USDA diversity training session included 'illegal immigrants' chant, group claims

The U.S. government paid a Chicago consultant hundreds of thousands of dollars to put on diversity training workshops that, according to one watchdog, included an exercise in which employees were told to chant "our forefathers were illegal immigrants." 

Conservative group Judicial Watch made the claim this week as it released a handful of documents pertaining to the program -- and alleged that the sessions ended up enforcing political views more than promoting tolerance. 

"Instead of being diversity-oriented or tolerance-oriented, it's more about adopting a mindset," said Lisette Garcia, a senior investigator with the group. "It seemed to go so far as to encourage illegal immigration." 

Judicial Watch began to investigate the sessions earlier this year after being approached by a tipster at USDA who was "offended" by them, Garcia said. Judicial Watch claims it has identified at least $200,000 spent by the USDA over the last two years on the company Souder, Betances & Associates. 

The USDA later confirmed that amount.   

The tipster, Garcia said, described one session in which the speaker led workers in chanting "our forefathers were illegal immigrants" while pounding on the table and getting others in the room to join in. 

"How does that fit into the USDA mission at all?" she said. "The price tag makes it more egregious." 

It's unclear how much total federal money was spent on these kinds of sessions at USDA and other agencies. Federal contract records show the Department of Defense has also contracted with the company, though it's unclear what that work entailed. The company's website says its clients include an array of federal departments, from Commerce to Energy and Interior, as well as USDA. 

"For over a decade Souder, Betances and Associates has been a leader in the field of diversity training and consulting," the company site says. 

The USDA did not confirm or dispute the anecdote from Judicial Watch about the illegal immigrant chant. However, in a statement to FoxNews.com, a USDA spokesperson stressed that the sessions were meant to foster diversity and were well-received by employees.   

"USDA offers a number of optional workshops and professional development opportunities in order to help employees better serve our customers," the statement said. "The Souder Betances & Associates sessions were designed to foster overall diversity awareness -- not to focus on any specific minority group -- and received positive feedback from employees across the department." 

A representative with Souder, Betances & Associates did not return a request for comment. 

Judicial Watch apparently has received little documentation from the USDA on the program, but it released an email exchange in which a USDA official discusses the "diversity intelligence advantage course" with an official from the Chicago firm. In one email from January, the USDA official asked about when he might be able to attend the course later in the year. 

Another email released by the group showed an analyst at USDA who handles record requests advising other records officers about the Judicial Watch request. The officer said that most would probably issue a "no records denial" but said because of the group's history of lawsuits "I want to at least say a USDA wide search for material was conducted despite ... knowing that most ... agencies will have no records." 

Judicial Watch later wrote in a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack that the email "reinforced the expectation of agency noncooperation."

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Police in Chicago uncover nearly 1,000 pot plants in city

CHICAGO –  Police in Chicago became farmers for a day Wednesday as they began to chop down a  marijuana farm as big as two football fields found in the city.

The farm, which contains about 1,500 plants and could have netted $7-10 million, was spotted by a police officer and county sheriff's deputy in a helicopter as they headed back to their hangar, MyFoxChicago.com reports.

No arrests had been made as of Wednesday, and police were still trying to determine who owns the property that housed the grow site on the city's far South Side. But police said they were hopeful that because of the size of the operation, informants or others might provide tips about those involved, including a man seen running from the area as the helicopter swooped low.

James O'Grady, the commander of the department's narcotics division, tells The Associated Press they've never seen anything like it before, in part because Chicago's harsh winters mean growers have a lot less time to plant, grow and harvest marijuana than their counterparts in less inclement places such as California and Mexico. The bumper crop was likely planted in spring, O'Grady said.

Add to that the urban sprawl: there are few spots in Chicago where such an operation could go unnoticed because of all the buildings, roads and residents. The growers took pains to ensure their crop was largely hidden by a canopy of trees and surrounding vegetation.

"Somebody put a lot of thought into it," O'Grady said. "But they probably didn't anticipate the helicopter."

Chicago Police Officer Stan Kuprianczyk, a pilot, said police helicopters flew "over it all the time," to and from their hangar, without spying the grow site. Yet somehow, a number of factors came together to allow Cook County Sheriff's Deputy Edward Graney to spot the plants.

