Michigan farm activist house burns: supporters claim arson

A Michigan farm rights activist and his family are lucky to be alive after a possible arson attack in the early morning hours of Thursday, March 6, 2008. Phil Morosky and his family were sleeping in their beds in their rural Michigan home when a passerby knocked on the door around 3 AM and told them the house was on fire.

After the fire department poured thousands of gallons of water into the house, thousands of legal documents were nothing more than icy mush. The central part of the house where the records were stored was gutted and Morosky suffered severe burns to his hands trying to save them from the fire.

Morosky’s friends and many area farm rights activists believe the fire was arson. They point to a one foot trail of fire damage which trails off the roof in a one foot wide line down to the side of the house—right over the room where Morosky kept his home office and stored legal research documents and information on the cases of thousands of black and white farmers from around the country, many of whom have lost farms in what they claim are illegal foreclosures.

Morosky is well known in the farm community and has been known to drive a thousand miles to participate in protests and farm rights conferences around the nation. The water and fire damage to his records will slightly slow him down, but he says he has most of the information in his head and he can reconstruct the files from memory and additional research.

What concerns Morosky and other farm activists is the timing of the fire. On March 4, 2008, just two days before the fire, Morosky filed a motion in court asking for a grand jury investigation of FSA in Michigan and around the country. He and others believe the agency has been acting illegally, without audit or oversight. They want to expose what they say are criminal actions within the agency by employees and loan officers in Michigan and around the country.

Morosky has his own case in federal court. Because the fire reportedly occurred within days of his filing of a critical legal motion in his case against the United States Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Administration, some say the timing was just too “cute” to be coincidence.

Morosky’s case against the USDA, his assistance to farmers in similar situations and the fishy fire, which destroyed his home office and documents, speak to an escalation of nastiness and violence, which could have been fatal. Around the nation, farm rights supporters say acts of intimidation, violence and arson are part and parcel of an increasingly contentious relationship between federal farm loan agencies, their employees, the occasional white supremacist and family farmers.

In the annals of farm rights activism, Morosky is not the only alleged target of arson or intimidation. Around the nation, outspoken farmers, land rights activists and whistleblowers have become targets of vandalism, threats and intimidation.

A black farmer in Kentucky was the victim of vandalism last year. Members of a white supremacist group allegedly cut down locked gates and conducted meetings on his rented fields. In two separate incidents, vandals stole or destroyed protest signs, which line the front of his property. Someone reportedly shot at his house, gouging out a chunk of his chimney, and yet, the local law enforcement agency allegedly can’t lay its hands on all of the incident reports of violence and trespass on his property.

As ugly as the situation between minority farmers and alleged supremacists has been over the last few decades, it is the problem between disadvantaged farmers and elements of the USDA bureaucracy, which are more central to the problem. For more than a quarter of a century the intimidation and threats from within the USDA have been a major point of friction between farm activists and the federal government.

Many farmers and civil rights activists point to an all too cozy, not to mention illegal, relationship between federal farm loan agency personnel and local bankers, real estate agencies, auctioneers and land investors. Farm loan agency personnel have been accused of illegally sharing information on the status of farmers’ finances with banks and real estate speculators and unlawfully closing off access to capital from other sources through this shared information, not to mention profiting by the foreclosure process.

What infuriates farmers and land rights activists most is the fact that the very same farm loan officers who supervise farmers’ loan accounts, the very people who approve or disprove farm business plans (plans must be approved for loans to be approved), are also reportedly profiting from their clients’ bankruptcies. All over the nation, farm rights activists have accused federal farm loan program officers of manipulating farm loan policies, delaying approval of operating loans, and illegally sharing information with other lenders to drive at risk farmers into complete bankruptcy—all while personally profiting from “production bonuses” for “clearing bankruptcies.”

These are the same “bankruptcies” which many farmers say the loan officer caused in the first place through manipulation of farm business plan approvals. This environment has generated enmity between farmers and USDA for generations and today, more than one farm activist has called the process an outright criminal collusion between loan officers and outside interests.

The current and ongoing battle between USDA and Congressional investigators over USDA’s alleged misreporting of civil rights complaints are part of a litany of alleged wrongdoings and complaints against the agency. The thousands of records which were destroyed in the Morosky fire contain first hand accounts of illegal actions on the part of farm loan officials, many of which have been the source of other congressional investigations for the past 20 years.

Many say the ongoing and contentious relationship between family farmers, minority employees in the USDA and agency managers is part of “The Last Plantation” in the United States. They contend that USDA treats many of its minority employees in the same disrespectful and illegal fashion in which it treats black, women, elderly and “minority” farmers, and, in the course of conducting “business as usual”, the agency reportedly uses retaliatory actions against both whistleblowers and outspoken farmers.

There are many in the farm rights community who believe that they are being targeted by extra-legal, even illegal acts by government employees and, even now, they are lobbying Congress to look into the matter. Congress and the USDA have been going head to head lately over the USDA’s refusal to allow congressional investigators to talk to employees of the USDA’s Civil Rights Division concerning the real number of civil rights investigations the agency is conducting.

Morosky and other farm rights activists say the USDA is actively manipulating bankruptcy laws and illegally keeping minority and economically disadvantaged farmers from exercising their right to a bankruptcy hearing. Reportedly the agency has illegally driven hundreds of thousands of family farmers out of business by allegedly forging documents and refusing to allow the farmers to present evidence in their own defense.

Morosky is careful to say that the evidence isn’t all in yet, as to whether the fire on his property was arson, but many of his supporters aren’t that reticent. Many believe that the fire was deliberately set, and point to the fact that Morosky’s actions have made him extremely unpopular in certain sectors.

According to sources, there is no shortage of people in and out of government who allegedly dislike his connection with black farmers, and still other “shadowy figures” (as some activists call them) who don’t like the way Morosky and others use Admiralty Law and legal precedent to fight what they claim is an ongoing campaign by USDA to favor agribusiness and large-scale corporate farms and drive family farmers out of business.

Morosky’s home suffered over $50,000 in fire and water damage. His hands were severely burned by melting aluminum siding when he tried to retrieve documents from his burning house and his friends are afraid that he may have suffered internal damage as well. He suffered smoke inhalation and close friends are afraid that he may have swallowed fire when he tried to save some of his vital papers.

His friends and family remain concerned, because he has no health insurance and can not afford to seek medical attention for his burns or possible lung damage. Morosky is letting others worry. He says he’s too busy trying to reconstruct his documents and keep the government from driving more farmers off their land.

The author is a Midwest-based journalist and has written hundreds of articles on government corruption, politics, black history, current events and religion. She is a print and broadcast journalist and has written 5 books. Her author website is:
http://www.lulu.com/davis4000_2000