LARRY ITLIONG BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION IN POPLAR AND DELANO

LARRY ITLIONG BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION IN POPLAR AND DELANO
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POPLAR, CA - 24OCTOBER21 - Farmworker movement activists celebrated the birthday of Larry Itiong at the Larry Itliong Resource Center in Poplar, and walked and caravanned to Delano.  Itliong was a Filipino labor leader, starting in the 1940s, when he helped organize farmworkers and Alaska cannery workers, and was dispatcher of UCAPAWA Local 7 (now the Inlandboatmen's Union of the ILWU).  He organized farmworkers through the 1950s with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, and in 1965 he and other Filipino workers started the 1965 grape strike, which led to the organization of the United Farm Workers.  A day in honor of his birth was declared by the California state legislature.

Among the people celebrating his birthday were California Attorney General Rob Bonta, UFW co-founder Dolores Huerta, Assemblywoman Mia Bonta, Sacramento LCLAA chapter president Desiree Rojas, Filipina academic Robyn Rodriguez, Central Valley Empowerment Alliance organizers Mari Perez and Arturo Rodriguez, longtime Filipino community activists Cyntia Bonta, Lillian Galedo and Edwin Batonbacal, members of the Itliong family, including Johnny Itliong, and many others.

Copyright David Bacon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A CANDIDATE FOR MIXTECOS IN THE REPUBLICAN HEARTLAND

A CANDIDATE FOR MIXTECOS IN THE REPUBLICAN HEARTLAND
By David Bacon
The Nation, 10/7/21
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/california-elsa-mejia-election/

 
MADERA, CA - Alejandro Santiago picks wine grapes and packs them into boxes.  He is a Mixteco indigenous migrant from Coatecas Altas, Oaxaca, and lives in Madera.  He wears a mask because of the coronavirus pandemic.--Copyright David Bacon


Madera County has been a stronghold for decades for the Republican Party in California's San Joaquin Valley.  Billboards this fall lined rural highways, urging the recall of Governor Newsom, pasted over peeling Trump/Pence posters.  If Newsom's fate had rested on Madera County he would no longer be governor - sixty percent of county voters went against him.  Fifty six percent went for Trump in 2020, slightly more than 2016.  In fact, the last Democratic Presidential candidate to win the county (barely) was Jimmy Carter in 1976.

But in the city of Madera, the county seat, changing demographics are producing political challenges to a conservative order.  That seemingly solid majority does not reflect the demographic reality of the county's 156,000 residents.  Almost 60% of county residents list their origin as Hispanic. African Americans, Native Americans and Asian Americans make up another 10%.  

 

 
LOS BANOS, CA - Equipment yard with U.S. flags and rightwing signs put up by the Madera County Republican Party, calling for recalling Governor Gavin Newsom.  Older signs urge votes for Trump and Pence.--Copyright David Bacon

 

 
MADERA, CA - Elsa Mejia is a candidate for Madera City Council District 5.--Copyright David Bacon


That challenge is colorful and young in the city's District 5, which combines a delapidated downtown with a large eastside barrio.  Here California's growing community of indigenous Mexican migrants has put forward its first candidate - Elsa Mejia, who is running for an open seat on the city council.

Mejia was born in nearby Fresno, to parents who'd come to the Valley from the Oaxacan town of Santa Maria Tindu.  A decade ago the Leadership Council of Santa Maria Tindu, an organization of town residents now living in the U.S, carried out its own community census.  They wanted answers because the government does no count indigenous migrants, even in the Census.  The Council found that migrants from just this one Mixtec hometown, living in Madera, already numbered 2,500.  Together with migrants from other Oaxacan communities, Mixtec-speaking people now are an sizeable part of Madera's people.

California communities of indigenous migrants maintain their ties with their Mexican towns of origin.  Growing up, Mejia would return with those family members who could cross the border to visit her grandfather in Tindu.  He would try to teach her Mixteco.  "But we didn't stay long enough, so I just learned a few words," she laughs.  Later she lived in Oaxaca for a year, working for Rufino Dominguez, a revered migrant leader in California who went back to Oaxaca to head its state Institute for Attention to Migrants.  Mejia later worked for a decade as a reporter for the Madera Tribune, and then edited Fresno's progressive monthly, the Community Alliance.  Today she works in the communications staff of Service Employees Local 521, the Valley's union for many public workers.

