Saturday, September 09, 2023

Iraq? No, Prince

There's an article that I'm just not in the mood to go into tonight.  It's a topic I think is important but I don't think we sell out C to advance D.  And the writer, probably very well meaning, rails against the attacks and distortions on group D in Iraq while, in her own writing, promotes attacks against C.  I don't buy into that garbage and I'm just not in the mood for it tonight.  Otherwise, in Iraq, the only stories I'm seeing of any interest are about the failure of the tobacco crops this year in the KRG which read like last week's reports about the failure of the grapes in the KRG.  So . . . 

Instead, let me reply to some e-mails regarding the music that went up today.


Heart went up because someone e-mailed earlier this week, when we posted a video of Heart performing "Crazy For You" on THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL.  "I thought you hated Heart," the e-mail insisted.

Nope.  

I like Ann and Nancy Wilson and Ann is a one-of-a-kind vocal talent.  One of the great singers of her genre.  I've called them out before and I'm sure I will again -- for two grown women -- forget that they're sisters -- they have spent way too much time in the last few years arguing.  I have little patience for that.  It's just nonsense.

And when I call Ann out, it's for nonsense.  I never liked the song "All I Want To Do Is Make Love To You" and I could list twenty or so reasons why that is.  But I didn't record it.  I didn't have a hit with it. Heart recorded it and it was a single that went to number six on the adult contemporary chart, number two on the rock chart and number two on The Hot 100 (that's the pop chart).  That was 1990.  In the last 33 years, they haven't had another top ten hit on the pop charts.  ("Wild Child" went to number 3 on the rock chart in 1990 and "Black On Black II" went to number 4 on the rock chart in 1993 while "Stranded" went to number 8 on the adult contemporary chart at the end of 1990.)  


"All I Want To Do Is Make Love To You" was a huge hit, making three different genre charts in 1990.  An across the board hit.  In terms of 'the weekly top forty' (pop chart), they only have two other songs that ever charted higher than "All I Want To Do Is Make Love To You" -- that would the number one hits "These Dreams" -- another song I've never been fond of -- and "Alone"  --a great song that Ann's sing amazingly in the studio version and pretty much every live version.  The best?

The live version on THE ROAD HOME.



The worst?  The one below.


It's a great musical arrangement but there's little fire in Ann's vocals.  


But "All I Want To Do Is Make Love To You" is their third biggest hit.  And they're a legacy act going around performing their greatest hits every few years to make money.  So where do you get off saying, "I'm not going to sing that song, I never liked it."  Where do you get off?


That's beyond stupid.  You don't like it the way it is, work on a version you can live with and sing the damn song or stop going on the road.


Cher didn't do greatest hits in Vegas or Tahoe.  For the mid-70s and early 80s, that was where she performed live.  And she didn't do her hits.  She did reworkings of other people's hits of the day and she did a revue show.  And that's fine.  It was brave, in fact.  But that was revue, it wasn't a tour.  Now when Cher went back on the road, city to city, she knew she had to sing some of those hits and did on tours in the late 80s, the 90s, the 00s.  And by the time she was doing the (ongoing) Farewell Tours, she was singing pretty much all the hits.  And, unlike Heart, Cher has a ton of hits.


On the US charts (pop, dance, adult contemporary), Cher has 42 hits (43 if you include the BILLBOARD's Latin Digital chart) that made it into the top forty on one of those three charts -- and that's before you factor in her eleven top forty hits on the pop and adult contemporary charts with Sonny as part of the duo of Sonny & Cher.  So 43 plus 11?  That's 54.  


Diana Ross has also been touring and she has a ton of hits -- top forty hits on the pop, adult contemporary, R&B or dance charts?  She sang lead on 28 hits with the Supremes; as a solo artist she's had 58 top forty hits on those charts.  That's a total of 86 hits.  


Neither woman has to be talked into performing their biggest hits.  They know their audiences are longing to hear those songs.


But with very few hits, Heart thinks it can get away with not performing their last significant hit, the song that went to number two across the board, their third biggest hit of all time because Ann doesn't like the song?


The time to decide to ditch the song because you don't like it?  Before you record it.


That's insulting the fans who have paid to hear you.  Get off your high horse and sing the song or stay home.  It's not that difficult of a choice.  You've got no new hits, you're a legacy act trying to (again) make money off your past but you're not going to perform your third biggest hit of all time?


