el equipo del trabajador

”Once in your life you may need a doctor, a lawyer, an architect,  but three times a day you will need a farmworker”

We jumped into phase two with both feet last night! After meeting at the Benson office, I traveled with Kenzie to a camp outside of Fayetteville. As it grew darker and later into the evening we drove deeper and deeper into rurality. The few scatterings of houses evolved into deep soybean and sweet potato fields. It was a little spooky to be the only car on the road for seemingly miles. After a missed turn we finally turned onto an unmarked dirt path that Kenzie had automatically recognized. We arrived at a group of trailer homes, all with doors wide open and inviting lights shining through. Despite Kenzie’s reassurance of the men’s kindness and patience, I was hesitant to say the least and petrified that my Spanish speaking skills would not be sufficient. However, the two hours I spent in the company of Alfredo and his two roommates easily put my fears to rest.

I was welcomed into the kitchen while Alfredo cooked his dinner. The younger of the two roommates brought me an orange pop and a snickers bar. Despite my hunger and the delicious smells coming from the skillet I declined Alfredo’s invitation to share his dinner with him. I couldn’t believe it! These men often earn wages well below the poverty line, and yet there was no hesitation in sharing their food with a complete stranger. Their rurality and limited transportation allows them to access the grocery store once a week at most, stifling their already limited resources. But I’m glad I didn’t accept his invitation because by the time we had completed the survey he had finished eating all four chicken breasts by himself. Kenzie told me after we left that oftentimes the men in these camps begin work at 5am and do not finish until as late as 9pm. No wonder he was starving! Could you imagine having to be in the fields from sun up to sun down six days a week, six months straight?

It’s been one of those weeks. You know the one. You have meeting after meeting, scheduled phone calls, midterms looming in the distance and multiple group projects comprised (of course) of completely different people. The monotony of scheduling conflicts and last minute details can start to cloud your judgement and dampen your mood. If only you could see my planner right now. My goodness! There is not a white space left. 

And then my friend Meredith sends me an email. Simple enough right? Not even a little bit. You see when I first learned that I would be part of Team Farmworker I emailed her for any resources she currently had. She works for a company called Michigan United. And one part of the many empowering things they do around Detroit and Kalamazoo is advocate for worker’s rights. They have a hand in immigration reform, worker justice, and many of the topics the NC Farmworkers’ Project handles on a daily basis. Perfect connection for learning more? I thought so too.

One of the items included in her list was an article published in the New York Times from earlier this summer, and after further investigation I realized that I had actually read this before. The article is titled, “Farm Labor Groups Make Progress on Wages and Working Conditions”.  At the time I was probably at home, surrounded by my family, possibly relaxing on our front porch without a care in the world (makes you really want fall break I bet). Maybe I was petting my dog Jake, sipping on a cup of coffee and was distracted while I read the article. 

Or maybe in the summer I was too far removed from this article for it to have made an impact upon me. Because I don’t remember stopping to reread the sentence, “[it] would guarantee their migrant workers a weekly day off, seven vacation days a year and more, including improved housing” (Greenhouse, 2015). The article is referring to the dairy workers in Vermont who are attempting to unionize. Which I kind of thought was a basic human right. What happened to the first amendment people? Remember that one...right of the people peaceably to assemble...oh yeah... Or how about the fact that they’d like a weekly day off. Just one! Not asking for much. Improved housing? Nahhh who needs that. Comical I know, but back in the summer I didn’t hesitate over this small portion. I didn’t even flinch when I read that the reason the workers in Vermont began to unionize is because one of their co-workers was “dragged into dairy machinery and strangled by his own clothing” (Greenhouse, 2015). I didn’t even stop to ask myself how working conditions like that still exist in this country! If you can’t tell, I am shaking my head at summer 2015 Raleigh pre-Public Health at Campbell.

You could say I was distracted by the cuteness of Jake, affectionately known as Flarf, or Fat Flarf or one of the many expletives if he’s just stolen your last piece of pizza. But more likely than not, it was because I had not yet learned the transformative impact an experience like Team Farmworker can have upon a person. I have now interacted with and can put names and faces to the workers referred to in the article. The over 15,000 men living a few miles away in unimaginable conditions, who only earned less than two paragraphs in this New York Times article. The workers who don’t have the luxury of leisurely sipping coffee, who are not surrounded by their family, and who have far more important worries than anxiety about moving to North Carolina for grad school. For some of these men moving is even a constant part of their almost nomadic lifestyle as they shift from camp to camp. 

I am grateful to have been given a second look at this article. It’s acted as a gauge, a before and after in my ever-evolving being and thought process. Instead of looking at shocking statistics in a removed, eyes-glazed over sort of way, I am learning how connect the numbers with stories and faces and other problems, so that we may fully correct them. I am practicing problematizing the issues and recognizing that something so horrific as migrant worker injustice does not stem from just one problem and will therefore not be resolved by just one act. Addressing it as a multi-layered issue will not only allow us the best understanding of the problem, but will lead to the many solutions that must work in tandem to right the wrong. Our practicum addresses a small few of these items, but understanding what is left will be the best way to move forward. So glad summer 2015 Raleigh is finally evolving into a grad student.