By Edgar Sanchez, Special to the UFW

Doroteo Jimenez, a Lodi farm worker, remains outraged over the death of his niece Maria Isavel Vasquez Jimenez, a 17-year-old farm laborer.

When Maria Isavel fainted from heat exhaustion on a farm east of Stockton on May 14, 2008, “no one made any effort to help her,” least of all her supervisors, who failed to dial 911, Jimenez said this week.

The delay in getting her to a hospital led to her death two days later, he said.

This May 16, the third anniversary of Maria Isavel’s tragic passing, the Assembly will vote on SB 104, the Fair Treatment for Farm Workers Act.   Jimenez will join hundreds of other farm workers at the Capitol, to advocate for the bill, amid a sea of colorful United Farm Worker signs.

Jimenez has picked crops for more than 20 years, but never at a union farm.

Yet he supports SB 104, stating, “I hope the governor signs this new law…so that farm workers will take advantage of it …”

Previously approved by the Senate, SB 104 would allow farm laborers to select unions through traditional polling place elections in the workplace, or through a new procedure away from the fields.  The new process, involving confidential state-issued ballots, would help workers avoid intimidation from anti-union bosses.

Jimenez began fighting for farm workers’ rights three years ago this month, “to ensure that no more farm workers die” the way Maria Isavel did.

For Maria Isavel and her uncle, May 14, 2008 dawned as just another day in the cycle of the fields.

“Both of us arrived together that day” at the Farmington vineyard owned by West Coast Grape Farming Inc., he said.  It was only her third day on the job, at the place where her uncle had toiled for three weeks.

Water-filled thermoses would be placed for the workers along the edges of their work areas.  But, on May 14, the thermoses were not delivered until after10 a.m., roughly four hours into her shift, Jimenez said.

As afternoon temperatures climbed into the mid-90s, Maria Isavel, who had also been without proper shade as she pruned vines, collapsed.  Her fiancé, Florentino Bautista, who is in his early 20s, was also on her work crew.

“If someone had dialed 911, an ambulance would have responded from the fire department, which is not too far away,” Jimenez said.

Instead, at the end of the work day, Maria Isavel was driven to her Lodi home, a trip that took an hour, Jimenez said. That evening, she was taken to a Lodi clinic, then to the nearby hospital where she died.

Her death was triggered by an accidental, work-related heatstroke, the San Joaquin County Coroner concluded.

Maria De Los Angeles Colunga, owner of the now-defunct Merced Farm Labor Contractors, and her brother, Elias Armenta, initially were charged with involuntary manslaughter in the death of their employee, Maria Isavel.  According to the Associated Press, it was the nation’s first criminal case involving a farm worker’s heat-related death.

As part of a plea deal, Colunga pleaded guilty in San Joaquin County Superior Court to a misdemeanor count of failing to provide shade.  Armenta , the firm’s safety coordinator, pleaded guilty to a felony count of failing to follow safety regulations that resulted in death.

Both were sentenced to community service and probation.  Colunga was also fined $370, while her brother was fined $1,000.

“There was no justice for my niece,” Jimenez said, maintaining that the crime demanded prison time.

Jimenez was fired from the Farmington ranch a few days after his niece died. According to Jimenez, he had requested and given a day off to meet with the Deputy Chief of Staff of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“The permanent supervisors told me I didn’t have a job any more,” he said, noting that by then, Merced Farm Labor was out of business, its license having been suspended by the state.

Jimenez currently works at a Napa vineyard.  “My boss has given me permission to be in Sacramento on May 16,” he said.

Edgar Sanchez is a former writer for The Sacramento Bee and The Palm Beach Post

Just days after forming an exploratory committee to enter the race for Governor, Jerry Brown has decided to follow the likes of Andrew Breitbart and Arnold Schwarzenegger by opening an investigation into ACORN:

In a letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger dated Sept. 25, Chief Deputy Attorney General James M. Humes said the office has “opened an investigation of both ACORN and the circumstances under which ACORN employees were videotaped.” The governor had asked Brown two weeks ago to look into the incidents.

The probe was sparked by a series of hidden-camera videos in which a couple posing as a pimp and a prostitute are advised on how to set up a prostitution business by people identified as workers for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. The videos were taken in Washington D.C., San Diego, San Bernardino and cities in several other states.

