Walking the Fields, From Liberia to California

Sacramento Bee

High Country News has long been one of our favorite publications; they consistently think in new terms about the West, but also about urban-rural and rural-international connections. Such a perspective continues with "In Rural California, a Liberian Family Finds an Agricultural Refuge," by Laura Markham.  

Markham's article offers not only an inspiring story of how immigrant families are contributing to local agriculture, but also a much-needed look into how African-Americans helped to transform such practices in the state last century. We'll include an excerpt below:

On a historic 50-acre ranch in Northern California, Cynnomih Tarlesson and her nine children drop watermelon seeds into the ground. Behind them, her father, Roosevelt, uses a tractor to churn up the dirt for tomatoes, zucchini and eggplant -- along with some lesser-known crops, like the Tarlesson-named 'Billy Goat Pepper,' from the family's native West Africa.

When war erupted in her Liberian hometown in 1990, Cynnomih and her family fled their farm and lived for over two years in the bush, foraging for berries, shoots and small fish. After several years in a refugee camp in the Ivory Coast, Cynnomih, now 43, finally received permission to come to the U.S. as a refugee, along with 25 younger siblings and children (biological and adopted). They joined her father, Rev. Roosevelt Tarlesson, in Vacaville, Calif., where he had lived since the 1970s.

Vacaville was a peaceful escape from the harsh refugee-camp life in Ivory Coast -- plenty of food, friendly neighbors and teachers assisting their transition to U.S. life. Yet in this suburban environment, the family's job prospects were low and financial pressures high. They missed farming; they missed the land. So in 2007, the Tarlessons secured a loan to buy property in nearby Guinda, population 254. 'When refugees are brought to this country, they are put in cities, making minimum wage at factories. Why? They know how to farm. Let them farm!' says Rev. Tarlesson, who's pushing this idea with resettlement agencies at the national level.

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For The Weekend: Colbert, Silver Screens, and Mother Vines

photograph of The Mother Vine from southwynde.com

Here's a few follow-ups and items of interest for your weekend consideration:

Earlier in the week we discussed the United Farm Workers' "Take Our Jobs" campaign. Here's the UFW president Arturo Rodriguez with Stephen Colbert, who has become the fourth person to accept a job in the fields:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Arturo Rodriguez
www.colbertnation.com
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After our mention of Patricia Leigh Brown's New York Times article on small town movie theaters, Andrea, in a comment on our Facebook page, suggested this film: Small Town Silver Screen. Produced, directed and edited by Bryce Jarrett, this film describes the culture of small town movie theaters in rural South Dakota. The trailer is included below; you can follow this link to watch the whole film on YouTube:

We're looking to explore the culture of wine-making in rural America soon, and this NPR story caught our attention: The Mother Vine, the oldest cultivated grapevine in North America (400 years old!) was sprayed with herbicides by a utilities crew this spring. Melissa Block talks to John Wilson, a member of the family who is currently working to restore the vine to health.

The Farmville Files: Take Our Jobs

photograph by Rick Nahmias from The Migrant Project

Last evening the NPR program Tell Me More featured a conversation between host Michel Martin and Arturo Rodriguez, the president of the United Farm Workers; his union recently launched a campaign called Take Our Jobs. Coming on the heels of the federal lawsuit over Arizona's new illegal immigrations law, the campaign offers an easy online application form through which everyday Americans (presumably in borders states) can apply to work alongside the documented and undocumented. Here's how the UFW frames the presence and necessity of this immigrant farm workforce and their place in our country's current economic and cultural debates:

There are two issues facing our nation--high unemployment and undocumented people in the workforce--that many Americans believe are related.

Missing from the debate on both issues is an honest recognition that the food we all eat - at home, in restaurants and workplace cafeterias (including those in the Capitol) - comes to us from the labor of undocumented farm workers.

Agriculture in the United States is dependent on an immigrant workforce. Three-quarters of all crop workers working in American agriculture were born outside the United States. According to government statistics, since the late 1990s, at least 50% of the crop workers have not been authorized to work legally in the United States. 

To counter their notion that "we are a nation in denial about our food supply," the UFW is welcoming applications. While this campaign is undoubtedly geared as much toward the media as toward unemployed Americans (Mr. Rodriguez is appearing on the Colbert Show tonight), it raises a whole host of questions that extend far beyond the current flare-ups in Arizona. These are questions just as pertinent in Wheeling, West Virginia as in Phoenix. 

