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All In the Family

National Master Steel poses with the two newest additions to his family: Jonathan and Ivy.

Near the close of the First Degree of our Order, the Master begins a charge with the words: “In the Grange, we are like one great family...”

In the first Declaration of Purposes, adopted in 1874, the first specific objective for the new organization was to “develop a higher and better manhood and womanhood among ourselves.”

The current mission statement for the National Grange begins with the words: “Provide opportunities for individuals and families to develop to their highest potential in order to build stronger communities, states, and the nation.”
So, we continue to be about family.

It has been stated by several Grange leaders on the state and national levels, that if we could just get current members to enroll more members of their families in the work of the Order, then we would grow in numbers and activities, especially the addition of programs and projects that relate to the modern day communities where we live.

Jonathan and Ivy Steel December 23, 2005

As we plan for our Grange Month activity this year, let’s make sure we include something relevant to the next generation and let’s be sure to make an effort to begin the process of enrollment.

Speaking of family, I would like to introduce the newest members of mine. Jonathan and Ivy Steel were born to my son, Chuck, and his wife, Angela, on December 23, 2005 in York, PA. Ivy Elizabeth was born at 7:48 p.m. and weighed 4 pounds, 11 ounces and was 18 inches long. Jonathan Thomas was born at 7:56 p.m., and weighed 5 pounds, 1 ounce and was 19 inches long.

I’m a proud grandpapa for the fifth time!

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Hello Grangers!

Meet DoriAnn Gedris, Marketing Director

It is just amazing how one event that occurs years ago can continue to impact our lives today. And, so the story begins. DoriAnn Gedris Marketing Director My family and I had just moved to Farmingdale, NJ, and I began 4th grade in a new school. I was a rather shy girl growing up, though many of you who already know me won’t believe that. At school, I started to make friends, but it was one girl who befriended me and one day asked, “Do you want to go to Grange with me?” “What is Grange?,” I asked. At the tender age of 10, I don’t think she knew the answer, but without hesitation she replied, “We have a lot of fun.” It wasn’t long after that, I went to my first Junior Grange meeting and became a member. From the meetings to arts and crafts, state session, the talent contest, camp, our annual Easter egg hunt, and Christmas caroling, we did have a lot of fun. Through my grade school and high school years, I remained active in the Grange. Some of my fondest memories include the first day of camp, taking the 6th degree, and our annual Christmas Party. Most of all, I remember the people I met and the friends I made. After I finished high school, I moved to Washington, D.C., and received my Bachelor of Arts from America University. During my college years, I interned at the National Grange. Since college, I received my Masters of Business Administration, worked for an association management firm and a start up e-marketing firm. About four years ago in April 2002, I joined the National Grange staff. I am currently responsible for program development, sales and marketing initiatives, and member benefits and services. Today, I am married and live in Alexandria, VA with my husband, Mark, two dogs, and a cat. I also spend my free time caring for and riding my two horses. Have you asked anyone to join the Grange? Just imagine if no one asked me.

Meet Shaletta Espie, Senior Communications Manager and New Grange Editor

When I was six years old, I started a newspaper called, Umoja. My father purchased a used copier machine at a yard sale, and I began printing and selling the eight-page publication to my neighbors, teachers, classmates, family, and friends for 25 cents.

Shaletta Espie Sr. Communications Manager and New Grange Editor

I printed and sold the magazine for four years, and it grew tremendously. I mployed two writers and a photojournalist, who I paid in lemon heads, chick-o-sticks, now and laters, and Boston baked beans. It also went from eight pages to 16 pages and included recipes from my grandmother’s kitchen, fashion tips from my sister who is a former catalog model and Miss Teen Maryland 1983, and local sports news from my three sport playing best friend.

Eventually, I ceased operations as my interest began to broaden, and my schedule became crowded with piano lessons, book clubs, and playing softball. But, my interest in writing and journalism didn’t cease. I still possessed a love for expressing myself with the written word, and I joined the newspaper staffs in elementary, middle, and high schools. In fact, it was in high school that the newspaper adviser suggested that I become the paper’s sports editor after breaking my ankle and not being able to play softball anymore.

