David Bacon
PeoplesWorld
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Past articles by David:
Farm Workforce Modernization Act’s failure reveals division in immigrant rights movement – People's World
For the United Farm Workers and its allies on Capitol Hill, the failure of the Farm Workforce Modernization Act (FWMA) was a defeat for their campaign to win legal immigration status for undocumented field laborers. → Read More
Ill harvest: In rural California, farmworkers fend for themselves for health care
Carmen Hernandez lives in a small home on Chateau Fresno Avenue, one of the three streets that make up Lanare, a tiny unincorporated settlement in the San Joaquin Valley. The street’s name sounds more appropriate to an upscale housing development. → Read More
Oakland’s unhoused targeted for eviction, but where will they go?
OAKLAND—Seven years ago, people began setting up what became Oakland's largest and oldest encampment under a freeway maze by a train yard, as the city's housing crisis grew increasingly serious. → Read More
Revival of Bracero Program is the wrong path to take
Ninety-six years ago, J.W. Guiberson, a San Joaquin Valley cotton grower, explained a primary goal of the country's biggest agricultural interests. The class of labor we want, he said, is the kind we can send home when we get through with them. → Read More
Trouble in the tulips
MT. VERNON, WA — Tulips and daffodils symbolize the arrival of spring, but the fields are bitterly cold when workers' labors begin. Snow still covers the ground when workers go into the tulip rows to plant bulbs in northwest Washington state, near the Canadian border. → Read More
In 114-degree heat farmworkers are still at work
In a field near Arvin, at the southern end of California's San Joaquin Valley, dozens of workers arrive at 5:30 in the morning. It's already over 80 degrees, and by midafternoon the temperature will top 114 degrees, according to my iPhone. → Read More
“Modernization” Act good for growers, not for workers – People's World
If the Senate passes, and President Biden signs, the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, U.S. growers and labor contractors will benefit, but most farmworkers will not. There should be no question that undocumented farmworkers need and deserve legal status in this country. → Read More
Biden’s immigration reform should roll back exploitative ‘guest worker’ programs
The current guest worker system prioritizes agricultural growers' profits over immigrants' and workers' rights. Joe Biden should seek a different way: building an immigration system based on family reunification, community stability, and immigrant workers' rights to decent wages, health, and housing... → Read More
Abandonment of COVID protections puts farm workers in a stranglehold
Growers are just beginning to bring this year’s wave of contracted laborers into Washington State for the coming season to pick apples, cherries, and other fruit. → Read More
Farmworkers need families, not deportation and exploitation
During the Trump administration, the U.S. deported an average of 275,725 people per year, almost the same number of workers - 257,667 - brought by growers last year to labor in U.S. fields. Contract laborers on H2-A visas now make up is a tenth of the U.S. → Read More
San Quentin vigil says incarceration has become a death sentence
On Sunday, July 19, about a hundred people gathered at the gate of San Quentin State Prison in San Rafael, to call for the release of prisoners because of the terrifying spread of COVID-19 inside the facility. → Read More
Amazon workers on May Day: Protect us from this virus
I was three when my mother and father took me to one of the last May Day marches and rallies in New York City's Union Square. Police and rightwing golpeadores (beaters, as they're called in Mexico) attacked the people in the square, mostly families like ours. → Read More
Farmworkers are “essential” but excluded, awaiting the virus
In fields and rural communities across the United States the nation's 2.5 million agricultural laborers are waiting for the shoe to drop - for the first cases of coronavirus among farmworkers. → Read More
In Philippines’ banana plantations: Children working in the trees, parents on strike
From the archives of photographer David Bacon, this collection tells of his visit to the banana plantations of Mindanao, in the Philippines, where he found children working in the trees, and a strike by members of banana cooperatives against the Dole Corporation, to end the poverty that sends childr... → Read More
Taking sides and telling the truth: The hidden history of the Arnautoff mural
Editor’s note: Last week, the San Francisco Board of Education voted to paint over a 1936 mural titled “The Life of George Washington,” at the city’s George Washington High School. The mural is the work of artist Victor Arnautoff. → Read More
Oil workers move to reclaim power for the people in Iraq
As millions of people marched against the invasion of Iraq in the early 2000s, many carried signs pointing an accusing finger at Dick Cheney and Halliburton - No Blood for Oil! But seeing that oil was a motivating factor for the war did not necessarily mean that people understood much about Iraq... → Read More
Fired just for asking for a raise, Washington farm workers organize
In 2013, in Washington State, Familias Unidas por la Justicia was born when migrant indigenous Mexican blueberry pickers refused to go into the fields of Sakuma Brothers Farms after one of them had been fired for asking for a wage increase. → Read More
After the national elections Mexico’s electrical workers rebuild their union
Mexico's new President, Andres Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), probably the only head of state to give two press conferences a day and then post them online, is accustomed to having his statements cause headlines. → Read More
Will growers’ demands for wage cuts get help from the U.S. government?
California growers have complained of a tight labor market for years, as a militarized border and a decade of mass deportations restrict the flow of migrants into the fields. Some growers, like Salinas' D'Arrigo Brothers Co. → Read More
A new day for Mexican workers
NAFTA had been in effect for just a few months when Ruben Ruiz got a job at the Itapsa factory in Mexico City in the summer of 1994. Itapsa made auto brakes for Echlin, a U.S. manufacturer later bought out by the huge Dana Aftermarket Group. → Read More