November, 2006

San Joaquin Valley: Why the poor are under attack

Editor's note: Portions of this article are excerpted from We're Still Slaves: Modern Day Slavery In The San Joaquin Valley by Black Rose, published in the People's Tribune in 2005.

Fresno police taking away shopping carts belonging to the homeless. PHOTO/RANDY JOHNSON SR.

Nothing can be understood apart from history. A Georgia slave-owning family migrated to the San Joaquin Valley in the 1920s, creating the richest cotton kingdom in the world. The cotton owners became rich from the brutal exploitation of the workers, white, Black and Mexican. The owners kept the workers divided by granting higher wages to the whites.

Today, California agriculture is under the control of corporations that produce an abundance of food, but with technology that requires fewer and fewer workers. Almost three million adults in California -- the breadbasket of the world -- do not have enough to eat. More and more people of all colors are living in the streets. The police, an arm of the big corporations, are becoming more violent in their drive to control the poor.

We need a vision of a new society where the workers take control of the corporations, such as those that produce California's breadbasket. Unity of the poor is key to making that happen. Together, we can create a world where everyone has plenty to eat and where everyone lives in harmony.