The kids and I went to a talk last night by Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers Union (UFW) with Cesar Chavez. To about 350 people at the University of California at Monterey Bay World Theatre, Ms. Huerta said with the pressing immigration debate today, the issues are very much the same as when she helped start the UFW in the late ’60s. That is, some of the nation continues to be fraught with with prejudice toward Latinos. “We have a new Civil Rights Movement,” said Ms. Huerta, pointing to the recent, and dramatic, mobilization of Latino protests across the country. She also said that she believes this issue has actually become a convenient distraction from the Iraq War. What’s more, Ms. Huerta said when you look at history, the Hispanic people are “indigenous” to this part of America. “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us,” she said… Speaking on farm worker issues, Ms. Huerta said farm workers have always been considered second class citizens. And a refrain that’s often heard in Hispanic families is: “You better go to college, or you’ll end up being a farm worker.” She said the irony is that farm workers do some of the “most precious work in the world.” That is, they help provide us with one of the most essential things of life: food. As an addendum, she said if there were a “Survivor” show where you were to be taken to a deserted island and could bring only one person with you: “Would you take a lawyer or a farm worker?” Note: During the Q&A period after the talk, I noted what I saw as a rather glaring irony. I said I couldn’t help but notice that many of the college students in the audience were Latinos who have been urged to go on to get a “better” education so they can go on to become lawyers and other white collar professionals, with all the pay, benefits and status that comes with this. I wondered out loud that if we want an egalitarian society where the farm workers are on a same par (in every respect) as these white collar professionals: “Shouldn’t we be looking toward changing the whole pre-dominant paradigm in our country?” [It is our belief we should return to an agrarian base in America, with a tremendous resurgence of the small family farm. In tandem, we should move back toward decentralism, with local food production for local consumption. And we should also return to non-polluting, small technology (horse and plow, sickle, hand seeders, hoes…) — many of the same methods the Old Order Amish utilize today. This should all revolve around organic growing again. There should be regular school classes taught by local farmers on farming techniques. And through Community Sponsored Agriculture projects, and the like, all children should have the chance to regularly work on farms, putting them more in touch with the land, natural growing cycles, and so on. In this paradigm, farmers and farm workers would be much more valued in the society. (And there would be more of a need for farm workers because of the shift back in technology.) Also, the work on farms would be much more in line with the way we believe God intended it to be (before huge computerized combines and corporate greed-driven farming): a sacred vocation.]
3/29/06
I picked up a Time Magazine in Seaside, California, yesterday. There was a “Special Report” on global warming. It was titled: BE WORRIED. BE VERY WORRIED. And after I read the articles, I was. (That is, even more than I already was.) The crux of the article is that a host of scientists believe that, not only is global warming real, but that the earth stands at an alarming “tipping point.” Glaciers at the North and South poles are turning to slush at a highly accelerated rate, Greenland is also going through a major meltdown. Global warming is also causing wide spread (and rapidly increasing) drought now. It is playing tremendous havoc with plant and animal species. Cyclones and hurricanes are increasing in intensity… It’s as if the earth is trying to “shake off a fever,” reporter Jeffrey Kluger wrote. The article also noted the question anymore isn’t whether global warming is real, but rather: Are we capable of reversing it in time?… This morning at St. Francis Xavier Church in Seaside there was somewhat of a roundtable discussion. I said I believe a big part of the answer to global warming is for the churches to take the lead in teaching that the environment is, indeed, a hugely significant moral issue. And each of us have a major personal responsibility (and spiritual culpability) in all this by the lifestyles we lead. [Hint: The U.S. has 5% of the world population and emits 25% of the greenhouse gasses. Read: gluttony.] And I also prayed this morning that the church members (and the church as an institution) would develop the charism St. Francis had for the environment — “so the next generation, including our children, has a world to live in.” Note: For more on the specifics of what we can tangibly do to reverse global warming in a dramatic way, see our “Energy Policy” position paper under “what joe stands for” on this site.
