The Common Ills

Saturday, August 17, 2019

Afropunk Festival

From the Center for Constitutional Rights:

Date

Saturday, August 24, 2019 to Sunday, August 25, 2019

Location

The Center for Constitutional Rights is joining movement partner Strategic Trans Alliance for Radical Reform (STARR) at AFROPUNK Festival 2019 Saturday, August 24, and Sunday, August 25, at Commodore Barry Park in Brooklyn.

We’ll be giving out “QUEER + TRANS LIBERATION NOW” T-shirts and raising awareness of the ongoing fight to defend queer and transgender rights on the local and national level. Find us in Activism Row, a space specially designated as a call to action to festival-goers and where guests can learn about issues impacting social justice movements.

Come grab a T-shirt and show your support for queer and transgender rights!

For more information on the festival and where to find us, visit the festival website.

FARMWORKERS RISE UP AGAINST TRUMP AND LABOR EXPLOITATION By David Bacon,

FARMWORKERS RISE UP AGAINST TRUMP AND LABOR EXPLOITATION
By David Bacon,
Truthout August 10, 2019
https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2019/08/farmworker-rise-up-against-trump-and.html
https://truthout.org/articles/farmworkers-rise-up-against-trump-and-labor-exploitation/

Marchers take part in the Farmworker March for Dignity 2019, on August 4, 2019, in Whatcom County, Washington. David Bacon

Washington State today is ground zero in the effort to hold back the massive use of agricultural guest workers by U.S. growers, and to ensure that farmworkers, both those living here and those coming under the H-2A visa program, have their rights respected. For a second year, on August 4 workers and their supporters marched 14 miles in 90-degree heat through berry fields just below the Canadian border, protesting what they charge is widespread abuse of agricultural labor.

"Farmworker families have been living and working in local fields since the early 1950s," according to Rosalinda Guillen, director of Community to Community, a farm worker organizing and advocacy group in Whatcom County. "But we've seen a big increase in growers' use of the H-2A guest worker program in the last few years, and it's had a huge impact on working conditions in the fields. We've had to feed guest workers who come to us hungry, fight to get them paid their wages, and help them deal with extreme work requirements. At the same time, our local workers find they're not being hired for jobs they've done for many seasons."

Rosalinda Guillen, director of Community to Community. David Bacon

At dawn on August 4, two hundred marchers gathered in front of the immigration detention center in Ferndale, about three hours north of Seattle. Before starting the 14-mile peregrination, Guillen told the crowd that most of the immigrants detained there, and later deported, are farmworkers. "The Trump administration is targeting our local community, deporting people who have been living here for years," she charged. "Then growers complain there aren't enough workers, and begin using the H-2A program to bring in guest workers. It is a vicious revolving door of exploitation."

Marchers gather in front of the immigrant detention center in Ferndale before setting out on the rest of their route.David Bacon

According to the U.S. Department of Labor's National Agricultural Workers Survey, there are about 2.5 million farmworkers in the U.S., about three quarters of whom were born outside the country. Half are undocumented and the rest are visa holders or people born in the U.S.

Last year growers were certified to bring in 242,762 H-2A workers - a tenth of the total workforce and a number that in just four years has increased from 139,832.

In 2017, Washington State growers were given H-2A visas for 18,796 workers, about 12,000 of whom were recruited by WAFLA (formerly the Washington Farm Labor Association, a H-2A labor contractor). "We predict growers will request more than 30,000 H-2A workers during 2019," according to Washington Employment Security Department Commissioner Suzi LeVine.

The department estimated that 97,068 farm workers were employed in Washington State in 2016, so the projected number of H-2A workers would be a third of the entire workforce.

At the same time as H-2A employment is rising, deportations are increasing. The Trump administration deported 256,000 people in 2018, just slightly more than the number of people brought to the U.S. under H-2A visas. Local deportations are increasing as well in Washington. In August last year 16 people were arrested and held at the Ferndale center. Half were deported immediately, and others were charged bail as high as $18,000 to be released pending hearings. A month earlier 19 others had also been arrested for deportation.

Stories are common, according to C2C, of people stopped for traffic violations, and then held for detention by immigration authorities. In 2017, Gov. Jay Inslee signed an executive order barring state agents from helping to enforce federal immigration laws in most cases, ordering them not to ask about immigration status. Nevertheless, immigration detention centers are scattered around the state, including one of the nation's largest in Tacoma, three hours south of Whatcom County, where the GEO Group holds around 1500 people.

[. . .]

For a full set of march photographs, click here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/56646659@N05/albums/72157710187529022

PODCAST: Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen: Erasing Unsettling Truth: The San Francisco Mural Controversy

Art, by its nature, is often about challenging the viewer. You may have heard of the controversy about large Depression-era murals on the walls of San Francisco's George Washington High School. After 80 years, why did the school board vote to spend $600,000 to now cover it up? Painted as part of the New Deal's WPA by Victor Arnautoff, these frescoes show the real George Washington - slave owner - and the white settlers whose progress meant destruction of native people. It is disturbing. SF photographer and author David Bacon says racism is the cause of students' trauma, and argues that participatory solutions are an alternative to covering it up. Click http://bit.ly/2O5COCO to listen to the podcast.

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

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

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

"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

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