There’s at least a nod to the possibility that the videotapes were obtained illegally, although I’m not sure California law mirrors the state of Maryland, where the filmmakers clearly violated the law.  But the tendency for Brown to follow Governor Headline and chase the popular story is pretty lame.  Remember that the Governor specifically called on Brown to investigate ACORN because of the San Bernardino tape, which is full of holes:

Most critically, it is clear that Fox News has made virtually no attempt to verify the authenticity of the tapes before broadcasting them — something no self-respecting journalistic organization would dare do. Consider the case of the San Bernardino ACORN office, which was featured in the most recent video to be released. The words of ACORN employee Tresa Kaelke appear to be damning. Not only does she offer assistance to Giles and O’Keefe, but she claims that she murdered her former husband following a period of domestic abuse […]

The problem, of course, is that Kaelke was deliberately lying. The San Bernardino Police Department itself has now confirmed that her claim regarding her husband was untrue. A department statement released on September 15 reads: “The San Bernardino Police Department is investigating the claims made regarding the homicide. From the initial investigation conducted, the claims do not appear to be factual. Investigators have been in contact with the involved party’s known former husbands, who are alive and well.”

Furthermore, Kaelke has claimed that when she made the statement, she was seeking to mislead the undercover videographers, whom she was suspicious of. “They were not believable,” Kaelke is quoted as saying in an ACORN press release. “Somewhat entertaining, but they weren’t even good actors. I didn’t know what to make of them. They were clearly playing with me. I decided to shock them as much as they were shocking me.”

But none of these simple facts stopped anyone at Fox from running with the story. Any cub reporter would have thought to actually call the San Bernardino police before effectively alleging that ACORN was staffed by murderers. But such an act never occurred to people like Beck, Hannity, or Carlson. (In her defense, Carlson later added that the husband was still alive, “according to ACORN,” but ignored the police report.)

Let’s be honest.  Fearmongering about ACORN is a cover for a racially tinged agenda by ideological extremists.  If the actions of a couple employees provokes a state Attorney General investigation of entire companies, I eagerly await the investigations into every company in California.  But we don’t have that.  Instead, Jerry Brown has decided to follow the fearmongering, and legitimize it.  Sad.

The Stacy Peralta-directed documentary Crips And Bloods: Made In America looks at the history of gangs in South Los Angeles over the last 50 years, and the violent civil war on the streets that has raged for the past 30, killing as many as 15,000 residents, three times as many as in the Unionist/Catholic war in Northern Ireland in the 1970s and 80s.  Anywhere else in the world, UN peace negotiators would be brought in and Security Council resolutions passed to stop the violence.  In South Central, the battles continue, and children growing up among the chaos, according to a recent RAND Corporation study, have higher rates of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) than children growing up in Baghdad.

One of the more amazing things about the documentary is that, despite unparalleled access to the gang-bangers surviving on the streets over the past 30 years, there is precious little about the actual feud between the Crips and Bloods.  Most of the history of why they fight and why they kill has been lost in the minds of the young leaders on both sides who suffered an early death.  Crips and Bloods shoot and get shot largely because they are supposed to oppose one another.  Wearing the wrong colors in the wrong neighborhood is a death sentence, but it’s unclear why.  At one point, one of the original gang leaders, Masuka, says that “one of the ways the oppressor state functions is by turning the subjects against one another.”

The story traces gang culture from the earliest days, through the Watts riots of 1965, the Black Power movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the rise of the Crips and Bloods, as South Los Angeles fell into a self-perpetuating cycle of decay and despair.  After the major factory jobs left in the early 1960s, residents were without opportunity and without hope.  Crack cocaine and other drugs eventually became the only economic salvation.  And it led to violence and warfare in the streets.

The most revealing sequence in the film comes when every current gang member is asked about their childhood, and they all – to a man – respond that they were products of a broken home, without fathers, with the family members who raised them selling drugs out of the house, caught at an early age without positive role models or figures to enable their own empowerment.  Those living in South LA with strong family units had mothers and fathers who kept them off the streets and away from the gangs.  Those without had little hope.  And this is a very direct consequence of an insane prison policy that locks up nonviolent offenders, particularly in the black community, at absurdly high rates.  One out of every four black men will be imprisoned at some point in his life, and particularly in California, the inability of the system to handle all the warehousing of inmates leads to a lack of rehabilitation and an expanded recidivism rate.  In fact, the explosion of gang activity inside the prisons ensures an increase outside the jail.  This revolving door in and out of prison rips apart families and leads to a sustained cycle of gang activity and violence.  The “war on drugs” is unquestionably a war on people of color and the lower classes.

