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Farmworkers

Children Near Farms Pay Steep Price For Food We Eat

May 15, 2016 Elizabeth Grossman, www.civileats.com , ,
By Elizabeth Grossman for Civil Eats. The report out today from Pesticide Action Network (PAN) found that children in rural and agriculture communities across the United States are effectively exposed to a “double dose” of pesticides. They’re exposed both directly, through pesticide drift, and indirectly, through the residue that makes it home on their family members’ bodies and clothing. At the same time, PAN researchers say many children in rural communities also experience economic and social pressures that can exacerbate the adverse health effects of these chemicals. What’s worse, there is now increasingly solid evidence linking pesticide exposure to an array of childhood cancers—particularly leukemia and brain tumors—which are on the rise, as well as adverse impacts on children’s neurological development. Yet despite mounting evidence that rural children are in very real danger, they are still not being protected, says PAN.

Farmworkers Who Sparked Biggest Labor Movement In U.S. History

May 2, 2016 Alexa Strabuk, www.yesmagazine.org , , ,
By Alexa Strabuk for Yes! Magazine - On a dusty Thursday evening, a couple hundred yards across the railroad tracks from old town Delano, California, Roger Gadiano ambles out of his one-story house to conduct his usual tour. The gray-haired Filipino man grew up in Delano and can tell you not only his own story but also the story of a small, seemingly prosaic agricultural town. He hops into his aging pickup and points out passing landmarks that any outsider might consider bleak and forgotten: a rundown grocery store, a vacant lot, the second story of an old motel.

Newsletter – Building Toward Political Revolution

April 9, 2016 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.PopularResistance.org , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese for Popular Resistance. Of course, we also know the Panama Papers leak is about just one tax evasion firm, and not a major one. This is a small tip of a massive tax evasion iceberg. Estimates are that $7.6 trillion in individual assets are in tax havens, about one-tenth of the global GPD. The use of tax havens has grown 25 percent from 2009 to 2015.  Gabriel Zucman, author of The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens and assistant professor at UC Berkeley estimates that US citizens have at least $1.2 trillion stashed offshore, costing $200 billion a year worldwide in lost tax revenue and US transnational corporations are underpaying their taxes worldwide by $130 billion. The Panama Papers will escalate demands for transformation of the economy as well as of government; continue to increase pressure on capitalism and result in the growth of the people powered movement for economic justice.

Berry Farmworkers Toil 12 Hours A Day For $6. Now Demanding Raise

April 5, 2016 Esther Yu-Hsi Lee, www.thinkprogress.org , ,
By Esther Yu-Hsi Lee for Think Progress - Some of the farmworkers who make it possible for U.S. consumers to have berries for breakfast are paid about $6 a day. Those farmworkers include children toiling for 12 hours a day at 85 percent the amount of money that adults get paid. Many farmworkers do not get lunch and rest breaks and are subjected to terrible housing conditions. Hoping to rectify these issues, farmworkers in the United States and in Mexico have been on a three-year-long fight to get Driscolls — the world’s largest berry distributor — to recognize their unions...

Farmworkers Fight For Food And Job Justice

March 23, 2016 Staff, www.boycottsakumaberries.com , , ,
By Staff of Boycott Sakuma Berries - Burlington, WA- Familias Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ) an independent farmworker union comprised of 450 migrant farmworkers based in Burlington is embarking on a month long tour throughout the West Coast to organize a major offensive against the Ag giant Driscoll’s Berries. After two and half years of waging a historic fight to end wage theft, poverty wages, inhumane production standards, and retaliation for organizing at Driscoll’s supplier Sakuma Bros Berry Farm

Farmworkers In Mexico, Facing Human Rights Abuses

March 18, 2016 Griselda San Martin, www.transbordermedia.com , , ,
By Griselda San Martin for Transborder Media - Cecilia Sanchez, 25, has two children and is pregnant with her third. When asked how far along she is, she simply tilts her head and shrugs. She doesn’t know because she hasn’t been able to see a doctor yet. She lacks the money for the bus to get to the clinic. Sanchez’s husband works as a farmworker each day, sometimes spending more than 12 hours in the field. This month he is picking strawberries. He earns 700 pesos – about $35 – each week.

Farmworkers Protest By Home Of Wendy’s Billionaire Chairman

March 14, 2016 Staff, www.cbsnews.com , , ,
By Staff of CBS and AP - PALM BEACH, Fla. - Hundreds of protesters, many farmworkers, led by Ethel Kennedy, demonstrated near the home of Wendy's fast food chain's chairman in hopes of convincing the company to pay a penny-per-pound fee for its tomatoes to supplement some farmworkers' wages. The Palm Beach Post reports the Immokalee Coalition of Farmworker' march near billionaire Nelson Peltz's home was peaceful Saturday. A federal judge had ruled the coalition could use loudspeakers but said marchers must remain on the sidewalk.

From Farm To Table: Protecting Farmworkers From Pesticides

February 22, 2016 Kari Birdseye, www.earthjustice.org , , ,
By Kari Birdseye for Earthjustice - At first, the sticky drops raining down were a welcome reprieve from a long, hot day spent uprooting weeds on a Minnesota farm. "I remember thinking, 'This is cool!' As in, 'This will cool me off,'" said Juan Fernando Rodriguez Tellez. As Tellez and his friends continued to pull at the huge weeds tangled within the cornstalks, they paid little attention to the crop duster flying overhead that was supposed to be dousing a neighboring field. Tellez wore long sleeves and pants for protection against the sun, but as he pulled weeds the drizzle leaked inside the glove on his right hand.

