Friday, September 09, 2011

100,000 Acre Federal Wildlife Preserve Proposed for the Headwaters of the Everglades

The Miami Herald

New federal plan a boon for Everglades

By SUSAN COCKING
scocking@miamiherald.com

Most of the proposed Everglades Headwaters National Wildlife Refuge and Conservation Area would consist of pasture land to be protected through conservation easements purchased from willing landowners.
Most of the proposed Everglades Headwaters National Wildlife Refuge and Conservation Area would consist of pasture land to be protected through conservation easements purchased from willing landowners.
The U.S. Interior Department unveiled Wednesday details of a new huge national wildlife refuge and conservation area in the Everglades north of Lake Okeechobee, aimed at protecting wildlife, wild lands, and fresh water that sustains South Florida.

Most of the proposed Everglades Headwaters National Wildlife Refuge and Conservation Area would consist of up to 100,000 acres of pasture land to be protected through conservation easements purchased from willing landowners. Ranchers would retain ownership of their land but agree not to allow development there. Another 50,000 acres would be targeted for outright purchase by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to create the refuge itself where public hunting, fishing, and hiking would be permitted. The area extends from southwest Osceola County south to the Lake Okeechobee, including swaths of Polk, Okeechobee and Highlands counties.

Federal officials acknowledge fully accomplishing the plan is years away and could cost more than $600 million, with no money yet set aside. But, they say, it’s worth the effort.

“We found a conservation landscape. We found a gap between those lands. We wanted to make connectivity to these places. We wanted to make sure the ranching community is on board,” said Charlie Pelizza of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

Pelizza said the areas targeted for conservation are a mosaic of habitats, such as pinelands, wetlands, prairies, and scrub that support 98 threatened and endangered species, including the Florida black bear, panther and scrub jay. They are also critical to the state’s drinking water supply by slowing down and filtering pollutants in water that flows from farms and suburbs into Lake Okeechobee.

“This is a softer touch of restoration of the Everglades,” he said. “Others rely very heavily on infrastructure. What we’re hoping for here is a more natural approach.”

Osceola County cattle rancher Mike Adams, who attended Wednesday’s news conference, said he supports the program.

“The easement type of program keeps people employed, which is critical,” Adams said. “Working through an easement program keeps lands on the tax rolls. We see this as a win-win for the Adams family and for the wildlife.”

When the idea of a new refuge first was floated early this year, many South Florida hunters and anglers became alarmed because they feared they’d be excluded from some of their favorite recreation areas on dry land and in wetlands, rivers and lakes. But both federal and state officials emphasized that won’t happen.

“The Service will defer to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to decide on hunting opportunities and managing public access for hunting and fishing,” said FWC northeast regional director Dennis David.

Added Pelizza: “We hope to show the sportsman community we’re really serious about providing that access.”

Now that the feds have a map of the area to show people, they will seek public comment through October 24. Public hearings will be Sept. 24 at South Florida Community College in Avon Park and Oct. 1 at Kissimmee’s Osceola Heritage Park. Written comments may be submitted by email to EvergladesHeadwatersProposal@fws.gov.

If the approval process goes smoothly, the deal could be done as soon as early 2012. Then funding would need to be obtained in a process that would likely stretch over many years. The Department of the Interior’s funding for land acquisition and conservation easement such as this typically comes from the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Royalties from federal leases of offshore oil and gas drilling go to that fund, and many projects compete annually for some of the money. It’s also possible that private land donations could be part of the equation.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Resources Conservation Service recently announced it would spend $100 million to acquire development rights to some 24,000 acres in four counties around Lake Okeechobee that overlap the proposed refuge and conservation area. The two programs are separate, but the Fish and Wildlife Service and Agriculture say they will work together on their common goals.



© 2011 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/07/v-print/2395111/new-federal-plan-a-boon-for-everglades.html#ixzz1XUAX5gtY
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Thursday, September 08, 2011

National Geographic article re: Stetson Kennedy, Colorful Champion of Civil Rights

Stetson Kennedy: Colorful Champion of Civil Rights

Posted by David Braun of National Geographic September 7, 2011 Comments

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By Rick Bowers

We recently lost a champion of the civil rights movement. We also lost a colorful character with a flair for drama.

Stetson Kennedy was a folklorist, activist, author and spy with a lifelong passion to eradicate racism from our cultural landscape. He was also a perpetual self-promoter who took flack for embellishing his exploits and hyping his accomplishments. On Aug. 27, Kennedy died at age 94 at a hospice near his home in St. Augustine Fla. His death closed the curtain on an era that few of us today can even imagine – when racism ruled as the social norm and bigotry hid behind hoods and robes.

