#NNPA BlackPress
‘Black snow’ from sugarcane harmful to Black, poor communities in Florida?
NNPA NEWSWIRE — While these burnings have been going on for several years with groups rising up to combat them, a recent lawsuit against the Florida sugar industry has brought it to national light, bringing attention to an issue that has forced residents to take a stand.
By J.S. Adams, Contributing Writer, The Final Call
@niiahadams
Thick black smoke plumes from sugarcane fields near Belle Glade, Fla., a predominantly Black community west of West Palm Beach and just south of Lake Okeechobee. Residents watch as red-orange flames engulf the sugarcane fields as the industry prepares for harvesting season.
These annual burnings, which take place from October to March, May or June, make it easier for farmers to harvest the sugarcane.
However, the side effects leave the residents of Belle Glade, South Bay and Pahokee with respiratory problems and a poor quality of life.
While these burnings have been going on for several years with groups rising up to combat them, a recent lawsuit against the Florida sugar industry has brought it to national light, bringing attention to an issue that has forced residents to take a stand.
The lawsuit, filed by the Berman Law Group in June, seeks to permanently end the pre-harvesting burning, obtain economic and property damages, and health monitoring, particularly for children, the poor and elderly.
“The firm has been working on this issue for a long time prior to me joining,” said Joseph Abruzzo, director of government relations for the Berman Law Group. “What put them on track was several clients alerting them to what was occurring with them and that spawned the investigation into hiring the experts (and) finding what was in the air of the Glades community.”
Joining the fight in this lawsuit is Frank Biden, the younger brother of Presidential candidate Joe Biden, and former NFL player Fred Taylor, who grew up in the Glades community. In a video produced by the Berman Law Group, both agree the burnings need to stop.
The sugar industry burns about nine million tons of sugarcane foliage on 400,000 acres each year. EarthJustice, a legal group for environmental organizations, says the burning puts out more than 2,800 tons of hazardous pollutants into the air annually. According to the Sierra Club, an environmental non-profit organization, the sugarcane is burned in order to rid the plant of its outer layer so that the sugar stalk will remain.

ADVANCE FOR WEEKEND DEC. 8 AND 9 –Horses graze in a field near the U.S. Sugar Corporation’s mill and refinery in Clewiston, Fla. Thursday, Nov. 8, 2001. Plunging prices last year forced the town’s largest employer, U.S. Sugar Corp., to lay off 300 workers to cut costs, a major blow in a community where nearly every business is tied to the green fields of cane and the huge mill beyond the railroad tracks. (AP Photo/Amy E. Conn)
Patrick Ferguson, the organizing representative for the Sierra Club’s Stop Sugar Field Burning Campaign, said health issues due to the burnings are a major concern.
“Exposure to pre-harvest sugar field burning pollution has been linked via medical research to many negative health impacts including respiratory diseases, cancer, cardiac disease, and poor infant health outcomes,” he said. “Many of the campaign volunteers either themselves suffer from respiratory issues or have family members who do. Some of our volunteers have young children who have to use breathing devices during the 6-8 months long harvesting season when sugarcane is burned.”
The lawsuit alleges that due to the burning, harmful pollutants are released into the air. It creates “black snow” during burn season, or ashes that fall down onto the Glades communities. Because of this, children in the Glades communities use breathing machines at night and walk to school with trash bags over their head to protect them from the black snow.
“There’s a lake, they have issues,” Mr. Abruzzo said. “I wasn’t too long ago out at one of the churches and multiple ladies had on white dresses. They know when the ash falls on your dresses … . You can’t swipe it away because it will create a black line. You blow it. The black snow is right in front of their faces, on their car, over their homes and worst of all, it’s in the lungs of the children and elderly.”
The Poor People’s Campaign held an event in Belle Glade where residents, pastors and activists had the chance to share their experiences about the burnings.
Steve Messam, a pastor born and raised in Belle Glade, shared how his father came to the United States from Jamaica as a contracted migrant worker hired to cut the sugarcane. The pastor got involved with the Sierra Club’s campaign because he noticed many of the people he knew were suffering from breathing difficulties.
“They were suffering from a lot of respiratory issues, whether it was asthma or allergies,” he said during Poor People’s Campaign gathering. “A lot of people were also dying from cancer at a crazy rate.”
Mr. Ferguson says the black snow and air quality affects not only health issues, but the community’s quality of life.
