For Readers Who Can Perform Miracles

Guest blog post by April Simon

I am rarely at a loss for words. In four years of sharing farmworker justice with children, I have never been faced with a question that I could not immediately answer, or quickly find information on. Presenting to a particular fourth-grade class this spring, I found myself in a unique position.

“Is there a book we can get for our class, so we can study more?”

There is no shortage of literature on migrant and agricultural workers in the United States. Much of this is geared toward adults and, at the risk of offending authors and researchers, often rather dry and pedantic. Not exactly kid-friendly.

With a handful of exceptions, books geared toward children focus on Cesar Chavez. While it is indisputable that the man and his work were of monumental importance to the movement, there is so much more to the story.

I explained this to the class, and made a few suggestions (my favorites, Amelia’s Road, by Linda Jacobs Altman and Gathering the Sun, by Alma Flor Ada). They were, unsurprisingly, not satisfied with that. Youth are interested in the now, what is happening today, and how they can get involved.

“Why don’t you write a book?”

This is where they stumped me. I had, in fact, often ruminated on writing a book to accompany the curriculums I developed for pre-K through sixth grades. Though there was clearly a need, there never seemed enough time, and I wondered if there was even a real interest. The fourth graders were telling me loud and clear that there is- and they wanted to know why I wasn’t doing anything about it.

At home that night, I couldn’t shake the idea. The seed they planted stuck hard. After years of going out and telling kids that they can go out and make a real difference in the world with whatever talents they possess- they had finally turned  the tables on me. It was my turn to act.

My degrees are in Child Development and Spanish, with a minor in English writing. My curriculum has been presented to every age group from three-year-olds through the aging Rotary Club set. Who better, I was forced to ask myself, to tackle this task?

“I don’t want to write for adults. I want to write for readers who can perform miracles. Only children perform miracles when they read.” —Astrid Lindgren

There will be two books. One, a picture book geared toward children aged seven and under. This is a day-in-the life story of a worker. The text comes from the account of a man I met a few years ago, and relates life in los campos to his experiences and family in Mexico. For this, I have asked Emily Drakage to collaborate/illustrate. Her experiences, particularly with farmworker youth, and her amazing artistic talent will give a depth and sincerity often lacking in literature for the very young.

The second will be for grades 2 through 6. It will include facts, activities, personal stories, and pose questions to the readers to help initiate conversations. There will be a glossary and resource list in the appendix, and possibly an updateable online component for the tech-savvy.

If you would like more information, or are interested in contributing to this project, please contact me (April Simon) at:  alsimoncds@gmail.com.

U.S Department of Labor Keeps Children in Harm’s Way

By Emily Drakage, NC Regional Coordinator, Children in the Fields Campaign - Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs

This spring North Carolinians are enjoying their local farmers markets as they begin to overflow with a myriad of fresh fruits and vegetables planted and harvested here in the state. Joy can be found on the faces of folks as they purchase a rainbow of delectable and affordable produce. Springtime for migrant and seasonal farmworker children in North Carolina, carries an entirely different implication. Many of these children must labor 40+ hours a week in the fields to help their families get by.  They are subjected to unsanitary, hazardous, and back-breaking labor conditions. It seems surreal for a state with an over-abundance of agricultural revenue to have child labor tangled up within it. 

Meanwhile, agriculture continues to be the most dangerous industry for children to work in.  In fact, three-quarters of the children under age 16 who died while working for wages in 2010 were killed while working on farms according to the Bureau of Labor statistics. The Department of Labor recently proposed safety updates to the rules governing child labor in agriculture—it would have been the first change in 41 years.

The updates were common sense changes to protect farmworker children from known dangers and would still have allowed children to perform any type of task on their parents’ farm, at any age. This is an exemption secured through the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which is statutory and therefore cannot be changed by a federal agency. Members of Congress also introduced legislation in the House and Senate to block the implementation of the protections called, "Preserving America's Family Farm Act."  Even after advocacy groups held a press conference with a panel of experts from the education, health and agriculture communities to dispel the misinformation surrounding the proposed rules, the Obama administration in the end conceded to the large and misguided outcry from the opposition.   

Throughout the summer let us not forget the farmworker children who sacrifice their childhood, health, and wellbeing to bring us the fruits of their labor at what appears to be a “low cost.”   

For more information, click here: http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/the-administration/225809-labor-department-abandons-child-farmworkers.

