America's Finest

Living in the Piedmont region of North Carolina, I fell for the lush, overgrown vegetation that provided rich soil for a multitude of different crops. In the heat I sunk my hands into the organic earth, tilled and perfected into rows by the same hands that would bring it's produce weekly to the Farmer's Market. Every day I shared a meal with the farmer's family- green, earthy asparagus, ripe sungold tomatoes, a wealth of produce at my gloved

fingertips. As a farmer, I took breaks when I needed them, stopped to talk with my co-workers, and returned home to a cushiony existence in a cool house with electric fans.

The land I visited while traveling out to various migrant camps during a "Witness for Justice" program with the Farmworker Unit of Legal Aid in Raleigh, NC, spoke of a different harvest. Human beings, like produce, marketed at the lowest cost to work on monocropped land of tobacco and cotton.

Barreling down dirt pathways, barely roads, that end in uniform bunk houses in varying states of disrepair, I am reminded of my visit to the US/Mexico border in Arizona. I was there over one year ago on a rescue trip, bringing food and water to people who risked dehydration in the desert. We walked around hot land, encountering the remains of lives of survival and struggle: small, cavernous dwellings, littered by food and spoiled clothing. I wondered then at who could possibly think any human being would choose to live this way.

(picture-cotton)

Now I have the same feeling as I walk into the dark exterior of the camp houses. I see a broken pipe hanging down. The humidity traps me as I try to make space between the bed and kitchen table. The set of houses where these tobacco farmers are living is isolated and small. I am reminded of summer camp dwellings where I have stayed to "rough it" out in the woods. But this is not summer camp, and these are hardworking families. The neat rows of well-tended tobacco sit juxtaposed next to disheveled homes.

Conversing with the farmers brings the setting to life. It is dinnertime and the moment is alive with young men chiding each other, women cooking and showing off children. The family extends through each unit as a community takes form. The vibrant sounds of Mexican Spanish: words of comradery and journey. Everyone is interested in hearing how they can keep safe, greeting Omar our guide, and learning of the NC Justice Center. And then, I am reminded of how young so many of these workers are when one of the guys asks me about my nose ring. What do young people do when they must wait sometimes weeks for work?

Farmwork is the hardest sort of work to do because it requires that the human form be strong and dependable. Yet, so often migrant farmworkers are treated with little respect. Their backs bear the weight of our daily sustenance while their hearts endure our discrimination, jokes, and lack of consideration. Migration is a reality for many people all over the United States. I have met a handful of New Yorkers in North Carolina, seeking a higher quality of life. I have ventured out of Maine to touch my spirit again and improve my own living. Families change, shift and grow out of cities and towns. We cross borders, travel through mountains, carving out new paths all the time. How are some travelers beyond compassion, some borders beyond crossing?


As I farm my way across the South in the heat I feel deeply connected to the human beings whose hands touched my food. I think about how their shoulders feel at the end of a day, how the summer sun sometimes makes you feel like you can never get comfortable, how their children may have breathed in chemicals out in the filde. And I ask myself, what is the true cost of my food?

Southern Exposure

(The alternate topic under this title would have been about my southern skin infestations...)

Well, it's hot June in Carolina del Norte and I having been watching okra get ready for its season on the farm. Peaches will soon be here, and we have all been enjoying the beginnings of tomato season. Lightning bugs are out in full glory and somewhat humiliated by our voyeuristic needs to put them in jars to see their bums light up. I wear the humidity every day like a polyester suit coat and know I will be ready for whatever heatwave Maine will ever dish out. Farming is near impossible for me, and the chigger bites and poison ivy that were my hazing into the south are still making my skin crawl. I went out into my garden today on Arnette Ave. and marveled at all the creatures in our hammock. Then decided i would have nothing to do with them.

I have been in North Carolina one month longer than I had planned. I have fallen for the South because it pokes and provokes me. Durham has been a wonderful place from which to explore other areas in the South, and to come home to, dragging my tale between my legs as I evaluate everything I ever knew about people and organizing. What I have learned into my hands about the farm and the legacy of this land has been further planted in me as I share in stories of resistance and a deep, immediate kind of pain rooted here, a pain renewed by the reality of immigrants as slave labor in the South.

I wouldn't want anyone to think that I came here, found community, and lived out my days in peace. The south isn't about peace. Its dance is a furious one, fire and passion. We only sit on porches in between. The South is a train barreling through towns, lurching and sweating out fumes, screeching, "Are you ready to get on?" I can't tell yet, if I'm getting on, but I sure am doing some of the deepest analysis of power and privilege I have ever had to do.

So there are places on this trip that I don’t realize I need to be until I find myself speeding down the interstate in their direction. I want to tell you about a few of them.

I. The Highlander Center

I was pretty sure after one month in North Carolina that I was receiving a clear message to go to Florida. Every activist and labor organizer that I had spoken with agreed that there were rad happenings south of where we were. The Immokalee farmworkers have just won a fight against McDonalds and are the highlight of southern Florida activism for farmworkers.

But after a couple attempts at trying to arrange farm work and visits to the peninsula it was clear: if I wanted to do farm work in Florida I would have to haul watermelons, tomato season being over, and also I wasn’t really ready for Florida in the middle of the summer. Besides, the season was over and most of the organizers had scattered and were actually working on seasonal crops in the Carolinas. Finding anyone would be like stitching a quilt without a needle.

So five minutes after I had set my sights west on Tennessee, home to some 40 anti-immigrant proposals, I marched down Arnette Ave to my friend Tony’s place(a collective house where I am now living) and he immediately said, “you have to go to this conference at the Highlander Center.”

Who up North knows about the Highlander Center today anyway? When we think of labor organizing many of us think of local unions, protests at Wal-mart, our own local meat and seafood processing plants.

The Highlander Center is sacred space. Perched atop a hill in the valley of the great Smokies of Eastern Tennessee the spirit meets the struggle. The Highlander Center has been a nexus of popular education and labor organizing in the South since the 1940s, although many people identify it with the Civil Rights movement, because it was one of the first safe spaces for black and white laborers to organize together.

Still ringing in my ears are the songs of resistance from the Civil Rights Movement that initiated my days at the conference. "I woke up this morning with my mind, set on freedom". This has been one of the blessings of southern organizing. Every conference maintains this tradition of song. During a music circle at Highlander, I heard Guy and Candie Carawan, two seasoned musician activists tell stories of songs from the movement, from the coast of the Carolinas to Appalachia, songs like good friends carrying the load. Songs like "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize", and "We shall Overcome" that people perpetuated in frightening moments in the dark, or happily over supper. This inherited drumbeat of revolution awakened my commitment. Oh, let us always remember to sing.

The other blessing in our organizing work is the progressive language access movement in the South. I came to the Highlander to participate in a training entitled," Interpreting in the social justice movement". I have seen some of the finest activism here around organizing interpretation and been involved in bettering my skills as a simultaneous interpreter for ally work in the immigrant justice movement. I believe that if I truly want to create change I need to step back and trust in immigrant and indigenous leadership; using my language privilege for good and assuming the role of interpreter at these events may just be the most radical way of using my voice.

So I have been volunteering to interpret at many events, sometimes getting paid, and seeing some amazing discussions take place. I went to a forum on immigration in the South, a local conference for Latinos in NC, and have offered to interpret at the US social forum in Atlanta, GA. Most of these conferences work from popular education models disseminated by Highlander. More power to our peeps.
The focus of the immigration work we are doing is to frame the movement within the larger context of racist politics and apply a popular education model to create strong communities that question our basic values around immigration. We are building a "multi-racial movement".

The immigration conference I attended was at University of North Carolina, the oldest public university and perhaps the reason for NC being the more progressive southern state. One of the participants said he felt the South was unique with a more settled population of Latinos we are changing the paradigm because the minority is organizing itself, instead of being organized by others.

One of the moments I remember most is a woman from Paraguay sharing how when she came to the United States she was in four years of darkness.

Eastern TN is an amazing place. I loved resting in the mountains at a place where MLK, Paulo Friere, and other people came together to share ideas that are still seen as so radical. I took a walk down a country road at one point and decided I would come back here in July. There must be something else I need to see.

Finally, as I was sitting down at the end of the conference, waiting for my ride and watching a perfect afternoon end in the mountains, a woman I had been trying to connect with in Immokalee, FL walked up the road with her huge backpack. I also met a group of people from New Orleans who offered me a place to stay and information. A woman who talked about dead bodies in the streets and handing out respirators to clients only to see them two seconds later be rounded up by immigration, respirators on the ground. She will need someone to cook her good meals and remind her to sleep. Sometimes the less we organize something, the more available we are to receive it in gift form.


II. Greensboro, NC

One restless night a couple of weeks ago, while tossing and turning and like a bear, scratching an itchy belly full of swelling chigger bites against the sandy texture of my bedsheets, I dreamt I lived in Greensboro in the week of February 1, 1960.

Maybe I had been thinking about how to talk about race, maybe I had been troubled by the lack of struggle for immigration reform in NC in the past few weeks. I don’t know. But all of a sudden I was transported into Greensboro and was being led by a young defiant black woman into the side door of the local Woolworth building, the site of the start of the Civil Rights movement, when black university students sat down at the lunch counter and demonstrated until they won the right to equal service.

I do not remember much of this dream, but I do recall being led by the hand and while my guide sat at those same stools, I hung back at the end of the counter, observing some books on nearby shelves. I awoke with the thought, “what kind of ally will you be?”

Somehow it just felt important to me to go to Greensboro. I learned during my life in Bolivia that places of resistance can be very sacred sites. I felt that this place might inform other areas of my trip.

Greensboro is a graceful step into the past. Old tiled buildings, streets lined with antique shops promising wonders untold to window shoppers who chance into their caves of bedframes, wagon wheels, and soda fountains. I played the part of the mosaic artist, gathering tiles for a future project, peering into alleys and looking at storefronts to imagine their story. Red velvet and lemon cakes behind glass cases and milkshakes and fountains…a quaint downtown with no idea as to why I have come.

I paid homage at the Woolsworth building, which is boarded up and awaiting restoration, along with the Civil Rights Museum next door. According to the tourist center folks, the museum has already received a lot of funding, which apparently has been mismanaged. The folks at the other historical museum up the road said there had been a lot of water damage. Hmm. So I made the hard cement sidewalk outside my museum and paid tribute to this home to courage and resistance.

We are sure going to need it in New Orleans.

III.

Most recently I was at a Barnraising for a Malcolm X Radio Station in Greenville, SC, chaperoning a group from the Youth Noise Network, a radio station in Durham powered by high school youth. The term barnraising implies building something in a short amount of time. For our project, it was building the Low Power Station, WMXP,in a weekend.

The goal of this weekend was to provide Greenville with the resources to create the station and to empower attendees in general by offering technical skills in all areas of radio as media activism. They reported that African-Americans in general only own 3.4% of US radio stations. The hope was to diversify the voices. Greenville, SC was chosen because it is a very conservative southern town. A walk downtown during the "Scottish Games" (can you imagine wearing a wool kilt in a heat wave? thou shalt not kilt!) offered a reference as to who owns the streets in some of the more wealthier area. We did stop to pay tribute to a statue commemorating the students in Greenville who were a part of the movement to end segregated public spaces. But from this moment on, the struggle we witnessed was disjointed and pretty segregated.


The event we participated in offered no collective analysis and response to privilege and power and appeared at the outset to be another attempt of folks from the North, mostly white and mostly male, coming to educate folks from South to be more "progressive". In many ways, it backfired because of this. In summary, the project exploded in the end into disorganized dialogue brought forward by a committee of well-meaning folks who unfortunately created even more problematic layers.

What I have learned from the South thus far is that there is real pain here that I may never be able to understand. It is not a carnaval ride. As a Yank with white skin privilege I cannot just buy my ticket and hope on. I need to keep challenging myself, for I am an imposer as much because of my northernness, as my white skin. There is trauma here that I have not lived, not in NC, not in New Orleans, not in anywhere I have hope for. I have struggled with questions about my role as an ally, my privilege as an ally, and my own spiritual journey. I have explored questions about my travel and the impact of my presence in communities not my own. There is a responsibility to doing work in the South, to educating myself without putting that burden on people of color, to knowing the community I travel to and why I am going there. Although I always want to support all people traveling freely, esp women, the work that I will continue to do as I travel through to the border is to look at the privilege I have in being able to make this trip, and how to use that privilege to turn around racism.