3/28/06
I talked with Chuck Carter in Sand City, California yesterday. He ran for the House of Representatives three times in the 17th District here. He ran as a Republican in a heavily liberal (Santa Cruz is in the District) area. He, understandably, lost three times. His campaign slogan: “More Chuck and Less Pork.” But it wasn’t enough to go with the slogan. He and his wife also got a pet, 20 lb baby pig that they would bring with them everywhere (on a leash no less, and it did tricks). The pig even slept with them. “It was kind of cudly,” Chuch smiled — although I noticed Mrs. Carter wasn’t smiling as much… Back in the campaign vehicle, my wife (and campaign manager) Liz — who would never go for the pig — said we should try and come up with some “fun” angle for the campaign like the Carters did. Her initial suggestion was to put a megaphone atop the “average Joe” mobile and play the “average Joe” theme song as we passed through towns. Note: To hear the “average Joe” theme song, go to the bottom right hand section of the home page and click.
3/27/08
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.
3/25/06
Yesterday I wrote an entry about breaking the 5th Commandment (“Thou shalt not kill.”) within the context of America’s poor environmental track record and it’s ongoing fatal ramifications. Today the theme continues… San Francisco Chronicle reporter James Sterngold wrote a front page piece this week about a Bush administration proposal to build more than 1,000 replacement nuclear warheads that will cost taxpayers “hundreds of billions” of dollars over the next few decades. The claim (although this is being disputed) is that the current arsenal of warheads have undergone readioactive decay, weakening the explosive force of the bombs, according to the Chronicle article. A question here: Are we the same country that has been telling a good number of other countries that they can’t have nuclear weapons? Perhaps a bit of, oh, duality? Anyway… According to a History Channel Magazine story, Albert Enstein regretted the role he played in developing the atomic bomb. (He had sent a letter to President Roosevelt recommending the atomic bomb be made. “I made one great mistake in my life…,” he said in retrospect.) Since then, the U.S. alone has spent $4 trillion between 1940 and 1995 on its nuclear weapons program, also according the the History Channel Magazine piece. Another question: If I as an American citizen has gotten behind a military ideology that has allowed for the latter build up (or I just tacitly sat back for that matter), have I broken the 5th Commandment? That is, let’s say I know, or at least am generally aware, that 24,000 people starve to death in the world every day and scores more die from drinking contaminated water in the Third World. However, I’m more worried about my own protection and am willing to ok the expenditure of “trillions” of dollars on these nuclear weapons — when the money could keep millions of children from starving to death. Given this, haven’t I, indeed, broken the spirit, if not the letter, of “Thou Shalt Not Kill?” You see, we can allow death by our ommission, selfishness, fear… Note: I just saw a bumber sticker that said “Altered State University …where all you can do is smile, smile, smile.” Yes, we’re still in California.
3/24/06
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.
