On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 7:59 AM, <LawrLCL@aol.com> wrote:
what about usda employees
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Sent: 5/16/2011 7:46:32 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subj: Shirley Sherrod Returns To Work At USDASaturday, May 14, 2011
Shirley Sherrod Returns To Work At USDA
Sherrod will lead Georgia program that is part of Agency effort to enact recommendations from two-year study on civil rights cases brought against USDA...
Shirley Sherrod, the Georgia state USDA employee who was forced to resign last year after a portion of a videotape was misleadingly used to show her making racially insensitive remarks, will return to work at the USDA, Justin DeJong, deputy director of communications, told Politico on Friday. Sherrod, in August of 2010, had previously declined to return to work for the Agency, but she will now be leading a project to enact recommendations from a federal report that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced on Wednesday, which reviewed the Department's handling of civil rights and racial bias cases brought against the Department by African American, Native American, Hispanic, and women farmers. (Above: Sherrod with Vilsack at a press conference in August of 2010, when she announced she would not return to USDA)
Vilsack ordered the two-year racial bias assessment in 2009, as one of his first acts in office, long before the debacle surrounding Sherrod's departure, which caused a firestorm of controversy. Sherrod will now be a contract employee leading the Southwest Georgia Project for Community Education, one of three field programs designed to bolster relations between the USDA and minority farmers and ranchers, DeJong said. Sherrod was a co-founder of the project she will be leading.
Sherrod's program "is considered among the best southeastern regional organizations focused on the issues and populations affected by this assessment and has a strong relationship and understanding of the work of USDA," DeJong said.
He added that he did not know if Sherrod has been working, or where she has been working since she left the USDA. Politico could not reach Sherrod for comment. The Obama Administration has created separate mutli-billion dollar settlements to address all of the decades-long racial bias claims brought by thousands of African American, Native American, Hispanic, and women farmers. Read the full report here [PDF].
The report...and the programs
The study was conducted by a private firm, Jackson Lewis LLP Corporate Diversity Counseling Group, and examined the decades of discrimination claims. It contains recommendations that can be implemented administratively, as well as recommendations that will require policy or statutory changes. Other recommendations will be considered as part of the 2012 Farm Bill deliberations.
In addition to the Southeast Georgia program, the other two programs being established will target minority farmers in the Southwest and on Native American reservations, DeJong said. The programs, the National Latino Farmers & Ranchers Trade Association and the Intertribal Agriculture Council--are "part of our continued effort to build a new civil rights era" after settling the costly discrimination lawsuits suits brought by minority farmers, DeJong said (including Keepseagle and Pigford II).Sherrod has filed a $13 million defamation lawsuit against conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, who posted the partial video that seemed to show Sherrod making racially inflammatory comments. Breitbart and co-defendant Larry O'Brien last month filed a motion to dismiss the case, which is pending in federal court in Washington. (Above: Sherrod and Vilsack meeting in his office on August 24, 2010, before the press conference in which she announced she would not return to USDA)
*Top photo by AP; second by USDA.