Regarding New Orleans, I am taking longer to get there because I feel it an enormous responsibility. I want to know if being another white person there can be at all helpful or even more oppressive.I've been asking myself why I'm here, how I think I can be a good ally, and what are the questions I can bring home. When I get that squirming feeling in my belly (the kind that isn't left over from Bolivian chicha) I need to sit with it,figure out what feels wrong, and meet the challenge. The impact of this place is that i am just doing that naturally. Sometimes we white folk get all stressed when we don't consider something; I'm working to challenge myself despite my need to be perfect and adored. I have also been interviewing my elders here on how they approach the role of ally in this space because whatever work we're doing, we all need community.

Father's Day 2007

For M.A.A. and A.A.L.


The girl slips her hand into his
Imagining the words she will speak
In his own language
Papi, quiero pizza
Without sensing the words on his mind
Deportación, migra, que será de la reforma, m'ija?
Or even
"Illegal alien".

They walk the narrow sidewalks,
And from behind there is nothing alien
About the way her body hugs his.
She has the same gait,
Legs short and lagging in city traffic.
The soft down on her back is his,
And they raise the same thick wealth of eyebrows
At the line of cars.

Father's Day in a New York minute.

They continue past shops and greet,
Although the only Spanish she speaks is whispered at bed,
Among kicked-off covers in the lone room they share,
Her sticky little face molded into his arm.
Or upon leaving her school in the afternoon
Amidst a flurry of mothers pecking at their clothes
And herding children along while
He waits to take her hand,
His work uniform still pressed from the morning
And his black hair shining.

Still she listens to the señoras and understands
As if she were the one they were talking to.
She has no idea
That one day soon
She might need to use this language to ask
Her family
Why her father had to leave.

-Sarah L.

Got food? Thank a farmworker...

Day 1 at the farm:

When I was living back in Maine, I knew I wanted to come to the South to farm. I also knew that I was going to be involved with migrant workers in a variety of different jobs.

Once while facilitating a weekly support group for homeless Latino men, the group chose the topic of the meanings of agricultural labor in their lives. One of my elderly Mexican clients described in detail the loss he felt at not being physically able to farm, because "farming is like having money in the bank". Being able to grow food and feed your family is the greatest security a person can have.

Thinking about how to design this part of my trip, I was clear that I didn't want to play at being an immigrant farmworker so that I could experience something. Being a farmworker and an immigrant so often means being exploited or earning too little; doing solidarity work doesn't mean studying people or in any way excepting that behavior. Moreover, I'm committed to organic farming. I'd been working to create a local food co-op in Maine and learning more about our agricultural economy. And farmwork means a lot to me at this age, touching earth to get clarity, feeling connected to my own mother, who did all kinds of migrant labor, educating myself to perhaps work once again with permaculture and farming in Maine. And yes, to be in solidarity with farmworkers.

I found Harry LeBlanc and the Beausol Farm through a friend of a friend in Durham. I called Harry just after his chosen apprentice failed to show up. At the time, I thought there would be no way I could do it : I would need to bike 60 miles daily on sketchy roads to get there. I pondered this out loud one day with my friend Tennessee, who immediately suggested I take her car. Well, I'm not afraid of much in this world, but driving a stick is right up there with death. However, I really wanted to farm. So I relearned how to drive in rush hour on the 15-501 and it all worked out.

I spend my first day weeding in the swiss chard and other beds. It looks like the farm had been needing another person for awhile. Over lunch, the other worker, Jessica, and Harry's wife called me an "angel". What I had put out there, my desire to farm, had led me to Beausol just in time. I feel blessed to once again be creating something living with my hands.

Farmworkers in North Carolina: nearly 5 out of 10 farmworker households in NC cannot afford enough food for their families.

