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NEWS
Blue Mountain Eagle
Young
CUSTOM SADDLE UP FOR RAFFLE
Continued from Page A1
around tools or kitchenware,
others around hunting and fish-
ing supplies – one held a com-
plete ice fishing setup, while
another came with everything
you might need for a deer hunt-
ing camp. Yet another basket
included a coupon redeemable
for a live, 800-pound steer.
Once the auction is over and
the money toted up, Immoos
and a group of volunteers head
to the Walmart store in Ontario
for a major shopping expedi-
tion. Armed with wish lists from
Grant County nursing home res-
idents, they fan out through the
store to fulfill their mission.
Each resident gets toilet-
ries such as shampoo and hand
lotion and usually some basic
clothing items like socks and
underwear. But they can request
other goodies as well.
“I don’t care what’s on their
list,” Immoos said. “If I have the
money, I’m going to get it.”
One year, for instance, an
80-year-old female resident
at Blue Mountain Care Cen-
ter said she wanted a margarita
and some M&Ms for Christmas.
Immoos didn’t bat an eye.
“By God, we got her some
Cuervo and margarita mix
and some M&Ms,” Immoos
recalled. “I figure if you’re 80
years old, you should have
whatever you want.”
Immoos and her team also
keep track of vulnerable elderly
people living independently
throughout the county and look
after their needs as well.
“They’re very prideful peo-
ple; they don’t ask for help,” she
said. “A lot of them are vets, a
lot of them are retired loggers or
ranchers with no pension living
on very limited Social Security.”
For these people, funds
raised through the annual Carrie
Young auction purchase gift cer-
tificates to local grocery stores
as well as heating oil, firewood
or electricity vouchers to get
them through a Blue Mountain
winter.
“They all get some form
of groceries and some form of
heat,” Immoos said.
Last year, Immoos said, the
Carrie Young Memorial raised
more than $48,000 – despite the
fact that the in-person event had
Rent
Continued from Page A1
for tenants and landlord support.
During a press conference
on Wednesday, Dec. 1, Oregon
Housing and Community Ser-
vices Director Margaret Sala-
zar said her understanding is that
the infusion of funds would con-
tinue the rental assistance pro-
gram. Though mindful that fed-
eral funding for the program will
sunset at some point, the state
does not want to pull the rug out
from under tenants and landlords
who have not received assistance.
While some local govern-
The big ticket item in this year’s Carrie Young Memorial
Auction was a Franklin saddle donated by Bub Warren, an
80-year-old former Prairie City resident who is now a well-
known saddle maker.
According to event organizer Lucie Immoos, Warren came
back to town for a visit and stopped in to see some old
friends at the Blue Mountain Care Center, where he learned
about the work done by the Carrie Young Memorial.
“He went to visit the old codgers at the nursing home in
Prairie,” Immoos said, “and said he was completely blown
away by what we were able to do for the residents through
our organization, and he wanted to give back.”
Some of Warren’s custom saddles sell for thousands of
dollars, so rather than auction off the hand-tooled leather
beauty in one night, Immoos decided to hold a yearlong
raffle. Tickets are $20 apiece or six for $100 and can be
purchased in several ways:
• Mail a check to Carrie Young Memorial, P.O. Box 192, John
Day, OR 97845.
• Send money via Venmo @CarrieYoung-Memorial.
• Call Immoos at 541-620-2098.
The raffle winner will be announced at next year’s dinner.
Ranchers
Continued from Page A1
an FSA employee and had his loan application
torn up, which aren’t experiences the plaintiffs
can comprehend.
“They don’t know what discrimination is.
They don’t know what it looks like or what it
feels like,” Boyd said. “I just feel it’s shameful
white farmers are doing this to us.”
White farmers have historically been able
to write down their debt, refinance it or have it
forgiven by USDA while Black farmers have
instead faced foreclosure, he said.
Discrimination against Black farmers still
exists but the lawsuits and injunctions don’t
acknowledge that reality, Boyd said.
“In some fashion, you have to recognize
this terrible history that occurred on Ameri-
can soil,” he said. “Why not support a group
of people that has just been dogged by the
government?”
Black farmers represent about 1.4% of the
agricultural producers in the nation, down
from roughly 14% a century ago, according to
USDA’s Census of Agriculture data.