That is the faillure we are talking about when we look at California prison policy, a failure that will now lead to mass release in the absence of leadership in Sacramento.  Policymakers would rather lock away the problem instead of facing the terrible blight in the black community.  Indeed, they have locked up these people inside AND outside of prison, confining them to the few miles in South Central that is their turf; there are stories in the film of young gang members who have spent their entire lives in a 10-block radius.  The border between South Central and suburbs like Lynwood and South Gate has been a virtual pen for black youth for 50 years, with anyone crossing the border risking a beating or even their lives.  We built communities that are prisons, through restrictive housing covenants and police directives to “maintain order”.  This is what created gang life, out of mutual protection from whites.  And what now sustains it is not only the locking up of parents from sons and daughters, not only the locking up of blacks inside ghettos and away from opportunity, but the locking up of minds, the locking in of self-loathing and the snuffing out of the flame of hope.

While South LA is now as Latino as it is black, the difficulties for residents and the ravages of gang life remain.  While violent crime has decreased since 1992 it remains unspeakably high.  As we look at prison policy in California, and in particular the efforts by elites in Sacramento to block any meaningful reform, despite bending over backwards from federal receivers to work out agreements that allow for inmates to retain their Constitutional rights to be free from cruel and unusual punishment, we need to think about the Crips and the Bloods, about why they persist, about why they fight, and about why we made them.

The speech yesterday took away any doubt I had about Obama standing up for what is right.  As an Edwards supporter I was wary of Obama’s fight, not when it comes to Democrats but when it comes to the forces of evil that I believe exists in our Country today.  Those forces not only benefit from a racial and class divide in our Country but they profit, profusely.

The politically expedient thing to do would be for Obama to leave his Church and to say that he no longer considers Wright to be an ally or a friend.  Would that be the right thing to do though?   I’ve heard many say that Obama would do anything to be President and the speech he gave yesterday proved to me that is not the case at all.  Obama took the high road, something so few politicians do, not in order to win votes but to declare that we cannot dispose of those we vehemently disagree with if we want to make any progress or change.

Obama displayed to me what he means by reaching across the aisle, that because we may not like what other people stand for we have to work with them if we are to get anything done.  Obama epitomized what he’s been saying throughout his campaign in this speech, that we cannot have politicis as usual anymore.

I believe that our racial divide will never be healed if we do not recognize the anger that exists among Americans, black, white or purple.  And rather than using this anger to divide us, as the Republican party has done for many years or how the Clinton Campaign has done this Primary Season. Obama understands that we have to embrace the anger and use it to change things for the better, for every single American, not just for one group.

Nothing can change if we don’t admit our most base anger and fears.  Nothing changes if we don’t air these grievances in the open rather than in the closed rooms and private conversations among our “own”.  If we cannot admit to have our own prejudice then there is nothing we can do to learn from it and grow past it.  The first step is admitting that we have a problem and I believe that many white Americans think there is no longer a problem for African Americans in this Country.

Why?  Because, it’s not overt racism.  We have grown enough to be able to know when to condemn such outright racism.  But I’ve seen it here when people still casually use the term ‘Mulatto’ and don’t understand the mean and racist undertones of the word.  Or in other places when people reject the symbols of the past without understanding that such images and stereotypes must be preserved so we don’t forget how hateful and overtly racist this Country was just a few decades ago.

Why is it so important to acknowledge this rage?  Because nothing will change until we stop pointing fingers and telling people that our own suffering, our own poverty, our own problems and our own histories are far more worse than anyone else’s.  

This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children.  This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem.  The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy.  Not this time.  

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.  

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life.  This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.  

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag.  We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.  

I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country.  This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected.  And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.  

If we refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the hurts from every single portion of our Country, from every segment and every County, from every cul-de-sac to every project, from every house on the hill to every home near the tracks, that all these places are what make us American, United, not divided.  Because it is true, divided we fall.  If we cannot look past our economic, cultural and social differences then we cannot change anything for the better.  We will spend all our time fighting about things that are true and that are wrong but we will never have time to find the solutions for any of them.

And we have to also acknowledge as a culture that race is not real and that it does not exist.  Culture and ethnicity exist but race was merely a term coined in order to keep certain segments of our United States subordinate to the “superior race”.  And many still argue and rail against this (and it’s valid, there are certain genetic disorders that are more prevalent among ethnicities) but my point is, the genetic differences that express themselves in “racial” characteristics are not what define our culture.  We saw this when people asked if Barack Obama was “black” enough.  Obama was raised in Kansas people, in a different culture and his skin color has no bearing on how he speaks and carries himself as a human being.  These are all merely enculturation and the influences of culture not genetics.

But what does this have to do with things?  We are all human beings, that’s all it comes down to and I saw Obama speak out and acknowledge not only the anger expressed by blacks in our Country but the anger expressed by whites, native Americans, etc.  