Day 2: Heat in the flower bed

What images come to mind when we think of planting flowers? I imagine my mother, down on her hands and knees with her soft hands in the moist dirt, digging amidst squirming worms, sifting out the weeds with her trowel.

This land I'm working was not made for this garden, I think on my first day. The earth is dry, crumbling orange and red rocks and dirt. We are in a bit of a drought and both the soil and I are thirsty and hardened. I pick my hoe up over my head and swing it down to till....I reach rock and the hit reverberates into my elbows. I think of the arm muscles to be acquired in this task...that is, until midday when the sun is overhead and I think about how I've actually been standing in one place all day. Today is also different than yesterday because I am working alone and feel resentful at having to work in the same hot spot until the afternoon. I try to put good thoughts into the ground as i shovel and rake and hoe and till these plot to no avail; I have no use for planting flowers right now. I mean it's April for the love of God! As much as I love this labor of recreating the land, I look longingly over at the vegetable beds and yearn for their succulent greenery. I want to plant myself in their moister wanderings and be an artist of legumes, sculpting their rows. This land is not for my imagination.

This land is your land, this land is my land...from Native families to enslaved farmhands. It is quite amazing to find myself in a place that is such a compilation of my southern studies. Farmer Harry moved to this state from Lousiana, where he was raised to farm an even hotter, humid land. He moved to North Carolina to attend school and subsequently, to practice as a scientist until he found himself drawn back into farming and supporting a large family. With the death of his first wife, he stayed home to raise their daughter and farming became a full time occupation for Harry. No he works out in the heat until dusk, wearing a long sleeve linen shirt and jeans.

But long before Harry, this land produced other stories of grief and struggle, resistance and change. Harry showed me how he has found arrowheads, while tilling the soil. Based on his knowledge of Native Americans in the Carolinas, he claims that there could have been Cherokees on this land. At some point, the land was colonized and converted to a cotton farm. We do not speak of what we are sure is true...if this land was big enough , it was probably run on slave labor. Before Harry bought the land it was a tobacco farm, so it had been converted yet again for crops that would ultimately do damage to the land that would take years to repair. Now the land is still being converted into soil that has been finally been certified organic.

Tomatoes and peppers grow well now in this southern soil. We grow greensd such as spinach, but for some it is too hot to produce a good crop and the leaves wither and yellow in the heat. I am amazed to find we will be planting okra, and that the asparagus is already up in April. And my favorite...southern spring onions are sweet and ready to barbecue. There are also herbs, artichoke, broccoli, potatoes (some varieties from Maine), a small mushroom farm in the back woods, bushes of berries and grapes and kiwi, and out in the far field- a beehive. Everything is growing and harvesting has begun while the soil in Maine is probably still unfreezing. 600 tomato plants sit in the greenhouse waiting. Many of these plants have been raised from organic seed that was produced in Maine (Fedco, Seeds of Change). Again, my worlds collide as I think of friends who able hands are sorting those seeds.

In time, I will learn what can be planted here. But today, I am sweating in the flower bed and striking rock, trying to remember that flowers bring the bees to pollinate it all.

Farmworkers in North Carolina: Agricultural work has been ranked number three of the most dangerous occupations in the US. In NC, heat stress, dehydration, falls, and pesticides are frequent health hazards.

Day 3: A day for planting flowers

Today all of the flower seedlings that have been raised in the greenhouse need to be planted in their beds by 2:00 is the afternoon. This is to be my introduction to work on a biodynamic , organic farm.

Never again when I buy products that say biodynamic on the label, or eat at my brother's fancy raw food and often biodynamic restaurant in NYC, will I take it for granted that this food is hard work! Biodynamic farming means that all planting and harvesting is organized and conceptualized by the cosmos. That is, the position of the moon and the Earth dictates when we can plant certain groups of plants. There are flower days, fruit days, root days, etc. And for some reason I don't understand, flowers always seem to have to be planted by 2:00 in the afternoon. Humph.

