'Dubious harvest' indeed.

[nosmokes]

Oh hell, this is about food. Never mind. As long as it's cheap and plentiful Americans don't much give a snap about anything else, like quality or the condition of those that produced it, whether it is or isn't genetically modified, whether it's safe to eat, whether it was humanely or ethically produced, cost and convenience seem to be the trump cards. A sad statement. Hopefully when children start dying and treatment of farmworkers borders on torture and is clearly inhumane we can start to change.Maybe? Please?
--###--

original-modestobee

Inspectors find labor violations on Central Valley farms

By SUSAN FERRISS

THE SACRAMENTO BEE



At least 10 confirmed or suspected minors harvesting fruit and weeding fields. A crew using short-handled weeding tools banned under state law. Filthy toilets. No place to seek shade. Water jugs but no cups. No safety plans, or training for farmworkers about the perils of heat.

Then, when they were about to call it a day, the inspectors pulled off a country highway in east San Joaquin County and drove just seconds down a dirt road cutting through a canopy of cherry trees. A vision from the Great Depression lay before them, they said.

More than 30 tents rose like mushrooms under the trees. Clothes hung from branches, and empty cans and food packages were piled high.

Smoke curled from one of the fire pits that had been dug in the soil.

About 100 male migrant workers who follow crops were sleeping on the ground by night in this orchard owned by R & J Don-dero Inc., and climbing ladders by day to pick the company's cherries. Only a few overflowing portable toilets and the orchard were available for the men.

"We're just working people, with nowhere else to stay," one of the migrants, Ramon Jiron, 32, said apologetically in Spanish.

State labor inspectors found all this, off back roads but in plain sight, during routine checks over two days in the Central Valley orchards and fields where anonymous human figures labor day after day.

In the 1960s, labor leader César Chávez began prodding the state to enact laws to protect farmworkers from wage theft and unsafe conditions. Yet poor treatment and flagrant violations endure in many California farms, activists and labor officials agree.

Beginning with Gov. Jerry Brown in the 1970s, each administration has formed special teams to root out abuses. Gov. Schwarzenegger formed the Economic and Employment Enforcement Coalition, with 66 inspectors versed in wage and occupational safety law. Inspectors spend three weeks a month on surprise visits to farms and other low-wage industries: car washes, construction sites and garment assembly shops.

Despite oversight, a young farmworker died last month after collapsing in a vineyard in 95-degree heat. Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, 17, fell ill after allegedly working hours without required water breaks and shade. According to witnesses, 90 minutes passed before she was taken to a clinic. She died two days later. Her employer, Merced Farm Labor, is under investigation on suspicion of violating state heat-stress rules.

Like thousands of California farmworkers, Maria was in the country illegally. Labor activists say such workers, often unaware they are covered under state and most federal labor laws, are most at risk of exploitation.

A week after the girl's funeral, her death sharp in their minds, state inspectors fanned out through eastern San Joaquin County to monitor employers and educate workers. In two days, they went to 25 farms, ordering two audits and citing employers for 80 violations, 25 related to heat-stress laws.

~snip~
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complete article here

[Runcible Spoon]

1. KnR.

the fragility of the food chain and the unethical assault on it by corporate greed, both in terms of the vulnerability of laborers and the environment, need to be a top priority for the next administration.

[flashl]

2. K/R nt

[AwakeAtLast]

3. And people wonder how salmonella gets into the produce.

x(

[Two Americas]

23. silly

These silly connections are not helpful, and only serve to promote misconceptions. Unwashed fresh produce is subject to contamination. It grows outdoors and is in contact with the soil. It is not like a situation of improper packaging that results in contaminated processed food. It is fresh fruits and vegetables we are talking about here, and the FDA just ran a stupid and dangerous media circus. The same FDA that is populated now my Bush political appointees from the pharmaceutical industry, that is doing little or nothing to inspect and test pharmaceutical products or corporate food processing plants, bur has been running a relentless fear campaign against fresh fruits and vegetables and small farmers, and scaring and misleading an ignorant public.

Animals and birds shit outside. Crops are grown outside. Shit can carry Salmonella. Wash the damned fruits and vegetables before you eat them. There is nothing "wrong" with tomatoes. ALL food is subject to contamination and must ne properly handled. The latest FDA scare is much ado about nothing. There are thousands of cases of Salmonella every year that have nothing to do with fruits or vegetables. The numbers in this case are minuscule. If the FDA spent a tenth of the resources investigating the source as they do scaring the public, this could easily be solved. Instead, tons and tons of perfectly good tomatoes are going to waste, and hundred of innocent small farmers have been badly harmed, and the public has been scared away once again from fresh produce.

[AwakeAtLast]

24. Last I checked, simply washing a fruit or vegetable does not kill salmonella.

And it doesn't just "appear". Corporate farms have to start working cleaner to make sure this doesn't happen again, starting with the working conditions of its workers. I wasn't being silly, just making a statement that was supposed to convey those feelings in a short sentence. It is unfortunate that small farms have been harmed, which is why the big farms need to be inspected better.

[Two Americas]

28. oh really?

Would you recommend that we eat no fresh fruits and vegetables, then? No one said that washing fruit killed Salmonella, but it does prevent you from ingesting it. If you want to "kill" bacteria, then perhaps you would support irradiation of food, or maybe you need to spray your food with one of the many bactericides on the market. Some people are afraid of all fresh food and cook everything, and that is an option for you as well.

There is no way to "make sure this doesn't happen again" and that is a naive and unrealistic idea. Your five year old crawls on the lawn. Pets defecated there. Your child then unknown to you handles fruit sitting on your table. There is no way to prevent all possible scenarios for pathogens getting onto food surfaces, is there?

It is not merely "unfortunate" that farming is under incredible duress, it is a threat to all of us,nor is it the farmers you should worry about if we lose our agricultural infrastructure and traditional cooperative farming communities.

Salmonella exists out there, so yes it does "just appear" under the right conditions.

There is no way to "work cleaner" in farming - there is dirt outdoors. Bacteria lives there. Animals run around out there as though they owned the place. Animals defecate.

I agree that we need more inspection. The Republicans have virtually eliminated inspection and regulation. It is a nightmare right now, an d there is virtually no inspection, just the occasional flamboyant raid and media circus to manipulate public opinion.

[Bandit]

25. Shit can carry Salmonella

So in your educated opinion hundreds of migrant workers setting up camps in the orchards and using them for their waste area would have no effect on contamination of the fruits? :shrug: yet birds shiiting in them would..:crazy:

[Two Americas]

27. right

The droppings from animals through the year is the greatest risk. Of course. Harvest workers are in the orchard block for a brief time. In farming, as in many other occupations, people are outdoors and in remote areas for long periods of time. Not sure what that means to you exactly.

There is some sort of nicey-nice gentrified suburban view of life that animates and informs these fear-driven discussions, I think. I have never seen an open latrine situation in an orchard, and if it were there I would see it.

There is no such thing as a 100% germ free world. That is a suburban notion, driven by commercial advertising.

I am just throwing out some responses here, because I am not sure what goes on in people's imngainations about this.

[Two Americas]

33. more about shit

Have you ever dug a latrine? Used an outhouse? Lived in a remote village in an impoverished country? Been in a combat zone? Camped in the wilderness?

Walking through the orchard, I notice droppings from raccoons, deer, foxes, coyotes, mice, voles, porcupines, rabbits, squirrels, and many kinds of birds. Could you recognize and identify those?

What is a suburb, if not a gigantic "camp" placed on land that was once used for farming? Are you claiming that suburbia is more sustainable, safer, more environmentally friendly than a camp in an orchard? Just because your fecal material goes into a sparkling white porcelain fixture does not mean that it disappears or that it does not have to be dealt with somewhere by someone downstream. It disappears from view - and that is mostly what this aristocratic attitude is about: the sterilized, sanitized, gentrified, shiny white nicey-nice fantasy of modern suburban living. Suburbia is a cesspool, a toxic waste dump, a sprawling environmentally destructive and wasteful abomination that is all about appearances rather than reality. It is spreading and destroying the country, environmentally, socially, culturally and politically. It benefits the few at the expense of the many, both here and around the globe. It can not co-exist with traditional culture and sustainable communities, and cannot co-exist with justice and democracy, because it is rapacious and is chewing up everything in its path, because it is classist and aristocratic and gentrified, it is wasteful and toxic, it requires the rest of the world to be depleted and despoiled to support it, and it destroys the lives of all who are excluded from the privileged inner circle.