Ms. Martin also included journalist Gabriel Thompson in the discussion: he's the author of the recent Working In The Shadows: A Year Doing The Jobs (Most) Americans Won't Do, a book that chronicled his experiences working alongside Latino immigrants as a bicycle delivery "boy," at a rural Alabama chicken slaughterhouse and, among others, a farm worker in the southwest. Here's a segment of the transcript:

GABRIEL THOMPSON: People would say after five days you start getting use to it and the pain goes away. But really what happens is you just you start redefining what constitutes pain. And so you just have to become use to always having your hands swollen, and used to your back going out, and used to falling asleep at the drop of a hat.

I would say, the positive is that, as opposed to some of the other jobs I did, there is a real feeling in the fields - at least where I was - of solidarity among workers - about workers really feeling that the work they're doing has a lot of dignity. And they - even if American consumers in grocery stores dont make the connection, workers in the fields make the connection that they are literally feeding the United States American citizens and doing some of the hardest jobs that exist. 

MICHEL MARTIN: Mr. Rodriguez, I noticed that you laughed when Gabriel mentioned that living with the constant pain and you actually chuckled. Why did you chuckle? 

ARTURO RODRIGUEZ: No, because it's true. I mean your hands are swollen. They're cut up. They're stained. And the women that oftentimes theyll work on their knees and their knees are brown so they won't wear skirts because they're ashamed of showing that off to people. I mean those are just the realities that farm workers face every single day. So it's a grueling effort, a grueling job that takes place and they get very little recognition for what they do. But the reality is, that if it wasnt for them, we would not have food on our tables every single day. 

For another interpretation, visit The Migrant Project, a photography exhibit by Rick Nahmias, from which the image above was taken. The University of New Mexico Press has recently published a book of these photographs alongside a selection of essays on this issue. Through this book, and Mr. Nahmias's sale of prints and his speaking appearances, a great deal of money has been raised to benefit these workers and their families.

Mexican Migrant Workers, Vermont Dairy Farmers and Local Artists

photograph by Caleb Kenna

The only thing that we want is to work and to have a better future in Mexico.

- A Migrant Worker

I would definitely prefer something different than the scenario that is in place at this time. It's uncomfortable to me as an American citizen to have to feel that I'm doing something wrong.

- Dairy Farmer

The Vermont Folklife Center is currently featuring Invisible Odysseys: Art By and About Mexican Farm Workers in Vermont, a collaboration between many facets of the local community: students at the Lincoln Community School, local Mexican migrant workers and artist/wrtier B. Amore. This exhibit was inspired by The Golden Cage Project, itself a collabartion between Chris Urban, a former Vermont Migrant Education tutor, and Chris Kenna, a photographer. Their work was previously on display at the VFC; here's how they describe the Golden Cage Project:

Migrant Mexican farm workers began arriving on Vermont dairy farms almost ten years ago and continue to work here living hidden lives. Through intimate photographs and interviews, this project strives to create a revealing portrait of dairy farmers and their Mexican employees and offer a glimpse into their interdependent lives--exploring who they are and what they hope for. 

.....

Although this project focuses on Addison County, the same stories could be told in dairy farming communities around Vermont and throughout the United States. The documentary process brings this world into view in all of its complexity and contradiction.

The Golden Cage Project has a beautifully-designed website to go with the photographs and audio interviews of these farm workers. I'm sure that our readers may disagree on the specifics of immigration reform, but there is no denying the value of what's accomplished here by Mr. Urban and Mr. Kenna: they are telling a compelling and complicated story. 

As seen above, the students involved in Invisible Odysseys created poetry, prose and visual art inspired by these stories. B. Amore also "brought paints, wooden boxes, and mixed media materials to Mexican workers so that they could engage in making three-dimensional representations of their personal journey."

The exhibit opens on April 22nd--we'll share more of the artwork and discussions in the coming weeks.

Saving Texas Dance Halls, One Two-Step At A Time

From John Burnett's piece on NPR:

Dance halls throughout Central Texas have been dying off from decay and disuse. The best way to save them? 'Dance in them,' says Patrick Sparks, a structural engineer and president of Texas Dance Hall Preservation Inc.

'My view is that the dance halls are the most Texas thing there is,' Sparks says. 'You get a look back at 19th-century Texas and the European immigrants that came and formed such a strong part of our character.'

Here's a video from Texas Dance Hall Preservation: