AMBER AMAYA and CHRISTIAN MENDEZ / Coachella Unincorporated

COACHELLA — Pins from a United Farm Workers of America Convention were scattered across a long table covered in a bright red banner. The bold image of a black eagle was stitched to the front of the banner, and a small signature next to the eagle read, “Cesar Chavez, ’77.”

“Viva Cesar Chavez!” a woman yelled.

A crowd was gathered at Coachella’s Vietnam Veterans Park on Sunday, March 29 for the “El Precio de la Justicia,” celebration and procession in honor of Cesar Chavez’s life and legacy.

Maria Serrano, a UFW veteran, stood at the front of the crowd, dressed in a white shirt with a portrait of Cesar Chavez printed on the front. Serrano, a UFW member since 1977, helped Chavez organize strikes in Mecca. And it was during those strikes, she said, she witnessed Chavez’s firm commitment to nonviolence.

“We were in Mecca trying to organize and the teamsters were there,” Serrano described in Spanish as she rested against her walker. “There was almost a fight between everyone, but Cesar was very strict about telling us to disperse. ‘Please,’ he told all the workers, ‘I do not want violence. No violence.’”

Serrano said Chavez’s commitment to nonviolence during confrontations with law enforcement and farm owners stuck with her long after the incidents were over.

Across the table from Serrano, Maria Aguirre, another life-long Coachella resident, described her visits to UFW meetings when she was a farmworker. Aguirre said it is important for everyone, especially young people, to remember the sacrifices Chavez and other UFW organizers made.

“It is important to have events like this that remember the movement,” Aguirre said in Spanish. “It’s gratitude towards what was done.”

The work of Cesar Chavez and local UFW organizers didn’t go unremembered, thanks, in part, to a group of young people who helped organize events over the weekend in Indio and Coachella.

On Friday, March 27 the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA) chapter from College of the Desert (COD) hosted the Cesar Chavez Celebration: A Night of Cultural Resistance at the COD campus in Indio. Alfredo Figueroa, a former UFW organizer, acted as the keynote speaker. Figueroa described how he had helped Cesar Chavez organize in Coachella, and even spent time in jail because of his activism.

Yolanda Moreno, a MEChA student organizer and Mecca resident, said even though a majority of Chavez’s organizing happened before she was born, Chavez’s legacy still influences the next generation of organizers in the eastern Coachella Valley.

“[Cesar Chavez] was a crucial leader figure here in our community, and it’s important to recognize that and to follow his footsteps,” Moreno said. “Not a lot of brown figures make a national impact the way that he did, so it’s just a continuation of remembering and empowering each other, and the fact that we can actually change stuff.”

Students from the MEChA chapter at Coachella Valley High School also attended the “El Precio de la Justicia” event on Sunday; they passed out water bottles to the crowd gathered at the park.

Jackie Aguilar, a senior at Coachella Valley High School and MEChA member, said both her parents and her grandparents had worked in the fields. She decided to attend the event on Sunday to learn more about Chavez and the UFW organizers who fought for the rights of farmworkers.

“I think it’s important to learn all these things because it’s part of our culture, and it’s part of our history,” Aguilar said. “I would be very detached from my culture if I didn’t know all this history. I just think it’s great to keep in touch with what our ancestors did.”

Young people, like Aguilar, are the future of organizing, according to Serrano. As she rested in her walker, Serrano continued to reflect on her own history of organizing with Chavez in the eastern Coachella Valley, and she instructed young people to take up the fight for social justice and rights for farmworkers.

“We are here so that our fight does not die. We want it to continue with the youth. Youth need to know of this struggle. Over time, many achievements were made for the community,” she said in Spanish. “This makes us proud because through our struggle and sacrifice and Cesar and his fasting and marching, this is the reason we are here.”

Editor’s Note:  California Senator Ricardo Lara’s (D- Huntington Park/Long Beach) Health For all Bill (SB 1005) – it would make all Californians, regardless of immigration status, eligible to purchase insurance – advanced out of the Senate Health Committee on Wednesday, April 30, and will go to the Senate Appropriations Committee before being moved for a vote.  Under the Affordable Care Act, undocumented immigrants are barred from receiving federal subsidies for their health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. In California alone, there are an estimated 1 million undocumented immigrants who lack health care.

Below is the story of an undocumented farm worker family in Salinas, the Toledanos, which now faces insurmountable medical debt due to being uninsured.

