Month: July 2023

By David BaconThe Nation, 3/6/23https://www.thenation.com/article/society/across-the-tracks/ The tracks divide downtown from west Fresno, and a man crosses as the rain begins.   In the San Joaquin Valley, the most productive agricultural area in the world, poverty is endemic. Fresno, crisscrossed by irrigation canals and railroad tracks, is the working-class capital and largest city of California’s San…

Read more

WHAT REAL IMMIGRATION REFORM WOULD LOOK LIKEClue: It’s Not a New Guest Worker ProgramBy David BaconThe Progressive web edition, 7/27/13http://www.progressive.org/real-immigration-reform Oralia Maceda, an immigrant mother from Oaxaca, asked the obvious last weekend in Fresno. At a meeting about the Senate immigration reform bill, she wanted to know why Senators would spend almost $50 billion on…

Read more

From Diego Rivera’s Paintings to the Fields of CaliforniaText and Photographs by David BaconDollars and Sense,  January/February 2023https://dollarsandsense.org/archives/2023/0123bacon.html Along West Ocean Avenue in the summer of 2022, where Lompoc, California’s flower fields meet the edge of town, workers from Oaxaca and Guerrero were harvesting stock flowers. Even far from the rows where they labored, breezes…

Read more