David Bacon's "The Right To Remain"

 

THE RIGHT TO REMAIN Interview with David Bacon franknews, 6/29/20 https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-right-to-remain.html http://www.franknews.us/interviews/415/the-right-to-remain This interview with David Bacon, journalist, photographer and author of Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants, was conducted and condensed by franknews. franknews:  Can you start by talking about your background a bit? I grew up in Oakland. The racial politics of my youth was centered around Black people and white people. Learning about how the imperial and racist history of this country affects African American people, Asian American people, and Latino people and their migration has been a lifelong learning experience for me. I say that because, I want to make sure that it's understood that I'm a learner, a lifelong learner. In the 1960s, I was involved in supporting the Delano grape strike by the workers in Central Valley. I would stand in front of Safeway and try to convince people not to buy grapes. After a while, I wanted to know more about what was going on with the workers themselves. In the 1970s I convinced a friend of mine, a lawyer for the United Farm Workers Union, to let me volunteer in one of their offices. I began working at the union, on a ridiculous salary of $5 a week, taking statements from workers who were being fired or beaten up because of their union sympathies. Using the skills I learned with the UFW I worked as a union organizer with other unions for about 20 years. As time went by, I became more and more drawn into documenting what I was seeing. So I made the transition to the work that I do now, and have done for the last 30 years, as a writer and a photographer. I look at the process of migration from the perspective of those who are migrating. I ask: What uproots people and sets the process of migration into motion? What is the experience of traveling as a migrant? What happens to migrants once they reach the place they are going? franknews:  How does your work with the unions inform your perspective of immigration. The union was a school for me  - it taught me Spanish, it taught me organizing, it taught me about immigration. I'll never forget how one evening, I was meeting with a group of date orchard workers at the union office. The next day, when I went out to talk to them again, they were being handcuffed and loaded into a green border patrol van. I was just floored by it. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't stop it. I chased the van all the way down to the Imperial Valley, trying to figure out how to help them. It was a very brutal learning experience, certainly more brutal for them than for me, but it also taught me something very important. I realized that this country's immigration policy has a great deal to do with work, and a great deal to do with labor. I've written a lot about the US immigration process over the years, and I have tried to put an analytical framework around the process. The framework I use is this: people get displaced in their countries of origin due to the penetration of capital from large wealthy industrial countries into developing countries. Those who are uprooted become an important part of the workforce of the countries that displaced them in the first place. It's a singular system. And it is a system that is motivated by producing economic results. franknews:  What is an example? Well, there was economic incentive in the process that made Walmart the largest employer in Mexico. Mexico used to buy corn from small producers in states like Oaxaca to help those communities survive. They would then turn that corn into tortillas, and sell them at state run markets in the cities to help poor people. That system became illegal under the new rules of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Walmart comes in as the big retailer of tortillas in Mexico, and the tortillas are no longer made from Oaxacan corn, but corn imported from Iowa. What happens to the farmers who were previously supported by Mexico's system? They become migrants. About a third of the agricultural workforce in California is made up of people coming from Oaxaca. The irony is that Oaxaca is the birthplace of domesticated corn -those farmers are coming from towns that gave corn to the world, but they can no longer grow it themselves, so they became migrants. franknews:  You have worked with migrants for many years. What is the starkest example of change in the migration system that you have seen? The border has become much more militarized. Largely that is due to the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.   Before '86, if a hot band was playing in Mexicali, undocumented workers working in the Imperial Valley would cross the border, see the show, and go back across the border to sleep in the labor camps that they were living in. In many places, even now, the border consists of nothing. For all of Trump's talk about the border, the reality is that it is still hardly marked at all in some places, but the process of crossing has become much more difficult and deadly, and much more expensive. franknews:  At the time that you were organizing with unions how did migrants look at immigration? People generally looked at the United States as a place that they had to come to in order to work. The Bracero Program from 1942 to 1964 was crucial in shaping this dynamic. Hundreds of thousands of people were recruited in Mexico, contracted a short period of time to work in the US, and then sent back to Mexico. We still have programs that are very much like the Bracero program today, such as the H-2A. People have very conflicting feelings about those programs. On the one hand, people want to come here to work. They know the wages they can get here, and they see the programs as a possible way to get US jobs. On the other hand, people know that those programs do not offer you the ability to stay in the US permanently or the ability to bring your family to the US. It's just work. At the same time, there are thousands of undocumented migrants in California who live in garages or shacks or even under trees.  People put up with conditions that are sometimes worse than the poverty in the communities they come from, because they need to work and send money home.  Sometimes folks say, "Well, it's just for awhile. I can put up with it for now while I send money home. In a way, it's better for me - if I don't have to pay rent, I can send more money home."

[. . .]

SAN QUENTIN VIGIL SAYS INCARCERATION HAS BECOME A DEATH SENTENCE
San Quentin State Prison, San Rafael, CA 

To see a full set of images of the protest, click here:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/56646659@N05/albums/72157715250290036
 

---

Free City Radio (Canada) interview: journalist David Bacon on solidarity with Iraqi unions and labour's role in activism

https://soundcloud.com/freecityradio/journalist-david-bacon
 

---

LABOR MARCH PROTESTS THE POLICE MURDER OF GEORGE FLOYD
BERKELEY, CA - 13JUNE20 - Hundreds of union members and outraged people march through the streets of Berkeley to protest the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and other African American and people of color killed by police.  The march was organized by the labor councils of Alameda, San Francisco, Contra Costa and San Mateo Counties, and Service Employees International Union Local 1021.

To see a full set of photos, click here:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/56646659@N05/albums/72157714734338062

STUDENTS MARCH TO PROTEST THE POLICE MURDER OF GEORGE FLOYD
BERKELEY, CA - 09JUNE20 - Hundreds of students, teachers and outraged people march through the streets of Berkeley to protest the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and other African Americian and other people of color killed by police. 

To see a full set of photos, click here:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/56646659@N05/albums/72157714656895057

HUGE CAR CARAVAN PROTESTS THE POLICE MURDER OF GEORGE FLOYD
OAKLAND, CA - 31MAY20 - Thousands of people participate in a caravan of over 2000 cars from the Port of Oakland, to protest the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and African American and people of color killed by police.

To see a full set of photos, click here:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/56646659@N05/albums/72157714533842187
 

---

IN THE FIELDS OF THE NORTH
Online Exhibit, May 29 to August 2, 2020
Los Altos History Museum

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


 

---

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
 

---

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

 

---

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!

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

Online exhibition until August 2
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

Rescheduled for December
Uri-Eichen Gallery, Chicago

 

---

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
 

---

 "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
 

---

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

Die 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
 

---

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

---

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