Mejia's laugh belies the many things her parents, and Mixteco parents like them, did over the years to make sure their children know and enjoy Mixtec culture.  They formed organizations to carry that torch, from dance groups to language classes.  

Every year the Binational Fronte of Indigenous Organizations (Frente Indigena de Organizationes Binacionales - FIOB) mounts a dazzling festival showcasing the dances of Oaxacan towns, called the Guelaguetza.  Its Fresno festival is just one of several.  California's indigenous Oaxacan population is so large there are more Guelaguetzas organized here than in Oaxaca.  In Madera itself FIOB has organized a yearly basketball tournament, the Copa de Juarez, on the birthday of Benito Juarez, Mexico's first indigenous president.  It organized protests against the celebration of Christopher Columbus' arrival in the Americas, accusing colonizers of trying to destroy indigenous culture and people.

 

MADERA, CA - A home near downtown Madera in a neighborhood of many indigenous immigrant farmworkers.--Copyright David Bacon

 

MADERA, CA - Inside the Del Valle market in downtown Madera people can order and eat food or buy piñatas for their children's birthday parties.--Copyright David Bacon

 

 
MADERA, CA - A paletero, or ice cream seller, sells frozen fruit juice bars from his cart to mechanics in an auto shop near downtown's Yosemite Avenue.--Copyright David Bacon


Culture is a principal basis of organization in Mixteco communities, a key understanding for winning an election in Madera District 5.  Even if she has problems with the language, as many second generation immigrants often do, Mejia understands its importance in mobilizing her community.  "It's very important for people to have access to public services in their own language," she explains.  "We still don't have equal access, even in Spanish.  You can't take a driving test in Mixteco.  Everybody should have access in the languages they speak."    

FIOB fought over many years for language rights in the Valley.  It won interpretation in Mixteco and other indigenous languages in California courts before that right was recognized in Mexico.  But Fidelina Espinoza, FIOB's state coordinator who staffs its Madera office, says she supports Mejia because language is still a huge problem tied to the lack of city services in general.  "When our parents go to school for a conference with teachers, there are no interpreters, and sometimes even no conference," she charges.  "We have no translation to help us access what we need, and the city doesn't support cultural programs or even community gardens for our young people."

Downtown Madera could use a lot of community gardens.  The main street, Yosemite Avenue, is lined with small businesses, mostly with Spanish-language signs, that are clearly having a hard time.  One star attraction is Sabores de Oaxaca (Oaxacan Flavors) where a stream of Mixteco-speaking customers find a small cool restaurant.  Many come inside still in sweat-stained clothes from a day in the fields, in 115-degree heat.  

Nevertheless, other businesses on Yosemite Avenue could clearly use city support.  Across the freeway chain stores and malls get a lot more attention.  Downtown homes are mostly modest rentals, many in need of help as well.  

"The city has abandoned downtown," Mejia charges.  "Those little stores and restaurants were hit hard by COVID, but where was the help?  People in District 5 have the lowest incomes in Madera.  A lot of people have no homes and there's no city program to build housing.  The subsidies in the Federal bills for renters never got here."

 

 
MADERA, CA - Alejandro Santiago picks wine grapes near Madera, where the temperature can reach over 110 in the afternoon.--Copyright David Bacon

 

 
MADERA, CA - Juana Ruiz picks grapes for raisins early in the morning, in a vinyard near Madera.  She stands on a milk crate so that she can reach the grapes on the vines above her.--Copyright David Bacon

 

 
MADERA, CA - Cesilia Perez Lopez, an indigenous farmworker from Oaxaca, comes home from work.  She shows the card punched at work that gives her credit for every bucket of tomatoes she picks.  She is a steward for the United Farm Workers there.--Copyright David Bacon


"Things are going to change if Elsa is elected," promises Antonio Cortes, Central Valley Director for the United Farm Workers.  Cortes also comes from Tindu, and today works in the union's Madera office.  "Oaxacans are very numerous and important here," he says.  "We're always struggling with the city for resources, and we deserve representation.  She comes from a farmworker family, and has that commitment."

Out of an economically active population of 85,000, about 23,000 Madera County residents work in the fields, according to demographer Rick Mines.  His studies show that the median income for a farmworker is between $10,000 and $12,499 while for a family, the median is between $12,500 and $15,000.