By JESÚS E. VALENZUELA-FÉLIX/Coachella Uninc

“I felt she was going to die”

How much does it cost to live? $200,000. That’s what Jorge Toledano discovered when he opened his mother’s hospital bill.

“My mother was having convulsions,” said Toledano. “We (still) don’t know exactly what happened.  My sister found her chocking in her sleep, and tried giving her mouth-to-mouth.  I knew it was bad, because she was twitching, her voice was gone, and she couldn’t even speak.  When I sat her up she vomited, and from there I called my grandmother and told her that my mother was in bad shape and we didn’t know what was wrong with her.  Then I called the ambulance.”

Toledano, 28, is a farm worker, like the rest of his family. He came to California from Mexico at the age of 14 in pursuit of the American Dream, because at home there was nothing to eat.  He made the trek from his home in San Martin Peras, Oaxaca, to San Diego, California, rarely if ever taking a day off.  He was a migrant farm worker in Mexico long before he came to the U.S. – as a kid he picked tomatoes in Sinaloa, where there are neither bathrooms nor water for workers, and where being indigenous means putting up with strong racism from the mestizos, or mixed-race Mexicans.  Toledano’s first language is not Spanish but Mixteco, an indigenous language.  As Toledano puts it, the goal has always been survival. Prosperity? Maybe that will come later.

Stories like Toledano’s are commonplace these days in the farming regions of California.  Economic conditions at home have forced entire generations of Mexicans to move north, with the promise that if they worked hard enough they would get ahead.  But in the Toledano’s line of work, farm work, wages are low and health risks associated with the occupation – to the physical nature of the labor and exposure to harmful agricultural pesticides and chemicals – are high.

“She was in the hospital all day Monday and Tuesday, and it wasn’t until late Wednesday that she opened her eyes,” Toledano said of his mother.

It turns out she was suffering from meningitis, a viral infection that causes inflammation of the areas around the brain and spinal cord, that can lead to serious symptoms such as vomiting, convulsions and fever.  Doctors, said Toledano, were unable to confirm exactly when or where she contracted the virus.

A full week in the hospital was followed by four days resting at home.  Toledano and his sister followed up by accompanying their mother to an outpatient clinic.

“As we were waiting in the clinic she began to get convulsions. My sister was there and as soon as she noticed that something was wrong, we held her hands. When she was convulsing I felt that she was going to die. I screamed, ‘Help her, please, help her!’  I was crying.  The clinic called an ambulance and we went (back) to the hospital.  She went in on a Thursday and left on a Wednesday.  After leaving the hospital we came to the house, but it was as if we’d brought home a dead person. She had no idea where she was.”

In debt for life

The bills for the two weeks combined came out to more than $200,000.  The ambulance ride alone cost over $3,000.

Asked if he’d be able to pay the bill on his own, Toledano, laughing, said, “Maybe if I stop eating for a whole year.  A farm worker makes on average $25,000 a year.  If I had insurance, of course, it would help.”

Toledano applied for Medi-Cal on behalf of his mother, but the application was denied because the she is undocumented.

“I don’t know how we’ll be able to pay,” he said.  “We barely make enough to pay the rent.”

After 14 years of working hard and saving up, Toledano is completely broke.  What little money he had managed to save up through the years has gone to help pay for the medical bills. By the time this article is published he’ll be in Oxnard, working the same cycle that he’s been following for years, picking strawberries there, making $9 an hour, working ten hour days for 6 days a week, hoping to not get sick or do something that will impede him from working.  When that season ends, he’ll be back at home in Salinas.

Despite it all, he talks with a smile. Life has been hard, toiling in the fields through the dirt and sweat, but he has faith that everything will turn out fine.  Pity, said Toledano, is the last thing he would want from anyone.  Rather, the recent nightmare with his mother has him hoping for something else entirely — to live in a society where equality means equality, regardless of status.

Jesús E. Valenzuela Félix is a reporter from Coachella living in Salinas and working for the United Farm Workers Foundation. He is a regular contributor to Coachella Unincorporated and New America Media. Read more of his work here. 

The Diary of Joaquín Magón Entry 31: Why Citizenship?

Citizenship is one of the most important rights in this country; so why is there talk of denying this to an entire population?

Republican members of Congress recently unveiled their “Immigration Standards,” a lengthy list of requirements that undocumented immigrants must meet in order to become legal residents – but a path to citizenship is not included on this list.

Let me tell you why full citizenship is important.

