Vote for Joe

Our family stood in solidarity with a group of Latinos on a downtown square in Hollister, California, yesterday. They were there to protest current, hot-button proposed new immigration policies that, among other things, would: make it a felony to be an illegal immigrant; entail stepped up deportation of illegal immigrants; significanlty increase fines to employers hiring illegal immigrants; add more secure fencing and stronger “virtual fences” (more border patrol in the air, on the ground…). The group in Hollister comprised one of numerous protests around the country over the weekend, including a phenomenal 500,000 person turn-out in Los Angeles… Hollister’s Cynthia Lee told me she believed Latinos do jobs Whites won’t do, especially in the fields. “You don’t see White farm workers in the fields, period,” she said. (Adding emphasis to Ms. Lee’s statement, more than 100 farm groups have joined together as the Agricultural Coalition for Immigration Reform and are rallying for change that acknowledges a reliance on immigration labor, according to a Sacramento Bee newspaper article.)… Hollister’s Gabriella Recollos told me her people work, raise families, go to church and pay taxes. “And all we want is peace and equal rights,” she said. Ms. Recillos held a sign that read: “I’m not illegal, if you check the history — I’m in my territory.” This is a reference to a time when a good part of California (Texas, Arizona…) was Mexican territory. [I said to my wife Liz that given what we did to the Native Americans “…we’re actually all illegals.”]… Fernando Perez, a Hollister website designer, was also protesting at the square. He said Americans sometimes look at immigration through a rather myopic lens. That is, “they seldom put themselves in our shoes.” Mr. Perez said he was referring to all those who risk everything to come to this country, barely being able to scrape by in taking care of their families (both here and in Mexico), and so on. This is not an issue of criminality, it’s an issue of human rights, he said. “We don’t want pity,” Mr. Perez continued. “We want justice.” He added that he believed if an illegal immigrant has been in America for a time and has been a law abiding citizen who is a contributing member to his community, there should be a provision where he is allowed to become a citizen. Our administration would believes this too, and would push for amnesty. (See our position paper on Hispanic immigration.) Note: Mr. Perez said Mexicans, for instance, often come to America because of poverty in Mexico. We saw this abject poverty first-hand on a research trip to Juarez, Mexico, several years ago. Some 200,000 people in Juarez were living in cobbled together shacks, no running water, no electricity. Parents were working in multi-national factories for $3 a shift and children were going hungry. Our administration would acknowledge this for what it is: a monumental human rights tragedy, and work stridently to try to help Hispanics in as many ways as possible here, while working just as stridently to help (more humanitarian aid, more Peace Corp help…) Hispanics be as sustainable as possible in their own countries. It’s our belief many people would rather not leave their home, family, community, culture. But when your children are hungry… To get tough on all this, to turn our backs on this tremendous human need: flies directly in the face of sound, spiritual judgement.