In the pandemic, poverty translates into illness and death.  Madera County has had over 22,000 COVID-19 cases (14% of the population) and 266 deaths.   Only half of its residents are vaccinated.  Reporting Area C, which includes downtown and the eastside barrio, has the most cases, almost a third.  By comparison, in Silicon Valley's Santa Clara County, while it has more cases, only 7% of residents got the virus, and over three quarters are vaccinated.  Every day activists in FIOB go out to the fields to sign people up for shots.  UFW organizers visit members in the almond orchards, bringing masks, sanitizer and other protective equipment.

Mejia's chances of winning come from her connection to these campaigns and organizations, working on concrete community problems.  She's running for an open seat, and her opponent is another Latina, Matilda Villafan.  But in challenging the economic priorities of the San Joaquin Valley, Mejia doesn't have an easy path to election.  For instance, she believes that "farmworkers who work during the pandemic should be paid better since they're risking their lives.  And not just them, but their families as well.  This should be part of treating them with dignity as workers."  The growers who put up those Trump signs can't be happy about that.  

 

 
FRESNO, CA - Rolando Hernandez, a community activist with FIOB and the Centro Binacional, talks with Angelica Corona as she picks peaches about the importance of getting vaccinated against COVID-19.  Hernandez speaks Mixteco, and can talk with the many workers who only speak that language.--Copyright David Bacon

 

 
MADERA, CA - Vianney Torres, an organizer for the United Farm Workers, hands out personal protective equipment to workers in a pistachio grove at lunchtime to members of the United Farm Workers at the Wonderful Co., a large grower.--Copyright David Bacon

 

 
MADERA, CA - Carlos Cruz Victoriano lives in a rundown home in Madera with other Mixteco farmworkers.  In the summer of 2020 everyone in the house had serious cases of COVID-19 and were hospitalized.--Copyright David Bacon


She thinks there are about 2000 eligible voters in her district, but there's no precise number for those who come from indigenous families.  It is a complicated question for several reasons.  In the huge migration of people out of Oaxaca, the first wave of migrants to reach California arrived in the mid-1980s, and the arrival of people has continued ever since.  Because the last immigration amnesty in 1986 had a cutoff date of January 1, 1982, most of these migrants have been undocumented.  For them, citizenship, the ability to register to vote, and the political rights that come with that, are out of reach.

If all the immigrant farmworkers in San Joaquin Valley agriculture could vote, Kevin McCarthy would probably not be the Congressman from Bakersfield, and head of the Republican Congressional caucus.  Using citizenship to restrict the franchise has successfully prevented the formation of a voting base for more worker-friendly politicians, and more progressive legislation.  

Elsa Mejia represents the new generation of the children of these families, born here, and therefore citizens.  Her campaign is part of their entrance onto the political stage in communities where immigrant workers contribute the bulk of the labor, but cannot vote.  Over time, that could affect California politics as profoundly as the immigrant upsurge did in Los Angeles in the 1990s.  

But it does make it difficult to determine who the Oaxacan or Oaxacan-descended voters are in District 5, and how to mobilize them.  In an era of scientific election campaigns, like those already unfolding for 2020's Congressional election, lack of such concrete information is a cardinal sin.  

But sometimes what scientific campaigns lack is an organic connection to local communities and their struggles.  Mejia is not running against Trump, at least not directly.  She's running on her ability to speak to the concrete needs of her district, which in the end conflict with those of the ranchers, with all their flags and recall signs.  On November 2 this year, Elsa Mejia will have the chance to show that kind of strength.

 

 
FRESNO, CA - The Danza de los Diablos, performed by the community of Mixtec immigrants from San Miguel Cuevas, Oaxaca, at the annual festival of Oaxacan indigenous culture, the Guelaguetza.

GOV. NEWSOM VETOES UNION VOTE-BY-MAIL BILL FOR FARMWORKERS

GOV. NEWSOM VETOES UNION VOTE-BY-MAIL BILL FOR FARMWORKERS
By David Bacon
Capital & Main, 10/4/21
https://capitalandmain.com/gov-newsom-vetoes-union-vote-by-mail-bill-for-farmworkers

United Farm Workers members and supporters begin the "March for the Governor's Signature" in Farmersville, CA on Sept. 22 in support of Assembly Bill 616. Newsom vetoed the bill the same day. All photos by David Bacon


Almost before athe farmworker voting rights march set out for Sacramento last week, their 217-mile pilgrimage was cut short by the Governor's veto of the bill they supported.