The proportion of Black farmers has plum-
meted over time due to a “bad taste in their
mouth for the farm,” going back to sharecrop-
ping and slavery, Boyd said. Even so, some
remain committed to the industry.
“I love being a farmer. I’m going to die
being a farmer,” he said. “I love the smell of
the land when I throw that disc harrow in the
ground.”
‘Structural problem’
Bennett Hall/Blue Mountain Eagle
Dawnna Reed checks out the themed gift baskets on auction at
the 2021 Carrie Young Memorial.
to be scrapped at the last minute
because of COVID protocols
and converted into a radio auc-
tion, conducted live on KJDY.
The money, a record amount,
was enough to provide Christ-
mas presents for 52 nursing
home residents and holiday sea-
son assistance to between 225
and 250 Grant County elders.
Asked why the event has
become such a big deal, Immoos
said it just seems to mesh with
Grant County’s values.
“There’s a lot of elderly in
this community, and we know
each other,” she said. “I just
think Grant County’s a very giv-
ing place. Everybody looks after
each other here.”
That community spirit was
on full display at the Elks Lodge
Friday night.
Kathleen Madsen, a recent
transplant from Bend to Can-
yon City, was astonished by the
turnout.
“I’ve been to a lot of big
charity events,” she said. “But
I’ve never seen community par-
ticipation like this.”
John Day Mayor Ron Lund-
bom, who has had more time to
witness the event’s growth, was
more proud than surprised.
“It’s amazing,” he said. “It
keeps getting better every year.”
As if to prove him right,
Immoos reported after the event
that this year’s memorial set yet
another new fundraising record:
$49,972.77.
ments, such as Multnomah and
Lane counties, received sepa-
rate pots of money from the fed-
eral government for emergency
rental assistance and still have
funds in those programs, those
in less populated areas like Grant
County are primarily left to fend
for themselves.
Salazar said that while some
local community action agen-
cies might have funds set aside
for rental assistance or other
local programs, on the whole,
rural Oregonians do not have
too many options. According to
Salazar, getting more dollars to
rural populations is one of the
reasons her agency is fighting for
more funding for the program
from both the state and federal
governments and is why she was
pleased that Brown called for the
Dec. 13 special session. Ham-
ilton said that housing instabil-
ity due to the pandemic is wide-
spread in Eastern Oregon and is
likely comparable to other parts
of the state.
Hamilton said she does not
want the state’s lack of funding
to discourage people from asking
for help. Community Connec-
tions offers other local programs,
including energy assistance and
food programs, among others.
Those in need of assistance
can call John Day Community
Connections representative Amy
Smetana at 541-575-2949.
OPEN HOUSE 
Come celebrate
our new
domestic trauma
service center
Wednesday, December 8, 2021
The bias experienced by Blacks and other
minorities isn’t just a matter of individual FSA
employees with a racist agenda, said Cassan-
dra Havard, a law professor at the University
of Baltimore who’s studied the issue.
“It’s a structural problem within the
USDA,” she said.
FSA’s loan decisions are influenced by
county committees elected by the local popu-
lace, Havard said. The arrangement can perpet-
uate racial bias because these committees are
generally dominated by white farmers.
“You’re in competition with other people
who are also farming nearby,” she said. “It was
basically a way of cutting out the competition.”
Boyd characterizes the situation fac-
ing Black farmers less diplomatically: “They
know when you’re in trouble with the USDA,
they can purchase your farm for pennies on the
dollar.”
The USDA was accused of discrimination
against minorities in several lawsuits, includ-
ing two class actions by Black farmers that
were settled for $2.4 billion.
However, the agency admits in court filings
that the payments “did not cure the problems
faced by minority farmers.”
Many farmers were unaware of deadlines
to file claims or faced problems qualifying
for payments, raising concerns about whether
the compensation was adequate, Havard said.
“Farmers felt like it was difficult for them to
be successful.”
Banking records are private, which sti-
fles comparisons between how Black and
white farmers are treated by FSA, said Susan
Schneider, a law professor at the University of
Arkansas who studied the issue. The USDA’s
civil rights office was dismantled in 1983 and
wasn’t reinstated until 1996, so many com-
plaints were neglected.
“You had to be able to prove a very spe-
cific instance of discrimination,” she said. “It’s
really difficult to prove these kinds of cases.”
