Resistance and perseverance / Late August 2018 under a smoke-filled sky in Whatcom County

(photo from Bellingham Herald)

Article from Seattle Times, August 21, 2018:

"... The workers sought to have a Northwest farmworker union, Familias Unidas por la Justica, represent them in the negotiations, but farm owner Gurjant Sandhu rejected that request, according
to Edgar Franks, a Community to Community Development staffer who says he was present when that request was made ..."

And one year ago, a farm worker, Honesto Silva Ibarra, 28, of Mexico, died after working under unhealthy conditions in Whatcom County that were the result of dense smoky air from wildfires in British Columbia.  Last year, 70 workers were fired after demonstrating in response to unhealthy working conditions and the death of their fellow farm worker.

We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure. (Cesar Chavez)

To make a great dream come true, the first requirement is a great capacity to dream; the second is persistence. (Cesar Chavez)

Further -- email received just now, 11:21 a.m., August 23, 2018:

THANK YOU! Continued community action needed

Dear supporters, Thank you to everyone in the community who responded to the farmworkers' call for justice at Crystal View Raspberry Farm. After the combined power of two days of the farmworkers' work stoppage, the presence of Familias Unidas por la Justicia and C2C, and a successful solidarity picket, Crystal View Farm reinstated the suspended workers and paid all of the 90+ H2A workers their owed wages, including giving them paycheck stubs! This has never happened before! We are monitoring the situation to make sure the rest of the workers' demands are met, and the union, Familias Unidas por la Justicia President Ramon Torres remains in close communication with the worker elected committee. We ask that you stay updated in case there is retaliation against these elected farmworker leaders. We are humbled by the community's response to crises when farmworkers are in need. For the time being, the workers have asked us to stop collecting and delivering food or clothing donations. Please watch this short video of C2C farmworker organizer Edgar Franks sharing a more detailed update about the victory, and follow our Facebook page to stay informed about the farmworker movement. We must keep the momentum going. These horrifying injustices perpetuated by the use of the exploitative H2A program are now an ongoing pattern in Washington State, as H2A workers are being poisoned and injured, dying for the profit of agribusiness. Take action to right a great wrong! En Solidaridad, C2C Team ACTIONS Call wafla (360) 455-8064 Dan Fazio's wafla is the labor contracting firm that recruited these workers in Mexico and Guatemala, transported them to the US, and abandoned them to the whims of an abusive farmer. George Sandhu, owner of Crystal View, held them hostage without pay or food or safe housing conditions, and denied them access to health care, clean drinking water, and community assistance such as the Food Bank. DEMAND that wafla honor the terms of the Crystal View contract that was made with the workers. There should be no retaliation on behalf of wafla for workers standing up for their rights while wafla was absent. Call Governor Inslee (360) 902-4111 -- DEMAND he convene a task force to fully investigate the well documented negative impacts of the H2A guestworker program to farmworkers in WA State. Call the WA State Dept of Labor and Industries (360) 902-5584 -- ask to be transferred to Director Joel Sacks DEMAND they conduct an immediate review of Crystal View Farms H2A contracts, addressing all of the complaints and demands from the workers. This investigation needs to include a process for FUJ to be receiving weekly updates; explain that the agency failed miserably regarding Sarbanand and we demand a faster and more transparent process that includes the union! Farmworkers' lives are at stake and we demand a response from Labor and Industries!

April 19, 1943 / Resistance / April 19, 2018

This was in my email inbox this morning, from American Jewish World Service: Dear Amanda, Today is especially poignant for me, as the granddaughter of Edna Brill. April 19th marks the day my grandmother joined with thousands of other Jews in the Warsaw ghetto in 1943 to resist the Nazis’ plan to transport the remaining Jews in the ghetto to Treblinka for their extermination. This was the largest act of Jewish resistance during World War II. My grandmother’s love for me and her life story have shaped me to be the proud Jewish woman and human rights advocate I am today. I could not be more thankful. As a young girl, my grandmother risked her life by sneaking in and out of the ghetto each and every day. Able to pass as a non-Jew, she sang on the streets of Warsaw for food in order to keep her family and others in the ghetto alive, where they faced crowded conditions, filth, disease and starvation. At age nine, she bravely became a “runner” for the ghetto resistance movement — carrying messages between the Warsaw ghetto fighters and the Polish army. Even though she witnessed the deportation of her parents and four siblings to the death camps, my grandmother’s remarkable spirit enabled her to survive and, after the war, build a new life and family. My commitment to build a better world today is the legacy of my grandmother’s indefatigable quest for human dignity. When I think about how my grandmother and the brave Warsaw ghetto fighters remained hopeful despite having every reason to despair, I’m reminded of the many advocates around the world I have come to know through American Jewish World Service (AJWS). I have met activists who are engaged in their own struggles against hatred and, yes, genocide, often in the face of great danger. I’m reminded of the women I met in Burma while traveling with AJWS in 2016; women who, much like my grandmother, are risking their lives to protect their homes and livelihoods in the face of ethnic persecution. The world of these Burmese women, and the ongoing plight of the Rohingya people in Burma, looks very different today from that of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto. But I know that they share a desire to shape their own futures, to liberate themselves from ethnic oppression and build a better world. As a child, 75 years ago today, my grandmother fought for dignity and justice. Today, I honor her legacy as a proud member of the AJWS community, to ensure that all people can live in safety and freedom with respect to their human dignity, culture and religion — no matter who they are or where they live. For me, ‘Never Again’ means no oppression and no genocide against anyone, anywhere, ever again. Thank you, grandma. You taught me well. Sincerely, Mia Brill Once again, I am reminded of the quote by John Steinbeck that also came via email not long ago:  “All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up. It isn’t that the evil thing wins — it never will — but that it doesn’t die.”