“You’re talking about the harvesting season lasting from October to May, some of the best months to be outside and enjoy the Florida weather and during days when large amounts of toxic burning takes place, people in the region are often forced to stay indoors,” he said.
Alina Alonso, director of the Florida Department of Health in Palm Beach County, said the health department uses a website called airnow.gov to monitor air quality within the region. She said air quality counts remnants that come from ash and into the air. The website measures air quality ranging from good to hazardous.
“Only those who are sensitive to the smoke or burnings will be affected by moderate,” Ms. Alonso said. “But if it gets above 100, then that’s unhealthy for everyone.”
Mr. Ferguson said many doctors in the area suggest options for residents that aren’t always reasonable.
“One common thread that we continue to hear is that doctors tell residents from the communities heavily impacted by pre-harvest sugar field burning that the best long term solution for their health issues is to move to an area with better air quality, which many residents don’t have the resources or the will to do so, nor should they have to do so,” he said.
Back in 2015, the Sierra Club filed a legal action asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate the burnings.
“The way sugarcane burning is regulated makes it an environmental justice issue as well. Regulations in place are based off wind speed and direction that prevent burn permits from being issued when the winds would carry the smoke and ash toward the more affluent in eastern Palm Beach County,” Mr. Ferguson said. “However minimal protections are in place from the toxic smoke and ash when they blow toward the lower income rural communities within the Everglades Agricultural Area. This leads the predominantly African-American and Hispanic population of the Glades communities of western Palm Beach County that are surrounded by over 75 percent of the total sugarcane acreage in Florida to disproportionately bear the negative impacts of pre-harvest sugar field burning.”
The alternative that’s offered to the sugarcane industry is green harvesting.
“The Florida sugarcane industry already green harvests in small amounts each year. Other countries around the world have been phasing out of burning altogether because of the negative health and environmental impacts of pre-harvest burning but also because of the many benefits associated with green harvesting as well,” Mr. Ferguson said.
Because of the pre-harvest burning, the Glades communities have suffered economically as well. Mr. Abruzzo said whereas Palm Beach county and the state of Florida have seen an increase in real estate values, property values for the Glades community remain stagnant.
“Everybody knows if you move out there, you’ll have to deal with four months of black snow over your home,” Mr. Abruzzo said.
Mr. Ferguson believes that a shift towards green harvesting can help improve the economic condition of the community.
“[It] can create more economic opportunities which are important especially for the lower income Glades communities,” he said. “What the sugar industry considers as trash can be used to generate more electricity, create mulch, biochar, biofuels, and can even be used to create tree-free paper products.”
Florida sugar companies have caught wind of the Berman Group’s lawsuit and say that they believe in their practices.
“The health, safety and jobs of our communities all are vitally important to U.S. Sugar,” spokeswoman Judy Sanchez told Treasure Coast Newspapers in a statement. “We are American farmers and stand behind the safety and integrity of our farming practices, which are highly regulated and legally permitted on a daily basis by the government. Our farming practices are safe, environmentally sound, highly regulated and closely monitored.”
Ms. Sanchez also said company officials “live in these Glades communities and raise our families here—our children and grandchildren—in the neighborhoods, schools and churches throughout these small, close-knit farming towns.”
Mr. Abruzzo said he’s looking forward to the company providing the names of those officials who live in the area.
“One of the most disappointing things since the lawsuit was filed is the propaganda that the sugar companies are helping lead that we are well aware of and without question will be discussing in depositions, primarily, that the lawsuits are trying to put sugar out of business. That could be anything but the truth,” he said. “The sugar companies profit in the billions of dollars per year. I’m sure they wouldn’t even notice on their balance sheets doing it a proper way and not harming an entire community. This would create more jobs if they do it by hand. At the end of the day, they just can’t burn.”
Mr. Ferguson and volunteers that work with him have spent the past four years pressing this issue. He said it’s something that must be known all around the country.
“There’s no reason the sugarcane industry should continue to put short term profits ahead of the long-term health and welfare of the surrounding residents, especially when there are so many benefits that can be gained from transitioning to green harvesting,” he said. “It’s time for the industry to become better neighbors to the surrounding communities by stopping the burn and switching to green harvesting.”
“I believe it’s a very good thing that attention is being paid to this very important issue. The Glades has been suffering for a very long time.” Mr. Abruzzo said. “Ultimately, I do believe that the law will be with the people. Once this is corrected, I believe the Glades will stop being one of the poorest places in the country. It will be vibrant and flourishing.”