Back in the 1940s, Kennedy worked with a team of infiltrators to get inside the Ku Klux Klan. Their goal was to expose the secrets of the invisible empire to civil rights organizations, law enforcement authorities and the media. Kennedy filed reports to his sponsors in the civil rights community revealing secrets he gleaned at KKK meetings. He also served as a handler for a deeply embedded mole who gained access to the most militant factions of the infamous Nathan Bedford Forrest Klavern No. 1 in Atlanta, Georgia. Kennedy leaked sensitive KKK information to friendly journalists and even advised the producers of the Adventures of Superman radio show, who were creating a 16-part series for kids that pitted the Man of Steel against the men of hate.

Just a couple weeks before his death, I spent most of a day with Kennedy at his home in St. Augustine. I was there to conduct the final interview for my upcoming book Superman versus the Ku Klux Klan – the True Story of How the Iconic Superhero Battled the Men of Hate. (National Geographic Press, Jan. 2012.) That interview culminated a year of research into Kennedy, which included studying his extensive writings, pouring through his papers, tracking down old spy reports and weighing the praise of his allies and barbs of his critics. In the end, I had no doubt that Stetson Kennedy was one of those characters who – despite his flaws – had to be credited for making a positive mark on history. Despite his tendencies to exaggerate the record and play the hero, Kennedy’s dedication to his cause remained strong right up to his final days. Even as he warned me that his health was failing, Kennedy talked about history and social issues with a gleam in his eyes and wry sense of humor, like the time he declined to answer one of my questions because, he smiled, “I have you pegged as a CIA agent!” For me, the best way to address his legacy is to look back at his life.

Stetson Kennedy was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1916, and grew up in a white-columned house of a traditional Southern family that boasted blood ties to Confederate war heroes and wealthy cotton planters. Even as a boy he recoiled at racism and resented the presence of the KKK in his community. “I’ve always felt like an alien in the land of my birth,” he recalled later.

After a year at the University of Florida he moved to Key West to take a job with the Florida Writer’s Project — a Depression-era program that provided work to unemployed writers, editors, and historians. Lugging around a clumsy recording machine that used a sapphire needle to cut sound directly onto a 12-inch acetate disc, he collected the life stories, tall tales, folk songs and fables of ordinary people. He never forgot visiting the back-woods camps where black workers served as indentured servants to their white bosses. “Why don’t you leave and get out of it?’ he asked one elderly worker. The man responded: “The onliest way out is to die out.”

Kept out of World War II by a bad back, he decided to fight fascism at home. As a writer, he penned dozens of exposes for newspapers ranging from left-leaning PM to the African American Pittsburg Courier. Under his byline flowed account after account of KKK violence and political influence as well as predictions of an imminent KKK revival. He learned about extremist groups by subscribing to hate sheets published by organizations such as the American Gentile Army, the White Front and the Union of Christian Crusaders and continued to cozy-up to the KKK. By 1946 Kennedy and a team of spies had forged a direct pipeline into the Atlanta Klan, reporting on plots to kill black families who were moving into white neighbourhoods, hit lists targeting anti-Klan journalists and the role of Atlanta police in KKK violence. Terrifying stuff. One report noted that a policeman named John ‘Itchy Trigger Finger’ Nash received a commendation from the Grand Dragon for “the slaying of a Negro on Decatur Street last week… This makes the thirteenth Negro he has killed ‘in his line of duty.”

Kennedy’s work against the forces of racism is supported by the historical record. He certainly infiltrated the Klan and stood up against racism for decades. His credibility problem stemmed from his book The Klan Unmasked. Breaking with the tone of his previous writings, the Klan Unmasked read like a hard-boiled detective novel, with fanciful accounts and made up dialog woven around his Klan-busting capers. Under fire from critics for embellishing history, Kennedy had to admit that he novelized the book to sell more copies and raise more awareness of Klan violence. In the end, however, his actual accomplish were extensive and important — more than enough to secure his legacy as a tireless champion of civil rights.

A strong strategic planner and natural entrepreneur, Rick Bowers has launched and managed programs across all major media channels, including newspapers, magazines, online, music, books, television, radio and new media. Rick is currently the Director of Creative Initiatives for AARP, developing game-changing branding programs and integrated multi-media campaigns for the nearly 40-million-member organization.

Rick’s new book is entitled Spies of Mississippi: The True Story of the Spy Network that Tried to Destroy the Civil Rights Movement. Published by National Geographic, it tells the story of a pro-segregation state espionage agency that infiltrated civil rights groups with the express intent of stopping integration.

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Tuesday, September 06, 2011

My friend and mentor Stetson Kennedy was a national hero, ahead of his time

Guest column: Stetson Kennedy was a true hero, ahead of his time

Posted: September 4, 2011 - 12:49am
St. Augustine Record
By ED SLAVIN
St. Augustine

My friend and mentor, Stetson Kennedy, died last Saturday at the age of 94. Stetson was a true American hero, of whom Studs Terkel wrote:

"Stetson Kennedy, in all the delightful years I've known him, has always questioned authority -- whether it be the alderman or the president. He has always asked the question 'Why?' Whether it be waging a war based on an outrageous lie or any behavior he considers undemocratic, he has always asked the provocative question. In short, he could well be described as a ''troublemaker'' in the best sense of the word. With half a dozen Stetson Kennedys, we can transform our society into one of truth, grace and beauty."

Nearly six years ago, I was introduced to Stetson Kennedy by our mutual friend, David Thundershield Queen (now-deceased Native American advocate) at Stetson's birthday party at Beluthahatchee. Stetson impressed me with his courage, intellect and dogged determination. I enjoyed the pleasure of his company, whether talking about life or poring over FBI documents. Stetson was a kindred spirit. I was humbled and flattered when Stetson called me "Stetson Kennedy, Jr." upon our second meeting.

I had lunch with Stetson Kennedy earlier this year, at Athena (local Greek Restaurant, across from the former Slave Market, where two civil rights monuments now stand). I asked Stetson if he knew where our City Manager was that day. "I don't usually follow him," Stetson said. I told him that City Manager John Regan was visiting three Civil Rights Museums, then on his way to meeting our former UN Ambassador Andrew Young, to discuss a National Civil Rights Museum here. Upon hearing the news, Stetson Kennedy was so proud -- he almost cried. Our City of St. Augustine has come so far in such a short time, and Stetson Kennedy got to see it all. Stetson exemplified Mahatma Gandhi's precept: "Be the change you want to see in the world."

Stetson Kennedy was proud that our Nation's Oldest European-founded city will soon have a National Civil Rights Museum, thanks to the courage of the people who demonstrated here in 1964, including Ambassador Andrew Young.

Stetson Kennedy lived to see an African-American elected president of the United States and another African-American elected to be mayor of Jacksonville, Florida. That's where it all began for Stetson, as a young boy who heard about his African-American nanny raped by vicious Klansmen, retaliation for asserting her rights on a Jacksonville bus. Kennedy helped end the Klan as he knew it: the motto of his life might be "Eracism."

Stetson Kennedy's ideas live on, in the spirit of the character Tom Joad from John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath: "I'll be all around in the dark -- I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look -- wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build -- I'll be there, too."

Stetson Kennedy didn't live nearly long enough to see all of his goals achieved, but he pointed the way for future generations. He was a true hero, ahead of his time. As Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Bernard Malamud wrote in The Natural, "Without heroes, we are all plain people, and don't know how far we can go."

*

Ed Slavin received a B.S. in Foreign Service, Georgetown University; a J.D. from Memphis State University, now University of Memphis, and is a leader on environmental justice issues.

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The Guardian (UK): Diane Roberts' Appreciation of Stetson Kennedy

Stetson Kennedy, unmasker of the Klan

Kennedy was a courageous writer and activist for racial justice. But more, he was a champion of that passing 'other America'

    • Ku Klux Klan, Louisiana, 1962
    Hooded Ku Klux Klansmen, in 1962, protesting against racial integration in Louisiana. Stetson Kennedy had exposed the workings of the Klan a decade earlier, by going undercover. Photograph: AP Photo

    You wouldn't think it to look at us now, but the United States used to grow a fine crop of progressives.

    Stetson Kennedy, who died 27 August at the age of 94, was one of the great ones. Political provocateur, author of books on social justice and folklore, civil rights campaigner, friend of Zora Neale Hurston, Jean-Paul Sartre and Woody Guthrie, subject of a Billy Bragg song, southern gentleman and object of constant death threats from angry racists, Kennedy dedicated his long life to the struggle for equality. According to historian Gary Mormino, "At one time Stetson Kennedy was the most hated man in America." He was also a genuine American hero.

    Kennedy is most famous for infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s. Denied the chance to fight fascism in the second world war because of a bad back, he decided to fight it at home. He impersonated an encyclopedia salesman and joined a "Klavern", swearing to "uphold the principles of White Supremacy and the purity of White Womanhood." He funnelled information on Klan rituals (a juvenile mix of Freemasonry and college fraternity, complete with secret handshakes, elaborate titles and a rule book called "The Kloran") and, more importantly, whatever violence they were planning, to the police, the Anti-Defamation League and the Washington Post. He gave closely guarded Klan passwords to the writers of the popular "Superman" radio show, who used them in a story line in which the "Man of Steel" battles the hateful forces of the Grand Dragon.

    In 1946, Kennedy wore his white robe and hood to crash a meeting of the House Un-American Activities Committee. He wanted them to investigate the Klan. They had him thrown out of the capitol. Mississippi Congressman John Rankin, chair of Huac, said, "After all, the KKK is an old American institution."