That's the sort of thing that pisses me off.  If they gave a free concert in the park?  Play whatever you want.  But you're asking people to spend forty dollars or more a person to see you live and you're not going to perform your third biggest hit?  You're saying (begging), "Come see us live!  Spend your hard earned money on us! And, oh, that song you love, one of our big hits, one of the few big hits we have, we're not going to perform it."


Anyway, that may be why someone thinks I hate Heart.  I don't hate the Wilson sisters but I think they've very stupid about how you treat an audience -- especially how you treat an audience you're asking to pay to see you.


Ally wants to know if today's musical choices were an 80s theme?  Leave out Heart, which we started with in the morning, and stop right before the last three songs (which were ballads, starting with Carole King's "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman") and you have the following:


  • Shannon - Do You Wanna Get Away (Official Music Vi...
  •  
  • Until You Say Love Me - Aretha Franklin
  •  
  • Pebbles - Girlfriend
  •  
  • Sheena Easton - 101
  •  
  • Gladys Knight & The Pips - Love Overboard
  •  
  • Natalie Cole - Jump Start (My Heart) - 1987
  •  
  • Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam - Head To Toe
  •  
  • Diana Ross - Workin' Overtime
  •  
  • Prince and Sheena Easton - U Got The Look
  •  
  • Vanessa Williams - He’s Got the Look (Official Mus...
  •  
  • Janet Jackson - Miss You Much
  •  
  • Jody Watley - Looking For A New Love • TopPop
  •  
  • Vanity 6 - Nasty Girl (1982) • TopPop
  •  
  • Sheila E. - The Glamorous Life (Official Music Video)
  •  
  • [4K] Tina Turner - What's Love Got to Do with It (... 

  • Ally's right that they're all 80s song.  That wasn't the theme though.  I was just going for songs with great percussion.  And songs that clearly owed something to Prince.  "U Got The Look" -- he wrote that and he sings it with Sheena Easton.  He also wrote Sheena's "101" and Vanity 6's "Nasty Girl" and, of course, Shelia E played drums with him and he wrote "The Glamorous Life."  Andre Cymone and Jody Watley wrote "Looking For  A New Love" and Andre was in Prince's band.  Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis wrote "Miss You Much" and they were part of The Time so that's their Prince connection. But all the songs above have a musical connection with Prince.  He really defined the 80s in a way that few other artists did.  And there are many other songs that could have been included.  I don't think a Madonna song could have been except maybe "Love Song" (a duet she co-wrote with Prince from her LIKE A PRAYER album).  Of all the big artists in the 80s, she's really the only one with multiple hits who didn't record something that owed a big debt to Prince's work.  She went her own way (sometimes for good, sometimes for bad).  Even an artist like George Michael was influenced by Prince (listen to "I Want Your Sex"). 


    We could have included Patti LaBelle's "Yo Mister" (which Prince wrote) and the Jets' "Crush On You" (which he didn't). But his own work, his work with The Time, with Vanity 6, with Apollonia 6, Tevin Campbell, the Family, influenced the sound of the 80s -- as did those who started out with him but went on to work with other artists (i.e. Andre Cymone with Jody Watley, Adam Ant, etc;  and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis with the S.O.S. Band, New Edition, Cheryl Lynn, Morris Day, etc).  Songs from that period like  "Neutron Dance," a hit for the Pointer Sisters, have a Prince feel even when he had nothing to do with the song. Or look at Alexander O'Neal and Cherrelle, Stacy Lattisaw . . . 


    Let me steal from Elaine who does posts with five videos.


    Five best covers of Prince songs?


    1) Cyndi Lauper with "When You Were Mine"



    2) Meli'sa Morgan with "Do Me, Baby"


    3) Jordan Knight with "I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man"


    4)Tina Turner with "Let's Pretend We're Married" 

     


    5) Chaka Khan with "I Feel For You"



    And my five favorite recordings by Prince.