Workers’ Memorial Day: Remembering those who have died on the job in NC

By Tom O'Connor, Executive Director, National Council for Occupational Safety and Health

2011 was a bad year for North Carolina’s Hispanic workers, especially those working in construction and agriculture. Although they make up only about seven percent of the state’s population, Latinos accounted for 30 percent of deaths on the job in NC in 2011 according to a report to be released this week in conjunction with Workers’ Memorial Day, April 28. A majority of these deaths occurred in the construction and agriculture industries and most were due to highly preventable causes.

"North Carolina Workers: Dying for a Job," produced by the Raleigh-based National Council for Occupational Safety and Health and the recently formed Triangle area Jobs with Justice chapter, found that:

• The State Department of Labor grossly understates the problem of worker deaths in NC. The NCDOL reported earlier this year that 53 people died on the job in NC in 2011. The report counted a total of 83 deaths.
• Fines imposed by Labor Commissioner Cherie Berry’s OSHA are pathetically low, even in cases of worker deaths. The median fine paid by employers in cases of worker deaths in NC in which at least one OSHA violation was found was only $3,250. These fines are far too low to act as an effective deterrent to unsafe employer behavior.
• State and local governments are using taxpayer dollars to support some employers who criminally neglect their workers’ safety and health, sometimes with tragic consequences.

The case of Triangle Grading and Paving is a prime example. Luis Castaneda Gomez, an employee of the company, told his wife that he feared for his life on his construction job. “Luis didn't want to work for the company….He would say they would force him to do stuff that was dangerous,” his wife told a reporter. But he couldn’t find any other jobs in the slow economy. Sadly, the 34 year old construction worker’s worst fears came to pass. He and a co-worker, Jesus Martinez Benitez, were sent down into a manhole on the site of a road construction project in Durham. The men had not been given oxygen detectors nor equipment that is required for work in confined spaces. Both men died from asphyxiation in the oxygen-deficient atmosphere of the manhole. The company had been awarded the contract because they were the lowest bidder, despite a long history of OSHA violations and a previous fatality. (Click here for more on this case.)

The groups will be releasing their report at a Workers’ Memorial Day commemoration event in front of the State Department of Labor office at 4 W. Edenton St. in downtown Raleigh on Friday April 27 at 12:00 noon.

Please come out and show your support for safe workplaces for all North Carolina workers!

The NC Farm Bureau Shares Concern about Immigration Enforcement’s Effects on Agriculture

By Erin Krauss

This spring, the North Carolina Farm Bureau released a video-advertisement that encourages North Carolina lawmakers to think about the implications of harsh immigration enforcement policies on the agriculture industry. The NC Farm Bureau, founded in 1936, claims to represent 500,000 member families with ties to the agriculture economy.

The video’s message is clear: when agricultural states crack down on immigrant workers, there is a huge cost to farmers and the states’ economies overall.

Alabama is mentioned as an example; and recent events there make for a depressing situation. Last summer, AL enacted a harsh local immigration law that resulted in numerous consequences for the immigrant community. After the law went into effect, a mass exodus of community members fled the state causing a major blow to the state’s farm industry, which depends heavily on immigrant labor to be successful. Replacing these workers has proven to be virtually impossible.

As one AL farmer states in an interview on NPR: "That isn't the kind of job most of us want to do…I don't blame them for not wanting to do [it], but somebody's got to do it if we're going to keep eating for the price that we are eating at." The interview goes on to quote a farmer who recognizes that many farmworkers have come to make the US their home and have families and community here: "You got people's been living here 25 years. They've raised families here, they've got a residence; they've made a life here… I've got very good friends, almost like family, that's been working for us for years and years. I don't think that's right."

Here at home, North Carolina has been facing it’s own set of proposed anti-immigrant legislation. Beyond instilling fear, anger, and magnifying a strong sense of dehumanization in the immigrant community; these kinds of immigration laws threaten to bring the local agriculture industry to a halt. How would NC presume to be any different or be any more prepared than Alabama was to deal with the consequences of ostracizing and criminalizing an already undervalued workforce? The success of North Carolina economy depends heavily on agriculture (it provides 22% of the state’s income), and it could not survive without the workers that keep fruits and vegetables moving from the fields to our tables.

Farmworkers, farmworker advocates, and the farm owner community don’t always agree. But this year, the concern about draconian immigration enforcement and the inevitable devastation of NC agriculture is one concern that many stakeholders share. Although farmworker advocates have long recognized that farmworker justice cannot be achieved by way of immigration advocacy only (fair treatment of farm workers is a labor rights issue that should be recognized as such for any population working in the fields), there is no denying that immigration law *does* effect the farmworker community and the agriculture industry in North Carolina.

We must think deeply about the multiple impacts (economic & humanitarian) of immigration laws, and in doing so, perhaps we will begin to finally recognize the human element behind immigration enforcement & the human element that has always existed behind the production of our food.

Spotlight on Child Labor

By Drew Gores, Undergraduate Student, Duke University 

Child labor has entered the spotlight in recent months as two states have introduced bills that would weaken legal protections for child workers. During the spring, Missouri State Senator Jane Cunningham introduced SB222, which aims to reduce the minimum age at which a child may be employed and eliminate restrictions on the number of hours a child is allowed to work. Elsewhere, the Maine state legislature held hearings on a bill which would permit high school students to work for more hours during the week and at later times of night.

Opponents claim that passage of these bills would facilitate the exploitation of child workers. Missing from the national discussion, however, is any mention of the fact that children working in our nation's agricultural industry already face far more harmful working conditions than even those which would be introduced by the Maine and Missouri bills. This issue is of special interest to North Carolinians. Because our state's farms employ about 150,000 farmworkers every year - some of which are children^.  

For the last 70 years, child farmworkers have been excluded from even the minimum federal legislation which protects child workers in other industries. To work at a restaurant, for example, a child must be 16, while children as young as 12 and 13 can work on a farm with parental permission.

This discrepancy in the laws persists despite the fact that the Centers for Disease Control’s National Institute for Occupational Safety Health (NIOSH) has rated the agricultural industry the most dangerous occupation for young workers. Children working in the fields labor long hours in the hot sun. They carry heavy loads and face exposure to toxic pesticides and dangerous machinery. Because they are still growing, child farmworkers are extremely susceptible to illness and trauma as a result of this work.

North Carolinians are taking action to ensure that all children in North Carolina are able to enjoy a safe childhood. Representatives Jordan and Parfitt introduced the Protect Youth/Farm Family Employment Bill, which limits the number of hours that 14- and 15-year-olds can work in our state's fields.

Farm labor is the backbone of North Carolina's agricultural industry, a sector which contributes 70.1 billion dollars to our state's GSP annually. Without strict rules regulating child labor, this industry is profiting as it puts children in harm's way. 

A Tomato Daydream

By Erin Krauss, Long term resident of NC, lover of just-food, community social worker, FAN Volunteer

My daydream thoughts: Tomatoes are here. Every Saturday, I stroll down to the community farmers market and walk the circle twice, maybe three times – admiring the colors, the smells and the imagined tastes of all the homegrown vegetables I see. Lately, tomatoes have been available in great supply and will continue to be as long as the heat lasts. In the front yard of my apartment building, tomatoes are also thriving. A raised garden bed and multiple buckets make for prime growing space; I am proud and relieved that I’ve finally found the time and space for urban gardening.

Just as my daydream about tomatoes begins to ripen over weeks of planting, watering, and finally picking, I am reminded of the tomato turmoil that exists in the world we live in. I’m not talking about bugs or deer attacks or salsa gone bad; I’m talking about massive global systems wrapped up in the tomato harvest and the many people whose lives depend on these systems.

Barry Estabrook’s new book, Tomatoland, tells the tale of this tomato turmoil. Estabrook was recently featured on NPR’s Fresh Air. During the interview, the author spoke to all the things in my daydream: a tomato’s color, taste, harvest and even nutritional value. He also told the story about how this crop has evolved to be an out-of-season commodity that large-scale farmers in Florida depend on and often exploit for economic gain. The interview explained how the fruit is pumped with nutrients and pesticides to survive in Florida’s climate (which it turns out is not ideal for tomato growing), then picked while hard and green and gassed to achieve artificially ripe coloring. According to Estabrook, in the 1960’s grocery store tomatoes had about 25% more vitamin C and much more niacin and calcium than they do now.

Estabrook also explored the issue of who does the hard labor of tomato harvest and what the consequences are for the people working the fields, including child-labor, modern day slavery, deplorable conditions, poverty wages. In Estabrook’s words, "Of the legal jobs available, picking tomatoes is at the very bottom of the economic ladder. I came into this book chronicling a case of slavery in southwestern Florida that came to light in 2007 and 2008… These were people who were bought and sold. These were people who were shackled in chains at night or locked in the back of produce trucks with no sanitary facilities all night.” Although seven legal cases have been successfully brought to court in the recent past regarding current day slavery, abysmal conditions still abound.

