[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 39 (Tuesday, March 5, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H2350-H2352]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         TWO WOMEN, TWO PLACES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2019, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. 
Fortenberry) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. FORTENBERRY. Madam Speaker, before I begin my remarks, let me 
thank my colleagues, Congresswoman Virginia Foxx and Congressman   
David Price, for their beautiful, moving tributes to our colleague, 
Walter Jones.
  I wasn't an intimate friend of Walter's, but we did have a 
friendship. Each encounter that I had with him was special because he 
always had an eye toward that which was higher, noble, and good.
  I heard some of the sentiments Members expressed, heartfelt 
sentiments of loss, but also a great tribute and honor to this 
extraordinary man who did try to rise above the difficulties and the 
tensions here. I think both his life and his death taught us invaluable 
lessons, and frankly, I think it is what the American people are 
longing for from this body as well. So I thank the gentlewoman very 
much for doing this.
  Madam Speaker, tonight, I would like to talk about two women, two 
women from very different places, two women from very different 
cultures and different religions, two women with very different 
stories. Together, these two women, differently and separately, are 
reinterpreting in light of what was so that they can imagine what will 
be.
  The first woman's name is Nadia Murad. Nadia won the Nobel Peace 
Prize in 2018. I know Nadia. She is a Yazidi from northern Iraq. The 
Yazidis are a people bound by an ancient faith tradition, and they have 
sought to live in peace in very harsh surroundings through the 
centuries. Along with the Christians of the area, they have endured 
many persecutions for a very long time. But nothing could have prepared 
Nadia for what happened on August 15, 2014.
  Nadia lived in a little village called Kawju in an area called 
Sinjar, again, in northern Iraq. The town's residents were mostly 
farmers and shepherds. At 21 years old, Nadia dreamed of owning her own 
hair salon and becoming a history teacher. But then the unthinkable 
happened.
  The Islamic State, ISIS, invaded her village. ISIS rounded up 
everyone and forced them into the schoolyard. The men were then 
separated from women. As Nadia told us, she said that she never 
realized how small her village was until she saw all of them in that 
schoolyard.
  They stood huddled on the dry grass. Some whispered to one another, 
wondering what was going on. Others were silent, in shock. No one 
understood what was happening, as Nadia said to us.
  Nadia was then forced to watch as six of her brothers were massacred. 
Her mother was executed along with 80 other older women. The bodies of 
the men and women were then thrown into mass graves.
  The rest of the women, including Nadia, were taken to Mosul, the 
largest city held by ISIS at that time, and they were sold. They were 
sold as sex slaves.
  The depravity of ISIS further unfolded as they sought to carry out a 
genocide, a complete extermination of Christians, Yazidis, and other 
religious minority traditions in that area. The Yazidis were singled 
out for persecution by ISIS because they were part of a Kurdish-
speaking religion without a holy book.
  Using that background as justification, what was called the ISIS 
Research and Fatwa Department targeted women for sexual slavery in an 
effort to lure young men into joining their cause. ISIS' twisted 
bureaucracy of barbarity even prepared a document on this, and it was 
called ``Questions and Answers on Taking Captives and Slaves.''
  True to the dictates of the ISIS document, Nadia was bought and sold 
several times, with Facebook used as one of the prime ISIS marketing 
tools. She was repeatedly raped, burned with cigarettes, and beaten. At 
one point, she attempted to escape, but she was caught. The vicious 
gang rape that then ensued left her unconscious. She decided not to try 
to escape again.
  After months of unspeakable agony, one day, Nadia discovered that a 
door had been left unlocked, and she fled. She found refuge with a 
Muslim family who willingly helped her. In fact, the eldest son, at 
great personal risk, took her in his car and got her to the Kurdish 
lines where she was safe.
  I was first introduced to Nadia by some friends in Lincoln's Yazidi 
community. Through an interesting convergence of things, Lincoln, 
Nebraska, which is my home, has the largest Yazidi population in 
America. Many of the young men had served as our translators during the 
height of the Iraq war.
  Interestingly, one of the first pieces of legislation that I worked 
on was to give special visas accommodating people to come to America 
who had risked their lives alongside our troops, some of whom died, and 
they were given special status to come here. Many have made their home 
in Nebraska, and I am very proud of that.
  When Nadia came to see me, I could sense the trauma in her face and 
the wounds in her soul, so I tried to gently ask Nadia if she would be 
willing to share her full story with those of us there in my office. I 
told her that I thought it was important that we hear, in order to try 
to understand, but only if she wanted to. She again gently answered 
back that, yes, she would share her story.
  She walked us through her nightmare. At one point, I looked over at 
her Yazidi translator. Tears streamed down his face. My own chief of 
staff sobbed. It was just too much to bear.
  But in a real moment of pride for me, Madam Speaker, 1 month ago 
today, Nadia Murad was my guest right here in the House Chamber for the 
State of the Union. I was happy to see her again, and she gave me a 
copy of her book called ``The Last Girl.'' Her fiance was with her, 
Abid Shamdeen. What a gentle young man. He had served as well as a 
translator at the height of the Iraq war and had earned his citizenship 
to America.
  Before the State of the Union event, Nadia and I spent about an hour 
with a reporter from The Washington Post. The beautiful gift of 
watching her interact with this reporter was this: She answered the 
questions clearly, with great grace and purposeful resolve, as Abid 
lovingly stood by her and translated her words and the full meaning of 
them.