    1) "Controversy"


    2) "Little Red Corvette"


    3)"Thieves In The Temple"


    4) "If I Was Your Girlfriend"


    5) "Forever In My Life"



    Prince was a huge influence on music in the 20th century.  Even though he made some racists uncomfortable.  I'm thinking of one roots-rocker in particular.  He's dead so I'll be semi-kind.  A friend had two big hits with songs influenced in sound by the work of Prince.  Those aren't her only hits.  But that whole album was sneered at by the roots-rocker.  And what my friend just won't accept is that her hero the roots-rocker was a raging racist and his problems with her album that he sneered wasn't rock like what his roots-rock band did (poorly) was that she had incorporated some Prince touches into the album.  The roots-rocker is largely forgotten and will only become more forgotten as the year continue to pass.  Prince will be a legend forever.


    The following sites updated:






    'Bottoms' emerges as the 'Mean Girls' of the LGBTQ+ community.



    I'm posting this because BOTTOMS is a great movie, I have not streamed this QNT video.  If one rude remark about BROS is in the group 'discussion' in the video above -- let alone the bitchfest attack of BROS like they did about a month ago -- let me know and we will be done with QNT.  I do not do pile ons and I do not attack someone who has given their all.  QNT's embarrassing attempt to walk back that attack on Billy a few weeks later by noting the study that the only film with real trans representation in 2022 was BROS?  They shouldn't have needed GLAAD or anyone else to point that out.  It was obvious if you watched BROS and had a brain.  And it's one more reason why the little bitches shouldn't have attacked BROS -- and did so with such glee and such malice. 


    And anyone who thinks the above is 'too much,' I bit my damn tongue on this until now.  I've held my tongue long enough on it (Ava and I did allude to it in a piece at THIRD but we didn't name the outlet).  I don't watch their videos anymore so I don't know if this involves any attack on BROS.  If it does, let me know and we're done with QNT.


    BROS is an excellent comedy.  Equally true, I'm not in the mood when someone creates art to see it or the creators beat up in the playground.   

    New Issue of The Black Commentator - Sept 7, 2023 - Issue 968

     The Black Commentator Issue #968 is now Online

    Sept 7, 2023



    Read issue 968

    Our email address is BlackCommentator@gmail.com

    Our voicemail number is 856.823.1739

    from spain to delano - the radical roots of farmworker unions

    FROM SPAIN TO DELANO - THE RADICAL ROOTS OF FARMWORKER UNIONS
    By David Bacon
    Positively Filipino, 8/30/23
    https://www.positivelyfilipino.com/magazine/from-spain-to-delanothe-radical-roots-of-farm-workers-unions
    https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2023/08/from-spain-to-delano-radical-roots-of.html


    We can't talk about defending the human and labor rights of farm workers without talking about their history of organizing unions-and the efforts by the government to suppress them. Liberal mythology holds that farm worker unions didn't exist until the creation of United Farm Workers in the '60s and that the farm worker unions and advocacy organizations of today appeared out of nowhere, with no history of struggle that went before.

    But in fact, during the 1930s Filipinos and other farm workers organized left-wing unions and huge strikes. According to Rick Baldoz, a professor at Oberlin College, "The burgeoning strike activity involving thousands of Filipinos in the mid-1930s occasioned a furious backlash from growers who worked closely with local law enforcement."

    The people who fought to organize unions in the '30s, '40s and '50s on the West Coast were the same people who fought for Spain-in the same organizations, like the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, and especially ILWU Local 37. Of all the efforts to organize farm workers, the ones that were closest to the International Brigades were those of the Filipinos during those years. And the forces that later went after the Lincoln vets were the same as those that went after the farm worker unions, using the same tools: blacklisting and deportations.

    Baldoz gained access to the FBI files on one of the most radical of the Filipino leaders, Carlos Bulosan. "The fact that these partisans attracted the attention of federal authorities during the Cold War is hardly surprising," he says. "Filipino workers had developed a well-earned reputation for labor militancy in the United States dating back to the early 1930s. That a considerable number of Filipinos (both from the U.S. and the Philippines) had volunteered for the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War... only added to the perception that they were immersed in international left-wing politics."

    In their history of Asian volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, Nancy and Len Tsou write: "At least 11 Filipinos went to Spain to join the International Brigades. Among them, several came from the United States. [Pedro] Penino was able to establish the Rizal Company, a part of the International Brigades named in honor of a Filipino national hero." The Tsous name the following volunteers: Manuel Lizarraga, Artemio Ortega Luna, Enrique Almenar Gabra, Modesto Ausobasa Esteban, Dimitri Gorostiaga, Eduardo Miranda Gonzales, Pedro Penino, Carlos Lopez Maestu, Mark Fajardo, Servando Acevedo Mondragon and Aquilino Belmonte Capinolio.




