CŽsar Ch‡vez, the Catholic Bishops, and the Farmworkers' Struggle for Social Justice

CŽsar Ch‡vez, the Catholic Bishops, and the Farmworkers' Struggle for Social Justice

Author: Marco G. Prouty

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 2008-09-01

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 9780816527311

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Available in paperback September 2008! CŽsar Ch‡vez and the farmworkersÕ struggle for justice polarized the Catholic community in CaliforniaÕs Central Valley during the 1965Ð1970 Delano Grape Strike. Because most farmworkers and landowners were Catholic, the American Catholic Church was placed in the challenging position of choosing sides in an intrafaith conflict. Twice Ch‡vez petitioned the Catholic Church for help. Finally, in 1969 the American Catholic hierarchy responded by creating the BishopsÕ Ad Hoc Committee on Farm Labor. This committee of five bishops and two priests traveled CaliforniaÕs Central Valley and mediated a settlement in the five-year conflict. Within months, a new and more difficult struggle began in CaliforniaÕs lettuce fields. This time the Catholic Church drew on its long-standing tradition of social teaching and shifted its policy from neutrality to outright support for CŽsar Ch‡vez and his union, the United Farmworkers (UFW). The BishopsÕ Committee became so instrumental in the UFWÕs success that Ch‡vez declared its intervention Òthe single most important thing that has helped us.Ó Drawing upon rich, untapped archival sources at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Marco Prouty exposes the American Catholic hierarchyÕs internal, and often confidential, deliberations during the California farm labor crisis of the 1960s and 1970s. He traces the ChurchÕs gradual transition from reluctant mediator to outright supporter of Ch‡vez, providing an intimate view of the ChurchÕs decision-making process and Ch‡vezÕs steadfast struggle to win rights for farmworkers. This lucid, solidly researched text will be an invaluable addition to the fields of labor history, social justice, ethnic studies, and religious history.


Environmental Justice and Farm Labor

Environmental Justice and Farm Labor

Author: Rebecca E. Berkey

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-02-17

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 1317293673

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Utilizing a model derived from literature on environmental justice overlaid with multiple scales of agriculture, Environmental Justice and Farm Labor provides key insights about laborers in agriculture in the United States. It addresses three main topics: (1) justice-related issues facing farmers and laborers on farms; (2) how history and policy have impacted them; and (3) the opportunities and leverage points for change in improving justice outcomes. It explores who labors in US agriculture and the justice-related issues facing these workers, including occupational injury and illness, lack of access to healthcare, substandard housing, hunger, low wages, issues pertaining to immigration, and the inability to organize. In addition, it assesses the impacts of labor safety, immigration and international policy, and in particular the effects of organic and fair trade certification. Two detailed case studies, one based on conventional agriculture in Florida and the other on organic agriculture in the Northeast, highlight the interrelated but unique challenges facing those who labor in the different sectors of this complex agricultural system. Finally, it touches on justice claims and the role of grassroots activism in improving justice outcomes by highlighting organizations operating at multiple scales to contribute to the livelihood of farmers and laborers in the different areas of agriculture.


The Right to Stay Home

The Right to Stay Home

Author: David Bacon

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 2013-09-10

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 0807001627

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The story of the growing resistance of Mexican communities to the poverty that forces people to migrate to the United States People across Mexico are being forced into migration, and while 11 percent of that country’s population lives north of the US border, the decision to migrate is rarely voluntary. Free trade agreements and economic policies that exacerbate and reinforce extreme wealth disparities make it impossible for Mexicans to make a living at home. And yet when they migrate to the United States, they must grapple with criminalization, low wages, and exploitation. In The Right to Stay Home, journalist David Bacon tells the story of the growing resistance of Mexican communities. Bacon shows how immigrant communities are fighting back—envisioning a world in which migration isn’t forced by poverty or environmental destruction and people are guaranteed the “right to stay home.” This richly detailed and comprehensive portrait of immigration reveals how the interconnected web of labor, migration, and the global economy unites farmers, migrant workers, and union organizers across borders. In addition to incisive reporting, eleven narratives are included, giving readers the chance to hear the voices of activists themselves as they reflect on their experiences, analyze the complexities of their realities, and affirm their vision for a better world.