In the spectrum of extremes – on one side no immigration reform at all, on the other full citizenship to the 11 million – there is a middle ground. That middle ground can only begin with the two sides of the representative spectrum start talking, and the people they represent start pushing. The fact that the two sides are now at least talking about immigration in realistic terms is positive.

There is currently a huge population of legal permanent residents (LPR) as a result of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 which granted amnesty to roughly 2.7 million people, according to the Center for Immigration Studies. Aside from that there are millions more that have achieved LPR status, as well as the millions more that are the children of those immigrants who are born in the U.S. leading to a diversification in the demographics of the citizen population and, thus, the voting block.

The diversification of the voting population is a beautiful thing for a democracy. There are new growing global issues that this country is facing and, in order to tackle those issues with success, we need a global-minded population. The need for a population that can think different, that brings to the table different perspectives can only strengthen a democracy. Citizenship allows us to come to the table as equals, share each other’s ideas and acknowledge that we all deserve the same rights to representation, that we all share the same concerns for the nation’s prosperity and that we will all share our unique ideas to ensure that we move forward as a nation.

The alternative being proposed, in which LPR status does not lead to citizenship for everyone except students brought to the U.S. under a certain age, is a shift from the citizenship perspective to a criminalization perspective. The Republican “immigration standards” is a list – which includes border enforcement, entry-exit visa tracking system, employment verification and workplace enforcement, Individuals living Outside the Rule of Law – portraying an entire population as criminals.

The criminalization of an entire population whose vibrant ideas and experiences are barred from supporting the nation’s democratic system can only hurt a nation. There is potential there, huge potential, to be inclusive and to move forward together.

Citizenship drives – what I’ve been calling the other side of immigration reform – is a less media-worthy, yet very effective means of applying the political pressure necessary to achieve a comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) bill that includes a path to citizenship. It was the quiet workings of thousands of organizations across the country working to turn LPRs into citizens that brought us to this point in time where CIR feels more real than it has felt for almost 30 years.

At the same time, citizenship has been used as one of the Latino population’s failures. According to the Pew Research Center’s Hispanic Trends Project report “The Path Not Taken,” only 30 percent of Mexican LPRs eligible to become full citizens do so. That is not to say that all LPRs chose to remain LPRs. The majority of LPRs from other backgrounds do, indeed, take that path.

The Mexicano, however, has a tendency to not do so. “I just don’t know how to go about it,” is the most common response — which is a key indicator that not becoming a citizen is not so much a lack of want as a need for help navigating the immigration system.

Citizenship drives are a very powerful tactic that can help achieve immigration reform and citizenship for others. We can ensure that this nation will remain strong, competitive, diverse, and ready to tackle any and all issues that arise in an ever-globalized nation, state, county, city, home.

The Diary of Joaquín Magón is written by Jesús E. Valenzuela Félix, a reporter from Coachella living in Salinas and working for the United Farm Workers Foundation. He is a regular contributor to Coachella Unincorporated and New America Media.

The Diary of Joaquín Magón Entry 30: Living Unconquered

“César Chávez: An American Hero” opens in theaters today, bringing to the big screen the story of the beginning of the United Farm Workers.

The film will inspire dialogue – that can help or not help — the farm worker rights movement.

Discourse around farm workers by media, the general community, and even some farm worker advocates, often revolves around the idea of farm workers as victims. There is also a tendency to idolize farm workers.

If we want to change the conditions of farm workers and thereby live in a system where the food we consume comes at a fair price, we must start talking about farm workers in a realistic and humanistic manner.

Some farm workers are fighters who have walked out on strikes, risking their jobs and even deportation to continue their struggle. Some saw their co-workers strike and instead decided to stay and scab.

Like César Chávez said, “Some farm workers are bums, just like some growers are. It’s a mistake to begin by idolizing the workers because they’re the ‘down and outers.’ Most farm workers are just human; they live, like all of us, from day to day; they want happiness and they want to avoid confusion and pain.”

We can credit Chávez’s success in organizing to understanding that farm workers are regular human beings with the capacity to build a movement; they simply lacked the tools to do so. He did not see or talk to them as if they were victims.

“We don’t let people sit around a room crying about their problems,” Chávez also said. “No philosophizing – do something about it. In the beginning there was a lot of nonsense about the poor farm worker…in order to help farm workers, look at them as human beings and not as something extra special or else you are kidding yourself and are going to be mighty, mighty disappointed. Don’t pity them either. Treat them as human beings, because they have just as many faults as you have; that way you’ll never be in trouble, because you’ll never be disappointed.”

