{"id":29769,"date":"2023-07-04T10:46:33","date_gmt":"2023-07-04T17:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colef.mx\/elmuro\/?p=29769"},"modified":"2023-07-04T10:46:33","modified_gmt":"2023-07-04T17:46:33","slug":"a-path-to-liberation-thats-still-evolving-by-david-bacon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colef.mx\/elmuro\/a-path-to-liberation-thats-still-evolving-by-david-bacon\/","title":{"rendered":"A path to liberation that’s still evolving | By David Bacon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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A PATH TO LIBERATION THAT’S STILL EVOLVING
By David Bacon
Civil Eats, 6\/29\/23
https:\/\/civileats.com\/2023\/06\/29\/photo-essay-a-cooperative-farms-long-path-to-liberation-for-farmworkers\/<\/a>
https:\/\/davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com\/2023\/06\/a-path-to-liberation-thats-still.html<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A young chilacoyote seedling in a Tierra y Libertad greenhouse.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

On the Sakuma Brothers farm, over two hundred angry Mixtec and Triqui farmworkers stopped work in 2013, over the firing of a coworker.\u00a0 They needed a spokesperson to present their demands, and Ramon Torres was an unlikely choice.\u00a0 He wasn’t indigenous.\u00a0 He was originally a city boy, raised in Guadalajara and the son of a construction worker.\u00a0 And he didn’t speak the workers’ indigenous languages.\u00a0 But he did speak Spanish, he was a blueberry picker like they were and lived in the labor camp with everyone else.\u00a0 Most important, he’d shown a willingness to stand up to the supervisors.

It was a fortuitous choice.\u00a0 Torres proved to be capable and dedicated.\u00a0 The workers repeatedly voted him president of their strike committee, and later their union, Familias Unidas por la Justicia, over the next four years.\u00a0 Finally, in 2017, they convinced Sakuma Brothers Farms to sign a pioneering collective bargaining agreement.\u00a0 Torres helped bargain the contract, and is still president of their union.

Two years into the bitter struggle Torres was fired.\u00a0 He tried to eke out a living on other farmworker jobs in the area, at the same time spending countless hours strategizing with the Sakuma workers.\u00a0 Then he made another unlikely choice.\u00a0 He became the lead organizer of the first farmworker-based farming co-operative in the Pacific Northwest. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ramon Torres, head of the strike committee and president of Familias Unidas por la Justicia, reports to the strikers at Sakuma Farms about the effort to get the company to sign an agreement.<\/em>
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He and his compa\u00f1eras and compa\u00f1eros named their co-op Tierra y Libertad (Land and Freedom) – the rallying cry of the Magonistas in Mexico’s rural revolution of 1910-20.\u00a0 They chose the face of Emiliano Zapata, the campesino revolutionary, as their symbol for their banner and the labels of their produce.

Torres was convinced to make the decision by Rosalinda Guillen, founder of Community2Community, a women-led advocacy and organizing center in rural Skagit and Whatcom Counties, two hours north of Seattle.\u00a0 Guillen had long experience helping farmworkers organize unions, and Community2Community organized the support base for the Sakuma workers.\u00a0 The new co-op started as a C2C project.

Torres says that the co-op idea grew out of the fight to get the union organized, and to change the conditions for Sakuma workers.\u00a0 At the beginning, many weren’t convinced that a union contract would change their conditions.\u00a0 \u00abThey kept talking about needing another route, and Rosalinda talked with us about a women’s co-op she’d formed earlier.\u00a0 So, workers decided to set one up.\u00bb

There were many discussions.\u00a0 C2C organized trainings in co-operative principles, which are still ongoing, eight years later.\u00a0 \u00abNevertheless, only a few workers actually decided to participate,\u00bb Torres remembers.\u00a0 \u00abIt was very hard to convince them.\u00a0 They’d ask, who’s going to give me a paycheck?\u00a0 Many thought they’d have to put in money they didn’t have.\u00a0 The reality was that we had nothing, no place even to begin planting.\u00a0 We really didn’t know if we could do it or not.\u00bb<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rosalinda Guillen, director of Community2Community Development, at the start of the May Day march.<\/em>

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Torres and a group from the new union rented their first small piece of land near the Canadian border.\u00a0 \u00abTwelve of us were committed to it, but the money didn’t come in the way we were hoping,\u00bb he says.\u00a0 The time commitment was more than most workers could sustain.\u00a0 In the training sessions someone would always be missing.\u00a0 To get to the land from Mt. Vernon, where most lived, was a 45 minute drive. \u00a0

\u00abPeople were putting in 10-hour days,\u00bb Torres recalls.\u00a0 \u00abThey’d arrive at the co-op at 5 in the afternoon, put in an hour and a half, and then have to drive back.\u00a0 In those years, before the union contract, people would go to work at another farm for a few hours after working at Sakuma, because pay was so low they needed the money to survive.\u00a0 So, they had to choose between working that extra job or coming to the co-op.\u00a0 Each day we might get two or three workers, and then the next day two different ones.\u00a0 The weekends were even harder.\u00a0 Saturday is a work day, and Sunday is the day for everything for the family – washing clothes, buying food, all the rest.\u00bb

Finally, only 3 remained of the original 12.\u00a0 And after fixing the farm up, breathing new life into its rows of red raspberries and putting up a greenhouse, the owner wanted it back.\u00a0 It was a blow, but they found another piece of land near Sedro Wooley.\u00a0 That was even further away.\u00a0 Finally, they found the 75 acres where the co-op farms today.\u00a0 It’s still a long drive from Mt. Vernon, but the co-op hopes to eventually buy it.

The co-op’s fortunes began to rise when the union contract was finally signed in 2017.\u00a0 The income of Sakuma workers rose dramatically.\u00a0 \u00abBefore, people would take home a paycheck for $400,\u00bb Torres says.\u00a0 \u00abEven the fastest and most experienced pickers took home $600.\u00a0 When the contract went into effect, they began making twice as much, even up to $2000 a week at the height of the season.\u00bb<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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PHOTO EXHIBITION \/ EXPOSICION DE FOTOS<\/strong>
\u00a0
Mas Que un Muro\/More than a Wall
Photographs by David Bacon \/ Fotografias por David Bacon
\u00a0
International Meeting on Human Mobility 2023
Encuentro internacional sobre movilidad humana 2023
\u00a0
Museo Nacional de las Culturas del Mundo<\/strong>
Moneda 13, Centro Hist\u00f3rico
Centro, Cuauht\u00e9moc
06000 Ciudad de M\u00e9xico
CDMX, Mexico
\u00a0
Opening – Conversation with David Bacon and Jason De Leon
Inauguracion – Conversatorio con David Bacon y Jason De Leon
\u00abBetween the hope and the pain: narratives of migration on the Mexico\/U.S. border\u00bb
\u00abEntre la esperanza y el dolor:\u00a0 narrativas de la migracion en la fronter Mexico-Estados Unidos\u00bb
Tuesday\/martes, July 11\/11 de julio, 7PM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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WHEN WE SPOKE OUT AGAINST WAR –
Unearthing the history of protest against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
Photographs \u00a9 by David Bacon
https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/56646659@N05\/52759801492\/in\/album-72177720306862427\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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IN THE FIELDS OF THE NORTH\/EN LOS CAMPOS DEL NORTE<\/strong>

Photographs by David Bacon

Exhibitions – Exposiciones<\/strong>

Global Museum<\/strong>
San Francisco State University
1600 Holloway Avenue
San Francisco, CA\u00a0
October 8 – December 3, 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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MORE THAN A WALL \/ MAS QUE UN MURO<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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More Than a \nWall \/ Mas que Un Muro explores the many aspects of the border region \nthrough photographs taken by David Bacon over a period of 30 years. \nThese photographs trace the changes in the border wall itself, and the \nsocial movements in border communities, factories and fields. This \nbilingual book provides a reality check, to allow us to see the border \nregion as its people, with their own history of movements for rights and\n equality, and develop an alternative vision in which the border can be a\n region where people can live and work in solidarity with each other. – \nGaspar Rivera-Salgado

\nDavid Bacon has given us, through his beautiful portraits, the plight of\n the American migrant worker, and the fierce spirit of those who provide\n and bring to us comfort and sustenance. — Lila Downs

\nPublished by El\n Colegio de la Frontera Norte with support from the UCLA Institute for \nLabor Research and Education and the Center for Mexican Studies, the \nWerner Kohlstamm Family Fund, and the Green Library at Stanford \nUniversity

\nPrice:  $35 plus postage and handling
\nTo order, click here:  
https:\/\/david-bacon-photography.square.site\/product\/more-than-a-wall-mas-que-un-muro\/1?cp=true&sa=true&sbp=false&q=false<\/a>

\n\u00abThe \u00abborder\u00bb is just a line. It’s the people who matter.\u00bb – JoAnn Intili, director, The Werner-Kohnstamm Family Fund
<\/p>\n\n\n\n


<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A PATH TO LIBERATION THAT’S STILL EVOLVING By David Bacon Civil Eats, 6\/29\/23https:\/\/civileats.com\/2023\/06\/29\/photo-essay-a-cooperative-farms-long-path-to-liberation-for-farmworkers\/https:\/\/davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com\/2023\/06\/a-path-to-liberation-thats-still.html On the Sakuma Brothers farm, over two hundred angry Mixtec and Triqui farmworkers stopped work in 2013, over the firing of a coworker.\u00a0 They needed a spokesperson to present their demands, and Ramon Torres was an unlikely choice.\u00a0 He wasn’t indigenous.\u00a0 He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-avisosyconvocatorias"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colef.mx\/elmuro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29769"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colef.mx\/elmuro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colef.mx\/elmuro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colef.mx\/elmuro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colef.mx\/elmuro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29769"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.colef.mx\/elmuro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29771,"href":"https:\/\/www.colef.mx\/elmuro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29769\/revisions\/29771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colef.mx\/elmuro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colef.mx\/elmuro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colef.mx\/elmuro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}