Mr. Abruzzo said the first step after the legal filing is to immediately get the sugar industry to stop burning while the case is going on. This case is federal, but they also plan to file state and individual claims.
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PRESS ROOM: Top Climate Organizations React to Trump’s Executive Orders Attacking Health, Environment, Climate and Clean Energy Jobs
NNPA NEWSWIRE — Climate Action Campaign (CAC), along with partners and allies, voiced strong concerns about the executive orders and the confirmation of Lee Zeldin as the 17th Environmental Protection Agency administrator.

Voice concerns about the New EPA Administrator
WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump wasted no time implementing the Project 2025 playbook. Within his first hours as the 47th President, he issued executive orders aimed at dismantling crucial climate, health, and economic protections, which could have dire consequences for the country and the environment. His actions of disservice to our communities on the first day of his presidency coincided with Martin Luther King Jr. Day which was meant for service and reflection. The policies introduced by President Trump, along with his new Environmental Protection Agency administrator, stand in stark contrast to the spirit of Dr. King’s commitments to service others and improve society.
Climate Action Campaign (CAC), along with partners and allies, voiced strong concerns about the executive orders and the confirmation of Lee Zeldin as the 17th Environmental Protection Agency administrator. “The new administration has moved to undo hard-earned generational progress like Justice40 that was created to ensure every American has an opportunity to be healthy and thrive,” said Dr. Margo Browne, Senior Vice President of Justice and Equity, at Environmental Defense Fund. “These actions threaten the rights of tens of millions of Americans to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and use products free of toxic chemicals, particularly those people whose zip code or race add undue burdens.
We must stay focused. Leaders change, but our work remains the same. And we will do everything we can to uphold the progress made with our partners and allies and to uplift the people on the frontlines fighting for equity every day.” “As we enter into an era of weaponized phrases and issues, we must remember that environmental justice means that all people should have equitable access to a healthy, sustainable, and resilient environment,” said Leslie Fields, Chief Federal Officer, WE ACT For Environmental Justice. “Trump’s day one acts – including rescissions of nearly 80 vital executive orders while adding dozens of new, anti-democratic orders – roll back popular policies that promote clean, renewable, and affordable energy. These actions also place vulnerable communities in even greater danger from pollution and the dire, real-time consequences of the climate crisis. In the face of these assaults, we will not stop pursuing justice.”
“The President of the United States is elected to lead and protect all Americans,” said Ben Jealous, Executive Director, Sierra Club. “Donald Trump promised to be a president who fights for working families, but his bluster of action shows he’s fighting harder to protect corporate polluters and their profits, all at the expense of our health, our safety, and our jobs. The American people want cheaper energy bills, safe drinking water, and clean air. Donald Trump should listen and offer actual solutions instead of exploiting their pain for political gain while he further lines the pockets of the wealthiest instead of American workers.”
On the Confirmation of Lee Zeldin, 17th administrator of the EPA:
“Lee Zeldin’s confirmation as EPA administrator is a catastrophic blow to the health of Americans, the climate, and the economy,” said Margie Alt, Director, Climate Action Campaign. “Under Zeldin’s leadership, the Environmental Protection Agency will no longer protect the American people and our communities – it will protect polluters. Zeldin’s public statements and record make it clear he will implement Trump’s anti-science, anti-clean energy Project 2025 agenda, prioritizing the interests of oil and gas CEOs at the expense of the clean air, water, and energy that Americans overwhelmingly support and rely on. Americans deserve an EPA administrator who will prioritize the health and safety of families over polluter profits. Zeldin’s confirmation is a tragic failure for all Americans.”
“The new head of the EPA must ensure that neither he nor the President denies vulnerable communities their most basic rights—the right to breathe clean air, drink water free from poison, and live on land that does not make them sick,” said Mustafa Santiago Ali, Executive Vice President, National Wildlife Federation. “Environmental Justice is not a privilege; it is the foundation of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To neglect it is to abandon the people who need protection the most.” “Confirming a director who normalizes baseless conspiracies, while failing to earnestly accept the facts of climate change, is a threat to the health of everyone in the United States and especially the most vulnerable Justice 40 communities,” said KeShaun Pearson, Executive Director, Memphis Community Against Pollution. “Lee Zeldin is the antithesis of environment and climate justice. We are amid a climate crisis that demands a protector, not a big oil pawn.” Climate Action Campaign is a vibrant coalition of advocacy organizations working together to drive ambitious, durable federal action to cut carbon pollution, address the climate crisis, advance environmental justice, and accelerate the transition to clean energy.