    A group of International volunteers in Spain (L-R): a seaman from Chile; Sterling Rochester (USA); Artemio Luna Ortega (Philippines); Juan Santiago (Cuba); and Jack Shirai (Japan).




    Artemio Luna Ortega was born in the Philippines, 1901. He served in the Constabulary from 1922-1925. He immigrated to the US in 1927 where he worked as a draftsman after college. He was a member of the CPUSA and FAECT. He arrived in Spain on January 14, 1937. Artemio served with ALB at Jarama, Brunete and as a guard Villa Paz. He also the joined the GTU. His fate beyond Spain is currently unknown.


    Bulosan had worked as a farm laborer since his arrival in the U.S. in 1930, but after his health was destroyed by his work he tried to make a living as a journalist. "Every word is a weapon for freedom," the FBI reported him telling a colleague. In 1946, Bulosan wrote America Is in the Heart, a classic and moving account of life as a Filipino migrant farm worker during the 1930s. The FBI viewed the book as evidence of his Communist associations during the Cold War. Bulosan was hired by leaders of Local 37 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Ernesto Mangaoang and Chris Mensalvas, to edit the union's yearbook in 1952. Among its many appeals for support for radical causes, it urged solidarity with the Huk movement in the Philippines, against continued U.S. imperialist domination of its former colony.




    Carlos Bulosan, a farm worker and later an acclaimed author, caught the attention of the FBI.


    In the 1930s, Local 37 was organized by Filipinos who were the workforce in the salmon canneries on the Alaska coast. They were mostly single men, recruited to come to the U.S. from the Philippines. They were shipped to the canneries from Seattle every season, where they faced discrimination and terrible conditions. They organized Local 37 to change those conditions and forced the fish companies to sign contracts.

    Until 1949, Local 37 had been part of the Congress of Industrial Organizations' (CIO) farm workers union, the United Cannery, Agricultural and Packing House Workers of America. From 1936 to 1953, the U.S. labor movement was split between the left-wing CIO and the rightwing American Federation of Labor. In 1949, as the Cold War started, the CIO expelled nine unions, including UCAPAWA and the ILWU, because of their left-wing politics and often Communist leaders.

    At the height of the McCarthyite hysteria more than 30 members of Local 37 were arrested and threatened with deportation to the Philippines. Raymundo Cabanilla, a former CIO organizer, named names to the FBI, identifying fellow labor activists, including Ernesto Mangaoang, as Communists. Eventually Mangaoang's deportation case was thrown out by the courts. He argued that he couldn't be deported, given that he was a U.S. "national" when he arrived in Seattle in the 20s. "National" was a status given Filipinos because the Philippines was a U.S. colony at the time. Filipinos couldn't be considered immigrants, but they weren't quite citizens either.

    Meanwhile, the Federal government tried to bankrupt Local 37 by forcing the accused workers to pay high bails and lawyers' fees. Union leaders were so tied up in legal defense that a conservative faction took control of the local. That group held it until it was thrown out in the 1980s by a new young generation of radical Filipinos, two of whom, Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes (a former farm worker) were assassinated.

    UCAPAWA (renamed the Food, Tobacco and Agricultural Workers) was destroyed in the 1949 purge of the CIO, and the Filipino local in Seattle was taken in by Harry Bridges' union, becoming ILWU Local 37. It survived, and today is part of the ILWU's Inland Boatman's Union.

    Today, 52 years after the historic 1965 Delano grape strike, it is important to reexamine this history, especially the radical career of Larry Itliong, who headed the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC). Itliong not only shared leadership with Cesar Chavez but actually started the strike. He had a long history as an organizer.




    Labor leaders Larry Itliong (left) and Cesar Chavez (Right) at the Delano Grape Strike (Source: CAAM.org)


    Itliong was Ernesto Mangaoang's protégé. In the late 1940s, he was Local 37's dispatcher, sending workers on the boats from Seattle to the Alaska salmon canneries. After the salmon season was over, many Filipinos would return home to California's Salinas and San Joaquin Valleys, where they worked as farm laborers for the rest of the year. In the segregated barrios of towns like Stockton and Salinas they organized hometown associations and social clubs. Itliong used these networks to organize Filipinos when they went to work in the fields. Along with Chris Mensalvas, at the time Local 37 president, Itliong organized a strike in Stockton's asparagus fields in 1949.