The day starts out easy enough. We water all the thirsty seedlings, weed a little in the greens, and start to plant the flowers in the far beds while Harry does other projects. Then, as the heat begins to climb and it turns around 11:00 am, Harry and his wife get progressively more nervous about getting all these seedlings into the ground. The seedlings are a bit overgrown and if they are not planted today, they will have to be planted next week, which would definitely stunt their growth. About around 12:00 it is announced that we will not have lunch until 2:00 when all the planting is done. Around 1:00 my back hurts and we are almost throwing seedlings into their holes, trying to get everything planted. I feel the hot breath of my co-workers stream into my sweat-drenched face as we cover the same ground in a race to get it all done. I think that if I didn't have my new friend Jessica laughing and sweating with me, I wouldn't want to be doing this at all. My body becomes a sweat-oiled machine out in the dry, red field where there is no green, no oxygen. I am a human conveyer belt, dumping seedlings into holes, patting and moving on. I have no love for them now. They are on their own. At the end of the day I go home, and fall asleep on Tennessee's couch, dehydrated and aching.

Farmworkers in North Carolina: NC has the highest production of sweet potatoes in the nation. However, farmworkers in NC earn 35 cents a bucket. They have to pick and haul 125 buckets to make $50. Sweet potatoes are heavy!

Day 4: Labor pains

I return to the farm the next day, after having tossed and turned all night on the futon couch. I have woken several times with sharp pain in my lower back. I can't believe I can get up in this southern heat with this pain in my back and work again. Today is a fruit day and we spend most of it planting peppers in rows. Thankfully, we have all day to plant them and we take frequent breaks. What makes it bearable is that I have Jessica to converse with and that I keep shifting my body to compensate for all the aches and pains. We all agree that we do not want another day like yesterday, and this day has a much nicer pace.


The pepper seedlings look good, although the ground they go into is hot and crumbly and in the middle of a drought. By the afternoon, their leaves wilt, even after watering them immediately. There are sweet peppers and hot peppers. Harry said he always plants a different variety of spicy pepper. I think about the four pepper plants I planted at my garden in Maine last summer. They blossomed in the breeze but the bugs immediately ate their stalks.


Being at the farm makes me look at motherhood differently. On a drive back from Beausol, I was pondering the implications of leaving my community at a time when many women my age are settling into families or homes of their own. I left home with much grief that this would not be my path, that I should be thrust out into the world on my own again to re-hatch myself into yet another environment. It was close to Mother's Day and I had just told my grandmother I regretted not being able to give her any great grandbabies. But had I not just given life to an acre of green goodness? Weren't they my miracle? When I feel like the cycle of life is passing me by I need only to stick my hands into the dirt and nurture the life I am creating. This cycle of life that my own momma began when she worked with her hands on someone else's land, when she got down onto her hands and knees and envisioned her own garden, when she talked softly to her child and taught me to love the green growing by the ocean's side. These are her grandchildren I tend. For now they are what I birth.

Farmworkers in NC: Although labor laws for farmwork require children to be 12 years old at least, all ages can be found in the fields. By the way, they earn 35 cents a bucket to pick peppers.

Day 5: A day for planting 600 tomato plants

I arrive early to the farm because the cosmos have predetermined that today we will plant all of the over 600 tomato plants that sit withering in the greenhouse. It's news to me that tomatoes are actually native to this area, and NC makes a huge profit annually from the tomato, which has a pretty long season.


Because it's native to this land, the chance for blight on the crops is even more significant and we spend the first part of the morning preparing the plants for the ground by suckering them, or taking the small leaves off the bottom so they get fewer problems from the ground up.

I am amazed to hear the names of the varieties that come from this area. My favorite is the Mortgage Lifters, aptly named by a NC native that used to go around selling radiators out of his truck. He developed this tomato and was able to pay off his mortgage in one year. So goes the legend.

We plant row after row of sungolds, heirlooms, tomatillos. Jessica and I raise concerns about setting up the drip tapes because these beauties will be thirsty. But there are so many to plant! We just keep going, stopping at the end to mulch them with hay and water as much as we can. Jess, a former dairy farmer, shows me how to really handle the hay. We pray for rain. It is beautiful to plant tomatoes in their native land. Their smell tickles my nose, which is sunburned and sneezy from the hay.

Farmworkers in NC: Come to the state from other migrant jobs further south for the tomato harvest.