#NNPA BlackPress
BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2025 We Proclaim It
NNPA NEWSWIRE — In the history of this country, in the ongoing fight against racial oppression, against a white supremacist narrative, and against the racial apartheid laws that were passed and upheld, there have always been gear-shifting moments when individual people have taken a stand.

By Dr. Karsonya Wise Whitehead
Former Georgia Representative Julian Bond and Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver once said that when Rosa Parks chose to stay seated on that bus in Montgomery, Alabama, somewhere in the universe, a gear in the machinery shifted, and everything changed.
A gear-shifting moment.
In the history of this country, in the ongoing fight against racial oppression, against a white supremacist narrative, and against the racial apartheid laws that were passed and upheld, there have always been gear-shifting moments when individual people have taken a stand. It happened in 1850, when Harriet Araminta Tubman, a year after her self-emancipation, chose to go back to Baltimore, Maryland, to help lead her niece and her niece’s two children to freedom. A gear shifted. It happened in 1770, when Crispus Attucks, a Black and Indigenous sailor and whaler, chose to get involved with the growing kerfuffle in Boston. In 1864, when the 22nd Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Colored Troops marched from Camp William Penn through the streets of Philadelphia on their way to fight, gear shifted.
When Mamie Till told them in 1955 to leave her son’s casket open so that the world could see what those white men had done to her son, a gear in the machinery of the universe shifted, it happened again in 1966 with Kwame Ture and Mukasa Dada’s declaration of Black Power after the “March Against Fear.” In 2014, after police officers killed unarmed Eric Garner in New York and unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Black people came together under the banner and hashtag of Black Lives Matter to march, protest, and demand change. Gears shift when we choose to fight, when we choose to stand up, and when we refuse to back down. The moral arc of the universe does not bend on its own toward justice, it bends because we push it and because we are willing to continue to do it until change does happen.
In 1926, when Dr. Carter G. Woodson—the founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), the son of formerly enslaved parents, a former sharecropper and miner, and the second Black person to receive a Ph.D. in History from Harvard University—sent out a press release announcing the first Negro History Week, a gear shifted. He chose February because the Black community was already celebrating the historic achievements on the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln (2/12) and Frederick Douglass (2/14). Dr. Woodson did not wait for the celebration of our history to be proclaimed, he proclaimed it. He did not wait for someone to permit him to celebrate what we had contributed to this country, he celebrated it. Dr. Woodson understood that Black parents had been teaching their children our history since we arrived in this country. Our stories and achievements had been carried by the wind and buried in the soil. It had been whispered as bedtime stories, spoken from the pulpits on Sunday mornings, and woven throughout our songs and poems of resistance and survival. America did not have to tell us who we were to this country; we told them.
[This post contains video, click to play]
America did not have to tell us that we built this country, our fingerprints are etched into the stone. America does not have to proclaim Black History Month, we proclaim it. We live in the legacy of Dr. Woodson, and as we have done for 98 years, we will celebrate who we are and all that we have accomplished. We stand at the intersection of the past and the future; what we do at this moment will determine how the next gear shifts. The 2025 Black History Month theme is African Americans and Labor, which focuses on the various and profound ways that work and working of all kinds – free and unfree, skilled and unskilled, vocational and voluntary – intersect with the collective experiences of Black people and the transformational work that we have done throughout the U.S., Africa, and the Diaspora. We are celebrating our visible labor—from the work we did back then to build the White House to the work we do right now to hold the White House accountable, from repairing the roads to teaching in our schools, from stocking shelves to packing and unloading trucks; from working in the federal government to our ongoing labor in the state and local offices—and, our invisible labor—from raising and teaching our children to caring for our aging family members, from finding ways to practice revolutionary self-care to finding ways to hope beyond hope in a country that frequently targets and terrorizes Black people. We bear witness to what it means to work hard every day and to get sick and tired of working so hard.
As the president of ASALH, one of the many legacy keepers of Dr. Carter G. Woodson, I am excited to proclaim and uplift the start of Black History Month 2025. I believe that ASALH is a lighthouse that you do not notice until you need it. When boats are caught in a storm or fog, they look for the lighthouse to help guide them safely back to the shore. We have been standing as a lighthouse proudly proclaiming the importance of Black History and helping people to understand that it is only through studying the quilted narrative of our historical journey that one can see the silences, blind spots, hypocrisies, and distortions of American history. We do not celebrate because we are given permission, we celebrate because we are the permission givers. We do not wait for Black History Month to be proclaimed, we proclaim it. We do not wait to be seen, we see ourselves. We do not have to be told the story of America because we are writing it, we are telling it, we are owning it, and we are pointing the way to it. We invite you to join us as we once again celebrate and center the incredible contributions that Black people have made to this beautiful and imperfect nation.
Dr. Karsonya (Kaye) Wise Whitehead is the 30th person and the eighth woman to serve as the national president of ASALH. She is a professor of Communication and African and African American Studies at Loyola University Maryland and the host of the award-winning radio show “Today with Dr. Kaye” on WEAA, 88.9 FM. She is the author of the recently released “my mother’s tomorrow: dispatches from Baltimore’s Black Butterfly” and a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. She lives in Baltimore with her family.
#NNPA BlackPress
Black Reaction to Trump DEI Blame on The Plane Crash
NNPA NEWSWIRE — Before the completed investigation officially began, President Trump laid the blame for the accident on the Army helicopter. He felt it should have been flying at a different altitude, higher or lower, than the jet

By April Ryan
“We are dealing with a vicious adversary,” according to Rev. Al Sharpton, the head of the National Action Network speaking of President Donald Trump and his hate diatribe Thursday morning. President Trump blamed DEI, the Obama and Biden administrations along with former Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg for the deadly midair crash over the Potomac last night. 67 people died after an accident between an American Airline Plane and an Army Helicopter. When asked why President Trump thought diversity had something to do with the crash, he said,” I have common sense and most people don’t.” Reverend Al, who is investigating the impact of the Trump anti-DEI efforts in retail believes Trump is “obsessed with race” and he is a “raw, insensitive, uncaring man.”
Former Secretary Buttigieg immediately went to social media making a statement saying, Trump should be leading, not lying.” Buttigieg also fact-checked Trump saying we grew Air Traffic Control and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch.” Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) / X During Trump’s rant on DEI at the White House briefing room podium, he asserted, “the FAA’s diversity push includes a focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities. That is amazing. And then it says, the FAA says, people with severe disabilities, the most underrepresented segment of the workforce, and they want them in, and they want them. They can be air traffic controllers. I don’t think so.” Trump went on to say the prior administrations felt those departments were “too white.”
According to reports FAA staffing has been an issue since Inauguration Day January 20, 2025. Also, Elon Musk, the head of the White House Office of Government Efficiency is reported to have asked the head of the FAA to resign. Musk FAA Ax Former Black Obama Administration Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx exclusively told this reporter after the Trump statements,” I would caution against any definitive conclusions until that work [investigation] is done by trained, experienced professionals.”
Foxx, who also worked as a transportation consultant in the Biden administration admonished the Trump address saying, “There is no sugar-coating the tragic midair collision that occurred last night. In my experience, safety has always been the number one focus of the Federal Aviation Administration.” Foxx says there is a safety mission to be completed after this tragedy. “There is a well-practiced root cause process that has been taken in the past. It should be used now with competent professionals. A comprehensive, fact-based investigation will answer the many questions we all have. It would also help guard against future accidents of this type,” according to the transportation expert.
Before the completed investigation officially began, President Trump laid the blame for the accident on the Army helicopter. He felt it should have been flying at a different altitude, higher or lower, than the jet. When it comes to the president’s corrosive comments, reaction has been swift from the civil rights community. In a statement from the President and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Derrick Johnson, “The NAACP is disgusted by this display of unpresidential, divisive behavior.” Johnson told this reporter in a text message, “The President has made his decision to put politics over people abundantly clear as he uses the highest office in the land to sow hatred rooted in falsehoods instead of providing us with the leadership we need and deserve.”
As Trump worked to distract with his words on DEI, the questions still abound as to what caused the deadly plane crash. Former Sec. Foxx, immediately following the fatal crash last night said. “My worst fear is that something happened with the avionics. I hope and expect that this is not the case. But most aircraft these days run in a form of GPS. Could a warning system have failed? But then, how can two systems fail? That leads to some even more grave concerns about interference with the systems. There are many other potential causes.”
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