"... Smith sees thousands of overripe tomatoes rotting alongside his vines ..."

[struggle4progress]

Tough new immigration law hits Alabama farmers
6:17 PM, Oct 4, 2011
Written by Doug Richard
http://www.11alive.com/news/article/208081/40/Tough-new-immigration-law-hits-Alabama-farmers

The crops are all in and the peaches are rott'ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They're flying 'em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again ...

My father's own father, he waded that river,
They took all the money he made in his life;
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees,
And they rode the truck till they took down and died.

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract's out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves ...

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except "deportees"?

Words by Woody Guthrie
Music by Martin Hoffman
http://www.woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/Plane_Wreck_At_Los_Gatos.htm

Joan Baez
Joan Baez and Bob Dylan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q07r_haREpU">Sam Bush, Arlo Guthrie, Emmylou Harris, Carl Jackson, and Barry Tashian
Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and Johnny Rodriguez
Dubliners
Arlo Guthrie & Pete Seeger
Kingston Trio
Dolly Parton
Bruce Springsteen

DCScripts

[dkf]

1. It's a commentary on the 99ers too.

[Donnachaidh]

5. how?

:popcorn:

[dkf]

8. If you have nothing coming in and you still won't do farm work...

Then you might be a little bit too full of yourself.

Manual labor sucks but it's honest work.

Frankly I admire a person who has the internal fortitude to do it. But I don't admire lawbreaking and cheating.

[fasttense]

9. Do you have any idea what they pay those fruit pickers?

Back in 1978 in Florida, I picked oranges at a grove. I earned $3.00 for a tub 4 feet deep and 10 feet across. With the foreman constantly yelling about breaking a branch on a 15 foot tree. It took me all day to fill one tub. This is why a family has to do it together, in order to combine their earnings.

It is all about the money. The corporate farms want free labor. What they get is almost free labor.

[hobbit709]

10. that poster always spouts the RW talking points

[dkf]

12. Pah this should be a left wing argument if anyone gave a shit about the poor citizens of this

Country. But no one does.

Farming is a basic necessity in life. Do you really need lawyers or accountants above food?

[dkf]

11. So why should anyone be paid like this?

If you let illegal immigrants work like this it will never turn into a decently paid job as you describe it.

[Trillo]

18. Local Planners in government have targeted food growers.

Threatening to send folks to jail for growing vegetables in their own yards. The point being people do want to do this kind of work, but the police are sent in to stop it!

[Lionessa]

2. I get tired of hearing "Americans won't do it," when the truth is "Americans won't do it for slave

slave wages and no bennies.

[hatrack]

3. "It ain't about the money", says farmer Smith

IOW, it is - he just hasn't offered enough yet.

[Sirveri]

4. Pay us enough to pick them, and we'll happily do so.

Until then STFU and GTFO.

[appleannie1]

6. Force normal farmers out of competition through fear of immigrants. Corporate farmers gain complete

control. That is what that law if about.

[lunasun]

7. yes exactly the move - Big AG using 'the unemployed' as a shill too

[GoCubsGo]

13. How many of these farmers voted "R"?

I'm betting it was a fat chunk of them. Such are the results of voting against one's own interests. You made your beds, now lie in them. Wish we didn't have to be in there with you.

[dkf]

14. Supporters of immigration reform says farmers should pay higher wages...

9th paragraph...

12th paragraph the farmer says citizens are physically unable to do the job. Well that Is a sad commentary on our people. Too out of shape to provide for themselves.

[Sisaruus]

15. Skilled labor/hard work

I heard an NPR story about the Alabama law's impact on farming as I was driving home yesterday from a 3 hour gleaning of an apple orchard for the Food Bank. It was really hard work in a seasonably record-high 80+ degrees and too much sun. Admittedly I am 60ish and work in an office and I knew how slow and unproductive I was (and exhausted when it was over) as were many of the volunteers who were there. Not sure I'd be able to do it as a real job; if I didn't quit first I'm sure I'd be asked to leave. And then one of the farmers on the NPR story started to talk about the fact that farmworkers are NOT unskilled labor, that these jobs require require skills and experience and I knew, based on 3 hours of UNskilled labor on my part, that he was right.

I know some tea-party types who bitch rhetorically about undocumented residents and I recognize that they would be the loudest whiners when the price of produce would reflect fair wages paid to farmworkers (and grocery retail workers - and everyone in between farm and check-out). I'm able to buy produce at local farms and I do pay more than I would at the local supermarket for that self-satisfaction of supporting local economies. But I work for the food bank and recognize that my shopping "eltism" is beyond the affordability of most. When I tried an experiment of living on a food stamp budget for a week, I immediately knew that one peach from the local farm for $2.00 was half my daily food budget and I would have to return to the supermarket for cheap food. Our entire U.S. wage structure for the 99% is, in part, dependent on cheap food pricing, which is dependent on the exploitation of workers. Imagine what kind of wages all of us would need if we did have to pay $7.99 a pound for tomatoes. I'm not sure what the answer is - I lean to nationalizing necessary industries like agriculture, health care, utilities/big energy but I am 60ish and it's not going to happen in my lifetime (but then again, who woulda thought marriage equality for LGBTs would happen in my lifetime?). In the meantime, I celebrate OWS because it's about time we got confrontational about the social and economic injustices that this nation has come to represent.

[Jim Warren]

16. Cue "rotting in the fields" story

from the US Chamber of Commerce archive, 3..2..1..

[SmileyRose]

17. Most other people WON'T do the job

Georgia experimented with a program to get long term unemployed who had exhausted all benefit to the fields as temporary migrants. Pay was $12.50 with transport and housing for the 3 month picking season. They had few takers and about half that signed up quit within the first 2 weeks.

Most people have no concept of how backbreaking farm work is and how brutal a migrant lifestyle is even when you are paid and treated well. (not that $12.50 is big money but it's not sub minimum wage and is what the farmers were paying the Hispanic migrants that have left)


Looked all over a link to the story that was all over Atlanta news over the summer - maybe someone elses google skills are better than mine......