[COMMENT: Anyone who is in or visits the DC area should try to take in this
show. If you've admired the labor journalism of David Bacon, you will be even
more moved by his exceptional skills as a photojournalist who captures the
world through the lens of a union activist and organizer (he is and has been
both). Don't miss it!]
"Every Worker is an Organizer --
Farm Labor and the Resurgence of the United Farm Workers"
Forty-one photographs by David Bacon
The George Meany Memorial Archives Gallery
10000 New Hampshire Avenue
Silver Spring, MD 20903
January 29 - May 28, 1999.
Exhibit hours: Weekdays, 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Closed weekends and holidays--
February 15 and April 2.
For directions, call 301/431-5451.
Every Worker is an Organizer
Farm Labor and the Resurgence of the United Farm Workers
Forty-one photographs by David Bacon
Farm labor is a key element historically in the photographic
documentation of social reality in the US, and in particular the
documentation of social protest. Dorothea Lange, Hansel Meith, Otto Hegel,
and the generation of the 1930s and 1940s left a body of work showing the
extreme exploitation of farm workers, documenting the early farm labor
organizing efforts, part of the great labor upsurge of those decades.
The iconography of social documentary photography was shaped by
images like Lange's mother and children in Nipomo, or those of the Pixley
cotton strikers packed onto the back of a truck under their banner "Disarm
the rich farmer or arm the workers for self-defense!" or the growers with
their rifles waiting in ambush.
The first two decades of the growth of the United Farm Workers was
undoubtedly one of the most-photographed social protests of the civil
rights era. It too had its icons -- the line of marchers on their way from
Delano to Sacramento, silhoutted against the sky, or Cesar Chavez weakened
by his fast, at the side of Robert Kennedy.
When Chavez died, the union was at the nadir of its power, after
twelve years of Republican governors had subverted the intent of the
nation's first farm labor law, and after growers had abrogated contracts
and ignored union election victories representing tens of thousands of
workers.
In 1994, under its new president, Arturo Rodriguez, and the
continuing leadership of its cofounder, Dolores Huerta, the UFW began a new
effort to rebuild its strength and power. On a second march from Delano to
Sacramento, the union and its leaders brought their message of the
resurgence of the union to thousands of workers on a month-long
peregrinacion. In some of the world's largest agricultural corporations,
the union used its associate member program, La Union del Pueblo Entero or
The Union of the Whole People, to reorganize and begin winning contracts.
Within two years, it had won 13 new contracts representing 6000 workers.
In 1996, the UFW, together with the Teamsters Union and the
organizing and field services departments of the AFL-CIO began one of the
most ambitious organizing drives in the country. They took as an objective
the organization of the entire central California coast strawberry
industry, employing 25,000 workers. That ongoing struggle, still in
progress, has pitted workers and their union against mass firings,
blacklists, company unions, and the use of the legal structure to subvert
workers' efforts.
Last year, the union also continued to organize the country's
largest vegetable companies. After gaining a contract with its old
adversary, Bruce Church, workers at the second-largest vegetable grower,
D'Arrigo Brothers walked out on strike.
The photographs in this exhibit document this most recent period in
the union's life. They show the determination of the marchers on their way
to Sacramento. They document the organizing drive in Watsonville, and the
strike at D'Arrigo.
These images start with the working lives of people themselves.
Strawberry pickers bend over double in the rows, working in the most
painful labor imaginable, one which over years permanently damages the
spine. These photographs show as well the extreme youth of farm workers
today, where the average age has fallen to 20 and below, and include
teenagers laboring in lettuce and strawberry fields. They document the
culture of recent immigrants, many from the indigenous peoples of southern
Mexico, where Spanish itself is a second language to their own dialects.
Like all workers, farm laborers take pride in the skill it takes to
do their jobs, their bravery in the face of dangerous conditions (farm
labor has one of the highest occupational injury rates of all US
employment), and the social contribution they make in providing food for
millions of people. The images include date palm workers, grape pickers
and broccoli harvesters, and explore the connection between labor at work
and the terrible living conditions in small farm worker towns.
But these are not images of passive exploitation, designed to
elicit a sympathetic response. They are a documentary record of the
efforts workers have made to rebuild the strength of their union.
One image shows Rodriguez and Huerta washing the feet of the
union's founders the Thursday before Easter, according to Catholic custom,
but also in a sign of respect for those who began the struggle with Chavez
in the early 1960s. The ceremony marked the beginning of the second
peregrinacion to Sacramento, and other images document that march's
progress and conclusion.
In Watsonville, a series of images gives a visual account of
nitty-gritty organizing activity -- organizers visit fields and talk to
workers in their homes, and workers gather in the meetings, rallies,
marches and great demonstrations which have been the hallmark of the UFW's
organizing style. There are photographs as well of activities by the
company union, set up by the growers to destabilize the UFW campaign.
And finally, the images document the unique approach farm workers
and UFW organizers take to strikes. In a series of photographs, UFW
activists stop busses carrying strikebreakers into the fields, call on
workers to put down their tools and leave, and even go into the fields
themselves to try to stop the harvest.
The images are a view from below, looking at the work process and
the union itself from the point of view of workers -- the participants.
They also include images of the union's leaders in day-to-day activity with
workers, and of John Sweeney, AFL-CIO president, during visits to
Watsonville to support the campaign.
The UFW has had an enormous impact on the US labor movement over
the last 35 years. It helped to inspire the current resurgence of interest
in organizing, and itself trained hundreds of people who went on to become
organizers and participate in rebuilding the labor movement all across the
country. The union and its unique style of organizing, often like a social
movement, affected profoundly the way community and labor organizers
approach their work today. These images capture a part of that style and
unique contribution.
This body of work is part of a larger documentary project, which
examines the changing workplace in California, northern Mexico and the
Pacific Rim, the changing demographics of the people who work there, and
the impact of the global economy as it is experienced by working people.
Previous sections of the project have been exhibited in the San Francisco
Bay Area and Los Angeles, and were sponsored by the Northern California
Coalition for Immigrant Rights and the Zellerbach Foundation.
The exhibit contains 40 silver gelatin prints, each image approximately
6.5" x 10", printed on 11" x 14" paper, on 16" x 20" matts. They are
framed in black metal frames.
"David Bacon's moving exhibit is more than an important photo
documentary of recent United Farm Workers history. His pictures put a human
face on the union's story. They remind all of us that these events are much
more than a battle between labor and management. At stake are the hopes for
a better life kept alive by thousands of the most exploited working men and
women in America.
"These images are the product of a writer and photographer who has
consistently been there during the most difficult moments in the recent
life of the UFW. While offering a unique view to the outside world, they
also reflect one person's personal commitment to the movement."
Arturo S. Rodriguez, President
United Farm Workers of America, AFL-CIO
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david bacon - labornet email david bacon
internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 1631 channing way
phone: 510.549.0291 berkeley, ca 94703
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