It is highly dangerous and anti-social and irresponsible to base public policy and political decisions on the illusions and fantasies of upscale suburban preferences and prejudices.

[Two Americas]

34. I forgot

I forgot to mention that there is one animal that I never see droppings from - Homo Sapiens.

I also forgot to mention that massive truckloads of turkey droppings are brought into the orchards in the springs. Tons and tons and tons. The local suburban transplant organic liberals were all excited about that, until they caught a whiff of the steaming piles of the stuff. Then they were not so enthusiastic anymore, and would probably be happier if farmers all went back to "artificial" fertilizer. The odor can make for an unpleasant experience when they are up for the weekend enjoying their sprawling getaway home and riding around on the farming roads on their expensive imported Italian bikes in their skintight lime green leotards, or whatever those costumes are, with their little designer water bottles strapped to the bike and their custom UV screen sunglasses on. They really resent farm vehicles trying to use the roads and are slow to get out of the way because they are doing the important and superior work of "saving the planet" for us.

[magellan]

4. This is one reason I like Lou Dobbs

Not that I watch often, but I happened to tune in recently and they were covering the death of 17 year old Maria Jiminez. No other station/broadcast was reporting on it.

I hope someone goes after Merced Farm Labor for her murder and puts them out of business. When are we going to have enough of corporations being allowed to get away with immoral acts that would land any of us peasants on death row?

[DCKit]

5. Current law allows these children to work with their parents in the field.

This is not an isolated incident.

Institutional slavery exists in agriculture on both coasts and as far north as PA - I saw it when I was growing up there.

[varelse]

6. It's good to know that the labor laws are sometimes enforced

and yet it's horribly sad to discover that, once again, the publicized, tragic death of a child was required to trigger a crackdown on a fraction of the countless violations committed daily.

[Two Americas]

7. obvious fear-mongering and propaganda

"No shade" in fruit harvesting? Later in the article we hear about the "canopy of trees."

Sleeping in the orchard? That is extremely common, and I have done it hundreds of times.

Teens picking fruit? There was a time when every teen pitched in on the harvest.

I don't know from the article if we have a bad employer here or nor, and if so I would never defend them. But this sort of misleading article is part of the problem, not part of the solution to the many challenges farmers are facing. Paternalistic and condescending concern for brown people is just another variant of racism. When whites are doing the exact same work under the exact same conditions, there is no uproar.

[XemaSab]

10. Where do you live?

Temperatures in the Valley can get REALLY hot. Well over 90 or 100, every day for weeks on end. There are serious health and safety hazards here, and it's good that OSHA and other agencies are stepping in.

[Two Americas]

13. understood

The problems in the Central Valley are a function of large factory farms and absentee owners to a large extent, I think.

Farm work is hard and there have always been dangers and risks. I have been around it and done every kind of work over the years, including picking fruit from dawn until dusk in 100 degree weather. Summer harvest can be grueling for everyone, dawn until dusk in hot weather for day after day until the crop is in, and it will never be a clean and completely safe job, and it does not pay well. The money is not there - that all goes into the pockets of corporations: middle men, speculators, brokers and distributors. There are bad owners in farming, just as there are in other types of work.

We need public support for agriculture, we need increased and restored regulation, we need government housing programs, we need to rebuild the public agriculture infrastructure, we need worker training and incentives, we need public protection and support for what is a public resource.

Misinformed and mis-informative articles like this do more harm than good, because there is no way to tell the real perpetrators from the honest people and the public is given a false impression. Farmers cannot provide anything more than rudimentary housing for workers who will only be there a week or two. Workers often make the choice to sleep outside to save money, and also because of off-farm racist prejudice against them and the never-ending threat from law enforcement harassment. Hell, I am sleeping in an old trailer in an orchard right now and running to an outhouse, and I am working as an ag writer and photographer. There is hardly a week that goes by that someone isn't sleeping in the fields or the barn. Why the Hell not? You don't go into farming if you are seeking gentrified suburban comfort, status and material wealth.

It is NOT good that a punishment model - an extremely right wing approach to social problems - is being used when agencies step in. What we have here is grandstanding by federal officials, and yet another example of the Bush administration's war on small farmers. This grandstanding is to appeal to locals, who do not care about the welfare of the workers but who want the farmers and farm workers out of proximity to their suburban developments. If we as liberals jump to conclusions on these stories - and we are easily suckered on them when brown people are involved - we are helping a very nefarious right wing agenda.

Farm work is not the same as other types of work, and public policy has taken that into consideration all along. If farm work is violating OSHA standards, then where in the Hell has OSHA been for the last 30 years? Likewise of fresh produce is not safe, then where the Hell has the FDA been for the last 30 years? Why now, with the OSHA and the FDA packed with Bush political appointees from industry - corporations that want to eliminate small American farms - have the FDA and OSHA suddenly decided that agriculture is their proper purview and started launching these raids and propaganda campaigns?

All I ask is that you think this through and don't allow yourself to be led around by the nose by propaganda and media circuses being intentionally created by highly politicized Bush federal agencies. There is an all out war being waged against farming by the Bush administration on behalf of their wealthy corporate clients. The FDA - run by people from the pharmaceutical industry who are waging an ongoing fear campaign with the public about fresh fruits and vegetables, as we just saw with the absurd tomato scare the created; the ICE, waging Nazi-esque raids against workers that have resulted in over 800,000 warrantless arrest and indefinite detentions and denial of due process; and now OSHA waging a fear campaign and manipulating an ignorant public about farm conditions. The people running those agencies and initiating these programs are all sipping Martinis together tonight and getting their marching orders from the Bush White House for the benefit of corporate interests. They are part of a "revolving door" process. moving from right wing think tanks, to corporate offices, and then into management positions in the federal agencies, answering to the White House.

The corporations want farmers eliminated. They want the land, they want the resources under the land, they want total control over the food supply, they want to outsource food production.

[XemaSab]

17. I think I understand where you're coming from a little better now

Sorry if I was dismissive of your experience earlier. Like, two minutes ago. :P

Ultimately, it's a big lions-versus-Christians struggle, with poor whites being pitted against poor Mexicans (and poor blacks, for that matter), and I thought that's where you might be coming from.

I think if ONE Mexican laborer is exploited and abused, and ONE white person goes "Oh well," that hurts us all.

Yeah, we all benefit from cheap food. But benefiting from cheap food on the backs of real human suffering makes us all tantamount to the apologists for Southern slavery. Well, yeah, making farmers adhere to OSHA standards DOES cut into their profit margins.

I agree with you that the Feds are not to be trusted to either protect the workers or be fair to the farmers, but I strongly feel that there has been a BFEE push to make Mexican laborers the "enemy" as far as poor whites go, and a lot of people have fallen for it...

Where the Mexican laborers are today, the Okies were 70 years ago, the Chinese were 70 years before that, and the Mission Indians were even longer ago. That could be YOUR people in another 70 years, with the Mexicans yelling at YOUR grandkids to hurry up.

In summary, I'm pro-labor regardless of the work or the ethnicity of the workers. :shrug:

[Two Americas]

19. agreed

The problem I have is not with the cause of the workers, it is with misguided ideas that do more harm than good.

Workers of all kinds are exploited and abused in all industries.

When I was a kid, it was students who did the harvesting. I picked fruit summers when I was 14. It was grueling, hot, long, and poor paying. But, it is outdoors and it was a job, and farm work has its own rewards that are alien to modern suburban dwellers and professional people.

What we are seeing more and more in the Midwest is an end to migratory workers and a transition into full time residency, and long term relationships with the small farmers. For illiterate and uneducated people, it is an opportunity, and I know hundreds and hundreds of people who have been able to buy farms, buy homes, send their kids to college, as well as send money home to provide health care, safe water and comfort to their parents back in the village. All farm work is underpaid - including the many farm owners who go under or need to supplement their income with outside employment. Immigrants from the south are the fastest growing group of new farm owners. People go into farming by choice - it has desirable things - being outdoors, being independent, in tune with nature, facing challenges, making an unambiguous and essential contribution to society.

I hear people talk about these images - "hurry up" and "slave labor" and other horrific impressions. I am around workers all of the time in all sorts of orchards. I am a decent and compassionate person, a strong leftist and pro-labor, most of the farmers I work with are decent and compassionate people and almost half of them are strong Dems - I do not see a systematic pattern of abuse of workers by farmers. It is hard, the hours are long, it is hot, it is dangerous - that is true for everyone involved in farming. That is true of commercial fishing, of logging and other jobs, as well.

It is not compassionate to deny people an opportunity, or to presume that they are incapable of recognizing and using an opportunity because of their ethnicity, nor to single out farming for attacks.

I do think that California has a disproportionate amount of worker abuse for some reason. I think it must be because of the absentee owners and larger operations. In my experience, immigrants are being integrated into farm families and communities and improving their lives. I see farmers going to bat for workers all of the time - helping with housing and school, fighting the cops and federal authorities, helping with paperwork and child care and other things. I see workers gaining skills and moving out of harvest and into crop management and operating equipment and supervising crews. Why not? Should we not hire people because of their race or origins? Because of their lack of education or illiteracy? Because they have never seen a "document" in their lives and wouldn't understand it if they did?

Farm labor is and has always been an entry level opportunity. We need skilled labor as much as we need unskilled labor. Many of us are advocating for funding to help workers learn farm skills, and for public assistance for housing and education. The barrier to these improvements is not the farmers, it is the eaters - racist and right wing propaganda is the barrier.

Why can we not have federal programs to help the good farmers pay their workers better, improve workers skills, encourage new farm ownership for workers, help integrate people onto the communities, rather than painting all farmers with the same broad brush? And that is exactly what articles like this encourage - the idea that farmers as a group are systematically and horribly abusing Hispanic workers as a group and that this article is merely one example of a widespread and horrible problem. The articles are almost always unusual, not typical examples, and are always presented in the most inflammatory way and leave a very negative impression of all farmers and farming.

By the way, I have never - in thousands of hours in the field over decades - seen a farm worker denied a break or denied access to water.

[XemaSab]

20. Good to hear your viewpoint

It's always SUCH a fine line between respecting the rights of people to make their own decisions, be they Chinese factory workers, Mexican farm workers, African miners, or any other group that is "exploited", and taking the paternalistic attitude to protect these people from their bosses, and ultimately from themselves.

It's not a battle I'm going to fight tonight, but I will say that treating Mexicans as slaves is not acceptable, and there needs to be far more oversight in farm labor.

[Two Americas]

22. exactly, you nailed it

You make the best point on the thread.

"It's always SUCH a fine line between respecting the rights of people to make their own decisions, be they Chinese factory workers, Mexican farm workers, African miners, or any other group that is 'exploited,' and taking the paternalistic attitude to protect these people from their bosses, and ultimately from themselves."

What looks like a horrible job - stumbling onto a field at peak harvest, when we are all killing ourselves and suffering, for example. But we are all kicking back for three months or so in the winter, and harvest is a brief and grueling window and everyone has to kick in. I have noticed that unknowledgable observers, riding with me through say asparagus country or cucumber country during harvest will betray a curious racial bias. If they see a field with Hispanic workers picking the crop, and then a few miles later Hungarian or Ukrainian immigrant workers doing exactly the same work under exactly the same conditions, will see the brown workers as "slaves" and the white workers as noble and romantic laborers. I mean WTF? It has happened so many times, that I am forced to conclude that the compassion is itself racist. The assumption is that white people are smarter, more able to take care of themselves, etc., so they are not slaves being exploited but the Hispanics are. City people "see" different things, depending upon the race of the workers.