The Devil's Fruit

The Devil's Fruit

Author: Dvera I. Saxton

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2021-02-12

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 081359863X

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The Devil's Fruit describes the facets of the strawberry industry as a harm industry, and explores author Dvera Saxton’s activist ethnographic work with farmworkers in response to health and environmental injustices. She argues that dealing with devilish—as in deadly, depressing, disabling, and toxic—problems requires intersecting ecosocial, emotional, ethnographic, and activist labors. Through her work as an activist medical anthropologist, she found the caring labors of engaged ethnography take on many forms that go in many different directions. Through chapters that examine farmworkers’ embodiment of toxic pesticides and social and workplace relationships, Saxton critically and reflexively describes and analyzes the ways that engaged and activist ethnographic methods, frameworks, and ethics aligned and conflicted, and in various ways helped support still ongoing struggles for farmworker health and environmental justice in California. These are problems shared by other agricultural communities in the U.S. and throughout the world.


Going Over Home

Going Over Home

Author: Charles Thompson, Jr.

Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing

Published: 2019-10-03

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1603589139

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Booklist Editors’ Choice “Best Books of 2019” An intimate portrait of the joys and hardships of rural life, as one man searches for community, equality, and tradition in Appalachia Charles D. Thompson, Jr. was born in southwestern Virginia into an extended family of small farmers. Yet as he came of age he witnessed the demise of every farm in his family. Over the course of his own life of farming, rural education, organizing, and activism, the stories of his home place have been his constant inspiration, helping him identify with the losses of others and to fight against injustices. In Going Over Home, Thompson shares revelations and reflections, from cattle auctions with his grandfather to community gardens in the coal camps of eastern Kentucky, racial disparities of white and Black landownership in the South to recent work with migrant farm workers from Latin America. In this heartfelt first-person narrative, Thompson unpacks our country’s agricultural myths and addresses the history of racism and wealth inequality and how they have come to bear on our nation’s rural places and their people.


Life on the Other Border

Life on the Other Border

Author: Teresa M. Mares

Publisher: University of California Press

Published: 2019-04-16

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 0520295730

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In her timely new book, Teresa M. Mares explores the intersections of structural vulnerability and food insecurity experienced by migrant farmworkers in the northeastern borderlands of the United States. Through ethnographic portraits of Latinx farmworkers who labor in Vermont’s dairy industry, Mares powerfully illuminates the complex and resilient ways workers sustain themselves and their families while also serving as the backbone of the state’s agricultural economy. In doing so, Life on the Other Border exposes how broader movements for food justice and labor rights play out in the agricultural sector, and powerfully points to the misaligned agriculture and immigration policies impacting our food system today.


Journey for Justice

Journey for Justice

Author: Gayle Romasanta

Publisher:

Published: 2018-10

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781732199323

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This book, written by historian Dawn Bohulano Mabalon with writer Gayle Romasanta, richly illustrated by Andre Sibayan, tells the story of Larry Itliong's lifelong fight for a farmworkers union, and the birth of one of the most significant American social movements of all time, the farmworker's struggle, and its most enduring union, the United Farm Workers.


Finding Latinx

Finding Latinx

Author: Paola Ramos

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2020-10-20

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1984899104

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Latinos across the United States are redefining identities, pushing boundaries, and awakening politically in powerful and surprising ways. Many—Afrolatino, indigenous, Muslim, queer and undocumented, living in large cities and small towns—are voices who have been chronically overlooked in how the diverse population of almost sixty million Latinos in the U.S. has been represented. No longer. In this empowering cross-country travelogue, journalist and activist Paola Ramos embarks on a journey to find the communities of people defining the controversial term, “Latinx.” She introduces us to the indigenous Oaxacans who rebuilt the main street in a post-industrial town in upstate New York, the “Las Poderosas” who fight for reproductive rights in Texas, the musicians in Milwaukee whose beats reassure others of their belonging, as well as drag queens, environmental activists, farmworkers, and the migrants detained at our border. Drawing on intensive field research as well as her own personal story, Ramos chronicles how “Latinx” has given rise to a sense of collectivity and solidarity among Latinos unseen in this country for decades. A vital and inspiring work of reportage, Finding Latinx calls on all of us to expand our understanding of what it means to be Latino and what it means to be American. The first step towards change, writes Ramos, is for us to recognize who we are.