I was interviewed by a reporter from the Modesto Bee, a large newspaper in mid-California. The reporter asked me how the cross-country campaigning has been influencing the children. I said our Sarah, 10, has been exposed to a tremendous amount of social and environmental issues as we’ve traveled. And this has motivated her to want to make a difference. In the last year, she started a club among her pen friends. The club revolves around what kids can do “…to change the world.” The project they are working on now revolves around how kids can impact pollution in the oceans, and Sarah, for instance, has been diligently doing research and trying to come up with ways to help… And by the time Sarah is an adult, there might be a whole lot more ‘ocean’ for her and her friends to worry about. Today on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle was an article that said two seperate scientific studies show global warming and polar ice cap melting is happening “at a faster pace than believed.” And this could cause sea levels around the world to rise 13 to 20 feet by the end of the century… I gave a talk at St. Joseph’s Church in a hard scrabble area of north Sacramento today. I talked about breaking the 5th Commandment (Thou Shalt Not Kill) in relationship to abortion. But here’s an interesting theological question. If my energy-glutonous lifestyle in America (driving everywhere, central heating and air conditioning, significant consumption of products that take all kinds of fossil fuel to make — cars, furniture, appliances…) contributes significantly to global warming, polar ice cap melting, and, ultimately, the death of my Sarah and some of her friends in the next generation — in God’s eyes, have I (in a very real sense) broken the 5th Commandment? Well, sure. Note: USA Today just carried a piece on ‘Smart cars’ called: Zaps. They are mini-cars developed in Europe that are four feet shorter than BMW’s Mini Cooper. (The joke is the car is so short that Zap boasts it can be parked perpindicular to the curb.) The care gets 85 miles to a gallon — meaning considerable less emissions per mile. While most people would look at this as a positive environmental step, given the alarming global warming trend we’re facing — I see the introduction of a few of these ‘smart cars’ in America as a mere drop in the bucket (or one less drop in cascading glacial melts). What would be tremendously ‘smarter,’ would be for engineers to be rapidly designing these little cars with electric or solar power, in tandem with us going to Walkable communities with wide lanes for pedestrians, bicyclists, buggies… Anything environmentally less at this point is like: rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic… At St. Joseph’s today before I talked,a priest in his homily said one of the “great Commandments” is to “Love our neighbor as ourselves.” Another question: If we were Sarah (or anyone in her generation), would we want our generation just steaming ahead in our comfort and consumptive lifestyle and trashing the world for her (or them)? Is that in any way: “Loving our neighbor as ourselves.” Hardly.

Met David “Laughing Horse” Robinson. During the 2003 Recall Election in California, he was one of 130 people who ran for Governor (which Arnold Schwarzenegger eventually won). Robinson said he is the head of the Kawaiisu Tribe here and is also an Art Instructor at UCLA. He came in 15th place in the Governor’s race. Robinson said figures showed the top 30 finishers (except for him) each spent at least $1 million on their respective campaigns. He said he spent $1,000… I interviewed Orville Brum, who used to manage one of the biggest dairy farms in the San Joaquin Valley. (It was near Maderna, CA.) He said dairy farms these days are going the way of Wal Mart and all the other big chains [read (my emphasis): going the way of greed]. And this is incrementally driving the small dairy farmers out of business… The National Agriculture Museum in Tulare, California, is — for the most part — a celebration of the evolution to mega farming in this country. And I was aghast at how skewed our paradigm about agriculture has become. The kids and I viewed a brief film on mega dairy confinement farms. Thousands of cows squeezed into small pens and on small, dirt and excrement filled feed lots. (As opposed to grazing free on acres grass.) We’ve seen these confinement farms all over the country and the conditions are deplorable. What’s more, many of these farms are using toxic, artificial hormones to increase cow size and milk production… Yet the film. amazingly — and with a good deal of propoganda spin — made one of these confinement farms in the Valley here look like it was ‘Cow Paradise.’ Note: The Catholic Rural Life Association has come out with a statement saying establishing a confinement farm (for cows, chickens…) is cruelty to animals and serious sin. Connecting the dots: consuming milk, eggs, meat… that come from these farms must be: sin, too. The answer: To buy, for instance, organic milk from farms where the cows are free range and grass fed. And to stand in solidarity with protests against these confinement farms at every turn (letters to the editor, letters to legislators, getting involved with rural actions to block these farms…)