    Once the left-wingers lost power in the union, however, its conservative leaders stopped its farm worker organizing drives. Still, in the early 1950s Filipino farm workers continued to organize. Ernesto Galarza (author of "Merchants of Labor") started the National Farm Labor Union, which struck the giant DiGiorgio Corporation, then California's largest grower. In 1959 the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) was set up by the merged AFL-CIO. After hiring Itliong as an organizer because of his history among Filipino workers, AWOC used flying squads of pickets to mount quick strikes. In 1962, it struck the Imperial Valley lettuce harvest, demanding $1.25 per hour.

    The grape strike started in Delano on September 8, 1965, when Filipino pickers walked off the fields. 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, breathing new life into the labor movement and opening doors for immigrants and people of color.




    Filipino workers on strike (Source: Harvey Richards Media Archive)


    California's politics have changed profoundly in these 52 years, in large part because of that strike. Delano's mayor today is a Filipino. That would have been unthinkable in 1965, when growers treated the town as a plantation. Children of farm worker families have become members of the state legislature. Last year they spearheaded passage of a law that requires the same overtime pay for farm workers as for all other workers-the first state to pass such a law.

    The 1965 Delano grape strike did not, however, start in Delano. It was in the Coachella Valley, near the Mexican border where California's grape harvest begins, that Filipino workers struck the vineyards that summer. They won a 40¢/hour wage increase from grape growers and forced authorities to drop charges against arrested strikers. The Coachella strike was organized by Larry Itliong. After the grape harvest moved north to Delano, he and the Filipino workers of AWOC walked out again.

    The timing of the 1965 strike was not accidental. It took place the year after Galarza, Bert Corona, Cesar Chavez, and other civil rights and labor activists forced Congress to repeal Public Law 78 and end the bracero contract labor program, under which growers brought workers from Mexico under tightly controlled, almost slave-like conditions. Farm worker leaders acted after the law's repeal, because once the program was ended growers could no longer bring braceros into the U.S. to break strikes.

    The Delano strike was a movement of immigrant workers. To organize farm labor, both Filipinos and Mexicans wanted to keep growers and the government from using immigration policy against them. In ending the bracero program, they sought instead immigration policies favoring families and communities. In the 1965 immigration reform they established family reunification as a basic principle of immigration policy. This enabled thousands of people, especially family members of farm workers, to come from the Philippines, Mexico and other developing countries.

    The Delano strike was not spontaneous or unexpected. It was a product of decades of worker organizing and earlier farm worker strikes. Many Filipino workers in Coachella and Delano were members of ILWU Local 37 in 1965, when the grape strike began. Every year they still traveled from the San Joaquin Valley (where Delano is located) to the Alaska fish canneries. Through the end of their lives, they were often active members of both Local 37 and the United Farm Workers.

    Cold war fears of communism were strong in the 1960s-one reason why the contributions of Itliong and the Filipinos were obscured. The strike in Delano owes much to Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Gilbert Padilla, and other Chicano and Mexican leaders who came out of earlier community organizing movements. But the left-wing leadership of Itliong, Philip Veracruz and other rank-and-file Filipino workers was equally important.

    Chavez willingly acknowledged that the NFWA hadn't intended to strike in 1965. The decision to act was made by left-wing Filipinos, a product of their history of militant fights against growers. Their political philosophy saw the strike as the fundamental weapon to win better conditions. And it was a decision made by workers on the ground, not by leaders or strategists far away.

    Growers had pitted Mexicans and Filipinos against each other for decades. The alliance between Itliong's AWOC and the Cesar Chavez-led National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) was a popular front alliance of workers who had, in many cases, different politics. AWOC's members had their roots in the red UCAPAWA. NFWA's roots were in the Community Service Organization (CSO), which was sometimes hostile to Communists. Yet both organizations were able to find common ground and support each other during the strike, eventually forming the UFW.




    Fred Abad and Pete Velasco, Filipino veterans of the United Farm Workers and the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee. (Photo by David Bacon, Special Collections in Stanford University's Green Library)


    Strikers in Delano developed close friendships. Cesar Chavez's son Paul recalls the way the older Filipino men looked at him and other children of Mexican strikers as their own family. Most of the Filipinos were single men, because anti-miscegenation laws prohibited them from marrying non-Filipinas, and the immigration of women from the Philippines was limited until the late 1960s. In the wake of the grape strike, the UFW and scores of young activists from California cities built a retirement home for them in Delano, Paolo Agbayani Retirement Village, to honor their contribution.

    Philip Vera Cruz, a Filipino grape picker who became a vice-president of the UFW and later left over disagreements with Chavez, wrote during the strike's fourth year: "The Filipino decision of the great Delano Grape Strike delivered the initial spark to explode the most brilliant incendiary bomb for social and political changes in U.S. rural life."




    Philip Vera cruz, a Filipino grape picker, was one of the initial leaders of the Delano Grape Strike.


    Liberal mythology has hidden the true history of the grape strike's connection to some of the most radical movements in the country's labor history. The contribution of that generation of Filipino radicals, including some who went to Spain, should be honored- not just because they helped make history, but because their political and trade union ideas are as relevant to workers today as they were in 1965. Those ideas, which they kept alive through the worst years of the Cold War, led to a renaissance of farm worker organizing that is still going on.

    This article was first published in "The Volunteer," February 27, 2018: https://albavolunteer.org/2018/02/human-rights-column-from-spain-to-delano-the-radical-roots-of-farm-workers-unions/

     

    PHOTO EXHIBITIONS / EXPOSICIONES DE FOTOS
     

    MAS QUE UN MURO / MORE THAN A WALL
    Photographs by David Bacon / Fotografias por David Bacon


     
    International Meeting on Human Mobility 2023
    Encuentro internacional sobre movilidad humana 2023
     
    Museo Nacional de las Culturas del Mundo
    Palacio Nacional
    Moneda 13, Centro Histórico
    Centro, Cuauhtémoc
    06000 Ciudad de México
    CDMX, Mexico

    Through October, 2023

     

    IN THE FIELDS OF THE NORTH/EN LOS CAMPOS DEL NORTE
    Photographs by David Bacon



    Global Museum
    San Francisco State University
    1600 Holloway Avenue
    San Francisco, CA 

    October 8 - December 3, 2023

     

    WHEN WE SPOKE OUT AGAINST WAR
    Unearthing the history of protest against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
    Photographs © by David Bacon

    https://www.flickr.com/photos/56646659@N05/52759801492/in/album-72177720306862427/
     

    BOOKS - LIBROS
     

    MORE THAN A WALL / MAS QUE UN MURO



    More Than a Wall / Mas que Un Muro explores the many aspects of the border region through photographs taken by David Bacon over a period of 30 years. These photographs trace the changes in the border wall itself, and the social movements in border communities, factories and fields. This bilingual book provides a reality check, to allow us to see the border region as its people, with their own history of movements for rights and equality, and develop an alternative vision in which the border can be a region where people can live and work in solidarity with each other. - Gaspar Rivera-Salgado

    David Bacon has given us, through his beautiful portraits, the plight of the American migrant worker, and the fierce spirit of those who provide and bring to us comfort and sustenance. -- Lila Downs


    Published by El Colegio de la Frontera Norte with support from the UCLA Institute for Labor Research and Education and the Center for Mexican Studies, the Werner Kohlstamm Family Fund, and the Green Library at Stanford University

    Price:  $35 plus postage and handling
    To order, click here:  

    https://david-bacon-photography.square.site/product/more-than-a-wall-mas-que-un-muro/1?cp=true&sa=true&sbp=false&q=false

    "The "border" is just a line. It's the people who matter." - JoAnn Intili, director, The Werner-Kohnstamm Family Fund


     
    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 checkoutreceive 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
     



    WORK AND SOCIAL JUSTICE:
    The David Bacon Archive exhibition at Stanford Libraries

    https://exhibits.stanford.edu/bacon/browse

    Exhibited throughout the pandemic in the Cecil H. Green Library at Stanford. The online exhibition (https://exhibits.stanford.edu/bacon), which includes additional content not included in the physical show, is accessible to everyone, and is part of an accessible digital spotlight collection that includes significant images from this body of work. For a catalog: (https://web.stanford.edu/dept/spec_coll/NonVendorPubOrderform2017.pdf)

     
    Online Interviews and Presentations

    Red Lens Episode 6: David Bacon on US-Mexico border photography
    Brad Segal: 
    On episode 6 of Red Lens, I talk with David Bacon.

