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| Fired H2A farm workers mourning Honesto Silva Ibarra, an H2A farm worker who died on August 6, 2017 in Sumas, Washington |
By the Rev. Connie Yost
Our history must reckon with the fact that Indigenous peoples, African Americans, and millions of other non-white citizens have not enjoyed the self-evident truths of equality, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness proclaimed at the nation’s founding as inalienable rights belonging to all. [1]
I’m going to be celebrating America’s 250 year anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, not to congratulate ourselves as having achieved the ideals written there, but as a reckoning of where we are and where we need to be.
Against the advice
of some friends, I will travel to Washington DC, and I will enjoy the special
exhibits that highlight our history. I
won’t be participating in the current administration’s events, but in the America250
events. America250, according to their
website, is the “national nonpartisan organization charged by Congress to
engage every American in celebrating and commemorating the 250th
anniversary of our country…an opportunity to pause and reflect on our nation’s
past, honor the contributions of all Americans, and look ahead toward the
future we want to create for the next generation and beyond.” For me,
that’s a worthy goal, and worth the trip.
Besides, I love DC and I won’t let anyone ruin it for me!
In my ministry advocating for and supporting farm workers, it is abundantly clear that these “self-evident” truths in the Declaration of Independence do not now, nor have they ever, applied to farm workers. Farm workers and domestic workers were deliberately left out of labor law in 1935 because they were black. Before that, farm workers were slaves!
We haven’t strayed very far from slavery when it comes to the people who feed us. Consider the H2A Foreign Worker Visa under which farm owners who can’t find enough domestic laborers are allowed to hire temporary workers from foreign countries (mostly Mexico for farm workers). These workers too often are hired through labor contractors who can operate unethically and even brutually with seeming impunity, and the workers are allowed to work on only the farm that they were hired to work on, no matter what the conditions are on that farm. (When H2A visa worker Honesto Silva Ibarra, 28, died at a Seattle hospital on August 6, 2017, the 65 H2A farm workers protesting his death and conditions at the farm in Sumas, Washington were literally thrown out into a neighbor’s acreage, now having no housing, no food, no legal documents, and no way to get another job or go back to Mexico.) And in 2026, under the current Trump administration, the very few labor rights or protections farm workers had under the H2A visa program or for farm workers in general have been eroded. It seems that the end goal is to remove all worker rights so farm workers can operate as slaves.
We call that Modern Day Slavery and everybody needs to know it exists on our farms and in many other jobs. [2] Since everyone eats, I wanted to think that it was a “no-brainer” for people to know about farm workers and advocate for their rights. Sadly, I can’t tell you how many times people tell me they WERE farm worker advocates, back in the day of Chavez and Huerta and the grape boycott of the 1960’s. “And what are you doing for farm workers today?” I ask. Sixty years after the grape boycott, 91 years after national labor laws were enacted, 161 years after the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the USA, conditions for farm workers have not improved and most of us go about our day not even thinking about where our food comes from.
On this 4th of July, let us join in truth-telling about our country’s legacy of racism, slavery, and genocide. As the Rev. Jim Wallis wrote recently, “Only truth-telling can lead America to genuine freedom beyond the comfort of falsehoods that often accompany the July 4th celebrations. In fact, the gravity of our present moment, when our flawed nation’s best ideals are being actively dismantled, gives us a choice to make it about our shared future and the kind of world our grandchildren will grow up in. That choice begins with an honest reckoning about who we are.”
Let us be the people who know what is going on with our farm workers and immigrant families. And let us raise our voices to stop the legacy of “our nation’s unflinching willingness to use violence on nonwhite people to exert its will on seemingly endless supplies of labor.” [3] Then, on this 4th of July, let us tell the truth and face our sins, and celebrate the promise of our coming together to demand the equality, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for everyone.
Some lyrics from America the Beautiful
America! America!
God mend thine ev'ry flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.
God shed his grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.
Listen to Brandi Carlile
sing America the Beautiful
[1] Blackhawk, Ned. The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History (The Henry Roe Cloud Series on American Indians and Modernity). Yale University Press, 2023. Kindle edition, page 14.
[3] American Capitalism Is Brutal. You Can Trace That to the Plantation. - The New York Times, by Matthew Desmond, AUG. 14, 2019