The march sought to press Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign a bill that would have brought farmworker union elections into line with the voting process used in California general elections.   Instead, the governor refused to allow changes in a 50-year old election process that workers say favors growers - changes that he has 's advocated for in general elections, like the recall vote he just overcame.

"Why was the absentee ballot process good for the Governor when he depended on it to defeat the recall, but not good for farmworkers?" asked Teresa Romero, president of the United Farm Workers.

AB 616 would have made it easier for farmworkers to vote to unionize by allowing them to fill out and mail ballots as absentees, just as voters do in a general election. Under AB 616 a union could distribute ballots to workers at home, which they could mail back to California's Agricultural Labor Relations Board in envelopes that keep the vote confidential, just like voters can do in any political election.

Newsom, in a veto statement, said he "has worked tirelessly to protect and support workers across California." However, he added, "this bill contains various inconsistencies and procedural issues related to the collection and review of ballot cards." No specifics were given in the message, or beforehand to the union and the bill's sponsors.

Presently, workers are forced to vote in polling places on the growers' or company's property. Voting by absentee would make it possible for farmworkers to cast their ballot away from foremen and anti-union consultants.

Currently, when workers want to organize a union, they have to sign cards that authorize the union to represent them. The union then presents them to the Agricultural Labor Relations Board. If the Board decides a majority of the grower's workers have signed, and other requirements have been met, it sets up a polling place on the company property. Workers have to cast their votes there, in favor or against the union.  

 
Xico Garza and Paulina Rodriguez lead UFW members and supporters in a prayer to the four directions at the start of the march.


It is a very high-stress process. Before the vote growers often hire union busters to dissuade workers all day from joining up. Foremen can legally pull workers aside during work hours, giving each a one-on-one talk to pressure her or him to vote as the grower wants. Since the Supreme Court ruled in June (Cedar Point Nursey v. Hassid) union organizers can no longer go on a grower's property during non-work time to counter false statements or threats.

Organizing a union in the face of these obstacles is hard and risky for workers.  Over the years the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, which administers California's farmworker unionization law, has held hundreds of hearings.  An endless parade of workers has testified to threats, firings and other illegal actions by growers and crew bosses.- all intended to increase fear.

Just as voting by absentee ballot is easier and less stressful in a general election, voting at home would make it possible for farmworkers to cast their ballot away from the pressure. Under AB 616 a union could distribute ballots to workers at home, which they could then fill out and mail back to the Board in envelopes that keep the vote confidential, just as anyone in California can do in a general election.

The Governor's objections makes little sense to the workers and their advocates. The existing process outlined in the Agricultural Labor Relations Act allows a union to request a list of employees by giving the Board authorizations signed by 10% of the workforce. Then the union can either request an election on the grower's property, as it can now, or it can distribute ballot cards to workers, allowing them to cast their vote at home. This is the same procedure that gave Biden his victory over Trump in many states, one that rightwing Republicans are now trying to outlaw in Texas and elsewhere.

The Agricultural Labor Relations Board must monitor the validity of the signatures on the ballot cards it receives, and must hold a hearing if there are accusations of chicanery. Voter coercion or falsifying signatures is already illegal.

As farmworker advocates see it, Newsom's veto is a self-serving bow to California's $50 billion agricultural industry as he faces relection next year and beyond that, he may run for the Oval Office - both of which need big-money donors. Among his anti-recall donors, along with unions, are tech moguls Eric Schmidt, Reed Hastings, Priscilla Chan and Jerry Yang, to whom unions are anathema.

As San Francisco mayor,  Gavin Newsom did play an important role in helping hotel workers win their lockout and strike in 2004, but his labor record is more mixed than his veto message claims. Workers have no union in Newsom's Plumpjack restaurant and Napa Valley winery. Business lobbyists were well represented at the lobbyist's birthday party Newsom attended, maskless and indoors, at the swanky French Laundry  restaurant at the height of the pandemic last November.  

 
UFW President Teresa Romero and farmworker activist Lourdes Cardenas march in support of AB 616.


His misstep angered millions of locked-down Californians and helped put the recall petition on the ballot. Farmworkers were not invited, a fact the United Farm Workers dramatized last week in a protest of his veto outside the French Laundry.  

In the weeks before Newsom fended off a recall on Sept. 15, UFW's Romero had asked to meet with him to talk about the bill. He refused. "We didn't want it to become an issue in the recall campaign, which farmworkers were committed to winning," she said, "so we didn't say anything publicly, even though we thought he should have been willing to hear our reasons for it."

