OAKLAND CELEBRATES THE RADICAL POLITICAL HERITAGE OF REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING

OAKLAND CELEBRATES THE RADICAL POLITICAL HERITAGE OF REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING
Photos by David Bacon

OAKLAND, CA  (1/19/15) --  Over a thousand people marched through East Oakland's African American and Latino neighborhoods, making the connection between the radical politics of Dr. King and the blacklivesmatter movement in solidarity with the people of Ferguson and all those fighting for social justice.  The following pieces are taken from three speeches made by Dr. King in the last two years of his life.  The radical transformation of U.S. society, and the end of U.S. military intervention in other countries, is as much on the agenda today as it was when he spoke these words.

Beyond Vietnam - 1967

I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube.

We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions.

I've Been to the Mountaintop - 1968

The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee, the cry is always the same: "We want to be free."

If something isn't done and done in a hurry to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty; their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed.

We mean business now and we are determined to gain our rightful place in God's world. And that's all this whole thing is about. We aren't engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying that we are God's children. And if we are God's children, we don't have to live like we are forced to live.

When the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out of slavery.

The issue is injustice. The issue is the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants, who happen to be sanitation workers.

Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution - 1968

This day we are spending five hundred thousand dollars to kill every Vietcong soldier. Every time we kill one we spend about five hundred thousand dollars while we spend only fifty-three dollars a year for every person characterized as poverty-stricken in the so-called poverty program, which is not even a good skirmish against poverty.

Not only that, it has put us in a position of appearing to the world as an arrogant nation. And here we are ten thousand miles away from home fighting for the so-called freedom of the Vietnamese people when we have not even put our own house in order. And we force young black men and young white men to fight and kill in brutal solidarity. Yet when they come back home that can't hardly live on the same block together.

There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right. I believe today that there is a need for all people of goodwill to come with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "We ain't goin' study war no more." This is the challenge facing modern man.

I say to you that our goal is freedom, and I believe we are going to get there because however much she strays away from it, the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be as a people, our destiny is tied up in the destiny of America.

Before the Pilgrim fathers landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before Jefferson etched across the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here. Before the beautiful words of the "Star Spangled Banner" were written, we were here.

For more than two centuries our forebearers labored here without wages. They made cotton king, and they built the homes of their masters in the midst of the most humiliating and oppressive conditions. And yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to grow and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery couldn't stop us, the opposition that we now face will surely fail.

OAKLAND POSADA FOR MIGRANT RIGHTS AND BLACK LIVES

OAKLAND POSADA FOR MIGRANT RIGHTS AND BLACK LIVES
Photoessay by David Bacon
Oakland, CA  (12/18/14)

For the nine days before Christmas people in Latin America celebrate Las Posadas.  They recall the journey of Mary and Joseph from Nazareth to Bethlehem before the birth of Jesus, where they looked for a place to stay.  The ritual of the pilgrimage from place to place, looking for shelter, has roots in many religious traditions, as does the tradition of welcoming the stranger.  Over the years immigrants and immigrant rights groups in U.S. Latino communities have adopted the posada's symbols as a way to talk about the experience of people in migration, and their search for a new place to live.

One of the days that falls in the period of Las Posadas is December 18.  This day was chosen in 2000 by the United Nations as International Migrants Day.  It celebrates migrant families, and comes on the anniversary of the day the UN adopted the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families in 1990 (still not ratified by the United States).  International observances on this day acknowledge the contributions made by migrants to the economies of their host and home countries, and call for respecting their human rights.

As night fell in Oakland, California, on December 18, immigrants and supporters gathered at the Hispanic Presbyterian Church in the Latino Fruitvale district to celebrate Las Posadas.  A small crowd moved from place to place, or station to station, through the yard outside, recreating the journey of a family from Honduras to the U.S.  The first station symbolized the home community from which the family fled.  The second was a detention center on the U.S. border, where in hunger and desperation they turned themselves in to the Border Patrol.  The third station was the church itself, where the community of Oakland welcomed the family, giving them sanctuary as they were about to be deported.

At each station people sang as Francisco Herrera, the movement's local troubadour, played the guitar.  Adults and children held candles in a vigil for all those still imprisoned in detention centers throughout the U.S.  They spoke especially about those from Central America who will not qualify for the recent deferral of deportation for undocumented parents of U.S. citizens.  Many commented bitterly that at the same time that some families will get temporary legal status, others will not.  In fact, the Department of Homeland Security has just opened a new detention center in Dilley, Texas.  It will hold up to 2400 women and children, most from Central America, housing them until their eventual deportation.  Speaking to the people of Central America at the opening of the prison, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson warned, "It will now be more likely that you will be detained and sent back.  Frankly, we want to send a message that our border is not open to illegal migration, and if you come here, you should not expect to simply be released."