Uniform labor standards must be applied for all, and in food production it is going to take a public commitment and public assistance to upgrade the lives of everyone in farming communities, before they are all gone. If we are going to apply the same labor standards that apply in the cities to farms, every farm is in violation and will be shut down. From work is diverse, hazardous, and episodic. It requires a lot of labor. I did a project where I lived with and interviewed hundreds of immigrants a few years back. The thing that most surprised me (embarrassed to say)was the answer they gave when I asked them why they were doing this work. I assumed they would answer that they had no choice, or something. Almost always they expressed a love for farming, and defended the importance of agriculture. I had assumed they were just dumb peons, rather than fully human, in a way, without realizing that I was. They had the same love for farming and the same dreams as all of the rest of us. The problems they are running into are not primarily from the farmers, but rather from the larger community. We could be helping them become farmers in their own right, and that would be of enormous social benefit. "Give us a chance, and we will show you a miracle" the signs in the marches say. The miracle could be that they will save American family farming. Native born people here don't care, or even know anything about farming anymore.

[knitter4democracy]

26. You're right--here in Michigan, they're buying houses and staying.

They have a home that's their home base, so to speak, and they move around during the summer with the crops. We also have special schools for migrant farming families, too. We're getting a larger and larger Latino population base here in SouthCentral Michigan and west of here all the time. Some people grumble, sure, but they've been great neighbors for us, and most people I know respect the work they do and how they try to raise their kids right.

I know that, growing up and helping out on my stepmom's family's farm, it's damn hard work. You make sure you have a hat and sunscreen and water, and we always got breaks. The FFA kids in high school told me of the same, and they were often working side-by-side with Latino immigrant workers. Sure, I've seen the trailers next to the blueberry bushes and all, but considering how poor whites doing the same work live, it seems to be the same.

Here in Michigan, it's a lot more of small family farms, though. I think that's the difference.

[Two Americas]

29. social and cultural differences

I am touring orchards in the Pacific Northwest right now, and one thing that stunned me is that compared to the Midwest there is a far greater gap between the haves and the have-nots than we see back east or in the Midwest. There is also an insulated and gentrified class here who live in their own bubble and are terribly alienated from the way the other half lives. I think that this gap and the modernistic suburban lifestyle that is so widespread here affects people's opinions and prejudices about farming and life in general. Most people in the Midwest have some sort of common sense perspective and proportionality about risks and the realities of survival and a greater tolerance and appreciation and empathy for the have-nots. There is a much bigger gap between suburban people and rural people here as well.

It is the rejection of poor people and brown people by the dominant suburban culture in the Pacific Northwest that is the prime source of the hardships farm workers are experiencing, from my observations here. Much more progress has been made in the Midwest toward tolerance and integration. That is not the fault of farmers, and much of the "caring" for the plight of farm workers here on the West Coast is a combination of racism and anti-farmer anti-rural sentiments.

The way that upscale people - and there is little or no middle here unlike in Michigan, just striving successful suburbia and crushing poverty and never the twain shall meet - see immigrants and poor people in general, as well as various safety issues is a function of a suburban gentrified mentality run amok, I think.

The last immigrant farm worker scare story, about the cherry pickers in Kern county, was a good example of how "concern" for the "poor exploited workers" is just the flip side of the anti-immigrant right wing crusade and just as racist. Obviously, we had some ambitious guys hustling to find the work, they heard that cherries were ready down there and workers were needed, so they piled in cars and drove hundreds of miles to pick up the income. Of course they camped in the orchard for a week to save money, and also to avoid being hassled by authorities and town folks. The "trouble" started when some busy body folks in a nearby suburb got frightened because they saw "gangs of Mexicans" OMG hide the babies and called the cops on the workers. This is part of another trend - suburbanites moving into farm country for the idyllic country life, and then complaining about the smell of manure, or about farm vehicles slowing them down on the road, or about the "gangs" of scary-looking Latino farm workers they see in the market.

So those guys were free agents, wildcatting and scrambling to grab the income and seize an opportunity - the exact opposite of the chain-gang slave labor captured labor image that people have in their minds.

If (and when) white teen agers do the exact same thing they are seen as industrious, ambitious, adventurous, motivated, resourceful and romantic. White suburban college kids VOLUNTEER to do farm work as a romantic educational summer work experience on all sorts of CSA's and organic farms without anyone thinking they are exploited, and they work like dogs for nothing wallowing in the manure and everyone admires them for it.

