"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