Remembering with Dorothea Lange

The photographer Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) gifted us with photographs that document times and people that the standard histories of the United States don't deal with in and substantive way. I don't post the Lange photographs on this blog out of nostalgia or sentimentality but because these people lived and their lives mattered. These were your grandparents or great-grandparents. This is what was done to them, these are the things that happened to them that they barely spoke of when you knew them. This is our true history. Knowing that might help you find your place in the world and carry on the good that these people did or hoped to do.

The photographs were taken from the Dorothea Lange, Photographer Facebook page. That page is a great source for photographs and helps greatly in recollecting

Title: Manzanar Relocation Center, Manzanar, California. The first grave at the Manzanar Center's cemetery. It is that of Matsunosuke Murakami, 62, who died of heart disease on May 16. He had been ill ever since he arrived here with the first contingent and had been confined to the hospital since March 23.
Creator: Lange, Dorothea
June 30, 1942
Central Photographic File of the War Relocation Authority, between 1942–1945.

Title: San Francisco, California. Young musician of Japanese ancestry plays his guitar at the Wartime Civil Control Administration station. He is a member of the first contingent of over 600 persons of Japanese ancestry to be evacuated from San Francisco.
Creator: Lange, Dorothea
April 6, 1942
Central Photographic File of the War Relocation Authority, between 1942–1945.
Access: Unrestricted
Use: Unrestricted

Title: San Bruno, California. Old Mr. Konda in barrack apartment, after supper. He lives here with his two sons, his married daughter and her husband. They share two small rooms together. His daughter is seen behind him, knitting. He has been a truck farmer and raised his family who are also farmers, in Centerville, Alameda County where his children were born.
Creator: Lange, Dorothea
June 16, 1942.
Central Photographic File of the War Relocation Authority, between 1942–1945.
Access: Unrestricted
Use: Unrestricted

Title: Children of evicted sharecropper, now living on Sherwood Eddy cooperative plantation.
Creator(s): Lange, Dorothea, photographer
Date Created/Published: 1936 July.

Title: Daughter of migrant Tennessee coal miner. Living in the American River Camp near Sacramento, California
Contributor Names: Lange, Dorothea, photographer
Created / Published : November 1936

We are union members and we believe in social justice

Workers' Solidarity

We began this blog with a quote from "Out of this Furnace" by Thomas Bell, still one of the best works of fiction written about working-class life. The graphics below tell a story of unions ad working-class life.

  

From the Teamsters Union.

Billy Bragg -There Is Power In A Union

The text reads:

On this date in 1933 (Sunday), Barney Graham, United Mine Workers President and Socialist, was shot dead in front of the Wilder Company Store. Shorty Green and Doc Thompson used a machine-gun borrowed from the 109th Cav of the Tennessee National Guard which they also held off Sheriffs Deputies of Fentress County with for over four hours. This was in retaliation for Graham supposedly being an Influencer in the murder of George and Floyd Winningham. The Miners of Wilder had no way to fight back after having all their firearms confiscated in August of 1932 by the Guardsmen.

We just want to make a living...

 

Safe Jobs Now!

 

Today is Workers' Memorial Day. We need to mourn for the dead, not be complicit in injustice, and fight like hell for the living.

Today is Workers' Memorial Day, the day when we remember all of those who died at work or from workplace injuries and illnesses. It should be a day of mourning---part of an extended period of national mourning for the victims of COVID and for our lack of a national healthcare policy and a national healthcare service---and a day of action and protest.

A Poem For Workers' Memorial Day (April 28)

The Plan

A poem for two voices - female & male, dedicated to all workers
who have gone before us, and who we remember on Worker Memorial Day.