After graduation, I accepted a full scholarship to Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland, and four years later, I received a Bachelor of Science in Journalism. At Towson, I was a sports writer, eventually becoming the first-female sports editor for the school’s publication, The Towerlight.

With my graduation date looming, I attended a Journalism Job Fair at Howard University in Washington, D.C. News rooms around the nation were striving to become more diverse and that’s where I met Mr. M.L. Lake, a recruiter for the Washington Post. In college, I won many student journalism awards, so I thought I was a very good writer, until Mr. Lake cut me down to size. He hated all of my articles and instructed me to go home and write a 3,000-word article on myself in three days. I left Howard crying, feeling defeated, and refusing to write anything until I got home and told my mother the story. Guess what? She made me write it and stood over my shoulder until I e-mailed it to him.

Five days later, Mr. Lake called me and offered me a job at the Washington Post as a prep sports writer. After two years, I decided that the grueling schedule of a daily newspaper journalist was not for me; thus, I began my career in public relations.

Before joining the Grange, I was a communications manager for a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit and a public relations manager for a Baltimore, Maryland-based public relations firm. Wanting to return to Washington, D.C. to work, I answered an advertisement for a public relations manager at the National Grange and began my career with the Grange in May 2003.

Working for the National Grange has been a fulfilling and a rewarding experience.

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The National Grange recently attended a conference sponsored by the New Millennium Research Council (NMRC). The conference explored the potential economic benefits to the nation from accelerated broadband deployment to elderly and disabled Americans. Speaking at the engagement was Robert Litan, a Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C., and an author and co-author of 19 books and over 200 journal articles.

Mr. Litan’s report championed the accelerated deployment of broadband technology to the 70 million seniors and people with disabilities in America and called this technology a “secret weapon” in reducing health care costs and kick starting the nation’s sluggish economy.

In the study, Litan notes: “Three types of benefits from broadband deployment and use are addressed: lower medical costs, lower costs of institutionalized living, and additional output generated by more seniors and individuals with disabilities in the labor force. Considered together, these three benefits are estimated to accumulate to at least $927 billion in 2005... The amount is equivalent to half of what the United States currently spends annually for medical care for all its citizens ($1.8 trillion).”

The report goes on to describe the untapped potential of broadband by pointing out, “There is a wide agreement that broadband will provide enormous benefits to users and to the entire economy, especially as the take-up (participation) rate increases. But so far, relatively little attention has been paid to the potential benefits to be reaped by different groups within American society and how this in turn will generate economic benefits and cost savings over time... Clearly, with so much at stake, policy makers have strong reasons to consider measures to accelerate the deployment and use of broadband technologies for America’s seniors and individuals with disabilities.”

The National Grange supports the use of broadband technology because of its positive influence on rural America. In the Legislative Policy Handbook it states: “The National Grange supports legislation to promote an integrated telecommunications network to assure widely available, high quality telecommunications to all of the nation’s us-ers at a reasonable cost as was originally intended by the Communications Acts of 1934 and 1996. We further believe that access to affordable and reliable broadband Internet service is vital to preserving the quality of life in rural America.” Rural communities across the nation also have a higher proportion of elderly and disabled residents compared with urban and suburban communities.

The telecommunication field, and specifically broadband, is an untapped resource for rural America. Mr. Litan’s study displays the positive effects an increase in technol-ogy can have in a specific population and the beneficial numbers are hard to ignore.

The National Grange fully supports the increased use and deployment of broadband technology and will continue to support further investigations into how this technology can be used to help rural citizens.

As the new-year begins, a call for stricter immigration laws was recently addressed in the U.S. House of Representatives. A bill, H.R. 4437, introduced by Senator James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and adopted by the U.S. House of Representatives before their holiday recess in late December is designed to strengthen enforcement of the immigration laws already in place and enhance security along the Mexican boarder.

Some of the provisions in the legislation include: making it a federal crime to live in the United States illegally; broadening the existing immigrant smuggling statute to penalize those who shield or offer support to illegal immigrants; further restricting the eligibility of illegal immigrants to receive government benefits; and, increasing authority and financing for local sheriffs in border states who must deal with illegal immigrants.