We’ve spent the last week in the San Joaquin Valley in California campaigning and looking at farm worker issues… In Keene, California, we stopped at the National Ceaser Chavez Center. I met with Douglas Blaylock who administers the Robrt F. Kennedy Farm Workers Medical Plan. While a good plan (medical, dental, vision, prescription drugs…), Mr. Blaylock said only 2% of the farm workers (some 5,500 people) are insured under the plan. Among the top medical issues for farm workers are asthma and cancer from being exposed to all the toxic chemicals (herbacides, pestacides…) currently being applied to the fields. Mr. Blaylock said “cancer clusters” were being found among farm workers and their families in various places throughout the Valley. Another excellent reason to “grow organic…” In Arvin, California, a dusty farm town just south of Bakersfield, we learned a good number of farm worker families live two or three families to quite tiny houses and trailers — as farmers scrape to get a foothold in this country, or scrimp in order to send money back to relatives living in abject poverty in Mexico. While in Arvin, I met with Fr. Lucas Azpericueda who is personal friends with Vincente Fox, the current leader of Mexico. Prior to becoming president of Mexico, Fox was the head of the Mexican State of Guanaguata. Fr. Lucas said Fox helped transform this State to one where there were many jobs, good education, adequate housing… Fr. Lucas said a key to immigration issues here is to help each state in Mexico become as sustainable as possible. Common sense is most people don’t want to leave family, neighborhood, culture… unless, of course: because their children are hungry and there is no hope where they are… While in Bakersfield, the Bakersfield Californian newspaper ran a piece about some students from Loyola Marymount, a small, private Catholic college in Los Angeles, spending their Spring break in nearby Lamont, California. The students stayed in small homes with farm worker host families and spent some time working in the fields. The article explained one day the students went to an orange grove where they picked part of the day, then knocked off early. They were exhausted, according to the article. Yvonne Garcia, a 20-year-old political science major said she was troubled knowing the host family had to keep picking, not only that day, but into the future. “That brought up the question of why them and not us, and what’s the difference,” Garcia said, then trailed off: “I don’t know…” Note: I, on the other hand, believe I do know ‘what’s the difference.’ That is, these Loyola Marymount students probably grew up, for the most part, in quite a lot of privelege out in the suburbs. Their parents, most likely, weren’t willing to sacrifice their comfort much to bring real social justice, and solid systemic change, to help these farm workers have every advantage possible. (The parents, for the most part, just bought the oranges at the cheapest price possible in the grocery stores, and maybe kicked in a few bucks for the poor at church every once in awhile.) As a result, these children probably grew up without any real social justice models to speak of. Coming out of this insular suburban mileau, of course the youth are going to be perplexed about the deplorable conditions and causes when they see abject poverty up close for the first time. Being uninformed about this is not necessarily their fault. However, once they know. And for that matter, once we all know, then we become spiritually charged, not to so much to spend a lot of time philisophically ruminating about the ‘us vs. them’ question in the cloister of our suburban comfort, as to tangibly mobilize (and sacrifice) to do as many things as possible to help the farm workers (and all the other marginalized)– including changing the system… Ways to help immediately would be, for instance, to go to the The Ceasar E Chavez Foundation or Chavez National Center websites to find out ways to donate, or get involved on other activist levels… Another suggestion would be to, say, put aside an extra $10, $20, $50… every week you buy produce. Then donate it, for instance, to a church in the San Joaquin Valley that’s doing outreach to help the migrant farm workers here.

Recap of the last couple days in the Tehachapi Mountains of California… I gave a talk at St. Malachy Church here and said there is the story of a woman in the Third World who drowned two of her children in the sea — so she didn’t have to watch them slowly starve to death with her. I told the congregation that in the face of this (staggering Third World hunger), to go on with our quite well-off American lifestyles unaffected is a tragic mistake — that could well have eternal ramifications… I also interviewed Tehachapi’s Kelly Rogers for a position paper I’m updating on taxes in the U.S. Rogers has a degree in Economics from the University of California at Berkley. She said the prevailing paradigm in America today is “it’s all about me.” So the politicians develop platforms that reflect: “it’s all about you,” she continued. As a result, lawmakers propose multitudes of tax loopholes and exemptions to benefit their (often already well-off) constituents. Rogers said it should be viewed as a privilege to fund Government services to help the poor and disadvantaged, to help the environment, and so on. And she exhorts people to consider forgoing all the loopholes and exemptions… Another problem that has arisen out of all this legislation is the current almost mind-boggling complexity of the Tax Code. The Tax Law has grown from 11,400 words in 1913 to 7 million words today! There are at least 480 different tax forms. And even the easiest form, the 1040E, has 33 pages of instructions — all in fine print. What’s more, American taxpayers spend $200 billion and 5.4 billion hours working to comply with Federal taxes each year. Note: In downtown Tehachapi there’s a German bakery that sells a t-shirt that reads: “A grouchy German is a Saur Kraut.” And contemplating the absolute leviathan the Tax Code has become, it is enough to make anyone grouchy. (Sorry.)