Community speaks out against the proposed immigration facility - KNDO/KNDU Tri-Cities, Yakima, WA |

Community speaks out against the proposed immigration facility - KNDO/KNDU Tri-Cities, Yakima, WA |

When will immigrant workers emerge from the shadows? DairyHerd.com - Feature Articles

When will immigrant workers emerge from the shadows?   DairyHerd.com - Feature Articles

ICE audit in Brewster spreads worry in state ag industry | Yakima Herald-Republic Online

ICE audit in Brewster spreads worry in state ag industry | Yakima Herald-Republic Online

Position Blog Monday

gustavob

CHSTU

Position Blog

El Movimiento has been an ongoing struggle on achieving societal freedom and Mexican American empowerment since the 1940’s Mexican American Civil Rights Movement.¹ Scholars have made the notion of saying El Movimiento whom elevated in the mid 1960’s, is an extension of the Mexican American Civil Rights. Numerous Chicanos and Chicanas whom belonged to well established organizations and attended prestigious universities have fueled El Movimiento. This powerful movement sparked all over the United States with great momentum due to the inequalities of Chicanos and Chicanas nationwide no matter of their socioeconomic standing. From inequalities in education, voting, and restoration of land grants, to farm workers rights and political rights, Chicanos/a have addressed these issues with the help of El Movimiento.^1A

El Movimiento or in English formally known as the Chicano Movement, has sparked the interests of the entire Chicano communities in the United States to fight for equality. These communities have been oppressed and marginalized for over 500 years.² This movement has been uprising since the mid 1800’s, the end of the U.S-Mexican War.^2A The war was to blame because of the hundreds of thousands of Mexicans whom became United States citizens immediately following the war. The fact was the United States decided to move the U.S-Mexican border to where it currently stands today. This era ignited the discrimination to all whom were Mexican American. ^2B

Chicanos/a were finally given the opportunity to stand to what enough was enough. They were tiered of being looked as third-class citizen who do not have the standards of belonging on the north side of the U.S-Mexican border.³ In a social context, the Chicano movement wanted to address the negative stereotypes mass media and American perception created for Mexicans.⁴ El Movimiento was also active on focusing its efforts on daily discrimination of Chicanos/a private and public organizations in which used these organizations to keep in contact with every one who was part of the movement. They served as the backbone of the Chicano Movement in keeping everyone in the community informed.^4A One in particular was the League of United Latin American Citizens. This organization has been active since 1929.⁵ The most leading organization in the Chicano community is the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) Mexican Americans formed these organizations to shield the wellbeing of them selves and others from prejudice. The main leaders whom helped not only these organizations but the entire Chicano/a nation came from New Mexico, Texas, Illinois, and mainly California like Reis Lopez Tijerina, Dr. Hector Garcia, and the well known figures of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, the leaders of the farm workers in California. ⁶

Cesar Chavez and the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) organized one of the well-known rallies in the Chicano Movement.⁷ The entire grape-picker work force of California rallied and marched to the state capital of Sacramento demanding higher wages and urged all Americans to boycott table grapes. This lasted five years, which lead to national awareness.⁸ This can be seen as the initiation of mass media covering El Movimiento live and on the move. Students viewed the Chicano Movement as an opportunity to address the lack of their heritage in the classrooms. They wanted to establish self-identity in the classroom as they have outside. Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán known as MEchA was formed to help the lack of teaching in the classroom of the Chicano/a history.⁹ This may be one of the factors of why CHSTU 101 is on the curriculum currently at the University of Washington.

The Chicano Movement has been a historical event that will never be forgotten in U.S history. I stand by this because of the overwhelming population of second-generation Mexicans who were born in the United States and consider them selves Chicano/a or Mexican American. They them selves are being identified by this powerful event that might of happened years before their time. This is the factor of how powerful this movement really was for the Mexican American community. This is one true accomplishment the Chicano Movement bestowed on the Chicano/a youth. They are proud on who they are and what they consider to really be their ethnical background. El Movimiento is jumping to the future in which may never be forgotten.

Work Cited Page

1. Edward J. Escobar, "The Dialectics of Repression: The Los Angeles Police Department and the Chicano Movement, 1968-1971" (The Journal of American History, 1993 Vol. 79, No. 4, pp. 1483-1514).

1A. Lecture Sanchez, Antonio

2. Power Point, Sanchez, Antonio

2A. Ignacio M. García, Chicanismo: The Forging of a Militant Ethos Among Mexican Americans (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997).

2B. Mario T. García, Mexican Americans: Leadership, Ideology, & Identity, 1930-1960 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).

3. George Mariscal, Brown-Eyed Children of the Sun: Lessons from the Chicano Movement, 1965-1975 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005)

4. Carlos Muñoz, Jr., Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement (New York: Verso, 1989). ISBN 0-86091-913-7

4A. Juan Gómez Quiñones, Chicano Politics: Reality & Promise, 1940-1990 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990). ISBN 0-8263-1213-6

5. F. Arturo Rosales, Chicano! The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement (Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1996). ISBN 1-55885-201-8

6. "People & Events: Cesar Chavez (1927-1993)". American Experience, RFK. Public Broadcasting System. 2004-07-01. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/rfk/peopleevents/p_chavez.html. Retrieved on 2009-03-31.

7. F. Arturo Rosales, Testimonio: A Documentary History of the Mexican-American Struggle for Civil Rights (Houston: Arte Publico Press, 2000).

8. database of portraits in the National Portrait gallery - César Chávez. Accessed Mar. 20, 2009.

