washington farmworkers become covid-19 guinea pigs

WASHINGTON FARMWORKERS BECOME COVID-19 GUINEA PIGS By David Bacon Capital & Main, 5/21/20 https://capitalandmain.com/are-washingtons-farmworkers-covid-19-guinea-pigs-0521 https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2020/05/washington-farmworkers-become-covid-19.html A room in a barracks for H-2A workers in Central Washington On March 12 an H-2A visa guest worker living in a Stemilt Growers barracks in Mattawa, Washington, began to cough.  He called a hotline, was tested and found out he had COVID-19.  He and five of his coworkers were then kept in the barracks for the next two weeks. A month later three Stemilt H-2A workers in a barracks in East Wenatchee began to cough too.  Before their tests even came back, three more started coughing.  Soon they and their roommates were all in quarantine.  Doctor Peter Rutherford of the Confluence Health Clinic called Stemilt and suggested that they test all 63 workers in the barracks.  Thirty-eight tested positive.  Then some of those workers who'd tested negative began to test positive too. Since the H-2A workers infected in the Stemilt barracks arrived in February, and didn't manifest symptoms until March and April, they must have contracted the virus in the U.S.  Guest workers, therefore, are getting infected once they arrive. The novel coronavirus continues to spread throughout Central Washington.  By mid-May rural Yakima County had 1,203 cases - 122 reported on May 15 alone - and 47 people had died. The county has the highest rate of COVID-19 cases on the West Coast - 455 cases per 100,000 residents. For over a week now, hundreds of workers in the same area have been walking out of the apple packing sheds to demand better protections and more money for working in a situation where they may be exposed.  Two have now begun a hunger strike. "Workers are trying to call attention to the danger to the whole community," says Rosalinda Guillen a longtime farmworker organizer and director of the advocacy group Community to Community. Meanwhile, thousands more H-2A guest workers are scheduled to arrive in the area, first for the cherry harvest and then to pick apples. A fence topped with barb wire surrounds barracks buildings for H-2A workers in Central Washington. H-2A workers (named for the visa program through which they enter the country) are recruited to work in the U.S. on temporary contracts; they can only work for the employer that recruits them, and must leave once the work is done. For the last decade prefab barracks have been springing up in the middle of Washington's blossoming apple trees, in orchards often miles from the nearest town. Inside, H-2A workers usually sleep in bunk beds, four to a room, and cook their meals in a common kitchen. Some barracks are ringed by a chain link fence topped by barbed wire, while others have no barriers. If workers want to go into town to buy groceries or to a clinic, they depend on the grower to provide transportation. The fate of thousands of these workers is at stake in a regulation handed down last week by Washington state's departments of Health and of Labor and Industries that permits housing conditions that could cause the virus to spread rapidly.  Sleeping in bunk beds in dormitories, according to these state authorities, is an acceptable risk.  Yet according to Chelan-Douglas Health District Administrator Barry Kling, farmworkers are more vulnerable to getting COVID-19 because they live in these very close quarters.  "The lives of these workers are being sacrificed for the profit of growers," Guillen charges. Washington State ignores the science The barracks for Stemilt's infected workers, like those housing thousands of others, are divided into rooms around a common living and kitchen area.  Four workers live in each room, sleeping in two bunk beds.  Stemilt says that it has 90 such dormitory units in central Washington, with 1,677 beds.  Half are bunk beds. Maintaining physical separation, especially in labor camps, "will be impossible under conditions H-2A workers typically experience in the United States," concludes a report in April by the Centro de los Derechos del Migrante (CDM -- the Migrant Rights Center).  There is no testing for H-2A workers as they enter the country, and until the infected group was found in Washington, there was no testing for them here either.

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TAKE A VIRTUAL TOUR OF THE EXHIBITION - IN THE FIELDS OF THE NORTH
at the History Museum of Tijuana

HAGA UN RECORRIDO VIRTUAL DE LA EXPOSICIÓN - EN LOS CAMPOS DEL NORTE
en el Museo de Historia de Tijuana



https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=659536991515786
 

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TARTINE HARDSHIP FUND
Newly organized Tartine Bakery workers in the Bay Area need your help and assistance!  This fund, supported by the International Longhsore and Warehouse Union, will help hose workers unable to collect unemployment insurance.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/tartine-union-hardship-fund?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet

 

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The exhibitions in the following list were scheduled before the current COVID-19 crisis.  Public gatherings are not now taking place and these exhibitions have now been postponed or rescheduled.

Stay healthy!

DOCUMENTING RESISTANCE -
Community Organizing Beyond the Farmworkers' Movement
Photographs by David Bacon

February 18 - March 27
Powell Library Rotunda, UCLA
Los Angeles, CA

IN WASHINGTON’S FIELDS: Photographs by David Bacon

February 1-May 10, 2020
Washington State History Museum
1911 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA

IN THE FIELDS OF THE NORTH / EN LOS CAMPOS DEL NORTE

March 15, 2020 - June 21, 2020
Los Altos History Museum, Los Altos
March 21, 2021 - May 23, 2021
Carnegie Arts Center, Turlock

MORE THAN A WALL - THE SOCIAL MOVEMENTS OF THE BORDER

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

DEPORTATIONS

April 10, 2020 - May 1, 2020
Uri-Eichen Gallery, Chicago

 

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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 - click here
 

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 "The Criminalization of Migration: A Socialist Perspective" with David Bacon and Rafael Pizarro.
http://ouleft.org/wp-content/uploads/David-Bacon-The-Criminalization-of-migration.mp4 

A video about the Social Justice Photography of David Bacon:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14TvAj5nS08ENzWhw3Oxra4LMNKJCLF4z/view
 

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

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THE REALITY CHECK - David Bacon blog
http://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com

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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