{"id":469,"date":"2006-03-30T15:21:43","date_gmt":"2006-03-30T15:21:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hostkabob.com\/vote\/?p=469"},"modified":"2006-03-30T15:21:43","modified_gmt":"2006-03-30T15:21:43","slug":"33006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=469","title":{"rendered":"3\/30\/06"},"content":{"rendered":"

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:<\/strong> 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.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}