While Pope Francis has declared these children must be "welcomed and protected," the Obama administration has been fast tracking deportations.  "Obama's administrative relief has left out the most vulnerable group of people: the children, and others who face danger and death if they are deported.  Faith communities and people of conscience are calling on the President to safeguard the lives of migrant children and families who have been left out of his action," said Rev. Jeff Johnson of University Lutheran Chapel in Berkeley.

The participants in the Oakland Posada spoke about the widespread street actions that have taken place throughout the city for weeks, protesting the failure to indict police for murdering Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City.  Art Cribbs, the African American director of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, urged people to connect these protests to those against deportations.  "Events of the past few weeks have once again painfully reminded us that in our nation, all people, and black people in particular, do not have equal opportunity to breathe, live and thrive," he said.  "We extend our support and solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and encourage you to engage in local activities promoting the message that black lives, indeed, do matter and deserve dignity, respect and justice.   We are also reminded, that this deep social inequality and expression of racism and violence extends to many parts of the immigrant community as well.  Immigrants, especially those who are black or brown, are also told that their lives do not matter."

After going inside the church, immigrants were invited to relate their own experiences of migration.  One young man faced the people assembled in the pews and described the beatings he suffered as a gay activist in Uganda, after the government there declared homosexuality illegal.  He then related his efforts to gain asylum and come to the U.S. as a refugee.  Rev. Deborah Lee, director of the Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights-CLUE-CA, embraced him.  The growing migration of African people to the U.S., she said, is helping people in the Black Lives Matter protests and immigrant rights activists fighting deportations see the commonality of their efforts.

"Christians remember that after Jesus was born, the holy family had to flee to Egypt for safety and protection of the newborn child," Lee reminded participants.  "Today, families from Central America cannot get to safety.  Baby Jesus and his parents, are getting turned away at the border.  Baby Jesus is getting detained.  Baby Jesus is having to appear before the judge without an attorney, and is at risk of expedited deportation and death."

HARD WINTER FOR CALIFORNIA FARM WORKERS

HARD WINTER FOR CALIFORNIA FARM WORKERS

Photoessay by David Bacon

San Joaquin Valley, CA, December 2014

New America Media

http://newamericamedia.org/2014/12/hard-winter-for-california-farmworkers.php

In October in California's farm worker towns, the unemployment rate starts to rise as the harvests end.  In Coachella, not far from the wealth of Palm Springs, one of every eight workers has no job.  In Delano, where the United Farm Workers was born in the grape strike 50 years ago, it's one of every four, as it is in other small towns of the southern San Joaquin Valley.  On the coast in Santa Maria and Lompoc the rate is 13.8 and 15.5% respectively.  In the Imperial Valley, next to the Mexican border, the unemployment rate is over 26% in Brawley and Calexico.

This is a reality invisible to the state's urban dwellers.  Los Angeles has a high unemployment rate for a city, but it is still less than rural towns at 8.7%, or one of every twelve workers.  And in San Francisco and Berkeley the percent unemployed is 4.3 and 5.9 -- less than a quarter of the rate in Delano.

Then the winter really hits.  By February one of every three workers in Delano and Arvin is unemployed.  In Salinas it goes from October's one in ten to February's one in five.  Coachella is one in every six.  And in Brawley, Calexico, Lompoc and Santa Maria unemployment just never goes down.

Winter is the hard time, when the money made in the summer and fall has to keep the rent paid and kids fed while nothing is coming in. With immigration papers workers can get a little unemployment insurance benefit, but with no papers workers can't collect it -- in fact, any benefit that requires a Social Security number is out of reach.  Everyone in this season can use a little work, but for undocumented people especially, even a few days of work make a lot of difference.

Much of the work in the winter is cleanup.  With the onset of the drought in California one farmer in a watermelon field near Merced began using drip irrigation to cut down on his water consumption. In the winter, therefore, the plastic tubes that carry water to the plants have to be collected so that leftover fruit and vines can be plowed under, and the field made ready for planting again in the spring.  The tubes are only good for one season.  After they're collected a recycler is paid to dispose of them.

Drip irrigation is an important technique for organic growers because it waters only the plants growing fruit, helping to keep out weeds without using herbicides.  This kind of irrigation also decreases the vulnerability of the watermelon plants to diseases that can occur with the older system of overhead sprinklers.

Organic or not, few growers and contractors here supply any protective equipment for field cleaners.  Workers purchase their own cotton gloves to keep their hands from getting scratched and infected, but the thin cloth doesn't keep out water.  The field is full of mud, and workers buy big black garbage bags, tearing holes for their head and arms.  That's some protection, but water still seeps in quickly through sleeves and pants.  No one knows what chemicals might have been used here, or what's in the water that soaks their clothes after a few hours.

Most of the workers in this field come from Sinaloa.  Twenty years ago they might have gone home during the off-season, where the cost of living in their hometowns of Guasave or Los Mochis is a lot lower.  They might have spent the holidays with their families, and returned when the work starts up again in the spring.  Not any more, though.  Going home is too expensive for workers at minimum wage, regardless of their immigration status.  And those with no papers are held virtual prisoner in the U.S. by the combination of economics and immigration policy.