    Cover image of Stetson Kennedy's I Rode With the Ku Klux Klan Cover image of Stetson Kennedy's I Rode With the Ku Klux Klan (1954), later renamed The Klan Unmasked. Photograph: Kennedy Archives

    Kennedy published two books based on his undercover activities, Southern Exposure in 1946 and in 1954, the lurid I Rode With the Ku Klux Klan, written in hardboiled detective style (it was later retitled The Klan Unmasked). He became Klan Enemy No 1, with Grand Dragon Sam Green offering a reward for killing him: "Kennedy's ass is worth $1,000 a pound!"

    William Stetson Kennedy was a traitor to his race and to his class. What's more, he was proud of it.

    He was born in 1916 to a well-off Florida family, a descendant of plantation-owning signers of the Declaration of Independence, Confederate officers and John Batterson Stetson, maker of the famous cowboy hats. He recalled that when he was a child in the 1920s, local Klan thugs beat and raped the beloved Kennedy family maid for "sassing whitefolks". Perhaps that spurred his precocious antipathy to the racial politics of the south: "At a very tender age, I became aware that grownups were lying about a whole lot more than Santa Claus."

    In 1936, while a student at the University of Florida, he collected boots and blankets for the Republican side in the Spanish civil war. In the late 1930s, he went to work for the federal writers project of Franklin Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration collecting folklore with Zora Neale Hurston, later famous for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Together, they'd travel the back roads, the revolver-packing black preacher's daughter and the word-besotted Confederate general's grandson, collecting the rapidly disappearing tales of Old Florida, stories of voodoo, talking alligators, jook joints and neo-slavery in the turpentine camps. In an interview in 2004, Kennedy recalled, "Zora and I were at a camp near Cross City where we met this octogenarian who'd been born 'on the turp'mntine.' I asked why he didn't just leave, and he said 'the onliest way out is to die out and you have to die 'cause if you tries to leave, they'll kill you.'"

    His WPA material became the basis of his first book, Palmetto Country, published in 1942. Woody Guthrie, whose "This Land is Your Land" is still beloved of schoolchildren who have no idea they're singing a socialist anthem, fell in love with Kennedy's work. The proletarian troubadour who inspired Bob Dylan sent Kennedy a Joycean fan letter, asking for songs he'd collected – "the sort that make the wives of senators faint when they hear them" – praising Kennedy's "lecturetalks against the KKK and all the rest of the stoolies, gooners and fonies in general, the raceyhaters, pinkybaiters, deadbrainers, and fraidy cats."

    The McCarthyite, Jim Crow America of the 1950s wasn't exactly friendly to the likes of Stetson Kennedy. New York publishers would touch him, and besides, the Klan had tried to burn down his house in Florida. So he left for Paris, where he got to know black writer and fellow southerner Richard Wright, and Jean-Paul Sartre who helped him publish The Jim Crow Guide to the USA. Meanwhile, Woody Guthrie, always in need of a place to stay, wrote dozens of songs there, but also stationed a shotgun by the front door in case the Klan came calling.

    Stetson Kennedy's house "Beluthahatchee" still stands by a lake ringed with cypress trees full of snowy egrets and osprey. The name comes from a black Seminole folktale collected by Zora Neale Hurston – Beluthahatchee is a sort of Garden of Earthly Delights, a place where "all is forgiven". After wandering for a decade, Kennedy came home to Florida, determined to find what he called "the other America", the one "envisioned by the Founding Fathers and Lincoln, Whitman, Guthrie, Robeson et al. Which is to say a democratic society and government functioning for the common good of the people, as opposed to megaprofit for the few."

    He joined lunch counter protests in southern cities throughout the 1960s and agitated for environmental protection until he went into hospital for the last time. In 2006, the authors of Freakonomics, who based an admiring chapter on Kennedy's The Klan Unmasked, concluded they had been "hoodwinked", and challenged his account of Klan infiltration. This ignited a fiery protest, with Studs Terkel angrily defending his old friend in a letter to the New York Times:

    "[Stetson] could well be described as a 'troublemaker' in the best sense of the word. With half a dozen Stetson Kennedys, we can transform our society into one of truth, grace and beauty."

    Investigations by several newspapers, and evidence from Peggy Bulger, director of the American Folklife Centre at the Library of Congress, generally exonerated Kennedy.

    In his tenth decade of life, Stetson Kennedy would say, "I like to think I haven't mellowed." He hadn't: he was still marching for farmworkers' rights at the age of 93. In hospice care a few days ago, a doctor came into check his mental facilities: "Where are you from?" said the doctor. Stetson Kennedy replied, "Planet Earth."

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