I am your....
Mother. . . . . . . . . . Father
Sister . . . . . . . . . . . Brother
Child . . . . . . . . . . . Partner
Lover . . . . . . . . . . . Friend
Today, I planned to....
Take a walk . . . . . . See a friend
Tell a joke . . . . . . . . Give a smile
Pay a bill . . . . . . . . . Play a game
Take a ride . . . . . . . . Kiss a cheek
Hug a child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I didn’t plan to . . . Die today
. . . but I did
I planned to....
Go to work . . . . . . . . . Build a bridge
Pave a road . . . . . . . . . Fix a pipe
Teach a class . . . . . . . . Save a life
Paint a room . . . . . . . . Write reports
Enter data . . . . . . . . . . .Work the line
Wire buildings . . . . . . . Walk the iron
Erect the steel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I didn’t plan to . . . Die today
. . . but I did
Please think of me...
Just once today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . When you
Fulfill your plans
I am your....
Mother . . . . . . . . . . . . . Father
Sister . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Brother
Child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Partner
Lover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Friend
I didn’t plan to . . . Die today
BUT I DID ...
—Sue Waltz

Tomorrow (Thursday) is Workers' Memorial Day

 

Workers' Memorial Day Is On Thursday, April 28---And We Need To Get Organized!

And from the Teamsters Union...

Workers' Memorial Day is Thursday, April 28

 

From Farm Worker Ministry Northwest: TULIP FARM WORKER UPDATE Cautious Hope: Washington Bulb respects their workers and bargains in good faith

Please see National Farm Worker Ministry for more details.

Good news from our partner, Community to Community:

March 26th, 2022

On Thursday March 24th, an overwhelming majority of tulip harvesters at RoozenGaarde Tulips voted to join Familias Unidas por la Justicia farm worker labor union and asked them to represent them in the first negotiations meeting Friday, March 25.

After three days of strikes, the majority of the farm workers at Roozengaarde have agreed to pause their strike in good faith to meet with management at the company’s main headquarters. The workers also voted to unionize with Familias Unidas por la Justicia (Families United for Justice) with 93 workers voting to join the union. WA State Representative Debra Lekanoff conducted a count of the signed union membership cards as a neutral party.

Please call Washington Bulb/RoozenGarde and thank them for respecting their workers and bargaining in good faith.
(360) 424-5533

“We are optimistic that we can reach an agreement that will give us a voice to create just working conditions and address the demands we presented to management through good faith negotiations,” said Alfredo Juarez, a RoozenGaarde worker and strike leader.

The workers initially walked out on Tuesday, March 22 after an angry exchange with a supervisor about an irregularity in their pay. They called the union Familias Unidas por la Justicia  to demand changes on a host of other grievances including low pay, unfair firings and treatment, lack of adequate PPE for working with harsh chemicals, lack of breaks and more.

Some of the workers have been planting bulbs, cutting the stemmed blossoms and harvesting the bulbs for over 10 years at Washington Bulb to help make the Tulip Festival successful. They shared stories of working long hours in the deep mud in cold and wet winter conditions to make the beautiful spring tulip bloom possible. “We want to be treated with respect for our work and recognized as human beings with families that should be earning a wage where we can live with dignity,” said Juarez. “The Tulip Festival should not be just about the flowers,” he added.

With the famous Skagit Tulip Festival less than a week away the workers are hopeful that they can reach a fair agreement with management and the public can have confidence that the workers who create the beautiful tulip vistas they come to enjoy have just working conditions and fair wages.

On Friday, March 25 the elected Committee and their Union Representatives, Ramon Torres and Edgar Franks met with Washington Bulb management and began discussions on the list of demands.

The Committee reported that there was good progress made because of the good faith Washington Bulb Management brought to the table.  Discussions will continue Monday, March 28 and the strike remains suspended.
 
Familias Unidas por la Justicia and the elected committee at Washington Bulb’s Roozengaarde would like to thank all the community support received from supporters state wide and even from other states. “This is a good beginning,” Said Ramon Torres, President of Familias Unidas por la Justicia, “We will keep our supporters updated on our Facebook page.”