Taking inflation into account, wages have been falling in California fields for two decades.  Today a bus ticket home, or gas for the car, costs at least a week and a half of full time work at the minimum wage of $9 an hour.  For those who don't have papers, going home is virtually impossible.? Just the cost of a coyote to take a returning worker through the desert and across the border is at least $2000.  At $9/hour that's more than a solid month of full time work.

And many people don't make it.  The cemetery in Holtville in the Imperial Valley holds the remains of hundreds who die on the border journey every year, many of whom are found in the desert with no identification, and buried with no name.

So in the west San Joaquin Valley town of Gustine, the trailer parks are full in the winter.  The town is evenly divided between residents descended from the Portuguese immigrants who arrived two or three generations ago, and more recent arrivals, mostly from Moyahua in Zacatecas, even further from California than Sinaloa.?

Some people get jobs pruning grapevines and cleaning almond orchards, two of the few relatively dependable sources of winter work.  But unemployment hits hard here too.  The town was once a center of the dairy industry, supplying milk and cheese to nearby cities.  The dairy industry has grown elsewhere in the San Joaquin Valley, but Gustine's cheese plants closed one after another over the last two decades.  Its original cheese factory, the New Era Creamery, was built in 1907 when the railroad line was extended down the valley's west side.? New Era closed in 2005, just short of a century in operation.  Last year what remained of the structure burned down, leaving residents with even fewer alternatives to labor in the fields.

In the winter, even that labor is hard to find.

MERCED, CA  -- Bonifacio Villegas, an immigrant farm worker from Guasave, Sinaloa, cleans watermelons from a field after harvest. Villegas is a photographer who worked in Merced before he lost his camera, and went back to the fields to earn enough to get another.

MERCED, CA  -- Vidal Cota is an immigrant farm worker from Los Mochis, Sinaloa.  He cleans the plastic tubes used for drip irrigation from a watermelon field, after the melons have been harvested.

MADERA, CA -- A crew of farm workers clean almonds from trees in a field near Madera.  The crew is made up of immigrants from Oaxaca, Mexico.  They have to knock the old almonds off the branches, because they'll become infected with worms if left on the trees. Enrique Zavala breaks open an almond to show how it can become infected.

MADERA, CA -- A crew of farm workers from Oaxaca prunes the vines that grow grapes for raisins, in a field near Madera.

MADERA, CA -- Juan Florencio Martinez Alvarado lives in Madera, and gets a few weeks of work in the winter in a crew of farm workers pruning vines that grow grapes for raisins.  During the summer he goes north to Oregon and Washington, when the heat in the San Joaquin Valley rises to over 100 degrees.  In the winter, though, it can get so cold he says his hands get numb.

MERCED, CA -- Francisco Acosta, an immigrant farm worker from Guasave, Sinaloa, cleans the plastic tubes used for drip irrigation.

GUSTINE, CA -- A trailer home of immigrant Mexican farm workers in Gustine, a poor town on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley.

GUSTINE, CA -- The abandoned New Era Creamery cheese factory in Gustine, which closed in 2005 and burned down in 2014.

GUSTINE, CA -- Little casitas, or cabins, in the farm worker trailer park.

GUSTINE, CA -- In front of this trailer home a Mexican family has planted a pomegranate tree, which bears its fruit as the winter starts.

FIESTA IN SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE - HOW THE TOWN CELEBRATES

FIESTA IN SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE - HOW THE TOWN CELEBRATES
Photos by David Bacon

SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE (9/29/14) -- During the town fiesta of San Miguel de Allende musicians and food stalls line the streets at night.  The fiesta includes a blessing of the horses from surrounding ranches. Then the town sets off two sets of fireworks.  In one handmade paper mache dolls explode while young people rush to collect the pieces. At night big fireworks are set off on tall towers in the zocalo while the crowd watches.

San Miguel was the first town liberated from Spanish rule in 1810 by Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla and Ignacio Allende (for whom the town is named) in Mexico's War of Independence.  The muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros taught at the art school founded here during the presidency of General Lazaro Cardenas.

FIESTA IN SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE - DANCERS

FIESTA IN SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE - DANCERS

Photos by David Bacon

SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE (9/29/14) -- For three days during the town fiesta of San Miguel de Allende indigenous dance groups converge here, and dance through the streets from morning until late at night.  Costumes celebrate everything from religious symbols to mythologized history to a common bond with the culture of native peoples north of the U.S. border.  Almost 40% of San Miguel residents are Otomi and 20% Nahua, but the dances are performed by groups from all over Mexico.

Indigenous people in Izcuinapan, the original native community located here, had a long history of resistance to the Spanish colonizers.  Guamare and Chichimeca people attacked the first Spanish settlement, and the Spanish viceroy was eventually forced to recognize a limited independence for the indigenous people here.