Category: Uncategorized

By David BaconTruthout, 3/7/23https://truthout.org/articles/eviction-of-300-person-encampment-in-california-shows-scorn-for-right-to-housing/ The Wood Street encampment of unhoused people under a freeway and railroad overpass was home to over 300 people. Volunteers helped residents try to resist eviction. The words “housing is a human right” used to appear in bright colors on a painted placard at the gateway to Wood Street Commons, which…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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The Farm Workforce Modernization Act’s failure to become law reveals critical divisions within the immigrant rights movement.By David BaconThe Nation, 1/10/23https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/farmworker-legalization-failed/ For the United Farm Workers and its allies on Capitol Hill, the failure of the Farm Workforce Modernization Act (FWMA) was a defeat for their campaign to win legal immigration status for undocumented field…

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Photographs by David Bacon In Mt. Vernon, Washington, hundreds of farmworkers and supporters marched in celebration of May Day in the annual Marcha Campesina.  It was the height of the tulip season in the Skagit valley, and marchers carried signs reminding growers of the strike a year ago that forced them to recognize workers’ committees…

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We need not only an alternative bill for immigration reform, but an alternative lens through which we view migration and immigration. The enviornment we face in 2009/2010 is not the same as it was in 1986 or even 1996. Globalization is more developed now. With big businesses relocating to other countries, regional wars, unequal trade…

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