"We had the right altitude, the right angle, the right sunlight, and I happened to be glancing down," said Graney. He said he initially spotted five plants or so through the trees before he asked Kuprianczyk to circle around for a closer look.

"We just happened to be right over a small hole in the trees and we looked down," Kuprianczyk said.

They also happened to have the right training, Graney said, explaining that just a few weeks earlier a much smaller operation in suburban Chicago prompted them to fly over and videotape the scene so they might be able to recognize marijuana if they ever saw it from the air again.

So, by the time Graney spotted the marijuana plants, which are a much brighter shade of green than the surrounding vegetation, he had a pretty good idea what he was looking at.

Superintendent Garry McCarthy, whose officers are more used to intercepting shipments of marijuana grown elsewhere or discovering hydroponic growing operations inside buildings, said the discovery of the marijuana is significant in a larger fight against street violence.

Those involved with narcotics, whether it is marijuana, heroin or cocaine, purchase firearms with their profits and have shown they're willing to use them to protect their business, he said.

"That's where the violence comes in, the competition for the markets," he said.

Click for more from MyFoxChicago.com.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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Chicago's O'Hare latest location to turn to goats for landscaping

CHICAGO –  Travelers may soon be doing a double take when they gaze out their plane windows at O'Hare International Airport, the latest location to consider trading in lawn mowers and landscapers for goats.

Chicago News and Weather | FOX Chicago News

The Chicago Department of Aviation is looking for about 30 goats and a herder for a pilot program, aimed at taming the grass and weeds in one area of the airport grounds that's difficult to mow. The agency is the latest government body to find that goats not only never ask for a pay raise or take vacation, they can also get to those had-to-reach spots.

"They may have steep slopes, very hard to get to with heavy machinery, and those machines also emit pollution," explains Amy Malick, point person for sustainability at the Department of Aviation.  "They're burning fossil fuel. So as a sustainability initiative we're looking to bring in animals that do not have emissions associated with them, at least to the same extent that heavy machinery would."

The farm formula is not a completely new concept. Atlanta's airport began using goats this week and San Francisco has been doing it for years.

Goatscaping goes beyond airports. Towns, businesses, and even homeowners are finding this four-legged solution helps maintain land, uses fewer chemicals, and cuts down on noise. Both Google and Yahoo have used goat herds to clean up the land around their California headquarters. Nearly 300 billies went to work on the Presidio Golf Course in San Francisco this month, chewing their way through acres of dense brush of thicket and hemlock so golfers could more easily spot their wayward balls.  The goats can get to parts of the golf course that never get attention because lawn mowers can't access them.

Gentle, easy to manage, and often less expensive than human landscapers, goats are popular workers. They also leave behind natural fertilizers and expose soil and seeds that can encourage native grasses and wildflowers to grow, which can also cut down on pesticide use. The goats are accompanied by herders and sometimes herd dogs to keep them in line.

In Charlotte, Vt., local cemeteries are using goats and sheep to trim the grass. Stephen Brooks, chairman of the Charlotte Cemetery Commission, told Vermont Public Radio he thinks the grazing could save Charlotte about $2,000 in fuel costs this year. While there are huge cost benefits, Brooks says if you add too many animals to one area, they chew the grass down faster so they need to monitor the sheep and goats to keep the level of grass down, relative to its growth rate.

Last month, town officials in Seaside Park, N.J., considered using goats to remove a patch of poison ivy that overlooks Barnegat Bay. Visitors to the bay have been deterred from certain areas due to the ivy, which is not poisonous to the goats. Although it could be an expensive endeavor-- costing up to $20, 000-- the solution is better for the environment than using chemicals.

With all these advantages, towns and businesses are likely to increase their use of the animals. Each goat can eat about five to eight pounds of weeds per day and the never call in sick.

Click for more from MyFoxChicago.com.

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Chicago teachers to go on strike after talks with district fail

CHICAGO –  Chicago teachers went on strike Monday for the first time in 25 years after their union and district officials failed to reach a contract agreement despite intense weekend negotiations that the union said were productive but still failed to adequately address issues such as job security and teacher evaluations.

