Young people and their families in Fort Bragg CA joined thousands of others who went into the streets this past week, protesting the effort by the Trump administration to terrorize them with the threat of immigration raids and deportations.
Fort Bragg is a former lumber mill town on the California coast a few hours north of San Francisco. When the mill finally closed in 2002, it was long after the time when the lumber industry employed thousands in California forests and mills.
Mexicans began coming to Fort Bragg, many from the Yucatan, to work in the seafood plants in the Noyo River harbor. For a few years, the demand in Japan for sea urchins, or uni, provided lots of work. But the shellfish were rapidly exhausted, and Mexican workers moved into jobs in the tourism industry or picking wine grapes in nearby vinyards, which replaced both the mill and the sea urchins as Fort Bragg's economic lifeline.
Today small Mexican markets and restaurants are part of many town neighborhoods. The community is growing, and students from immigrant families make up a majority in the city's schools. But being part of Fort Bragg has not been easy. The first immigration raid took place in 1988. When Trump threatened new raids and mass deportations, young people knew what he was intending from their own family histories.
It is a testimony to the courage of these young people of Fort Bragg and their families that fear of deportation did not paralyze them, or make them cower behind closed doors in fear. And as they took to the streets, passing cars honked and waved their support of the message carried by the handmade signs and flags.
David Bacon @photos4justice on the daily lives and ongoing struggles (both personal and political) of farmworkers - interview on Against the Grain with C.S. Soong
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
LISTEN: https://linktr.ee/thatshowthelightgetsinpodcast(or anywhere you get your podcasts) MAS QUE UN MURO Cinco Entrivistas sobre la exposicion en el Museo Nacional de las Culturas del Mundo, CDMX:
