A New Farm Worker Union Is Born

Indigenous Oaxacan farm workers win themselves a union in the Pacific Northwest.

David Bacon, American Prospect

June 26, 2017

Bob's Burgers and Brew, a hamburger joint at the Cook Road freeway exit on Interstate 5, about two hours north of Seattle, doesn’t look like a place where Pacific Northwest farm workers can change their lives, much less make some history. But on June 16, a half-dozen men in work clothes pulled tables together in Bob's outdoor seating area. Danny Weeden, general manager of Sakuma Brothers Farms, then joined them.

A worker votes to ratify the contract. Photo: David Bacon

After exchanging polite greetings, Weeden opened four folders and handed around copies of a labor contract that had taken 16 sessions of negotiations to hammer out. As the signature pages were passed down the tables, each person signed. Weeden collected his copy and drove off; the workers remained long enough to cheer and take pictures with their fists in the air. Then they too left.

It was a quiet end to four years of strikes and boycotts, in which these workers had organized the first new farm-worker union in the United States in a quarter-century—Familias Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ).[…]

Read the full article:

http://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2017/06/a-new-farm-worker-union-is-born.html
http://prospect.org/article/new-farm-worker-union-born

Read previous coverage of the struggle at Sakuma Brothers:

http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/search?q=Sakuma

‘Clear Victory’ for President Trump on Muslim Ban 2.0? Hardly.

By Cody Wofsy, ACLU

June 26, 2017

After the Supreme Court ruled today that it would hear arguments on the Muslim ban that a number of lower courts have ruled against, the president claimed “clear victory.”

Hardly.

In fact, the court handed the government a sweeping, but not complete, defeat. It rejected the government’s blanket ban and recognized what all the lower courts in two separate cases saw: The ban would be devastating to families, organizations, and communities across the United States. The court also allowed the government to implement only a narrow version of the ban, explaining that anyone with a “bona fide relationship” to people or organizations in the United States cannot be barred. To view that decision as “clear victory” is wishful thinking.[…]

Read the full article:
https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/clear-victory-president-trump-mus lim-ban-20-hardly

Muslim ban protest, JFK airport, January 2017

Your immigrant ancestors came here legally? Are you sure?

A good article, but the quote from historian Mae Ngai must have been cut short. Ngai, the author of Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America, the definitive history of U.S. immigration policy between 1924 and 1965, clearly didn’t mean that just any able-bodied person with a little money and some mental ability could enter the country before 1924: most Asians were excluded.—TPOI

Ellis Island, early 1900s. Photo: National Park Service

By Michael Matza, The Inquirer

June 25, 2017

Passions rise, tempers flare, and sooner or later someone says: Why don’t they just come here legally, the way my grandparents did?

In any debate about illegal immigration, that argument, with its implied moral distinction between prior generations of purportedly law-abiding immigrants, and anyone here illegally now, invariably comes up.

But although many people think their ancestors came legally, says immigration historian Mae Ngai, most families can’t know that with certainty. And the criteria for admission to the United States have changed so much since the late 19th and early 20th centuries that most comparisons of then to now are like apples to oranges.[…]

Read the full article:

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/your-immigrant-ancestors-came-here-legally-are-you-sure-20170625.html

Fighting for the Sanctuary Workplace: Unions Mobilize to Protect Undocumented **UPDATED**

This important new article from David Bacon describes ways unions can move to protect workers from ICE raids—and “silent raids”—at the workplace.

By David Bacon, Truthout

June 24, 2017

Sanctuary workplaces?

Albeit far from its intentions, the Trump administration has put the idea of sanctuaries on steroids -- spaces free from the threat of raids and deportations. As immigrant workers, unions and their allies look for creative ways to counter anti-immigrant onslaughts, they're adopting the sanctuary framework to deal with the dangers faced on the job.

This is not just a recent response to administration threats of increased enforcement. Immigrant workers have been battling jobsite raids and firings for many years, seeking ways to prevent la migra (immigration agents) from using their employment to sweep them into the enforcement net.[…]

Read the full article:

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/40964-fighting-for-the-sanctuary-workplace-unions-mobilize-to-protect-undocumented-workers

Update, June 29, 2017: International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) Local 810 in New York City has now declared itself a "sanctuary union," becoming the first Teamsters local to do so. Read the article at https://socialistworker.org/2017/06/28/we-are-a-sanctuary-union.

Local 2850 members and organizers in anti-Trump march. Photo: Truthout/David Bacon

The Apple Pickers of the Yakima Valley: A photo essay

More excellent photographs from David Bacon (we used his work for the covers of both editions of our book). But the analysis is also important. Bacon shows that, at least in Washington state, growers are switching from the exploitation of immigrant workers to the exploitation of guest workers. “Growers are increasingly recruiting Mexican workers to come to the U.S. on H-2A visas,” he writes. “….In 2006, Washington growers brought in 814 workers on H-2A visas, mostly to pick apples. Last year they brought in 13,641—about a quarter of the state’s farm labor force that year.”—TPOI editor

Farmworkers march on May 1. Photo: The Atlantic/David Bacon

By David Bacon, The Atlantic

June 22, 2017

Even after having worked as a farmworker for a few years, Eva Chavez still had trouble coping with how exhausted she was after a day of picking apples. “I’d barely make it home because I was so tired,” she remembers. “I’d just park the car outside my house and sleep in the car. I didn’t even want to go inside.”

She saw her fellow farmworkers get similarly worn down. She said she worried when she saw someone in charge of a job distribute pain pills and Coca-Cola. Some of her friends drank cans of Red Bull or Monster Energy so often that if they stopped, they got sleepy and lost their motivation to work. “We put our lives out there in the fields for a job that will never give our health back,” says Chavez. Another farmworker I talked to, who once picked tobacco on a farm in Kentucky, said that the exposure to the nicotine in the leaves left him with a sensation “like a hangover multiplied by 10.”[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/06/apple-pickers-yakima-photo-essay/530967/

As Temperatures Soar in Southwest, Border Patrol Puts Migrants in Greater Danger

Border Patrol Raids Humanitarian Aid Group Camp in Arizona

By Fernanda Santos, New York Times

June 16, 2017

  Photo: No More Deaths/Carrot Quinn

PHOENIX — The Border Patrol raided a humanitarian aid group’s base camp in the Southern Arizona desert on Thursday and arrested four men who had crossed into the United States illegally, officials with Customs and Border Protection said.

Volunteers with the group, No More Deaths, which gives water and first-aid care to migrants, said the men were from Mexico and were receiving emergency medical care at the camp, which had been raided by agents in the past. But this was the first time border agents had used a search warrant to gain entry, the group said in a statement, suggesting a change in strategy by the Border Patrol leadership in the region at a time when temperatures are soaring. Despite a history of tense relations with No More Deaths, the agency had previously abided by an informal, Obama-era agreement allowing migrants to seek medical help at the camp without fear of arrest.[...]

Read the full article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/us/border-patrol-immigration-no-more-deaths.html

Appeal From No More Deaths/No Más Muertes

June 20, 2017

The high-temperature forecast for Arivaca, Arizona on June 21 is 108 degrees Fahrenheit. It will be even hotter, 116 degrees, in the Devil’s Highway region of Ajo, Arizona.

In this heat, a 150-pound person needs three to four gallons of water to remain hydrated if walking all day. Migrants and refugees heading north often trek for many days or weeks and are unable to carry the water that is minimal for survival.

In Arizona alone, over three thousand people have died a migration-related death since 1999. We do not stand idly by. No More Deaths volunteers are in the desert today and every day providing food, water, and medical aid to border crossers in distress.

Today, in the wake of an unprecedented raid on our camp by the US Border Patrol (see coverage in the New York Times, the Associated Press, the Intercept, the Guardian, and the Arizona Republic), we need your support more than ever.

On June 21, when the sun is highest in the sky and daylight at its longest, we want to raise $10,000 to support our work. We’re calling this solstice effort our Longest Day Campaign.

Whether you donate today or on the longest day of the year, your contribution enables us to work towards ending death and suffering in the US–Mexico borderlands.

You can donate online or write a check to “UUCT/No More Deaths” and mail it to:

No More Deaths DonateNow

PO Box 40782

Tucson, AZ 85717

We are ever-grateful for your support in the face of the ongoing crises of death and disappearance at the border.

In solidarity, 

The No More Deaths community

Watch "Desert of Death" for more information on No More Deaths and the group's humanitarian work:
https://vimeo.com/220663284

ICE in NYC Courtrooms: Agents Target Queens Human Trafficking Court

ICE continues its practice in New York of detaining immigrants when they make scheduled court appearances. In the latest case, ICE agents were spotted waiting near a  special court intended to help human trafficking victims; the agents were planning to detain a young Chinese woman charged with working without authorization as a masseuse. ICE claims the agents are just trying to help protect the public. “Tell me,” Lauren Evans writes at Jezebel, “which strikes you as a greater threat to public safety? A young woman potentially working as a masseuse, or ICE agents so drunk on power they arrested a 19-year-old on the day of his high school prom?”—TPOI editor.

Outcry After Immigration Agents Seen at Queens Human Trafficking Court

By Beth Fertig, WNYC News

June 16, 2017

Public defenders and the state's top judge were rattled Friday after federal immigration agents were present in a Queens criminal courtroom for human trafficking victims.

A WNYC reporter was in the building when Legal Aid lawyers huddled frantically in the hallway: Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had been spotted in the building. The lawyers approached one of the agents, and he acknowledged there were warrants for several people in the building.

The lawyers said they learned from the judge that ICE wanted a young Chinese woman in the Human Trafficking Intervention Courtroom. They said she'd been charged with working illegally as a masseuse, and was about to receive an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal after completing a program with a community group — a goal of human trafficking court.[...]

Read the full article:

http://www.wnyc.org/story/outcry-after-immigration-agents-come-trafficking-victim-queens-courthouse/

The Immigrant Defense Project has provided the following summary of ICE courtroom practices in New York as of June 2017:

• ICE is targeting multiple people in court in multiple court parts. When they face delays, or are unable to apprehend a person in one part, they are going to other court parts to pursue people.
• ICE is targeting visa overstays with no prior criminal history who are facing a wide range of charges including misdemeanors.
• The physical arrests seem to be occurring farther from the courtroom; some have been in the hallways, by the elevators, and just outside of the courthouse. ICE may be sitting in court parts and identifying people when they're called and then following them out of the courtroom.
• Court officers continue to play a role in assisting in some cases. We have reports of court officers blocking doors, delaying the calling of cases, and communicating with ICE agents.