3/22/06
Gave a talk at St. Joseph’s Church in Modesto, California, about Pro-Life issues today. I said in Nazi Germany during World War II trains would come down the tracks Sunday mornings carrying screaming Jewish children and their wailing parents. The Christian response in many of the churches near the tracks — was to turn the music up and sing a little louder. The year 2006: Some 4,400 unborn babies are coming down metaphoric tracks on metaphoric trains — every day in America. However, we busy ourselves with entertainment, with sports, with shopping and all sorts of other extra-curriculars… metaphorically: ‘singing louder.’ In Hitler’s Germany, to protest might well have meant death. We, on the other hand, are at liberty to protest, loudly. Yet tragically, many of us who say we are Pro-Life, don’t… While at St. Joseph’s, I also interviewed Malissa Souza, who is on the Pastoral Council here and very active with social justice issues in general. She explained St. Joseph’s has a sister-parish in Bladvistok, Russia. In 2003, Ms. Souza and a number of other St. Joseph parishioners visited the parish at Bladvistok. The Russian parish has an outreach to a nearby orphanage and Ms. Souza volunteered there several times during her stay. She said she was prohibited from visiting a couple of the floors in the orphanage, but one day on her own clandestinely ventured into one of the “off limits” wards. Ms. Souza said there she found infants from birth to three-years-old quietly lying in tiny beds in their own urine. “They were there to die (because there wasn’t enough care, financial resources… to go around),” she lamented. “There is a mortuary just across the street.” (Several years ago, I’d read an article that explained infants with virtually no care in these types of places — eventually stop crying, even whimpering. Simply, and tragically, because there is no response. They, in effect, shut down emotionally if there is no care shown them, no bonding.) Ms. Souza said it only takes 20 American dollars to provide enough formula to feed a baby: for a year in Russia. And St. Joseph’s here continually does fundraising to try to get as much help to their sister parish and the orphanage. (Ms. Souza was so affected by the conditions in Russsia, that last year she donated 40% of her income ($45,000) to Russian causes.) To donate write to: St. Joseph Parish, 1813 Oakdale Road, Modesto, California 95355; phone: 209-551-4973 / www.saintjosephs-modesto.org Note: Our administration would push for a “U.S. Department of Peace.” For several years now (as a Department of Peace initiative), I’ve proposed a plan for American cities and churches to set up sister cities and sister churches with Russia. Small rural towns and parishes could match up with small rural Russian towns and parishes. Intermediate sized towns and metropolitan areas could do the same. The strategy could include both cultural exchanges and monetary help to Russia (“To Russia With Love.”) The Russian people stand at a precipice. The transition to democracy and free-market economy has been extremely difficult there and they need help to stay bouyant. People are hungry. (Modesto’s Ms. Souza said she saw scores of youth, and adults, sleeping over sewer pipe lines on the streets to stay warm at night.) We, as Americans, have an excellent opportunity for a tremendous grassroots outporing of help to our brothers and sisters there. For years during the Cold War, we would have relished this change in Russia — and this opportunity to help. And here it is… By the way, America doesn’t have to wait for us to be in office, and the U.S. Department of Peace to be underway, for this Russian project to take off in a major way. It can happen now… one town, one church, at a time.
3/20/06
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…)
3/16/06 thru 3/18/06
We went to the dusty, farm town of Arvin, California, which is chock full of farm workers, tiny houses and delapidated trailers. Although a relatively small town, it is now the “most crowded” town, per capita, in California. A typical residential scenario for Arvin was recently reported in a Mother Jones Magazine article: “Isabel, a single mother of three, can’t pack anyone else into the 300-square-foot house. Two of her sons share bunk beds and her oldest sleeps in the car; four other relatives sleep on the floor, and she stays on the couch.” [And this isn’t unusual here.]… There are some 75 less human beings in Bakersfield this week… The family and I stood in solidarity with a group of some 50 people praying the Rosary in the rain outside a “Family Planning Center” (read: abortion mill) in Bakersfield. Halfway through the Rosary, a small white truck pulled up and picked up a medium size cooler box. Terri Palmquist, co-chairperson of Life Saver’s Ministries (a Crisis Pregnancy Center just across the street), told me the box holds the remains of the unborn babies. She said estimates are about 75 of these babies are killed on Mondays and Tuesdays every week here. “THOSE ARE THE REMAINS OF LITTLE BABIES’ BODIES THAT WERE TORN APART. TREAT THEM WITH RESPECT!” Mrs. Palmquist yelled out to the workers getting in the truck. And in the background “…pray for us sinners now and at the hour of death, amen.” The next night my wife Liz and I talked about Pro-Life issues to a prayer group in Tulare, California. Liz mentioned the box we’d seen the day before, then said. “This (abortion and “…the right to choose.”) is not about Women’s Rights; it’s about murder.” Note: A group of youth were milling about the church where the prayer group was conducted. One of the youth had on a t-shirt that read: “SHHHHH… I’M TRYING TO HIDE FROM THE FLYING MONKEES!” Ahhh… only in California.
3/13 thru 3/15/06
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.