Fired H2A farm workers mourning Honesto Silva Ibarra, an H2A farm worker who died on August 6, 2017 in Sumas, Washington

Truth-Telling on July 4, 2026

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 250^th 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 13^th 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 4^th 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 4^th 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 4^th 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.

America! America!
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.

[2] Modern-Day Slavery - NFWM

[3] American Capitalism Is Brutal. You Can Trace That to the Plantation. - The New York Times, by Matthew Desmond, AUG. 14, 2019

Copyright 2026 Constance B. Yost. All rights reserved.

 

 PCUN May Day 2025

Reflection by the Rev. Connie Yost

President, Farm Worker Ministry Northwest 

 

In 1962 James Baldwin wrote, "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."[i]   Friends, we must stay strong and face the hard truths of this lawless and immoral time in our country. 

 And the truth is that the Trump administration appears to be heading to an authoritarian system, under which, in the words of Jamal Greene, professor at Columbia Law School, “civil society is significantly diminished for fear of targeted retribution... We have much to fear.”[ii]

And there is much fear in our hearts.  Fear of being deported, fear of families being torn apart, fear of economic hardship, fear of programs being diminished or eliminated that provide the basic safety net of food for the hungry, care for the elderly, services for the disabled and health care for all.

Isabel Allende who was forced to flee Chile in a military coup says that “Fear is a very pervasive thing that changes a society, and changes the way people behave with each other, and changes you inside. Something breaks inside you.”[iii]

Friends, it is our moral and human duty to come together in this time of fear.  Some of us are breaking inside right now.  We must stand strong together and not let us forget the inherent worth and dignity of each person, regardless of legal status.  We must stand strong against hateful narratives and policies that break people apart.  We must offer ourselves as a sanctuary for all in need.

We must stand together, as one community.  Pope Francis wrote “Let us dream, then, as a single human family, as fellow travelers sharing the same flesh, as children of the same earth which is our common home, each of us bringing the richness of his or her beliefs and convictions, each of us with his or her own voice, brothers and sisters all.”[iv]

I offer you this closing blessing:

May you offer and find comfort in a community of mutual support and care, such as this one;

May you cultivate and offer others love and hope even in darkest of times;

May we never forget that our lives are interconnected and we have a moral responsibility to care for one other, especially those in the most need and under the most threat;

May we honor the inherent worth and dignity of each person we meet;

May we be motivated by our own moral outrage to speak out, stand up, and stand with, and share our own stories;

May we know that there is an infinite love that surrounds us and supports us, even in our darkest hour.

Amen and blessed be.

 

---

[i] AS MUCH TRUTH AS ONE CAN BEAR by James Baldwin, The New York Times, January 14, 1962

[ii] Opinion | A Road Map of Trump’s Lawless Presidency - The New York Times

[iii] ‘The Interview’: Isabel Allende Understands How Fear Changes a Society - The New York Times

[iv] Fratelli Tutti: On Fraternity and Social Friendship - Top Quotes from Pope Francis' Latest Encyclical - Catholic Apostolate Center

Copyright 2025 Constance B. Yost. All rights reserved.

Happy New Year 2021

Happy New Year 2021

I am not sure how happy this new year is for most of us.  For me, it started like so many of the days before it - gray, rainy and straining my ability to think up new things to do to keep myself from sinking into boredom and lethargy.

But I do feel hope in the new year.  There is a new federal administration coming  in a few weeks that won’t solve all our problems or do everything I want, but will definitely do better than what we have had.  With any luck the daily news won’t be full of a barrage of lies and attacks on our democracy by the very leaders who are supposed to be upholding and advancing our democratic principles.  Maybe some decency will even enter into the public discourse and we will offer meaningful, tangible support to all those who have been hurt by the pandemic and all those who were already hurting due to their immigration status and/or poverty wages.

That’s a lot to ask, it seems.  How can we be the richest country in the world yet have so many people living in intolerable circumstances?  Can it be that we collectively worship wealth more than equality?  Can it be that we care about justice only if it doesn’t cost us anything, or inconvenience us in any way, or limit our own ability to accumulate wealth?

The pandemic ended life as we knew it, and now that I have been lamenting this for over nine months, I am beginning to understand that there is a gift in this, waiting for us to claim it.

The Indian writer Arundhati Roy writes[i]:

What is this thing that has happened to us? It’s a virus, yes. In and of itself it holds no moral brief.  But it is definitely more than a virus. Some believe it’s God’s way of bringing us to our senses. Others that it’s a Chinese conspiracy to take over the world.

Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could.  Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to “normality,” trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality.

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew.  This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.

We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

Impossible Dream

Me at Mass at La Parroquia, San Miguel de Allende

On Dreams and Democracy

In San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, I am a kind of Catholic, attending mass and a funeral.  The priest speaks simple Spanish slowly enough that I understand some of it.  But mostly I enjoy the music and wonder what the old people are praying about to the Virgin of Guadalupe.  Health and prosperity, most likely.

I say “old people” though I am quite aware that I am probably older than most of them.  That came home to me in the rain yesterday.  I don’t feel confident walking on these wet stones, slick with rain and soap, and so I go quite slowly, prompting everyone to pass me in the street, and even one gringo to ask me if I was OK.  Pretending not to speak English, I smiled wanly and walked on.

In truth, I wasn’t OK yesterday, having lost my faith in the Mexican weather and US democracy.  The weather was a new disappointment; the democracy, sadly not.  Still the culmination of all the atrocities of the last three years weighed down on me, and I collapsed, exhausted, after the news at 6 pm.

Today is better.  I got a lot of sleep, my headache is finally gone, the sun is out and will be for the foreseeable future.  I am having a gracious lunch at the best hotel in town, The Rosewood, a beautiful seared tuna on organic greens.  I swing wildly from eating with poor people to now this.  People in town are getting sick from food poisoning and bronchitis, but after my cold in Chiapas and last night’s sleep, I feel on top of the world.

Knock wood.

Everyone, including the Canadians, is disgusted by US politics.  And so fearful.  I know there are many people whom I do not know personally – with the possible exception of my mother and brother - who are celebrating the president’s “victory” and could well elect him again.  But I refuse to go down in fear and hopelessness.  My energy now is going into the mass movement to end runaway inequality (www.runawayinequality.org).  It is a tall order but worthy of my time and effort.  Yours, too.

But beyond my “to dos” and actions that I can and will take on, Mexico reminds me that I must keep open to dreams and visions, especially the ones that seem the most impossible.  My life already has been a testament to that, achieving things that no one thought me capable of, or possible, and surviving things that no one should have to go through.

So for me, death comes only when I can no longer dream.  I now understand that the reason I love Mexico so much is because despite conquest, corruption and cartels, the dream has not died here.  And no matter what you think of religion, or the Catholic Church, or faith, there is something much deeper and more powerful going on here than the cold exercise of reason.  And I am grateful for that, to have come home to that.

[next post, more on the Mexican dream]

Copyright 2020 Constance B. Yost. All rights reserved.