the social movement photography of david bacon - kids working in the banana trees, parents on strike

From photo journalist David Bacon:

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THE SOCIAL MOVEMENT PHOTOGRAPHY OF DAVID BACON - KIDS WORKING IN THE BANANA TREES, PARENTS ON STRIKE Photographs and text by David Bacon The Progressive, 7/16/19 https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-social-movement-photography-of_17.html https://progressive.org/dispatches/the-social-movement-photography-of-david-bacon-phillipines-190716/ Editor's note: We're delighted to share the fifth of a multi-part series from the archives of photographer David Bacon. A former union organizer, Bacon's thirty years of photographs and writing capture the courage of people struggling for social and economic justice in countries around the world. His images are now part of Special Collections in Stanford University's Green Library. Part Five tells of his visit to the banana plantations of Mindanao, in the Philippines, where he found children working in the trees, and a strike by members of banana cooperatives against the Dole Corporation, to end the poverty that sends children to work in the fields. In 1997 I went to the Philippines to document child labor on the banana plantations producing for the Dole Corporation.  In the Campostela Valley on Mindanao I found many children doing this work.  Later, in Carmen, outside of Davao I took photographs and interviewed workers defending their cooperative, formed as a result of the land reform after the end of the Marcos dictatorship.  They told me they were on strike against the low prices paid by the Dole Corporation, which forced many families to take their children to work with them. At the Soyapa Farms plantation, a huge operation set up in 1992 by Stanfilco, a division of the Dole Corporation, it wasn't hard to find the children - they were everywhere.  In one corner I found five children from 11 to 17 years old chattering as they flattened out and recycled sheets of plastic, coated with chemicals, that are inserted between banana bunches as they grow. From the shed I walked into the banana groves.  The roof of broad leaves overhead created a hot green shade underneath, and the earth was slick with the dead and rotting material cut from the trunks of the trees.  Here I found the youngest children, including Alan Algoso, nine, wielding a large sharp sickle he used to cut away the dead layers. Other children I found in the groves had stopped going to school, however.  Benedicto Hijara, at 15, had been working for three years. After I returned from San Jose Campostela I went to see Koronado Apuzen, a lawyer who was helping agricultural workers set up cooperatives.  Apuzen had worked with the National Federation of Labor, and many of the coops had grown out of the unions in that federation who'd formerly negotiated with Dole. Workers in four big coops had been on strike against Dole for weeks.  Before forming coops they'd worked for Dole as employees for decades.  Using the Philippines' land reform law passed after the fall of dictator Ferdinand Marcos, they'd gained ownership of the land. But Dole controlled the export market, without which the coops couldn't survive, and force a low price on the new coops. Under Dole's new price to the coops, daily income dropped from 146 to 92 pesos, and workers lost all the medical and other benefits they had as direct employees.  Faced with virtual starvation, the banana workers refused to keep on picking bananas. Instead of finding workers inside the plantations themselves - after all, they now owned them - I found them in Occupy-style encampments under the trees just outside.  Dole had hired guards and expelled the workers from their own land, shooting one striker.

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THE SOCIAL MOVEMENT PHOTOGRAPHY OF DAVID BACON - KIDS WORKING IN THE BANANA TREES, PARENTS ON STRIKE
Photographs and text by David Bacon
The Progressive, 7/16/19
https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-social-movement-photography-of_17.html
https://progressive.org/dispatches/the-social-movement-photography-of-david-bacon-phillipines-190716/

Exhibition Schedule
Exhibitions of photographs are scheduled for the following venues and dates:

In the Fields of the North / En los campos del norte
Scheduled exhibitions:

June 16, 2019 - August 18, 2019
The Museum of Ventura County's Agricultural Museum, Santa Paula
September 1, 2019 - December 22, 2019
Hi-Desert Nature Museum, Yucca Valley
January 5, 2020 - March 1, 2020
Community Memorial Museum of Sutter County, Yuba City
March 15, 2020 - June 21, 2020
Los Altos History Museum, Los Altos
March 21, 2021 - May 23, 2021
Carnegie Arts Center, Turlock

In Washington’s Fields 
Scheduled exhibition:

February 5, 2020 - July 15, 2020
Washington State History Museum, Tacoma, WA

More Than a Wall - The Social Movements of the Border
Scheduled exhibition:

August 29,, 2020 - November 29,, 2020
San Francisco Public Library

 

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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 (in the U.S.)

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

Los Angeles Times reviews In the Fields of the North / En los Campos del Norte - clickhere
 

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En los campos del Norte documenta la vida de trabajadores agrícolas en Estados Unidos -
Entrevista con el Instituto Nacional de la Antropologia y Historia
http://www.inah.gob.mx/es/boletines/6863-en-los-campos-del-norte-documenta-la-vida-de-trabajadores-agricolas-en-estados-unidos

Entrevista en la television de UNAM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdSaBKZ_k0o

David Bacon comparte su mirada del trabajo agrícola de migrantes mexicanos en el Museo Archivo de la Fotografia
http://www.cultura.cdmx.gob.mx/comunicacion/nota/0038-18

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

Das Leben der Arbeiterschaft auf Ölplattformen des Irak
http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=25973

Die Kunst der Grenze
http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=24304Notruf für "eine andere Welt"
http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=24087

Die Apfel-Pflücker aus dem Yakima-Tal
http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=23990
 

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"Documenting the Farm Worker Rebellion"
"The Radical Resistance to Immigration Enforcement"
Havens Center lectures, University of Wisconsin, click here

San Francisco Commonweallth Club presentation by David Bacon and Jose Padilla, clickhere

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.beTHE 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

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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