medical plan

Sometime in 1973, I began paying attention to newspaper articles about the continued exploitation of farm workers, and at a house meeting with the veteran peace activist Blase Bonpane, I learned more of what Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers Union were doing to bring some measure of economic justice for farm workers. Later, I re-connected with an old high school pal, who with his twin brother had worked as a lawyer for the UFW in the late '60s. In spring of 1974, Peter and I went to the Coachella Valley for the kickoff of the new grape boycott. That clinched my growing committment to do what I could to promote the UFW's cause. Peter reckoned that he might go back to work for the union. We then lost touch with each other, but, happily, were to meet again. I began distributing materials about the grape boycott at my UCC church in Woodland Hills, California, and so as to learn more about the issue first-hand, I spent a week in August with the UFW in the southern San Joaquin Valley. There I traveled with union members to the fields where they picketed the illegal aliens who had replaced them for the harvest. My trip was arranged by Presbyterian minister Chris Hartmire, then the Director of the National Farm Worker Ministry, and one of the few living saints I have been privileged to meet. Below I present some of the photographs I took of my experience. Sadly, in those days I didn't have a particularly good camera, nor did I have a flash to illuminate dark, or strongly back-lit subjects. (I didn't really know how to use a flash properly in any case.) Thanks to my trusty scanner, and modern photoprocessing software, however, I've been able to improve a bit on some rather poor examples of the photographer's art. Whatever notes I took disappeared long ago. The history of Californa agribusiness's battle against fair treatment for farm workers is sordid, and too complex to deal with on these pages. Suffice it to say that many of the gains made by the UFW during Governor Jerry Brown's tenure have been seriously weakened, if not erased, by subsequent grower-friendly governors. After 40 years, it is still difficult for farm workers to gain, and keep, union representation.

# 1. Clinic for farm workers on the southern outskirts of Arvin, funded by what was then the Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare. My great 1967 Dodge Dart is parked in front, with pro-UFW bumper stickers, if memory serves. I seem to remember taking them off at the advice of UFW members. Arvin is near the town of Weed Patch, which in the '30s was a destination of hundreds of poor "Okie" families who had fled their hard-scrabble farms in the Dust Bowl. Weed Patch became the somewhat unwilling host to a large federally managed farm labor camp, of the type immortalized by John Steinbeck in Grapes of Wrath. The story of the development of the Weedpatch Camp's school, in response to the shameful treatment of the Okies and their children by their Kern County neighbors, is beautifully told by Jerry Stanley in his book Children of the Dust Bowl: The True Story of the School at Weedpatch Camp. (Crown, 1992.) Through the love and compassion of a dedicated principal and his idealistic teaching staff, the school became so successful that the same parents who had earlier looked upon the migrants with contempt begged the administrators to allow their children to attend. If you know a film-maker looking for a powerful and inspiring story, deserving of an all-star cast, this is the one. For links to more information on the creation of the Weedpatch Camp School, see Dust Bowl Festival.

#5. Bulletin board at the Arvin UFW office. The yellow sheet shows deductions to M. Peña's weekly gross pay, leaving him with only $30.16 for a week's work. "Coyote" is the term for the person whom an illegal immigrant pays to get him or her into the U.S. for work, usually over the U.S.-Mexico border. It seems likely that the fee owed the coyote by the worker was paid in full by his or her U.S.-based handlers, and was paid off in weekly installments. It seems odd, though that a line item for such a charge would show up on the worker's pay slip, rather than being subtracted from the weekly gross. It may be that this sheet is only a representation of deductions taken from señor Peña's gross pay, and that he received no paper record at all. Either because I was no better a reporter than a photographer in those days, or because I didn't want to appear skeptical, I didn't ask about that.

# 6. Strike-oriented art. Mexico has produced perhaps the world's greatest muralists, and the heritage is apparent in the abundant small murals created by farm workers themselves. It was widely believed that the Teamsters Union had signed "sweetheart" contracts with many of California's growers in their common effort to break the UFW.

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# 10. Farm worker housing.

# 11. I never believed the sign. If memory serves, the date (unreadable here) was after the harvest in the Arvin area was over. It is a virtual certainty that people lived in these "prohibited" buildings during the harvest.

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# 17. A bunkhouse.

# 18. A bath house. The following two photos are of the inside of this structure.

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# 23. Graffiti on a "bedroom" wall.

# 28. A bunkhouse on farm property. If memory serves, this is where I obtained permission from a ranch foreman to speak with a few of the workers who were relaxing around the bunkhouse. They were not particularly unhappy there. One man felt the overseer was a pretty good guy because he allowed them to have a refrigerator and a hotplate in the bunkhouse. (Many years later, while on a bike ride through the lima bean fields of Camarillo, California, I stopped and asked the farm workers what they thought of the UFW's efforts to organize farm labor. One of them volunteered that he didn't think much of Cesar Chavez because Chavez drove around in a big Cadillac. I didn't ask him where he got that wildly mistaken idea.)

# 30. A mural at La Paz, UFW headquarters at Keene, California. Cesar Chavez is depicted front center.

# 33. La Paz. Shelf holding folders containing medical plan information for UFW members. Another such shelf is seen against the back wall. If memory serves, the medical plan for the farm workers was named after Robert F. Kennedy. UFW members from Mexico also had medical coverage, which could be used in Mexico.