9. Carlos Muñoz, Jr., Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement (New York: Verso, 1989). ISBN 0-86091-913-7

Migrant Farm Workers: Our Nation's Invisible Population - eXtension

Migrant Farm Workers: Our Nation's Invisible Population - eXtension

Gotham Gazette

Gotham Gazette

Posted using ShareThis

Urgent: Don’t Let Lobbyists Weaken New Organic Dairy Standards

by CORNUCOPIA INSTITUTE INCORPORATED

targeting The President of the United States

Farmers and consumers concerned with the integrity of organic dairy farming need to contact the White House and urge the President to support a strong pending standard governing organic livestock and dairy management practices.

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is nearing the end of its critical review of proposed new regulations clarifying the requirement that dairy cows and other ruminants consume a meaningful amount of feed from pasture and grazing. Powerful factory farm interests opposed to the rule – who want to continue to principally confine animals in feedlot style operations – have privately met with OMB officials and are seeking to weaken the new rule.

In the past, USDA officials have used the excuse that they needed tighter rules for enforcement against factory farms scofflaws — this has allowed the rapid rise of feedlot factory farms in organic dairying, milking as many as 7200 cows. These new regulations will negate that illegitimate excuse.

The giant operations have produced so much milk with their cheaper, suspect practices that a surplus is now driving legitimate, ethical family farmers off their farms and out of organic dairying. A strong new rule, coupled with promised enforcement from the Obama/Vilsack administration at the USDA, will level the playing field and prevent factory farms from continued cheating.

Contact the White House today and urge them to support a strong new standard for organic dairy cows and livestock that will require meaningful pasture and grazing.

The Food Justice Movement Ignored

by Jill Richardson

category: Organic

Published March 24, 2009 @ 02:00PM PT

Sustainable food's in the news lately. And some think that this recent New York Times piece ("Is a Food Revolution Now in Season?") was, in ways, a hit piece on our movement. They paint a picture of the Organic Elite - Alice Waters, Michael Pollan, and big wigs at Stonyfield and Whole Foods - but make them seem as though they've got their heads in the clouds as they call for tripling what we pay for kids' school lunches or changing our policy to create decentralized, regional food networks. They provide the viewpoint of the "other side," saying:

But advocates of conventional agriculture argue that organic farming simply can’t provide enough food because the yields tend to be lower than those for crops grown with chemical fertilizer.

“We think there’s a place for organic, but don’t think we can feed ourselves and the world with organic,” says Rick Tolman, chief executive of the National Corn Growers Association. “It’s not as productive, more labor-intensive and tends to be more expensive.”

That's fine, to throw in a quote from the National Corn Growers Association. What's NOT fine is to fail to mention that the quote is NOT TRUE. Organics is more expensive because people are willing to pay more for it. We as consumers therefore think of it as more expensive, but is it? Certainly it is expensive for a conventional farmer to transition to organic but once their soil life is healthy and the beneficial insects have moved in to eat the pests, quite frankly I've never seen any analysis of the cost of growing organic vs. the cost of growing conventional.

What I have seen are numbers from the Rodale Institute showing that organic yields beat conventional yields in most years after the first five years of converting to organic. And if a farmer were to grow corn and soy using Rodale's methods, I'd imagine it's probably cheaper than conventional farming. Sure, you'd have to buy seeds for your cover crop, but you need 2/3 less oil overall, and you can skip on the fertilizer and pesticides. With their methods, it's not terribly labor intensive because the cover crop (once you kill it and plant your actual crop) serves as a mulch to suppress weed growth. On the organic farms I've visited, much of the extra labor required is for weeding.

I don't have the data to fully refute the National Corn Growers quote (other than the bit about yields) but my point here is that the article never gives an organic farmer a chance to respond. They let the quote stand on its own, leading the reader to believe that the advocates of organics are perhaps just a bunch of Berkeley hippies with no idea how the real world works.

The other "money quote" in the piece is this:

But Ms. Childs worries that some of the activists’ recommendations for buying fresh, local or organic food cannot be adopted by many Americans because those foods may be too expensive. “By singling out certain lifestyles and foods, it’s diminishing very good quality nutrition sources,” she says. “Frozen goods, canned goods, they are not bad things. What’s important is that people eat well, within their means.”

“We’d all love to live on a farm in Vermont, right?” she adds.

This one really irks me. I spend much of my time engaged with the food justice/community food security side of our movement. That's the part of the movement that believes that all people have a right to healthy food and works to see it happen. That's the part of the movement that's getting very little press right now, as organics steal all the headines. While I love seeing organics and sustainability in the news, my hunch is that we can be marginalized if they paint us as an elite with our heads in the clouds.

This past year, I've visited my fair share of organic farms, but I've also visited a homeless shelter in Philadelphia that trains people to work in food service and helps them find jobs. I've written about Growing Power, an urban farm in Milwaukee that empowers its youth corps to grow healthy food in a sustainable way and to provide that food in an area of the city that would otherwise be a food desert. I've spoken with Austin's Sustainable Food Center, that teaches free healthy cooking classes to low income folks and sends them home with a bag of groceries after each class. In my own city, the International Rescue Committee set up the first farmers market that accepts food stamps and located it in a blighted area. Because the neighborhood of the new farmers' market has a high population of immigrants, they make sure to sell foods used in various types of ethnic cuisine.

There's a food justice movement out there and it's big. So we're not all Slow Food fanatics who dine on $120 a plate multi-course meals of locally grown food. That represents some people, sure, but it's not all of us. And it's about time that the food justice movement starts taking back the headlines.