Monday, December 18, 2017

Fighting for Breath by a Dying Sea (David Bacon)


Photo journalist David Bacon, author most recently of IN THE FIELDS OF THE NORTH / EN LOS   CAMPOS DEL NORTE, has a new photo essay entitled "Fighting for Breath By a Dying Sea" and here's a sample of it:


FIGHTING FOR BREATH BY A DYING SEA
By David Bacon
Sierra Magazine, January/February 2018
https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2017/12/fighting-for-breath-by-dying-sea.html
https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2018-1-january-february/feature/salton-sea-dying-we-cant-let-happen



At the edge of the Salton Sea, in Salton City, the salts dissolved in the sea's water leave a dry crust on the soil as the sea dries up and the edge recedes. On the hardpan are dead fish, left behind as the water recedes.


When the dust rises in North Shore, a small farmworker town at the edge of the Salton Sea, Jacqueline Pozar's nose often starts bleeding.  Her teacher at Saul Martinez Elementary School in nearby Mecca calls her mom, Maria, and asks her to come take her home.

Jacqueline is seven years old.  "I feel really bad because I can't do anything for her," Maria Pozar says.  "Even the doctor says he can't do anything - that she's suffering from the dust in the air.  Most of the children in North Shore have this problem.  He just says not to let them play outside."

The children of North Shore are the proverbial canaries in the coal mine, whose sudden illnesses warn of a greater, life-threatening disaster to come.  That disaster is the rapidly receding waters of the Salton Sea.  As more and more playa - the sea's mud shoreline - emerges from the water and dries out, fine particles get swept up by the wind and coat everything in its path, including children's noses.

Airborne particles ranging in size between 10 and 1 µm, called PM 10, are generated from wind-blown dust.  When they lodge in the lungs, they can cause asthma and other illnesses.




Maria and Yesenia Pozar are farmworkers, and indigenous Purepecha immigrants from Mexico. Except for baby Leslie, all the children suffer nose bleeds when the dust blows into their homes in North Shore, in the Coachella Valley, from the dry border of the Salton Sea.


"This will be the biggest environmental disaster of our time," charges Luis Olmedo, director of the Comite Civico del Valle, a community organization in the Imperial Valley at the Sea's south end.  "The issue of the Salton Sea trumps everything.  We have to get the air contaminant level to zero.  There is no safe level for the contaminants we have here.  We need an intermediate project to stabilize the shoreline.  The sea is receding much faster than any projects moving forward."





[. . .]







In the Fields of the North /
En los Campos del Norte

Photographs and text panels by David Bacon
documenting the lives of farm workers
Fotografias y paneles de texto por David Bacon
documentando las vidas de los que trabajan en el campo

Arbuckle Gallery / Pacific Hotel
History Park of San Jose, 1650 Senter Rd., San Jose, CA
10/26/2017 - 6/3/2018,
11A-4.30P, Tues/Martes - Sun/Domingo
 

In the Fields of the North / En los Campos del Norte
Photographs and text by David Bacon
University of California Press / Colegio de la Frontera Norte
302 photographs, 450pp, 9”x9”
paperback, $34.95
order the book on the UC Press website:
ucpress.edu/9780520296077
use source code  16M4197  at checkout, receive a 30% discount

En Mexico se puede pedir el libro en el sitio de COLEF:
https://www.colef.mx
 

Trabajo agrícola, migración y resistencia cultural: el mosaico de los “Campos del Norte”
Entrevista de David Bacon por Iván Gutiérrez / A los 4 Vientos
http://www.4vientos.net/2017/10/04/trabajo-agricola-migracion-y-resistencia-cultural-el-mosaico-de-los-campos-del-norte/

"Los fotógrafos tomamos partido"
Entrevista por Melina Balcázar Moreno - Milenio.com Laberinto
http://www.milenio.com/cultura/laberinto/david_baconm-fotografia-melina_balcazar-laberinto-milenio_0_959904035.html
 

EN LOS CAMPOS DEL NORTE:  Farm worker photographs on the U.S./Mexico border wall
http://us7.campaign-archive2.com/?u=fc67a76dbb9c31aaee896aff7&id=0644c65ae5&e=dde0321ee7
Entrevista sobre la exhibicion con Alfonso Caraveo (Español)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJeE1NO4c_M&feature=youtu.be
THE REALITY CHECK - David Bacon blog
http://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com

Cat Brooks interview on KPFA about In the Fields of the North
https://kpfa.org/player/?audio=263826  - Advance the time to 33:15

Book TV: A presentation of the ideas in The Right to Stay Home at the CUNY Graduate Center
http://booktv.org/Watch/14961/The+Right+to+Stay+Home+How+US+Policy+Drives+Mexican+Migration.aspx
 

Other Books by David Bacon

The Right to Stay Home:  How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration  (Beacon Press, 2013)
http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2328
Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants  (Beacon Press, 2008)
Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008
http://www.beacon.org/Illegal-People-P780.aspx

Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100558350

The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004)
http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520244726

En Español:

EL DERECHO A QUEDARSE EN CASA  (Critica - Planeta de Libros)
http://www.planetadelibros.com.mx/el-derecho-a-quedarse-en-casa-libro-205607.html

HIJOS DE LIBRE COMERCIA (El Viejo Topo)
http://www.tienda.elviejotopo.com/prestashop/capitalismo/1080-hijos-del-libre-comercio-deslocalizaciones-y-precariedad-9788496356368.html?search_query=david+bacon&results=1

For more articles and images, see  http://dbacon.igc.org and http://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com
and https://www.flickr.com/photos/56646659@N05/albums













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