Many of us are familiar with stories of Florida tomatoes and the Coalition of Immokalee (CIW) Workers, including the gains that CIW has made in their long fight for fair treatment and wages, and the challenges they still face. As I listened to this interview on a popular NPR program, I had to pause. These days food writers, foodies, small-scale farmers, anti-hunger workers and people generally concerned with food are all noticing how the agriculture industry in the US is failing on several fronts. Tastes and nutrients have declined while small-scale farmers are increasingly competing all over the world with industrial-scale farming operations. Despite the massive yield of those operations, roughly 1 out of 4 children under 5 go hungry in North Carolina. So who is winning here? The US agriculture industry is failing the American people – the workers, the consumers, small farm owners and hungry children. It seems clear that this system is so broken it’s not working for anyone except massive corporate interests.

Beyond feeling satisfied with the small mark I’ve made by planting my own tomatoes this year, I am grateful for Fresh Air’s interview about Tomatoland. I am grateful for the reminder that all of us are touched by the food system – those who work in it, and those who consume the fruits of labor. We must work together to make this system function well and treat people with dignity. What would it take for our nation’s tomatoes once again to be rich in vitamin C and other nutrients? What would it take for the workers who pick this fruit to be treated with respect? What would it take for this food to really arrive on the plates of the people who need it the most? These are the questions we must make ourselves think about this season while we enjoy fresh summer tomatoes – whether they’re from the grocery store, the farmers market or from our very own back yards.

Let there be dignity in food.

Faces in the Fields

Workers harvesting sweet potato in 2009. Photo by Peter Eversoll.By Zachary Kohn
Law Intern, NCJC 
J.D. Candidate 2013
UNC School of Law

This summer on outreach, I had the privilege to talk to farmworkers about everything from La Copa de Oro to minimum wage laws, and witnessed everything from scrimmage soccer matches, to workers trotting home under a majestic sunset with dozens of buckets strapped to their limbs, to tractors spraying pesticides in fields right next to farmworker housing. I enjoyed the aroma of delicious traditional meals being prepared at the end of the day, shared tortillas off of a truck with famished workers and even filed a few complaints with the NCDOL on behalf of farmworkers. 

Among the most memorable experiences so far was at a migrant labor camp where workers are suffering from bed bugs, snake bites, inadequate bathroom and water breaks, and housing with malfunctioning toilets, refrigerators, and stoves. The farmworkers at this camp, a talkative and friendly bunch, did not bring up any of these issues until we had been talking for hours. Even when the problems came to light, almost no worker wanted to file the complaint, even anonymously, out of fear that their employer might retaliate. Fortunately one worker had the desire for change. He told us that he would make the complaint not for himself, but for his fellow workers and future workers living at that camp. I cannot imagine a better client or a more righteous act.

Migrant farmworkers, just like anybody else, need to be able to prepare and store food free from insect infestation, earn livable wages, receive proper medical care, have access to water and bathrooms at the workplace, work in a location free from exposure to pesticides, have privacy in their homes and sleep on actual beds with mattresses. And no one should have to work for an employer who takes advantage of him or her.  Unfortunately, most of what we would consider basic requirements for human beings appears to be frequently denied to these incredibly hardworking, optimistic people.

Nonetheless, we can apply the same optimism and dedication the farmworkers have when they travel thousands of miles from home to do back-breaking work, by refusing to let others treat these workers as a distant abstraction. We must do everything in our capacity to demonstrate our belief that these honest people deserve an opportunity for a better future instead of being cheated, abused and lied to. We can witness, speak to farm workers, share our knowledge with others, make documentaries, pressure the legislature to pass bills in favor of humane treatment of farm workers, write about our experiences with workers, file complaints on their behalf, and even file lawsuits. What we cannot do is be complacent and accept their mistreatment. We must act. 

The outreach trips have been one of the most rewarding aspects of my legal internship at the Justice Center. Aside from interacting with clients and brushing up on my Spanish, I witnessed the hidden realities of our agricultural system, awakened to the plight of the truly impoverished, reignited my desire to study law and learned firsthand that even in the most truly difficult situations people can find happiness and hope. While it's frustrating at times to see progress in farmworker's lives develop so slowly, I can only hope that they have received at least a fraction of the benefit I gained from participating in this incredible experience.