I'm very fearful of what can happen and what
will happen, And yeah, what is happening? I really am.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
That was Dante King. His new book is Diagnosing Whiteness,
Anti Blackness. As federal support for key USDA programs are
cut without thought by the corrupt and criminal Trump GOP,
small scale Texas farmers warn of the damaging effects on
local agriculture, community health, and school nutrition across the state.
(43:18):
The cuts, both made and proposed, will affect the Local
Food Purchase Assistance program and the local Food for Schools programs.
These are managed by the Texas Department of Agriculture, and
these USDA initiatives connected Texas grown produce directly to schools
and local nonprofits. Their success relied on a crucial partner,
(43:39):
the common market Texas. The common Market Texas worked with
a community and is located here in the third ward
in Houston, Texas. The cuts to the USDA will be
devastating to local farmers in and around Houston. We talked
to Jeremy Logan, executive director of Common Market Texas.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
Can you talk about what had being able to USDA
food program and why it conserves teks As farmers.
Speaker 6 (44:04):
So the USDA canceled the third installment of a program
called LFPA, which is Local Food Purchasing Assistance. We're currently
in the second version of that, and in December, the
USBA announced that there would be a third version that
(44:25):
would start as soon as the second version was over.
The second version was originally meant to end in May
of this year. May thirty first was going to be
the last day, so they canceled the newest version of that.
They've extended the timeframe for the current one, but they
(44:46):
didn't add any money to it. So it's just a
matter of we have more time to utilize those funds.
But particularly here at the Common Market, our model as
a nonprofit is to purchase our food directly from local farmers,
so we source only from within the state of Texas.
(45:07):
Every piece of fruit, vegetable, rice, chicken, ground, beef. Everything
that we purchased comes from the state of Texas. It's
grown and it's produced in the state of Texas full stop.
The other thing that we do is we actually pay
the farmers directly. We pay them full market price. We
don't accept any donated products. We're not a food bank.
(45:28):
We are partners with the farmers and with our distribution
partners who actually help us distribute the food to the
communities here in Texas. So without this additional funding, we
don't really have the resources to be able to support
these farmers. And considering that in December it was announced
(45:52):
that LFPAW five, which was going to be this third
version of LFPA, was approved, started to plan with our
farmers for what the rest of twenty twenty five and
twenty twenty six was going to look like. So we
talked to them about crop planning and talked to them
about investments that they can make into their farm because
(46:13):
we had good evidence that this program was going to
continue and that we all of the money that we
received from this goes into either our operations or paying
the farmers directly. So it's a big hit, no question,
and it.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
Was the reason why USDA is doing this is they
are they talk to you guys at all.
Speaker 7 (46:35):
They have not.
Speaker 6 (46:36):
We work directly with the Texas Department of Agriculture, and
they simply said that the program has been canceled and
that it's out of their hands.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Saturday their hands. But the I know the Trump administration
was saying how great they're support they're getting from farmers
and how much support they're given to farmers, especially local farmers.
Speaker 7 (46:58):
Well, so I didn't say that.
Speaker 6 (47:00):
What I said was the USDA canceled LFPA twenty five,
and without LFPA twenty five, we don't have those resources
that we use to support local farmers. Our mission is
to connect urban communities to local food from sustainable family farms,
so we work directly with those farms. Those farms have
(47:21):
access theoretically to other funding. So if that's what you're
referring to, I don't know anything about that because I'm
not a farmer. We run a nonprofit regional food distribution outlet,
and we utilize LFPA funding, which comes from the USDA
through the Texas Department of Agriculture, to support those farmers.
(47:41):
That's what we use that money for. But we have
other resources that we also use to support those farmers
and to get this food into underserved areas. That is
our mission, that is what we do.
Speaker 7 (47:54):
But LFPA was.
Speaker 6 (47:56):
A great program that really helped support these local and
since we exclusively work with Texas farmers, and we exclusively
work with small and medium sized farmers, oftentimes first time farmers,
that was a huge boon. And now that we don't
have that funding, we're scrambling to find it elsewhere, and
in the meantime, we don't have those resources to be
(48:17):
able to continue to purchase, particularly at the volume that
we were doing before without this funding. If the TDA
comes up with other programs, which they have said they're
working on, then that could help solve that problem. But
LFPA was a great program and the canceling of it
has has significant impacts here in Texas.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
Can you talk about some of the challenges that farmers
in Texas have?
Speaker 6 (48:44):
Yeah, So, climate is a big part of it. We
are a seasonal group here because everything we supply is
and everything we purchase is locally procured. So theonality, the
soil type, the temperature, the weather, those all affect Texas farms.
(49:06):
So this time last year we still had access to strawberries.
Currently we don't because there was too much rain at
kind of the wrong time. This time last year, we
were talking about bringing on watermelons from certain parts of
the state and those just aren't available yet because other
parts of the state are suffering from drought. So our
(49:29):
farmers really need consistent year round support and they need
to be able to know that if there is some
sort of a weather event or if there is some
sort of a drought. There's a relationship between you know,
the southern border of Texas and Mexico in terms of
exchanging water rights, those have not been fully executed, and
(49:50):
in many ways, you know, the Texas farmers suffer because
they don't get the water at the right time. So
those are some serious challenges.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
That we have.
Speaker 6 (49:59):
But also there are other programs that had been run
by the USDA and by the Texas Department of Agriculture,
like LSS, which is Local Food for Schools, that give
schools access to funds to spend locally. And so if
we're talking about really supporting small and medium sized Texas
(50:19):
family farmers, those programs incentivize in this particular case, K
through twelve public schools to purchase locally. It's a lot
cheaper to buy produce from Mexico or from other places,
depending on the seasonality, it's a little bit more expensive
to buy it locally. And so when there are programs
(50:41):
that help support local and that encourage purchasing locally, that
really drives the Texas farm economy.
Speaker 2 (50:50):
Can you back up a bit, you said that is
cheaper to buy from Mexico and other places, it is
locally correct and why and while with that, you know
it seems like you know, we'll explain it, please sure.
Speaker 6 (51:09):
So again, large farms have the benefit of scale. Farms
in Mexico have the benefit of having a different labor
model than we have here in the United States. They're
different regulations. So small local farms just have to spend
more per acre than large farms or farms in other countries.
(51:31):
So when we when we want to support Texas farms,
we need to be able to create programs that incentivize
schools and other local entities to purchase locally. And that's
what LFS did, That's what LFPA did. The l in
both of those is local, and so we at the
(51:52):
common Market Texas work exclusively in the state of Texas,
and so we by definition, procure only local products. We
by definition you're only directly from small and medium sized
family farms, and we purchase from them. We don't accept
donations from them. We are really invested in those farm programs.
(52:14):
We provide them with technical assistance, We provide them with
pr and marketing materials, all for free. We offer no
interest loans to these farmers that they pay back through
purchase orders. We make long term commitments to these farmers
with our purchase orders, but without the customers to then
buy those products, our model doesn't work. And so when
(52:34):
Local Food for Schools incentivizes k through twelve public schools
to purchase locally, they can then come to us and
we have that direct line and that direct connected, that
direct connection to these local farms.
Speaker 2 (52:49):
What about he kind of he kind of talked about
it a little bit, but he explained how the food
program of fixed students in schools around the state.
Speaker 6 (53:00):
So there's a couple of components to that. First and foremost,
the further any piece of particularly like fresh produce, travels,
the less nutritional value it has when it reaches when
it reaches its destination. Time and distance are the biggest
factors in terms of the nutritional value of fresh fruits
(53:22):
and vegetables. So if they have to come from other
states or even from other countries, that's time and that's
a distance, and so those products just lose some of
their nutritional value, they lose some of their freshness. But
the other part of it is kids are in school
to get an education, and we want to educate them
on what farming looks like in their communities. And so
(53:43):
by connecting them directly with these farms, we really put
a face to the product. As I mentioned, we offer
them technical support. These are the farmers. We offer the
farmers technical support, we offer them pr and marketing materials.
So when we have a school that purchases from us,
we share with them a farmer profile, which is we
have digital and physical copies of it. But it's a nice,
(54:06):
you know, eight and a half x eleven glossy with photos
and with the story of the farm, with the location
of the farm, with the products that they serve, with
their backstory, and we put those we display those in
the schools, and so when the kids come through the
cafeteria lines and they see those Brussels sprouts or they
see those peaches. They then can look up and see
the farm that those came from and they can understand, oh,
(54:28):
I know where Kelgan, Texas is. I know where these
different places are, And all of a sudden they have
that connection of where their food is actually coming from,
and it sparks in them that curiosity. It gives them
that sense of place. It teaches them that food has
grown all over the world, but we grow our own
food right here in Texas and we want to be
(54:50):
able to share that story.
Speaker 2 (54:53):
Can you tell people about that don't know about Common
Market Texas and how they can get involved and how
they and trying to have more information.
Speaker 7 (55:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (55:02):
So we've been around as a total entity since two
thousand and eight. We were originally started in Philadelphia. We
have four regions, the Mid Atlantic, the Great Lakes, the Southeast,
and then here in Texas. We're located in Houston here
in third Ward. But really the best way to get
(55:23):
involved is to work with the school that your kids
go to, or that you work at, the hospital, the
clinic that you go to, the faith based organization that
you attend, or your local elected officials and say we
want more access to local food. We want more access
(55:44):
to fresh, healthy produce. We want to know that our
tax dollars are going to support our local farmers.
Speaker 4 (55:51):
We at the.
Speaker 6 (55:52):
Common Market manage all of the infrastructure. We do first
mile pickup at the farms, We do last mile delivery
to the district US sites to our customers. We have
our own warehouse here in Third Ward. We have our
own drivers, we have our own trucks, we have our
own full time staff. What we need is for people
to be aware of the fact that we are connecting
(56:15):
small and medium sized sustainable family farms in Texas to
these communities that don't have access to fresh fruits and vegetables,
and we want to be able to improve and increase
the amount of impact that we have with these anchor
institutions that are purchasing our food, whether it's through grant funding,
(56:38):
private funding, or through their own mission driven procurements. So
that's the story that we're trying to tell. We can
connect these communities with these great local farms and we
can provide them with a better product, We can provide
them with a more nutritious product, and we can help
tell that story.
Speaker 1 (56:56):
That was Jeremy Logan, executive director of Common Market Tech
the People's News is a production of Steve Gallington and
Richard Hannah, and is protected by copyright laws. All the
information broadcast on air and online, as well as published
in both print and or online, including articles, audio clips, illustrations, graphics, photographs,
(57:18):
and videos, are protected by these copyright and other state
and federal intellectual property laws. Therefore, you may not use
our content in any prohibited way, including reproducing, publishing, transmitting, selling, rewriting, broadcasting,
or posting on the Internet without the expressed written permission
of the People's News. Prohibited use also includes publication of
(57:40):
our material in printed or electronic brochures, newsletters, or flyers,
as well as all website or email distribution. To obtain
permission to use copyrighted material, email Steve Gallington at Steve
atgallington dot com. Thank you,
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