The two sides were not far apart on compensation, but were on other issues, including health benefits -- teachers want to keep what they have now -- and a new teacher evaluation system based partly on students' standardized test scores, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis said.

"This is a difficult decision and one we hoped we could have avoided," she said. "We must do things differently in this city if we are to provide our students with the education they so rightfully deserve."

Mayor Rahm Emanuel condemned the union's decision, and said the negotiations could be resolved if the two sides kept talking, "given how close we are."

"This is not a strike I wanted," Emanuel said. "It was a strike of choice ... it's unnecessary, it's avoidable and it's wrong. "

More than 26,000 teachers and support staff were expected to hit the picket lines early Monday, while the school district and parents carried out plans for keeping nearly 400,000 students safe and occupied while classes remain empty in the coming days in the nation's third largest school district.

Both Emanuel and union officials have much at stake. The walkout comes at a time when unions and collective bargaining by public employees have come under criticism in many parts of the country, and all sides are closely monitoring who might emerge with the upper hand in the Chicago dispute.

The timing also may be inopportune for Emanuel, a former White House chief of staff whose city administration is wrestling with a spike in murders and shootings in some city neighborhoods and who just agreed to take a larger role in fundraising for President Barack Obama's re-election campaign.

As the strike deadline approached, parents spent Sunday worrying about how much their children's education might suffer and where their kids will go while they're at work.

School officials said they will open more than 140 schools between 8:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. so children can eat lunch and breakfast in a district where many students receive free meals. The district asked community organizations to provide additional programs for students, and a number of churches, libraries and other groups plan to offer day camps and other activities. But it's not clear how many families will send their children to the added programs.

"They're going to lose learning time," said Beatriz Fierro, whose daughter is in the fifth grade on the city's Southwest Side. "And if the whole afternoon they're going to be free, it's bad. Of course you're worried."

Eric Ferrer, a cook, said his children can stay home Monday with his wife, who works in a store. But if the strike goes more than one day, they would have a problem -- one that he sees no way to solve.

"My wife is off tomorrow, (so) we can keep them at home," said Ferrer, as he sat in a McDonald's restaurant on the city's Southwest Side with his wife and their 8-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter. "She works the next day (and) so do I."

School board President David Vitale first announced Sunday night that talks had broken off, despite the school board offering what he called a fair and responsible contract that would cover four years and meet most of the union's demands. He said the talks with the union had been "extraordinarily difficult."

Emanuel said the district had offered the teachers a 16 percent pay raise over four years, doubling an earlier offer.

Lewis said she would not prioritize the issues, saying that they all were important to teachers.

That included concern over a new evaluation that she said would be based too heavily on students' standardized test scores, which she said would be unfair to teachers because it could not adequately account for outside factors that affect student performance, including poverty, violence and homelessness.

She said the evaluations could result in 6,000 teachers losing their jobs within two years.

City officials said they did not believe that was true, but said the union would not tell them how they came to that conclusion.

Emanuel said the evaluation would not count in the first year, as teachers and administrators worked out any kinks. Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard said the evaluation was mandated by state law but "was not developed to be a hammer," but to help teachers get better.

Emanuel said the union should have postponed the strike because an agreement is close. He also said his negotiating team would be available all night if the union was willing to talk, but Lewis said negotiations would resume Monday.

The strike is the latest flashpoint in a very public and often contentious battle between the mayor and the union.

When he took office last year, Emanuel inherited a school district facing a $700 million budget shortfall. Not long after, his administration rescinded 4 percent raises for teachers. He then asked the union to reopen its contract and accept 2 percent pay raises in exchange for lengthening the school day for students by 90 minutes. The union refused.

Emanuel, who promised a longer school day during his campaign, then attempted to go around the union by asking teachers at individual schools to waive the contract and add 90 minutes to the day. He halted the effort after being challenged by the union before the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board.

The district and union agreed in July on how to implement the longer school day, striking a deal to hire back 477 teachers who had been laid off rather than pay regular teachers more to work longer hours. That raised hopes the contract dispute would be settled soon, but bargaining continued on the other issues.

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