Giving thanks for our local farmworkers
The show of appreciation for our essential workers was impressive during the early days of the pandemic. Everywhere, doctors and nurses and even police officers were lavished with care packages, lunches and fanfare at their worksites. Local hospital workers received $600-$800 bonuses thanks to an anonymous donor who considered them “heroic” for continuing to work during “this challenging time.” These individuals deserved recognition for continuing to put themselves at risk while many of us were safe working from home.
Living in Watsonville, one cannot go far without seeing other hardworking individuals who, in addition to facing the risk of the virus, are accustomed to working through heat waves, rain, and hazardous smoke conditions during the fire season to plant and harvest the food we eat.
In April 2020, a group of us from Watsonville, many of whom grew up in and around the fields, got in our cars with our families and drove to local farms to wave signs and shout messages of love and appreciation to the workers who continued their labor, despite the pandemic. Soon recognizing the lack of information they were receiving about COVID-19 and resources available to them during these unprecedented times, our team decided to do more than just say “thank you” and honk our horns. The Watsonville Campesino Appreciation Caravan was born.
For 19 months, we have made weekly visits to farms, and the work has become a meditation through action on appreciation, and on the relationship between labor, land, and community. As we approach our national holiday of Thanksgiving, we want to share these reflections.
Although we depend on their labor, farmworkers are too often made invisible, or worse, targeted with anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies. Their real stories are too often missing from public discourse.
Between 500,000 to 800,000 farmworkers reside in California. Approximately 75% of California’s farmworkers and 83% of Santa Cruz County farmworkers are undocumented, and thus not entitled to basic labor protections such as sick or family leave.
Many of the farmworkers we visit are indigenous people, displaced from their homeland by unjust economic systems. They have made the difficult decision to leave family members behind, seeking a way out of extreme poverty or other dangers in their own countries. Some never return to their homeland due to the financial dependency of their families and the risks involved in crossing the border. Many do not see parents, children and other loved ones for years; some never again. And here, far from home, they are especially vulnerable to harassment and abuse.
When we first started, we put out an appeal for donations and thanks to an outpouring of community support from individuals, businesses, agencies and nonprofits, we were soon distributing PPE and high demand household items, lunches from local taquerias, and gift cards for local stores. We honored Mexican holidays with mariachi and folkloric dancing in the fields, and sent books, art kits and school supplies into thousands of farmworker homes.
We started the Caravan to offer love and appreciation and we received back much more than we gave.
Some have identified our work as mutual aid: community members taking care of one another, without waiting for the government or a nonprofit to step in. Our work addresses injustices with grassroots, practical, person-to-person solidarity.
Thanksgiving is a time to reflect on our relationships with one another and the real stories of our community, past and present. Native people who stewarded this land for thousands of years have been dispossessed and dishonored, denied basic rights and insulted by myth and cultural appropriation. And yet, today, their descendants are working with courage, hope and perseverance to restore proper stewardship and recover sustainable practices and sacred rituals.
May we focus this Thanksgiving holiday on honoring those who have and continue to labor the land for our food, our community, with justice and respect for all.