Different approach
The USDA’s minority loan forgiveness pro-
gram, which Congress passed earlier this year
as part of broader coronavirus relief legislation,
takes a different approach, said Stephen Car-
penter, deputy director and senior staff attorney
at the Farmers Legal Action Group, a nonprofit
that provides legal services to growers.
“Let’s do something without a lawsuit, pro-
grammatically to remedy past discrimination,”
Carpenter said, summarizing the program’s
intent.
The preliminary injunctions against the loan
forgiveness program bodes well for the plain-
tiffs’ chances of winning, he said. “If you sup-
port the program, it’s not a good sign the courts
have suspended this program. But it’s not the
end of the story.”
The litigation is ongoing and the injunctions
against the program aren’t permanent.
The USDA can still prove that loan forgive-
ness specifically for minority farmers passes
constitutional muster, “but there’s a very rig-
orous examination of it by courts,” he said.
The government must show that the program is
“narrowly tailored” to help people left behind
by race-neutral approaches.
“You have to show you tried in the past
to remedy the problem without using race to
determine who gets the benefit,” Carpenter
said.
‘Pattern and practice’
The argument that USDA’s program fits
those legal parameters is backed by statisti-
cal evidence that other COVID-19 relief mea-
sures almost exclusively helped white farmers,
said Dania Davy, director of land retention and
advocacy for the Federation of Southern Coop-
eratives, a nonprofit that wants to intervene in
the lawsuit to support the program.
The “pattern and practice” of discrimina-
tion against minority farmers has continued to
this day, she said. “It’s not relegated to history,
it’s an ongoing issue.”
The loan forgiveness program is sufficiently
“narrowly tailored” because it only bene-
fits farmers of color who’ve taken out loans
through USDA, Davy said. “It was limited to
17,000 farmers and ranchers.”
The FSA’s loan portfolio includes roughly
$28 billion in direct and guaranteed loans to
126,000 borrowers, according to a 2021 Con-
gressional Research Service report on agricul-
tural credit.
The plaintiffs are attempting to “manufac-
ture a narrative” that white farmers — who dis-
proportionately gain from USDA programs —
are being denied equal protection under the
law, she said.
The constitutional amendment that guar-
antees equal protection has a long history of
redeeming the rights of people of color, Davy
noted.
“It’s a bit of a disrespect to that legacy,” she
said of the lawsuits.
Equal under the law
The Pacific Legal Foundation, the nonprofit
law firm that represents the Dunlaps, doesn’t
deny the “sad and unfortunate history of dis-
crimination” at USDA. However, the organi-
zation also believes that equality under the law
means everyone is treated the same as an indi-
vidual, regardless of race.
The USDA’s loan forgiveness strategy
doesn’t protect “equality” but rather promotes
the concept of “equity,” under which people
are entitled to certain outcomes based on race,
said Wen Fa, the attorney for the Dunlaps.
This philosophy relies on “crude racial ste-
reotypes” and discounts the accomplishments
of successful minority farmers, said Fa.
“Just because a farmer is a minority doesn’t
mean the farmer is disadvantaged,” he said.
“It’s demeaning and it’s wrong.”
The legal dispute over USDA’s loan for-
giveness program involves “fundamental
equal protection principles” and has a high-
er-than-average chance of getting reviewed
by the U.S. Supreme Court, Fa said. If the
program wasn’t challenged in court, it would
encourage more racial discrimination by the
government, he said.
“Programs like this will be replicated
all across the country,” he said. “A person’s
opportunity is not based on achievement but
on membership in a racial group.”
The federal government has three options
to correct the problem: Either eliminate the
loan forgiveness program, expand it to include
everyone with USDA loans, or change the eli-
gibility to be race-neutral, Fa said.
Under the race-neutral option, eligibil-
ity could be decided based on such factors as
financial need, loss of revenue due to COVID-
19 or a lack of access to other coronavirus
relief funds, he said.
A need-based loan forgiveness program
would be acceptable to the Dunlaps, who
depend on outside sources of income to keep
their ranch afloat.
“If they want to pass a plan like that, then
great,” James said. “It shouldn’t be based on
your skin color.”
Kathryn works in sales for a marketing and
research company. Until he was laid off, James
was employed as a railroad engineer. He’s now
considering a career in real estate.
Their eventual goal is to make the ranch
self-sustaining.
“It’s a frustrating business. You don’t nec-
essarily do it to make much money,” he said.
“Our heart goes out to any grower in dire
straits. I don’t care what color you are.”

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John Day
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