Rep. Sensenbrenner’s immigration bill covers several issues that are important to the National Grange, like stronger border patrol, detention of illegal immigrants and upgrading the potential charges against illegal residents from civil to criminal violation of U.S. law. The bill also confronts the problem of illegal immigrants receiving benefits designated for U.S. citizens.

However, H.R. 4437 also fails to ade-quately provide for the agriculture community because of its detrimental stance on illegal immigrants working within U.S. borders. The bill lacks any kind of guest worker program, a measure championed by President Geroge W. Bush and supported by Grange policy.

Lack of a sensible guest worker program would effectively cut off access to a critical workforce that performs many jobs that Americans prefer not to take, at any wage level. Instead, the House legislation shifts its focus toward the increased responsibilities of the employer to screen the legal employment status of their employees.

Under the House passed legislation, all U.S. employers would be required to participate in a verification system under which the government would confirm that a worker has the legal status to work in the United States. The penalties for not complying with this new law would be steep and place many farmers and ranchers in difficult situations.

The establishment of an employee verification database creates another situation by generating a need to identify legal workers, as well as illegal aliens in an efficient and effective manner.

An obvious solution to this need is the implementation of a national identification card, a condition the National Grange is against. Policy adopted at the 139th Annual Convention of the National Grange opposes the establishment of national, federal identification programs. “The National Grange opposes federal standards for state programs for the issuance of driver’s licenses and identification cards.”

Although the Grange strongly supports stricter control of illegal immigration, the establishment of a national worker identification and verification system is an even greater threat to personal freedom, liberty, and privacy and is contrary to the common sense, grassroots approach taken by our members. H.R. 4437 clearly moves toward the possibility of a national identification card, a possibility that cannot be accepted despite the other merits of the bill.

In addition, the upgrade from a civil to a criminal charge for residing in the U.S. illegally in H.R. 4437 creates further problems for employers. Once again, the Grange delegates attending at the 139th National Grange convention addressed this issue when they adopted the following policy position on employer verification. “The National Grange opposes any regulation or legislation that would hold agricultural employers responsible for checking the authenticity of documentation provided by migrant and seasonal workers at the time of employment.”

The key word in this resolution is “responsible.” Increased employer responsibility for immigration enforcement, as outlined in H.R. 4437, could in fact, turn the nation’s employers into “de facto vigilantes” who would be expected to enforce a federal criminal statute without compensation, training, or the protection of sovereign immunity against lawsuits by employees claiming their constitutional rights to criminal due process had been violated by their employers.

H.R. 4437 also creates an untenable situation for employers by shifting the weight of government enforcement activities against employers, who because they may be unsure or reluctant to affirmatively accept the role of vigilante enforcers of the nation’s new criminal immigration laws that are forced upon them by H.R. 4437, are in turn potentially faced with criminal sanctions against them that would be brought forth by real law enforcement agencies

For nearly 220 years, the U.S. Constitution has recognized that one of the cornerstones of the rule of law requires that the government maintain a monopoly over the enforcement and prosecution of criminal offenses. That’s because dealing with the allegation of criminal activity can have devastating and lifelong consequences on an individual’s life.

Our system of courts, law enforcement agencies and penal institutions are all carefully designed and administered to make appropriate decisions based on all available information and to balance the complicated sets of rights and due process necessary to both bring criminals to justice and protect the freedom of the members of our society.

The Founding Fathers clearly recognized that the type of “private, vigilante justice” proposed in H.R. 4437, while potentially popular in the short term, would in the long run be detrimental to a stable, healthy society. The Grange recognizes that designating the status of an illegal alien in the United States as a criminal activity is a necessary and prudent step that needs to be taken in order to regain control of our borders and immigration policies.

However, the Grange also firmly believes that this step must also be accompanied with the appropriate expansion of law enforcement authorities and resources to enforce this law without resorting to “vigilante justice.” H.R 4437 fails to make this distinction and will require extensive additional review and amendment in the U.S. Senate in order to add provisions to protect the rights of American citizens and employers before becoming law.