Farmworker Awareness Week---March 25-31

From the Catholic Labor Network:

March 25-31 marks Farmworker Awareness Week – a week that culminates on March 31, Cesar Chavez Day. The backbreaking work of planting and harvesting our food is largely performed by immigrants from Latin America for low pay under difficult working conditions.

Like domestic workers, during the New Deal reforms farmworkers were excluded from the protection of critical labor laws such as the National Labor Relations Act (which protects workers who want to form a union) and the Fair Labor Standards Act (which sets the federal minimum wage and dictates that other workers earn overtime when working more than 40 hours per week). This means that farmworkers have had to work state by state to secure these rights, a process that remains largely incomplete. Only a few states such as California and New York have passed laws protecting farmworkers’ right to organize and form labor unions. And this year Oregon joined a handful of states that have passed overtime pay laws covering farmworkers.

The Catholic Church played a critical role in the great farmworker organizing campaigns of the 1960s and 1970s, especially in California, where Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers (UFW) organized grape harvesters. The UFW sought leverage through a national boycott of table grapes. Chavez, himself deeply committed to his Catholic faith, relied on allies in the Church and the wider community to promote the boycott and secure basic rights for workers in the fields.

The Catholic Labor Network is part of the National Farm Worker Ministry (NFWM), an interfaith coalition standing in solidarity with farmworker organizations such as the UFW, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW). Today the UFW is seeking reforms in California’s Agricultural Labor Relations Act to make it easier for farmworkers to form unions; the FLOC is campaigning for RJ Reynolds to clean up abuses in its tobacco supply chain; and the CIW is calling on Wendy’s to source its tomatoes from growers committed to fair labor practices. The CLN and the NFWM continue to support farmworkers in all of these initiatives.

Some Great News For Workers In Oregon

This come from the Northwest Workers' Justice Project, one of the best organizations available to help working people in Oregon:

The 35-day short Oregon legislative session wrapped up earlier this month – and despite the whirlwind nature of the short session, it was a good year for workers.

First and most important to our clients, farmworker overtime passed! This means, starting in January 2023, agriculture workers will start to earn overtime after 55 hours of work. Two years later, the threshold drops to 48 hours, and then finally in 2027 these workers will earn time and a half after 40 hours, ending the racist exclusion of agriculture workers from overtime protections. Thanks to all of you who submitted testimony, sat through hearings and contacted your legislators. Though the timeline is not what we hoped for, we are finally on our way to pay equality for those who plant, pick, harvest, tend and otherwise work to keep our world fed.

You may also have heard about the humanitarian crisis in illegal marijuana farming and distribution in Oregon. NWJP successfully advocated for the legislature to allocate $6 million to community-based groups to respond to the crisis.

The clean-up bill for the Workplace Fairness Act also passed. This bill brings the statute in line with the intent of this ground-breaking 2019 act by clarifying that employers cannot insist that workers request confidentiality agreements as a condition of settlement-which employers had been doing to avoid daylight on their misdeeds. It also adds a $5,000 penalty when employers violate sections of this law.

Two important workers' compensation bills passed. One is the modernization bill, which expands retaliation protections, updates language around disability and expands the definition of family member. The other is the Injured Worker Protection Bill, which requires insurers to give notice to workers before ending partial wage replacement and limits overpayment recovery to no more than 50% of the money the worker received, among other things.

An important bill to require state agencies to share information around Covid outbreaks also passed. (SB 1585) This is important to all Oregonians who lose loved ones to workplace Covid.

Many other important bills passed this session (Transforming Justice! Universal Representation! See FairShot’s press release for more on these two amazing and important wins.)

All in all, this felt like a great short session for Oregon workers. Thanks to everyone who made these things happen, especially to the workers who testified, wrote letters and showed up!

Thank You!

Northwest Workers' Justice Project

NOTE: The Northwest Workers' Justice Project needs our solidarity. Please subscribe to their e-mails and donate here.

This is true.