Newsletter: Movement Mobilizes To Stop The TPP

November 22, 2015 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.popularresistance.org , , , , , , , , , , ,
By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers for Popular Resistance. Now that the TPP is public, opposition is rising as we see the TPPis actually worse than expected. In an interview with Jaisal Noor of The Real News, Margaret Flowers explains how the TPP was a victory for the corporations on issue after issue, including reducing wages and worker rights, undermining environmental protection, making healthcare more expensive, undermining Internet freedom and more. Kevin Zeese in a conversation with Chris Hedges talks about how the TPP is the greatest corporate power grab in US history and how people have to rise up to stop the race to the bottom that will affect every aspect of our lives. A few days after the text was released, we highlighted ten shocking realities of the TPP. The final text showed that critics were right about what it would contain. In fact, the TPP is a step backward on many important issues.

Napa Vintner Says ‘No Pesticides, No Problem!’

October 6, 2015 Kari Birdseye, www.earthjustice.org ,
By Kari Birdseye for Earth Justice - Ceja was eleven told by a patriarch of the wine industry not to market to the Hispanic community because "they do not buy that much wine." She told him, "You concentrate on your market, I'll concentrate on mine." Ceja You have grown a successful business while introducing wine to new audiences for more than a decade. But you can read all about that in the glossy trade magazines. What I find MOST compelling About Ceja's story and her family's approach to running the business is the genuine love and respect for all their they show workers, from farmhands to managers. Because the Cejas Provide a pesticide-free work environment, pay good wages and treat workers to "parties" and family gatherings, Most of the field workers at Ceja Vineyards have been with the company for many years-a rarity in farm work. As the Obama administration finalizes a new Worker Protection Standard-the woefully outdated regulation protecting farmworkers from pesticide exposure-Ceja Serves as a shining example of how doing right by the environment (and your work force) can be good for business.

Lakeland Students: “Won’t Let This Happen In Publix’s Hometown!”

September 23, 2015 Coalition of Immokalee Workers, www.ciw-online.org , , , ,
By Coalition of Immokalee Workers - This past Thursday, in a classroom just miles from Fair Food holdout Publix’s corporate headquarters in Lakeland, FL, a crowd of over sixty Southeastern University students, professors, staff, and Lakeland community members gathered to learn about the CIW’s groundbreaking work for farmworker justice and of the shameful, six-year refusal of their hometown supermarket, Publix, to join the CIW’s Fair Food Program. The began the evening with a screening of the critically acclaimed documentary “Food Chains“. Lakelanders’ response to the film was strong and clear: excitement at the tremendous gains of the CIW, and dismay that their hometown grocer has refused to take responsibility for farmworker exploitation in its supply chain.

The Radical Roots Of The Great Grape Strike

September 23, 2015 David Bacon, www.davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com , ,
By David Bacon - Fifty years ago the great grape strike started in Delano, when Filipino pickers walked out of the fields on September 8, 1965. Mexican workers joined them two weeks later. The strike went on for five years, until all California table grape growers were forced to sign contracts in 1970. The strike was a watershed struggle for civil and labor rights, supported by millions of people across the country. It helped breathe new life into the labor movement, opening doors for immigrants and people of color. Beyond the fields, Chicano and Asian American communities were inspired to demand rights, and many activists in those communities became organizers and leaders themselves. California's politics have changed profoundly in 50 years. Delano's mayor today is a Filipino. That would have been unthinkable in 1965, when growers treated the town as a plantation.

In US Up To 90% Could Be Fed Entirely Locally

September 14, 2015 Lorena Anderson, www.phys.org ,
By Lorena Anderson in Phys - New farmland-mapping research published today (June 1) shows that up to 90 percent of Americans could be fed entirely by food grown or raised within 100 miles of their homes. Professor Elliott Campbell, with the University of California, Merced, School of Engineering, discusses the possibilities in a study entitled "The Large Potential of Local Croplands to Meet Food Demand in the United States." The research results are the cover story of the newest edition of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, the flagship journal for the Ecological Society of America, which boasts a membership of 10,000 scientists.

Pacific Northwest Farmworkers Fight For Job Stability & Fair Pay

September 10, 2015 Katherine Martinko, www.treehugger.com ,
By Katherine Martinko in Tree Hugger - It has been nearly six months since TreeHugger reported on the farm labor dispute that is taking place in the Pacific Northwest. Unfortunately the battle continues to rage between Sakuma Brothers Farm, a large-scale berry producer for many supermarkets across North America including Whole Foods and Costco, and Familias Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ), a group of indigenous migrant farmworkers that formed a union in 2013 in order to fight for better working conditions, pay, and job stability. There have been several work stoppages throughout the summer, when FUJ members waited in the fields for Sakuma officials to come negotiate. The most recent stoppage brought a small victory for the union, which means that the nation-wide boycott of Driscoll’s berries (a main buyer of Sakuma berries) in which the FUJ has been encouraging people to participate is having the desired effect. Haagen-Dazs and Yoplait also buy Sakuma's strawberries.

Martial Law Has Anti-Mine Protesters Back At Work

June 16, 2015 Franklin Briceño, www.AP.org , , , ,
By Franklin Briceño for AP - A respite imposed by martial law after nearly two months of violent anti-mining protests has sent farmers in a fertile coastal valley of southern Peru back to their fields. Most say they would be more than happy to sacrifice the current crop if it means preventing Mexico's biggest mining company from going ahead with a copper extraction project that farmers fear will contaminate the Tambo Valley. "Here, life is peaceful. He who works, even if he lacks an education, gets ahead. Why would we want a mine?" Domingo Condori said while taking a break from harvesting rice. Farmers like Condori earn about $4,000 an acre on the crop, which has two growing seasons a year.
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