This summer and fall AB 616 easily passed the state Assembly and Senate, despite fierce opposition from growers. The California Chamber of Commerce called it a "job killer."  Presumably if workers organize more easily, a larger and stronger union might push wages up - not a prospect agricultural businesses favor.

Agribusiness has fought laws giving farmworkers a legal process for organizing unions since agricultural and domestic labor  was excluded from the National Labor Relations Act in 1935.  Currently only California and Hawaii have state laws with a unionization process for farmworkers.  One result is that less than one percent of farmworkers belong to unions today.  In strengthening California's law, therefore, AB 616 could help increase that percentage and inspire the spread of similar laws to other states.

After the recall election was over, however, Newsom continued to sit on AB 616. Finally the union and its supporters decided to start walking to Sacramento to demonstrate their commitment and ask him to sign it. The march was due to take 19 days, following in the footsteps of the original farmworker march to Sacramento in 1967, during the famous Delano grape strike that marked the beginnings of the UFW.

Senator Alex Padilla, appointed by Newsom to fill Vice-President Kamala Harris's seat, supported the bill. "As Secretary of State," he said in a written statement, "I was proud to support and implement changes in state law to make it easier for people to exercise their right to vote. Farm workers should have similar opportunities as they exercise their longstanding right to vote in a union representation [election]."

Voting rights for farmworkers can't be taken for granted. They came with the passage of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act in 1975, after decades of conflict in California fields.  Last week's farmworker march sought to remind the governor of that history by starting in Farmersville, site of one of the key conflicts that led to the creation of the United Farm Workers union.

 
Xico Garza walks at the head of the march burning sage. UFW President Teresa Romero and activist Lourdes Cardenas walk behind him.


Pointing proudly to a silent man in a soft-brimmed hat walking beside her, Mari Perez said, "My father was part of that history.  He stood up for us."  Marchers like Jose Perez started their perigrinacion, or pilgrimage, less than a mile from one of the most famous battles, the rent strike at the Linnell labor camp.  "Voting rights and unions for farmworkers only came after a long struggle against poverty and powerlessness," explained another marcher, Roberto DeLa Rosa, board chair of California Rural Legal Assistance.

In 1965 anger over racism and exploitation grew hot in Tulare County, and boiled over when farmworkers living at the Linnell labor camp in Farmersville decided to stop paying rent. Residents lived in shacks built for dust bowl migrants.  They were so hot during the summer that families would salvage rugs from the dump, douse them with water, and spread them on the roof to cool off the rooms below. There were no separate showers for women. Gilbert Padilla, one of the strike organizers, called it "a very disgusting site."  

Camp residents won their strike. and Padilla (now a revered veteran organizer) went on to help lead the Delano grape strike later that year. Voting rights came a decade after that-- - in 1965 farmworkers had no right to vote for a union in the fields.  Even in general elections voting procedures were restricted, and most farmworkers didn't or couldn't vote. The idea that you could register easily at the DMV, or that every voter would be mailed a ballot to send back at their convenience, would have seemed utopian.

Today those changes in general election procedures are the norm in California, intended to make voting as easy as possible, and to encourage the maximum turnout. Governor Gavin Newsom owes his victory in the recent recall election at least in part to the increased turnout those changes made possible. Indeed, on Sept. 27, Newsom signed a bill to make mail-in ballots - a pandemic-era safety measure - permanent.

On Wednesday, September 22, 25 workers and their supporters who'd agreed to walk the whole way gathered in a Farmersville church parking lot. After a prayer to the four directions, led by dancers Xico Garza and Paulina Rodriguez, and accompanied by dozens of supporters, the marchers set off. A few hours later the word came down - Newsom had vetoed the bill.

Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, the San Diego Assemblymember who authored AB 5 to end misclassification of gig workers, tweeted her disappointment at the veto of AB 616, which she cosponsored. "I'm truly devastated that @GavinNewsom vetoed the most important union organizing bill of the year. Denying Farmworkers the right to organize and join a union in the same manner we allow all public sector workers in CA to do so is abhorrent."

"To me, the reasons he gave for the veto have no value," Romero said.told Capital & Main. "He benefitted from the voting choice Californians have to beat the recall. But he thinks farmworkers are not equal to him."


More photos from the march: