Environmental for Food Justice

Moderator’s Note: We are reposting this set of close-up reflections on the 2013 Burlington Berry Workers’ Strike by a direct participant, the scholar activist Tomás Madrigal, a doctoral candidate in Chicana/o Studies at UC-Santa Barbara. Tomás is among a new generation of Chicana/o social science scholars refocusing attention on the conditions and struggles of the working class. ‘Labor studies’ in Chicana/o Studies – perhaps because the field was closely associated with the marxist ‘metanarratives’ – became a neglected research area.  Over the course of much of the 1990s and early 2000s, Chicana/o Studies shifted focus and ‘old school’ topics like unions and strikes became passé and were largely eclipsed by the postmodernist obsession with identity and subjectivity. It is refreshing to see a new generation of C/S scholars like Tomás Madrigal, Raul Garcia, Gabe Valle, Jessica Lozano, and many others return to community-based social action research in support of workers’ self-organi...

Familias Unidas por la Justicia committee and members after voting to authorize boycott of Sakuma Bros. Farms! Moderator’s Note: As part of our continuing series dedicated to the revolt of food system workers, I am posting an important analysis and set of critical reflections prepared by Tomas Madrigal, a graduate student at the University of California-Santa Barbara and workers' rights activist collaborating with Rosalinda Guillen of Community to Community and the the Mixtec/Triqui organization known as Familias Unidas por la Justicia (United Families for Justice).   This report focuses on how indigenous peoples themselves define autonomy and what this means for an understanding of the current struggle of the berry pickers in Burlington, Washington. We make the road by walking INDIGENOUS FARM WORKERS EMBODY THE ETHICS OF AUTONOMY Tomás Madrigal | Seattle, WA | October 3, 2013 A los compañeros del CNI y La Otra: Unir y no dividirnos. ¡Hoy es el tiempo de luchar! ¡No estan solos! ...

Moderator’s Note: The historic strike of the indigenous berry pickers at Sakuma Brothers in Washington State continues despite renewed efforts by the growers at intimidation and strikebreaking. These acts of intimidation have included the hiring of private contractors to act as thugs – threatening the workers by engaging in blatant acts of surveillance and other harassment. It is the 1960s all other again, only instead of California it is Washington; instead of the UFW, it is an independent association of autonomous workers; instead of the Teamsters it is private contractors; but the struggles and demands pretty much remain the same. In the meantime, the workers’ movement continues to build a vast network of solidarity in Skagit County and beyond as it sustains the struggle and intensifies the boycott against Sakuma Brothers. I am posting an invitation from the Bellingham, WA-based Dignity Campaign for us to attend a rally on October 5 . Please make plans to attend this coming Saturday...