And as I drove my Five year old to daycare and we listened to this speech, I was glad to say she was there with me.  That in twenty or thirty years she can say she heard him speak when it happened and although she was too young to understand what he was saying, she was there and she now understands why it was so important for every single American to hear what Obama said regardless of who you support for President, no matter how you are registered and where you live.  It was a speech for every American not just supporters or detractors.  

I am proud to say that Charlotte was there and I’m hoping that it will help her understand how a strawberry blonde with freckles is genetically linked to the dark brown skinned Native American tribe the Mojave.

I’ve often suffered a personality flaw that allows me to forgive people for the most heinous things.  It doesn’t mean that I agree, that I condone or that I support their actions or their beliefs but that I embrace the part of them that is human and flawed.  I embrace the part of them that is a part of me and I embrace them for the same reason why I hope and pray others would forgive me my own trespasses.  If we cannot forgive, if we cannot walk a mile in anyone’s shoes but our own, then we cannot bring any change at all.  

A few weeks ago, I wrote in about the promotion of celebrity, glitz, race, and gender issues directly by the media and subtly by the campaigns of Senators Clinton and Obama.  Interestingly, Senators Clinton and Obama and their respective campaigns have both stated that neither of them are promoting the gender or race, respectively, card.  Then, lo and behold, it comes out that the Clinton campaign set a “trap” for the Obama campaign on the issue of race and the Obama campaign bit “hook, line, and sinker”.  Only time will tell whether the strategy of  pandering to bigotry by the Clinton Campaign and foregoing South Carolina by promoting race as an issue and the extreme willingness of the Obama campaign to bite without any questions asked will pay off for either Campaign and/or hurt the Democratic Party on Tsunami Tuesday, February 5 and beyond.

More below the flip…

Regardless, the much bigger and underlying issue is integrity and credibility, which is why before I go any further I must point out that I am a supporter of John Edwards, the adult wing of the Democratic Party.  Senator Edwards, as most of you know, last summer was confronted by the national media that he was subtly pandering to the white, male vote in the context of electability in November, 2008.  John, without any hesitation or equivocation, responded directly and forcefully to the effect “If you are voting for me because I am not a woman…because I am not African-American…then I do not want your vote”.  Before that time, during that time, and since that time, JRE has continued to lead the Democratic discussion (and to some extent the Republican discussion) on the issues being addressed during the campaign (i.e. universal health care, economic stimulus package and the economy, predatory lenders and the home mortgage crisis-these are just examples as the list goes on an on).

Recently, I hear the candidates and their campaigns talking about unity.  If the candidates and their campaigns will stick to a discussion of the issues like Senator Edwards has done, then unity will likely not be an issue at the Convention and there would be no reason to discuss such an issue at this time.  However, when candidates and their campaigns welcome, condone, and encourage the media promotion of celebrity, glitz, race, and gender as issues, then I suspect that unity will be very hard to accomplish since these issues are deep-rooted, filled with strong emotional feelings, and very, very divisive.  The City of Los Angeles, the host of the debates this Thursday night, provided our country with a very visible example of the tragic consequences that can result from such divisiveness following the Rodney King state court trial.

Therefore, it seems somewhat prophetic that the Thursday night debate is in Los Angeles and Senators Clinton and Obama have another opportunity to follow John Edwards by doing what he did last summer…by truly being transparent, enhancing credibility, and demonstrating integrity…by showing that this is not about YOU THE CANDIDATE, but rather about US THE PEOPLE…by instilling unity before the nomination process is over rather than later when it will likely be too late even if it may not be politically, strategically in the best interests of YOUR CAMPAIGN and you might not be the next President of the United States of America (but it will be best for the United States of American and each of US who call it home).  The opportunity will be there on a national stage at the debate in Los Angeles for Senator Clinton to tell the voters “If you are voting for me because I am not black…because I am not a white, male, then I do not want your vote” and for Senator Obama to tell the voters “If you are voting for me because I am not white, then I do not want your vote”.  And, mainstream corporate media, for one of the few times in this campaign, show why you were once looked up to in this country as the Fourth Estate and confront Senators Clinton and Obama on this issue if they will not address the issue voluntarily and/or directly and do not accept any non-responsive, non-direct, “beat-around-the-bush” answer.  As a sidelight, the respect Senator Obama would have right now if he had come out and said the foregoing BEFORE the South Carolina Primary and got the same results he obtained would make unity a non-issue right now.