    David Bacon is a California-based writer and documentary photographer. A former union organizer, today he documents labor, the global economy, war and migration, and the struggle for human rights.  We talk about David's new book, 'More than a Wall / Mas que un muro' which includes 30 years of his photography and oral histories from communities & struggles in the U.S.-Mexico border region.
    https://www.patreon.com/posts/71834023?fbclid=IwAR0BRhHYbrYU3BoeoAMFKU_zdHs5Xirmmt1LzQtfwf1yD8p9EYLXKhzzbDE

    Letters and Politics - Three Decades of Photographing The Border & Border Communities
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvs6SyXsM-4
    Host Mitch Jeserich interviews David Bacon, a photojournalist, author, broadcaster and former labor organizer. He has reported on immigrant and labor issues for decades. His latest book, More Than A Wall, is a collection of his photographs of the border and border communities spanning three decades.

    Exploitation or Dignity - What Future for Farmworkers
    UCLA Latin American Institute
    Based on a new report by the Oakland Institute, journalist and photographer David Bacon documents the systematic abuse of workers in the H-2A program and its impact on the resident farmworker communities, confronted with a race to the bottom in wages and working conditions.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXKa2lHJXMs

    David Bacon on union solidarity with Iraqi oil worker unions
    Free City Radio - CKUT 27/10/2021 -

    https://soundcloud.com/freecityradio/oct-27-2021-ckut-27102021-david-bacon-on-union-solidarity-with-iraqi-oil-worker-unions
     
    Organizing during COVID, the intrinsic value of the people who grow our food
    Sylvia Richardson - Latin Waves Media
    How community and union organizers came together to get rights for farm workers during COVID, and how surviving COVID has literally been an act of resistance.

    https://latinwavesmedia.com/wordpress/organizing-during-covid-the-intrinsic-value-of-the-people-who-grow-our-food/
     
    Report Details Slavery-Like Conditions For Immigrant Guest Workers
    Rising Up With Sonali Kohatkar

    https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/report-details-slavery-conditions-immigrant-guest-workers

    The Right to Remain
    http://www.franknews.us/interviews/415/the-right-to-remain

    Beware of Pity
    http://www.franknews.us/interviews/525/beware-of-pity


    En Español
     
    Ruben Luengas - #EnContacto
    Hablamos con David Bacon de los migrantes y la situación de México frente a los Estados Unidos por ser el principal país de llegada a la frontera de ese país.

    https://rubenluengas.com/2021/03/video-mexico-estados-unidos-migracion-y-suenos-rotos-encontacto/

    Jornaleros agrícolas en EEUU en condiciones más graves por Covid-19: David Bacon
    SomosMas99 con Agustin Galo Samario

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWQSvM9s1lw

    "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

    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

     

    Online Photography Exhibitions
     
    Documentary Matters -  View from the US 
    Social Documentary Network
    Four SDN photographers explore themes of racial justice, migration, and #MeToo

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWl-uENA7SQ&t=1641s
     
    There's More Work to be Done
    Housing Assistance Council and National Endowment for the Arts
    This exhibition documents the work and impact of the struggle for equitable and affordable housing in rural America, inspired by the work of George “Elfie” Ballis.

    https://www.thereismoreworktobedone.com/david-bacon
     
    Dark Eyes
    A beautiful song by Lila Downs honoring essential workers, accompanied by photographs

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdC2gE3SNWw


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

    In the FIelds of the North
    Online Exhibit
    Los Altos History Museum

    https://www.losaltoshistory.org/exhibits/in-the-fields-of-the-north/


    Virtual Tour - In the Fields of the North
    History Museum of Tijuana
    Recorrido Virtual de la Exposicion - En los campos del norte
    Museo de Historia de Tijuana

    https://www.facebook.com/542258639265202/videos/659536991515786
     

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


    Other Books by David Bacon - Otros Libros

    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)
    https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801473074/communities-without-borders/#bookTabs=1

    The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004)
    https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520244726/the-children-of-nafta

    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

    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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