Former Shirley Sherrod employee accuses her of explointing black farm laborers

Washington Examiner ^ | 8-3-10 | Tom Blumer

[afraidfortherepublic]

Readers who read my original Washington Examiner post about Shirley Sherrod know that she and husband Charles received $150,000 each for "pain and suffering” as part of "a thirteen million dollar settlement in the minority farmers law suit Pigford vs Vilsack."

Based on history presented by Ron Wilkins yesterday at Counterpunch, it's appropriate to ask: "Whose pain and suffering?"

It now seems that Mr. and Mrs. Sherrod inflicted quite a bit of pain and suffering on their own -- and on some of the very people Mr. Sherrod described as "our own" in a speech earlier this year -- at New Communities, Inc. (NCI). The group is described at the Rural Development Leadership Network's web site as "the land trust that Shirley and Charles Sherrod established, with other black farm families in the 1960s."

Wilkins, who says he is "a former organizer in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee" and is currently a professor at California State University Dominguez Hills, in the Africana Studies Department, writes: "I know this story well, for I was one of those workers at NCI."

Here is some of what Wilkins describes:

Imagine farm workers doing back breaking labor in the sweltering sun, sprayed with pesticides and paid less than minimum wage. Imagine the United Farm Workers called in to defend these laborers against such exploitation by management. Now imagine that the farm workers are black children and adults and that the managers are Shirley Sherrod, her husband Rev. Charles Sherrod, and a host of others. But it’s no illusion; this is fact.

... What most of Mrs. Sherrod’s supporters are not aware of is the elitist and anti-black-labor role that she and fellow managers of New Communities Inc. (NCI) played. These individuals under-paid, mistreated and fired black laborers–many of them less than 16 years

[TigersEye]

So, Shirley and Charlie Sherrod were massas of a plantation who mistreated their black workers!?! Did they use this exploitation of farm workers as the basis of their discrimination lawsuit?