  She was in Washington to raise awareness of the Yazidi genocide and 
join us in the call for a new type of security settlement in northern 
Iraq that would protect the ancient mosaic, the ancient tapestry of 
religious pluralism that once existed there, including Christians and 
Yazidis, as well as certain Islamic minority traditions.
  While that was her primary motive before that reporter and us, again, 
she gently and profoundly articulated the need to respect human 
dignity. She used that pain in her soul to project healing on our 
broken world.
  Madam Speaker, when I first came to Congress, an older Member warned 
me about something. He called it the tyranny of the urgent. He said to 
be careful of the tyranny of the urgent, because what that will do is 
subsume you into emergency after emergency without leaving any time for 
reflection, for thought, for dialogue, for relationship.
  We see that played out day after day, and, of course, the media begs 
this as issues switch and controversies arise, and we are all summoned 
to give various opinions on whatever negative thing just happened. The 
tyranny of the urgent, we have to be careful of that because it robs us 
of the chance to sit with a heroic woman like Nadia and listen 
carefully to what she has to say.
  This hour-by-hour D.C. and 911 fire alarm is distracting us from this 
essential work of reflection and authentic governance. It is true now 
more than ever.

[[Page H2351]]

  A lot of what goes on here is outside the glare of television. 
Recently, I had the chance to engage the Administrator of the United 
States Agency for International Development who had come before the 
House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and 
Related Programs. I talked to him about a number of issues that were 
important to me: the country of Haiti, the prospects for reforestation 
around the world, conservation, the story of Nadia and so many Yazidis, 
and this need for the new security settlement in northern Iraq.

                              {time}  2045

  The American people are generously helping with economic aid, under 
the leadership of the Agency for International Development, to help 
potentially create the conditions in which Yazidis and Christians could 
return and once again flourish.
  This was foremost in my mind as I spoke with the administrator in the 
committee hearing. But I told the administrator this, that the name--
the name itself, the United States Agency for International 
Development--really does not capture the fullness of the mission of 
what we are trying to do.
  Ultimately, this mission and our disposition, as reflected in policy, 
ought to be about one thing expressed in two words: human dignity--
protecting human dignity and, in doing so, attacking the root causes of 
poverty and attempting to create for the 21st century an imaginative 
architecture for diplomatic relations, again, rooted in authentic 
service to America's humanitarian impulse, creating the conditions for 
international stability which are inextricably intertwined with our own 
national security.
  This is a properly oriented foreign policy trajectory of our Nation, 
and, again, it is based on the idea that America's impulse is to be 
charitable, America's impulse is to help--yes, to demand responsibility 
but, also, to help create the conditions in which human life can 
flourish.
  This has profound meaning, Madam Speaker, where I live, particularly 
in Nebraska, because one of the ways in which we express, in practical 
terms, that humanitarian impulse is through agricultural policy. We 
feed ourselves, and we feed the world.
  Nebraska has a big role in doing just that, and this is true now more 
than ever in our modern age. The land has been the source of our 
vitality in America.
  Particularly where I live but, really, across the country, 
agriculture is so essential to our economic well-being, our life, our 
way of life, our culture, to who we are as a people.
  And again, where I live, production agriculture is so essential, in 
corn and soybeans and livestock that cover much of our landscape. They 
are an important part of America's export prowess.
  The farm communities' and the ranch communities' efficiency, their 
quality, their ingenuity allows us to provide food security for tens of 
millions of vulnerable people in America and abroad, while ensuring 
that Americans enjoy the lowest per capita grocery bills in all the 
world.
  Now, the challenge and the opportunity is to grow America's farm 
family. And to look to the future, we should look to the past to see, 
again, in this new century, a new connection starting to occur between 
the urban and the rural.
  This diversification of our farm family is happening rapidly, and so 
we, importantly, are no longer talking in the language of producers and 
consumers but, rather, in terms of connecting the farmer to the family.
  You can now meet your farmer at the local farmers market. That is a 
level of intimacy not seen since the early days of agriculture in 
America.
  What is at stake here, Madam Speaker, is this desire to bring people 
closer to their food and into an authentic relationship with those who 
grow that food.
  Agriculture is creating an exciting new entrepreneurial space, and we 
have seen a real uptick in young people entering the ag field. Young 
people are being drawn to agriculture through exciting new niches, 
including artisanal foods and crops, organics, and the farm-to-fork 
movement.
  Agricultural studies no longer sit off on the side in their own silo. 
They are inextricably intertwined, an intimate relationship with 
environmental science and conservation, as well as international 
development.
  Restaurants that focus on locally sourced foods are also growing in 
popularity, and with that trend comes an increased interest in the food 
of indigenous peoples--all exciting new spaces.
  Still, at the heart of Nebraska and at the heart of America is the 
traditional, large-scale American farm.
  At the beginning of this, Madam Speaker, I talked about two women. 
And we have heard about Nadia Murad, who is living with a deep wound 
yet seeking ways to rebuild what once was a thriving tradition.
  I want to talk about another woman I recently met now, though, a 
fascinating young woman who has merged the millennial sense of 
authentic connection with a traditional production ag operation.
  Hannah Esch is an agricultural student at the University of Nebraska 
in Lincoln and a Nebraska beef ambassador.
  Hannah was surprised when she recently visited some young children in 
a classroom in one of our counties and, when asked a basic question 
about where food comes from, a third grader answered that eggs come 
from cows since they are next to the milk in the grocery store. This 
alarmed Hannah a bit, but it reinforced Hannah's desire to go deeper 
into ag education and outreach.
  Hannah is a specialty livestock producer with a fascinating 
background as an agriculture pioneer. She is a part of a growing 
movement of young agricultural entrepreneurs. She is a passionate 
advocate for production agriculture, while also seeking emerging niche 
opportunities.
  In Nebraska, the average age of the farmer is 58 years old. I don't 
know exactly what it is across the country, Madam Speaker, but I assume 
it is somewhat similar.
  What we have on our hands is, on the horizon, a generational 
transfer. But there is also an interesting convergence of amazing new 
opportunity on that same horizon.
  Two dynamics are on the verge of breaking out: small-scale farm 
production and the nimble, innovative use of technology in agriculture.
  I met Hannah at an ag pioneers event organized by the Agribusiness 
Entrepreneurship program at the University of Nebraska.
  The businesses of these cutting-edge ag leaders range from organic 
popcorn production to ag tech in the Internet of Things. Others were 
leaders in the farm-to-table movement, boutique vegetable growers, and 
specialty livestock sellers. Some were large grain producers 
experimenting with cover crops that would enhance the soil and also 
advance their own innovation in the precision agriculture space.