There is an obscene thing at work here. When suburbanites see browns and whites doing the exact same work under exactly the same conditions, the assumption is that the brown people are helpless slaves who are being exploited, while the whites are having a farming adventure, or are building their futures and doing honorable work. In other words, scratch the surface of the "concern" for brown people, and there is racism underneath the compassion. Brown people are seen as being slaves and exploited because on some level people think that because they are not white they are somehow prone or suited for slavery. People are "seeing" things that are not there, and that spring from their ignorance and prejudice.

Do white workers, immigrants from Eastern Europe doing the exact same work as Latino immigrants have an easier time of things? Yes, of course. They are literate. They are educated. They are familiar with machines and vehicles and equipment. And most importantly they are white. That isn't a factor on the farm, but it sure as Hell is everywhere else. None of these problems are the fault of farmers, but farmers become a convenient scape goat for a wide range of social problems.

[knitter4democracy]

30. I've run into that kind of thinking here, too, unfortunately.

Talking with whites in small, rural Michigan towns can be pretty eye-opening, unfortunately. My own stepmom's family is one of the worst group of racists I've ever dealt with. That double standard--white kids farming is kids working hard but brown kids farming is people trying to steal jobs or people getting exploited--is prevalent here, too, sadly.

That said, we're also experiencing a population drain, so people moving here, opening up businesses, starting churches, and keeping their kids in schools, let alone paying taxes, is still something most whites here grudgingly accept and even embrace. Instead of those towns and villages dying out, some are growing, which they haven't done in decades. Who could hate that? When the Latinos (and it's almost entirely Latinos) turn out to keep their houses neat and clean, spend money in the area, are nice at the park and playground, and keep to themselves, well, then everyone starts opening their eyes to how nice it is to have these people here. More and more businesses are advertising in the bi-weekly Spanish newspaper (disclaimer: the chief editor's son was a friend of my daughter's at her old school, and she went to his birthday party, and his wife and I became decent school mom friends). More and more whites are shopping at the Latino-owned stores for the cheaper but better produce and such. Last night, one of our small locally-owned Mexican restaurants was packed--with all whites. The last time I'd been in there, our group was the only white group there, but word's gotten out that it's the best in town and has good prices.

I think it's also because, in Michigan, you're rich if you make $80K or more. At least in this area. That kind of money in the outer suburbs of Detroit wouldn't get you in the door of most places, let alone Chicago or LA, but here, that makes you rich. When you're rich, though, there's more pressure to help out the community, to give to those who need it, and you're seeing empty houses in your own neighborhood. You're right--we're all in this together here in Michigan, and I think we're banding together in ways we wouldn't if our state were doing better.

That, and we have the best farms in the country. I may be a bit biased on that, though. ;) Oh, and our apple tree is growing! We're going to spray it today (finally got masks and such) and see if we can protect it better. It never did flower, but that's for the best this year.

[Two Americas]

31. two things

All of the things you are talking about in Michigan, which I think are very accurate observations, are the result of a few things. First, Michigan has always been a leader in building and maintaining a strong public agricultural infrastructure. Secondly, unions have always been strong in Michigan. That is why there is a middle - though it is disappearing - and that is why there is not such a wide gulf between the haves and the have-nots and between the suburbs and the rural communities - attitudes and prejudices.

The contrast between traditional Democratic party politics, of which Michigan is a prime success story, and the modern suburban and West Coast liberalism dominated by upscale, educated, professional people, is stunning. The two are almost completely oppositional to one another. The stark contrast between the West Coast, especially Seattle and Portland and San Francisco, and the Midwest is explained by this. The West Coast suburban areas are self-selecting, with a large transplant population of people with the resources and freedom to relocate, and with a strong desire to leave the past behind and to engage in self-actualization. We can see on the West Coast that the political effect of this is to weaken the left, gentrify the party, and to cause a wider gap between the haves and the have-nots and to worsen conditions for the common people.