This applies whether you are organizing farm workers, participating in civic engagement, or donating to a cause. Do not pity them. We do no one any favors by treating them as if they do not have the strength and capacity to change their situations.

This is the Chávez that comes through in the film. The director, Diego Luna, followed those instructions clearly. And, as difficult as it may be when an issue is dear to us, we have to show what is real. The film portrays hope and workers fighting for their rights, making them instant heroes in our eyes. But the film does a good job at capturing the fear that comes when some don’t strike. The film captures the frustration of a long struggle. The film does not fall into this trap of impeccable good versus absolute evil.

I talked to a group of female farm workers who had attended the meetings to create change in their work place. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to change the situations — low wages, potential wage theft, discrimination for being indigenous, just to name a few. They lacked the space to participate in the dialogue that would engage them in change. They never had the tools to dismantle fears instilled long ago that this was their fate and that they should accept it. They began to dismantle once they discovered the space, walked into the space, engaged in dialogue, and had access to the tools.

So it is with all farm workers. If we had listened to their problems, said, “Oh poor you, here’s some money for your children,” then the cycle of poverty would not change.

Here are a few things we can do to change the way we talk and write about farm workers. We can discuss their problems and how they are working toward solutions. If we have a sad story about their conditions, show also how they are fighting to change them. Our photographs can show the struggle as opposed to the sadness.

One can join an organization that focuses on farm worker issues and actively participate, keeping in mind that we are guests in their space and that we must understand what their issues are — which means actively listening.

It’s a simple set of steps that can be transferred to any person in any situation because the reality is that people don’t want to be pitied, they want to live with the dignity they deserve.

The Diary of Joaquín Magón is written by Jesús E. Valenzuela Félix, a reporter from Coachella living in Salinas and working for the United Farm Workers Foundation. He is a regular contributor to Coachella Unincorporated and New America Media.  

Editor’s Note: This is the third in a series of three reports on the DREAMer movement.
Part one can be read here and part two can be read here.

The Diary of Joaquín Magón Entry 29: The Dreamer Chronicles, Part 3

Approved for DACA, Mayté and Lamber Can Finally Pursue their Dreams

I first spoke to Mayté, 21, in December as she was finishing up her stay at College of the Desert (COD), the Coachella Valley’s community college. She was getting ready to transfer and was waiting for her Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) approval.

I sat down with her again over the summer, along with her brother, Lamber, 18, for a follow up interview. Mayte had been approved for DACA in January 2013 and Lamber was approved a few months after.

Lamber recently graduated from Desert Mirage High School in Thermal, and he plans to go to COD because, as he puts it, “I have no cash.” He wants to study liberal arts and become a teacher.

Our conversation is a mix between me asking questions about their experience and them asking me questions on what to expect for the DACA renewals and what to expect if S. 744 — or any other comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) bill — becomes law. I explain that if the bill passes in its current form, DACA recipients won’t have to go through another background check and would go through a 5-year waiting period to become a legal permanent resident. It’s all speculation, of course, but it makes for good conversation.

Mayté is getting ready to start her first semester in CSU San Bernardino, embarking on her new adventures in a new school and a new city. To say that DACA changed her life drastically would be undermine her immense ability to survive, her resourcefulness; she would have graduated from a university regardless because she wants it bad enough, but now that the playing field has been leveled a bit more it will be easier.

“The only thing that has come from DACA is that now I can work legally,” says Mayté. “Before I would feel kind of restrained, only because I didn’t have papers. I couldn’t work. Now it’s better. I can go to San Bernardino. I had postponed that because I didn’t have a work permit. I didn’t have papers, and I asked where am I going to work? How am I going to pay for my classes? And my mom wasn’t going to help me out because she can barely pay for this [apartment].”

Their mother is a farm worker. She works the season picking lettuce in the night shifts. When I spoke to them it was May, the heat of the desert was hitting well over 90 degrees and would slowly creep over 100 in the coming summer months.

To go outside for a walk is unbearable, to work at a fast pace is deadly. Many companies prefer to work by night going in at 4 p.m and coming out at 3 a.m. One can imagine the difficulties of such a task, in particular for parents that must leave their children home either with a babysitter or alone at those hours of the night as parents swipe and cut away. While the city dreams, she dreams of one day having her children graduate from college and be the platform for which they, as a family, can achieve the American dream. She navigates the night with a knife and a light bulb searching and cutting produce that will make its way into a sandwich somewhere that one of us will eat.

“Whenever [our mom] comes from the fields,” says Lamber, “I can see her veins, her blood vessels exploded…[she has] cuts everywhere, her skin is rough.”

Seeing the conditions that her mother has to go through, and the injustices that her mother suffers in the work place, Mayté decided to go to school to become a labor attorney. Lamber, having seen how difficult it is to navigate the school system that he, at such a young age has noticed does not welcome all students equally, has decided to become an English teacher because he believes “those are the ones you learn the most from.”

Like Mayté and Lamber, there are millions of students out there fighting for CIR. We can look at CIR, we can look at our communities and see how immigration is integrated into every single aspect, in every single atom of our lives. The undocumented, low-income populations are usually relegated to the less economically privileged part of town, usually the East — the Eastern Coachella Valley, East Salinas, East Los Angeles. What we are seeing more and more of today are young immigrants that look around, notice their parents, notice the walls of the buildings on their side of town, notice the paved streets on the other side of town, notice their hands, notice their dreams, and notice the barriers.

What we see is a crux. A point. A specific point in history where people see that they want to change the world and are beginning to grow and become the root cause of a change that will spread like vines intertwined on walls. Neither Alma, Mayte, nor Lamber want to become leaders of a large movement. They want to become a lawyer, a teacher, a marriage counselor. In other words, they want to become integrated into society and change society from within. But that change, that fight for CIR is not an end; it’s a means from which to attain the full rights of a voting citizen coupled with the power of an education, in order to return to their community and to make things better for both the generation before them – the parents that migrated, that worked in the hot, burning, fields, construction sites, cleaning the halls of a university, mowing the lawn of mansion – and for the next generation that will not have to bear witness to the pain of the past.

The Diary of Joaquín Magón is written by Jesús E. Valenzuela Félix, a reporter from Coachella living in Salinas and working for the United Farm Workers Foundation. He is a regular contributor to Coachella Unincorporated and New America Media.  

Editor’s Note: This is the third in a series of three reports on the DREAMer movement.
Part one can be read here and part two can be read here.

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of three reports on the DREAMer movement

The Diary of Joaquín Magón Entry 27: The Dreamer Chronicles, Part 1

It was 2010 and the Immigration movement was at a crossroad— continue advocating for comprehensive immigration reform, or support the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, legislation introduced earlier that year by Senator Durbin (D-IL) which would have benefited undocumented youth exclusively, which is the most common version known today (there was a version introduced in 2001 but that, for reasons I’m sure all of you know, failed in a wave of xenophobia and patriotism). Neither was achieved.

In the span of the three years, we saw students work with a conviction. A perpetual defiance going viral through the media, cap-and-gown-wearing youth arrested across in the street shouting Si Se Puede, forsaking the use of massive marches and focusing strictly on media spectacles that caught the sympathy necessary to ensure that students would have a place in the hearts of constituents of even the most xenophobic districts. The Immigration movement had seldom witnessed such a spectacle much less why the generational gap so wide, parents were not getting arrested; their children, however, where.

Parents saw America as a new identity; But Dreamers came at a young age and the American identity continues to be the only identity they know; they attended same school systems as U.S. born children, learning the same patriotic U.S. history. Then one day they learned that the system denied them and that sense of belonging was threatened. This movement is a movement to retake that sense of belonging.

DREAMers are everywhere. You went to school with them; they live invisibly, you can’t know who is a DREAMer and who isn’t unless they trust you enough to speak about the immense sense of frustration that comes with having something to hide. But, then again, that’s all undocumented immigrants – farm workers, domestic workers, gardeners, fast food workers, all share that same sense of fear of being discovered, caught, and deported.

CHIRLA

Enter the Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA). Formed after the passage of IRCA, CHIRLA has been one of the leading organizations in the fight for a path to citizenship in recent years.

In 2001 CHIRLA created Wise Up!, a youth-led organization where high school students could organize to make going to college for undocumented youth more accessible. To this day undocumented students must pay out-of-state tuition, which can cost twice as much, if not more. Through their organizing efforts California Assembly Bill 540 came into existence giving any student, regardless of immigration status, that graduated from a California high school the right to pay in-state tuition given they met these and other criteria. From WiseUp! The CA Dream  Network was born.

Diana Colín, 25, a Community Organizer for CHIRLA joined in 2008. “While the whole country and the youth movement were working to get the federal DREAM ACT, the CA DREAM Network was working on immigration reform for families… CHIRLA isn’t only working for students. It’s for families.”

In a very real sense every person, every immigrant, documented or undocumented is an embodiment of a comprehensive package. As Colín points out, “Just because you’re a college student doesn’t mean you’re not a brother or sister or parent; you can be a family member even though you’re a student.”

An Organizer: Diana Colín

Like all large movements there are unseen players somewhere fighting for something that will benefit or harm us. At times we walk a day without knowing that there is something being negotiated in Capitol Hill that’ll have a profound effect on our lives, and there are times when we realize we can make a change and chose to join a movement.

In March of 2006 I attended a march that brought hundreds of thousands of people to rally through the cold, dark, paved, smog-infested streets of a Los Angeles empty of cars and filled with bodies walking with signs united and demanding to not be seen as criminals, but to be treated as equals, to be legalized, and to be able to keep more than just their dignity. Within that Los Angeles crowd Colín was also present.

“[In organizing] I think there are Ones, Twos, and Threes,” says Colín sharing a bit of knowledge she picked in CHIRLA, “One means you’re an organizer; Two means you go to meetings; and Three means you’re just a body. In 2006 I was a Three, I was a body. I was in high school in LA. March 25 march in LA, that was my first action ever; it was huge.”

The constant pressure that the Immigration Reform Movement placed on the Obama administration paid off when, after occupying several Obama campaign offices, the President announced, on June 15, 2012, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive order – this in plain campaign season.

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)

It’s been over a year since DACA (a two-year work permit for those that came before the age of 16 and before June 15, 2007, among other qualifications [insert link to DACA info]) was announced. With an employment authorization card one can get a social security number, get help to go to school, and get a driver’s license. The fear of driving and being pulled over, having your car impounded, and potentially being deported are eliminated…temporarily.

“We have a lot of people that have driver licenses,” says Colín who has seen the impacts of DACA first hand with her students, “we have a lot of students that are able to work after college graduation …they’re confident to go in and apply to a job that they’re qualified for. I think that was a big problem before DACA.”

Colín adds another positive consequence: “I also think that DACA made a lot of students active in the movement. [Some of] the most active members and volunteers came out of DACA. They didn’t know that here was a movement going on until DACA and now they want to be part of it.”

“I started getting involved last year around this time when DACA was announced,” says Alma Torres, 23, a member of the UFW Foundation who has been involved in the current push for comprehensive immigration reform. Within weeks of receiving her DACA approval she joined the 100 UFW Foundation and UFW members in April for a week of lobbying and actions Washington, D.C. She participated in a massive march outside of the Capitol where organizations from across the United States joined in an effort that would eventually help pass S. 744, the Senate immigration bill with a path to citizenship which has been stalled by the House of Representatives.

Like every movement in existence there are the big figures that we all remember and there are the rest of us mobilizing from the ground up. It’s easy to get lost in the figures, critiquing the figures, wondering if the figures know what they’re doing. But this article is not about them. It’s about the rest of the folks that organize around the issues and push forward a movement that will most likely never remember their name. The following two stories have extensive quotes so as to capture as much of the story in their own words as possible.

Jesús E. Valenzuela Félix, a reporter from Coachella living in Salinas and working for the United Farm Workers Foundation, contributes regularly to Coachella Unincorporated and New America Media.

KEENE, Calif. — On October 8, 2012, over 6,000 people descended upon Villa La Paz — the home, operational headquarters and final resting place of civil rights leader Cesar Chavez — for President Barack Obama’s dedication of the César Chávez National Monument. They came from throughout the country to see this 187-acre property in the foothills of the Tehachapi Mountains take its place among national monuments such as the Statue of Liberty and the Grand Canyon.

Although the dedication was celebratory in tone, many in attendance acknowledged that the dreams Chávez had for farm workers have not been entirely fulfilled.

By Coachella Unincorporated, youth media project of New America Media
Photography: Ivan Delgado, Aurora Saldivar, Johnny Flores
Digital Production: Ivan Delgado

The Diary of Joaquin Magon Entry 20

About a month ago, I was talking to workers on strike at Nob Hill, a chain of high-end grocery stores, trying to figure out what moved them to take this major step. The majority of the workers picketed outside the store in spite of the big sign on the front doors: “Now Hiring Replacement Workers.”

I went inside the store and saw it was empty; the stock of dairy products was almost depleted and the bread was going stale. And I saw how much work the strikers had done to make this a successful strike. I contemplated some of my favorite moments working with Unions. I think of the strike at Amarral and began to compare the two and the lessons both have taught me.

A strike is effective for two main reasons: (1) it forces the employer to negotiate with the workers as quickly as possible or else risk losing money and (2) it makes the workers realize the power that they hold.

It can be argued that a strike is the hardest thing to which a worker can commit. There is the risk of being replaced by scabs, the risk of being fired, the risk of being singled out by the employer, and, in some instances, the risk of being arrested.

But even with those risks, strikes continue and the striker holds a romantic image of the union man or union woman walking off work, picket sign in hand, showing the world that they can, indeed, change their conditions in the work place.

The Target Is The Profit

The strike is a work stoppage, a stoppage of the production of the materials or services that the “boss” needs to sell in order to make a living. By going out on strike the worker puts the owner in a tough spot, the owner must negotiate as quickly as possible or risk losing his investors.

In Amarral, the workers stopped harvesting the vegetables that needed to be sold and shipped off to stores such as Nob Hill. For Nob Hill, the workers stopped offering the service that the customer needs to successfully purchase the products sold in the store.

Along with that, the employer risks gaining publicity as an exploiter, and big brand companies and stores will not want to be affiliated with such a person if publicity gets so risky that it might lead to a boycott of the stores purchasing the product. This is what made the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) strike so successful – the workers connected with the customers to the point where most customers left the store without having bought anything or didn’t go into the store at all.

All workers have power.

There exists an invisible agreement between the employer and the employee that is central to all working relationships. When there are more workers than jobs, the worker has low value; when there are more jobs than workers, the worker has high value.

And often times it happens that workers are not aware of their rights or their power. This happens more in industries where the majority of the workforce carries barriers of different dimensions such as language, legal status, and knowledge of worker rights. But when workers learn that they have power, they can manifest it and take action.

I used to believe that a strike was more effective in industries where the workers have more power due to high demand. That is to say, in times where the unemployment rate is low.

In Amarral the workers knew that they weren’t going to be replaced – there aren’t many agricultural workers right now. But even in Nob Hill, where there are hundreds of people that would willingly take a job at a grocery store, the workers still went on strike. It all goes to show that the most important thing needed in a strike is a worker’s conviction.

The Importance of Collective Unity

In order for a strike to be effective each worker must believe that there exists at least one injustice in the workplace that the worker connects to on a personal level.

The second is the issue-based communication that fosters a strong bond between the workers where they reassure each other that when they do decide to go on strike no one will back down. This bond is the glue that cements the bridge between thought and action.  And, of course, each worker has their individual conviction. One cannot go out on strike without truly feeling the cause, because in the end they will easily lose momentum and return to work.

When we were at Amarral we saw conviction unlike any other. There were those that went out on strike but then returned to work. They did not have the conviction necessary and were easily scared off by their employer. The same occurred in Nob Hill.

This is what makes going out on strike so difficult. It’s a direct confrontation with the employer. In a regular union election, a worker can sign an authorization card and support in complete secrecy.  In a strike there is no hiding. The employer knows who the union supporters are.

We are all workers

A strike is a weapon, an option that all of us as workers or as future workers have and must preserve. We as workers must always remember the power that we have.

It is only by acknowledging our own power, and by knowing our rights that we, as workers, will not allow ourselves to be exploited, to be taken advantage of, and to act when employers and laws seeks to take that power from us; and we will not give up.

“The Diary of Joaquín Magón” is written by Jesús E. Valenzuela Félix, a reporter from Coachella living in Salinas and working for the United Farm Workers Foundation. He contributes regularly to Coachella Unincorporated.

Entry 18: The Incredible Story of Griselda, A Migrant Farm Worker

I worked in your orchards of peaches and prunes

I slept on the ground in the light of the moon

On the edge of the city you’ll see us and then

We come with the dust and we go with the wind

-Pastures of Plenty, Woody Guthrie

Griselda left, as many of them do. Uncles, aunts, parents, children, brothers, sisters, strangers, whoever, but they go; they move up north because there isn’t anything here, only dry land, desolate land, and a place called home.

There must be something there; so and so has a cousin up there and he’s rich! Always sending money! We want money! We need money! Leave everything behind – wife, kids, husband, mothers, fathers, a past, an identity, land, and dreams.

She got onto a bus to go up north, exported through the coastal route, Sinaloa, green and great, Sonora, dry and dead, Baja with a fresh air of smog, of progress, of stagflation, of deportation and lost hopes stuck there, hot and sticky.

Out of the bus into Mexicali, traffic rushing back and forth. Where you from? Guatemala? El Salvador? Oaxaca? Sinaloa? Who in Mexicali is from Mexicali? Who knows?

She talked to a coyote, you know, the same one that crossed the cousins, we have to get out of Mexicali in less than a week, after that Mexicali claims you and you’ll live here forever eating Chinese food and smelling old men, smog, and grease from food carts.

Into the night she went, along with the others. Some die in the desert, some drown in a river, some are killed by the coyotes, and some are killed by the border patrol agents who see the men as threats and the women as prey.

They move swiftly, she moves quickly, protected by her father, protected by her dreams and the things her mother taught her. She sees how they are treated, not like people; they’re like cattle, like chicken, polleros! Move, move, move! Gotta get across before dawn. Three days of walking, food gone on the second day, water gone by the third, and two died somewhere in between.

And she steps into the city, she sees people walking around, Chinese people speaking Spanish, Men with guitars playing songs, people shopping, eating, this is the United States? Smells horrible. Nothing like she expected, go in, eat here! Tastes terrible! Like chewing on rubber!

Let’s go! Move, move, move, my brother is waiting for us; he’ll take us north. More north? Yes the jobs are always north. Move, move, move, through the crowd of people, looking dirty, looking confused, not wanting to leave yet because they’re tired, they just need a little rest.

Into the car, up north through desert, a lot of desert, dry with small mountains beginning to appear on the right, rocky, brown, blue skies, white clouds, no rain, doesn’t smell like rain. It never rains here. Up and down because it’s hilly and she comes across a huge lake or sea, or, what is that thing? A large body of water, man-made, filled with too much salt, smells horrible in the summertime when it gets too hot and the wind is too strong. But it’s huge! Beautiful! Deadly and polluted.

Into the cities, small cities, not very big cities. She sees a sign: Welcome to Coachella. Coachella? Yes Coachella, this is where she will live, Coachella. It’s nice, with a beautiful view of mountains but hot as hell in the summer and cold in the winters, she’ll have to get used it.

Why Coachella? Because there’s work in Coachella!  But not all year around; if they want to work right now she and her father will have to move up north. Even more north? That’s right, go north, follow the migration patterns, watch out for migras and cops.

And so they do, they move north with the patterns, working with lettuce, chiles, tomatoes, living in shacks, small shacks, twenty people, perverted men, strong mujeres, weak mujeres, mujeres with children, mujeres with pictures of their children in their pockets, men with alcohol in their breaths and not a crumb of food in their bellies, and good, strong men like Griselda’s father. They are all migrants moving north, east, south, as extreme as you dare to go.

Don’t want to go too far? Guess you can go back south, we’re going east, that’s where the work is now. I thought work was up north. We’re as north as we can be! It’s east now! She sighs with a basket of apples in her hand, her eyes have seen so much land, her feet have traveled so far and she’s gotten nowhere closer to going back home to rest, to smell her own bed.

Sometimes they separate and find each other in Oxnard or Salinas to pick strawberries. Why strawberries? The best kind of fruit to pick, but you have to be quick! Move, move, move!

Pick, pick, pick! So what if she needs a break? Her back hurting from bending over all day? Then get another job!

And they move in herds, live in garages — ten, fifteen, twenty people per garage! Worker’s rights? What’s that? The boss doesn’t like that sort of talk. Going east? South? Go, go, go, move, move, move.

And so it goes for the migrant farm worker. They just have to keep on moving, make sure the children’s stomachs are full of food even though they are away, a million miles away. I’ll never have any of my own like this, Griselda thinks, but that was long ago, years ago.

And so it is that life goes on, with the seasons of different pickings and pretty soon Griselda knows the rhythms of the migration patterns, and she knows where she’ll be working in two weeks. And maybe she will repeat the pattern for years to come, or maybe one day she will move out east if she dares, although most don’t; they continue the cycle. One by one by one, for many years to come.

The Diary of Joaquín Magón” is written by Jesús E. Valenzuela Félix, a reporter from Coachella living in Salinas and working for the United Farm Workers. He contributes regularly to Coachella Unincorporated.