When the candidates and their campaigns directly, expressly, and unequivocally take race and gender out of this Democratic Campaign, the glamour of celebrity and glitz will also fall by the wayside.  The mainstream corporate media will then have no choice but to follow the real issues (and hopefully all of the candidates) that are truly important to the substantial majority of America.  If, or when, that happens, unity will flow naturally following the nomination no matter who the nominee is.

The images are strikingly similar. People of color, including children, standing in the middle of a disaster, crying out for help.

First it was Katrina. Today it’s the aftermath of the San Diego County wildfires, where Latino families at refugee centers are reporting family members being taken away by U.S. Border Patrol agents, according to reports on Spanish-language radio and TV. More on the flip…

The LA Times reported yesterday that six undocumented immigrants were arrested for “stealing food and supplies” from the refugee center at Qualcomm.

Six undocumented Mexican immigrants were arrested today by U.S. Border Patrol agents at Qualcomm Stadium, after a report that they were stealing food and water meant for evacuees, according to spokesman Damon Foreman.

It’s happening again. During the Katrina aftermath, African Americans were “looting” shops and stores, while whites were “finding food.” Border Patrol denies, of course, that they are trying to find undocumented immigrants:

“We are not in any means at Qualcomm for enforcement capacity,” he said. “We are not there to take advantage of a situation.”

My question is, why are they there? Why do Border Patrol agents have to be at the evacuation centers at all? Is it not enough that people who are working hard every day to provide a better life for their children have been displaced from their homes? Is it not enough that they will have to figure out how to survive when they are not eligible for any government aid? Or do they have to live in fear of being rounded up by ICE agents, or have to watch as friends or family members are dragged off, at a center that is supposed to be a place for help and support?

Al Gore says in “An Inconvenient Truth,” quoting Winston Churchill, that the global climate crisis is entering an era of consequences. The California wildfires are a consequence of global warming, as many scientists have said — the land is drier because of rising temperatures and more susceptible to fires because of low rainfall.

What is happening now at these refugee centers, and what will be happening in the aftermath of the fires and the recovery effort, is the consequence of what Van Jones calls Eco-apartheid. There are the eco-haves, and the eco-have nots. Those who are able to survive and get through a natural disaster — like the people who took their SUVs and high-tailed it out of New Orleans — and those who cannot — like the folks who waited on their drowning roof for days with no sign of rescue.

Bridging this divide is the greatest challenge of our generation, and it is something progressives must lead on. If we don’t, who will?

As juls noted in a quick hit, Mayor Villaraigosa’s girlfriend Mirthala Salinas has been put on temporary leave by Telemundo, calling her job into question.  Elsewhere though, the LA Times is all over this latest scandal.  There are 133 pages and counting of users comments in response to the situation and Steve Lopez is wondering “Who needs telenovelas when you have Los Angeles City Hall?”  Lopez brings up several legitimate questions, like whether taxpayers have paid for any part of the relationship and what effect the relationship may have had on the Telemundo newsroom.  But as compelling as all of that is, the real fallout may not be felt until next fall.  In light of scandals for Antonio Villaraigosa and Rocky Delgadillo, the Times is also exploring the extent to which the Latino community may be disillusioned by their political superstars.

The last several years have shown the Latino population gradually moving away from the Republican Party, and in 2006, Latino’s in the West went 72% for Democratic candidates.  This has been coupled in Los Angeles with a city government that increasingly matches its Latino population:

Over the last decade, the city’s government has finally started to reflect its demographics. Los Angeles, with a Latino population of nearly 50%, has a city attorney named Rocky Delgadillo and a City Council on which five of 15 members are of Mexican descent.

As noted in the article, it’s far too early to know whether either Villaraigosa or Delgadillo will personally face political ramifications for their respective scandals.  The potential problem that the Times suggests may be simmering though is that, at a time of major political gains for Latinos, future Latino candidates or future Democrats will have one more hill to climb on the way to election.

Please do read through the article for the full gamut of reactions from both insiders and people-on-the-street.  What’s particularly striking though is that the progression of Latinos into mainstream politics brings along a complex identity crisis.  Indeed, much of the concern reflected in the Times article touches in one way or another on concern that race would be caught up in analysis of the scandal:

“I don’t think it speaks to a problem of leadership in the Latino community,” [Former City Councilman Richard] Alatorre said. “We all make mistakes…. It just so happens that it happened all in one week.”

Will this demoralize the building political engagement and activism in the Latino community?  Will race be unfairly conflated with scandal within the broader population?  Or is Antonio Gonzalez (Southwest Voter Registration Education Project) right in seeing this as growing pains for the still young but increasingly influential Latino voting bloc?  Too early to tell, but the role of race will be something to follow as these stories evolve in the media and the public consciousness.