As this new faction within liberalism and the party now makes an ultimate play for control over the entire left, we are starting to see the backlash and increased resentment and disaffection in the party. Many in the party today - although they are few in number, they are dominant and powerful - seek to bury the New Deal coalition once and for all and abandon any left wing economic program and remake liberalism
into a particular vision of self-actualization and rationalized suburban lifestyle choices. This is a new and virulent form of aristocracy.

[XemaSab]

12. Oh, and it's totally ironic that your username is TwoAmericas

when there are really THREE Americas: Rich Whites, Poor Whites, and Poor Mexicans. :(

[Two Americas]

14. that was uncalled for

Feel free to search my posts and revise your slanderous remarks.

[XemaSab]

15. I don't think so

Your lack of sympathy for agricultural workers in this thread is a problem for me.

I've worked in the Valley enough to know that horrible conditions are a reality, and even though white people have done that sort of work traditionally doesn't make exposing ANY people to extreme heat okay. :shrug:

And for what it's worth, yeah, I was doing field surveys today in the sun in 90+ degree weather in Marysville, California. I had the option of going to the truck if I got too hot, and I had lots of water with me. It's upsetting to know that there are people working under the same conditions who don't have those options available to them if they're feeling overheated. :shrug:

[Two Americas]

16. not quite

I am an organizer and marcher for immigrant rights in the Midwest. I have met with congress members many times lobbying for immigrant rights. I organized a US Senator's campaign kick off in front of a farm group, and wrote the keynote speech for the farmer who introduced the Senator which was a strong call for immigrant rights. I have dozens and dozens of posts here defending immigrant rights and talking about the immigrant raids, and I am often the only one on a thread defending the immigrants.

[XemaSab]

18. I wrote a somewhat rambling response to your other post

but I think we're mostly on the same page:

Exploiting immigrants is NOT COOL. :P

[Two Americas]

21. thanks

We are on the same page. Exploiting ANY workers is not cool.

[Selatius]

8. In some ways, the US has not advanced much since the Great Depression days.

The greed and the lack of care for workers is still the same.

[tkmorris]

9. K&R, Thanks for posting this nosmokes.

[XemaSab]

11. One of the most sobering realizations of my life:

I was working a project out near Merced, doing wetland delineations in the summer.

Every morning we'd get out there at sunrise, and start work. We'd work until 1 or so in the afternoon, then quit because it was JUST TOO HOT.

Every morning we'd see the workers start work in the adjacent tomato field at the same time we were starting, and they were still going well after we were quitting due to the heat.

The thing that made it so sobering is that we were professionals who could just stop working when we felt like it was too hot out, and we were probably both making 4 times what they were making, IF they were making minimum wage, which they weren't.

(This was in 2004, before OSHA standards were put in place about allowing farm workers to take breaks in the shade, and allowing them breaks for water. :( )

[annabanana]

32. We have not travelled far from the "Plane Wreck at Los Gatos"

The agreement of 1947 (between Mexico and the U.S.)... contained a novel provision which established amnesty through deportation. Under its terms, undocumented Mexicans who were sent back across the border could return to the U.S. as temporary contract laborers; during the life of their contracts, they could not be again deported. In practice, employers often called Border Patrol stations to report their own undocumented employees, who were returned, momentarily, to border cities in Mexico, where they signed labor contracts with the same employers who had denounced them. This process became known as "drying out wetbacks" or "storm and drag immigration." "Drying out" provided a deportation-proof source of cheap seasonal labor...

The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting,
The oranges are packed in their creosote dumps.
They're flying 'em back to the Mexico border
To take all their money to wade back again.

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria.
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees."

My father's own father, he waded that river.
They took all the money he made in his life.
My brothers and sisters came workin' the fruit trees,
They rode the big trucks 'till they laid down and died.

The skyplane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightnin' an' it shook all the hills.
Who are these comrades, they're dying like the dry leaves?
The radio tells me, "They're just deportees."

We died in your hills and we died in your deserts,
We died in your valleys, we died in your plains.
We died 'neath your trees and we died 'neath your bushes,
Both sides of the river we died just the same.

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To die like the dry leaves and rot on my topsoil
And be known by no name except "deportee."

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria.
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees."
All they will call you will be "deportees."