  Not everybody in this room was young. Not everybody came from farm 
families, interestingly. But what they shared was a passionate desire 
to add value to traditional production agriculture and create the space 
for a new food movement that is showing tremendous potential.
  Of course, at that meeting, given this body recently passed a new 
farm bill, an important piece of legislation that does basically one 
thing--provides food security in two ways: The risk management policies 
that protect agriculture producers from the vagaries, the ups and 
downs, of weather, the supply problems as well as other difficulties 
that arise in ensuring that a timely, good harvest is delivered, that 
is the purpose of the farm bill, combined with its other purpose, to 
help those who are in food-vulnerable circumstances through our 
nutrition programs. We discussed the policies embedded in the farm 
bill, including the value-added grants section and the assistance that 
we give to beginning farmers and ranchers.
  Another of the participants were the Brugger brothers. They were 
engaging young people who could honestly, Madam Speaker, star in a 
reality TV show.
  They are adding enormous value to the farm commodities they produce. 
These twins not only distill corn and raise cattle; they create a 
sequence of value across multiple agricultural products, from hops to 
whiskey to finished meats. Their vertical integration puts the value in 
the value chain--in their pocket. That is an exciting entrepreneurial 
place to be.
  These brothers, however, are about more than food. They also want to 
lure

[[Page H2352]]

members of their younger generation back to the small town. They want 
to build community around artisanal agriculture.
  This connectivity around food is one of the value propositions that I 
wanted to highlight here that Hannah holds so dear. She has grown her 
own premium brand of beef through the power of story.
  Using Instagram and photos and video, Hannah sells her livestock 
product directly via the Internet to a diverse range of customers from 
around the country who yearn to know the provenance of their food.
  Hannah draws interest in her beef by showing the life cycle of her 
cattle, and, through compelling use of social media, she invites 
customers into the intimate process of livestock production. Her 
market, again, is to a world hungry for the authentic story behind what 
is for dinner.
  Madam Speaker, with Hannah and other ag pioneers, we are experiencing 
a bit--or the front end, should I say?--of an emerging set of ideas 
that will help shape our social and economic well-being for this 
century. It is the entrepreneurial drive that these young people 
possess to be stewards of the land, to grow the ag family, and to 
create the space for genuine food relationship.
  This millennial-driven movement signifies an embrace of the 
traditional human-scaled model of agriculture for which our society is 
yearning, while remaining firmly within and adding to the mainstream of 
production agriculture that feeds America and feeds the world.
  So what do Hannah and Nadia hold in common? I think they are 
connected. They are from very different lands. They speak different 
languages. They have different cultural mores.
  What they are driving for is meaning around human dignity. Whether it 
is Nadia, who has suffered the horrible loss of her family and her 
extraordinary tradition--she is being driven by a purpose to pull out 
of that tragedy deep meaning and projecting that on the world, speaking 
to our hearts clearly through her suffering about the need for human 
dignity.
  It is our only way out, to express and rebuild our systems of 
governance, our foreign relations, and our economics around this idea 
of interconnectedness with respect for human dignity. It is a very 
important driver, even in the life of an entrepreneur like Hannah, who 
seeks, again, the authenticity of food relationship. I think there is 
an intimate connection here between two women from two very different, 
faraway places.
  Madam Speaker, my wife was telling me recently--and I venture out 
here a little bit because I don't know the name of this art form. It is 
my understanding there is a type of porcelain that is very, very 
delicate and fragile; and, if it should break, it is actually repaired 
by gold so that, as beautiful as the original piece was, it becomes 
more vibrant, more offering. Its brokenness shows more beauty.
  In listening to Nadia and her deep woundedness and watching her young 
fiance lovingly escort her through the storytelling of her wounds to 
the world, it is that porcelain being repaired by gold, and it shines 
all the more beautifully.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________