California’s Farmworkers

by William H. Benson

January 24, 2019

     Michael Greenberg, reporter for the New York Review, examined California in two recent articles, the first in December on agriculture, and the second in January on housing’s high cost.

     In the first, he paints a stunning picture of agriculture in California’s San Joaquin Valley, a stretch of land “234 miles long and 130 miles wide,” with Stockton to the north and Bakersfield to the south.

     Greenberg writes, “Measured by yearly production, the San Joaquin Valley is one of the highest-value stretches of farmland in the country, and is dominated by large growers who preside over a labor force of migrant workers. A few hundred families own the land. Some own 20,000 or 40,000 acres.”

     The owners grow “raisins, table grapes, pistachios, almonds, tomatoes, fruits, garlic, cabbage, the clementines we buy in netted bags at the supermarket, as well as pomegranates.” All together those “few hundred families” receive annual gross revenues of about “$47 billion, more than double that of Iowa, the next-biggest agricultural state.” 

     One of the people whom Greenberg interviewed, Mark Arax, was blunt when he said that the valley “is like a Central American country. It’s the poorest part of California. There’s almost no middle class. To find its equivalent in the United States, you’d have to go to Appalachia or the borders of Texas.”

     Greenberg was surprised to learn that the farm laborers “speak none or very little Spanish, much less English,” even though “at least 80% of them are undocumented Mexicans.” Instead, they are “Mixteco and Trique Indians, from the states of Oaxaca, Sinaloa, and Gerrero, the poorest regions in Mexico.”

     One day in June, Greenberg visited a tomato field that the Gargiulo family owned, and estimated that “250 were working that day, almost half of them women, some of them visibly pregnant.” Each day the laborers work for five hours, “from 5 to 10 a.m., when the temperature rises to 113 degrees.”

     To protect themselves against exposure to pesticides, the workers wear “several layers of clothes: caps, hoodies, scarves, sweatshirts over sweatshirts, two pairs of pants, heavy socks and boots; only eyes and cheeks and fingers were exposed,” while the merciless sun beats down on them.

     The workers receive “73 cents for every five-gallon bucket they could fill.” Forced to stoop over to pick the tomatoes, “the Oaxacans went at it with dizzying speed. The younger workers filled two buckets at a time. In five hours, a skilled picker could earn between $75 and $85.”

     Once tomato season ends in October, “the laborers will move to the east side of the Valley to pick citrus fruits. With luck, a diligent field hand can find work for eight or nine months a year, and earn $20,000 to $23,000, before taxes.”

     Greenberg researched the amount of taxes that the workers received and discovered that, “In 2010, undocumented workers paid about $12 billion in Social Security taxes, money that accrued to the retirement benefits of American citizens—benefits those farmworkers will likely never receive.”

     Some Indians from Mexico have worked the fields “for at least a decade, have established families here, but live in terror of la migra, the Spanish word for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Instant deportation or imprisonment would wrench them from their children.”

     Greenberg said, “Thousands exist in a cordon of terror.” Determined to stay and work, they evade ICE by watching for unmarked cars, and by avoiding all legal troubles, such as traffic violations.

     The farmworkers refuse to “allow their children to follow them into the fields, because of the heat, the physical toil, the pesticides, the low wages, and the feudal power of the growers.”

      Thus, fieldwork in central California, Greenberg explained, “is a one-generation job, and that means that a constant supply of impoverished Mexican immigrants willing to do the work is required, but those immigrants are not coming now.”

     “In 2000, when the border was far more porous than it is now, 1.6 million Mexicans were apprehended trying to cross into the US. In 2016, the number was 192,969. This reduction is due to  improved conditions in Mexico, plus the cost and fear of venturing across the border.”

     Immigrants do not steal farm labor jobs from American citizens. A farm labor contractor said that he “has never had a white, American born person take an entry-level job.” Another said that one day he hired “twelve citizens or legal residents, and not one of them lasted longer than a day.”

      Each week millions of Americans buy a bag of table grapes, another of tomatoes, or a netted bag of clementine oranges, but few understand the arduous and dangerous physical effort that a farm laborer exerted to pick that fruit from its stem. Yet, ICE wants to deport that laborer back to Mexico.

Exit, Voice, and Loyalty

by William H. Benson

January 10, 2019

     Economic and political ruin strikes one country after another. Yes, it seems that, on occasion, the world’s nearly two hundred countries will suffer a disaster, a disintegration of the country’s stabilizing political and economic forces that pushes its citizens into the very center of chaos.

     For example, the civil war in Syria drags on. An estimated 500,000 people have lost their lives since 2011, and another 13 million have found themselves displaced and forced to flee the country. Once the U. S. troops leave, the Syrian people can expect more barrel bombs, bullets, and bloodshed.

     Venezuela’s economy has disintegrated. Since 2014, at least 2.5 million people, possibly as many as 5.0 million, have packed their few belongings, walked away from homes and jobs, and migrated to neighboring countries. The reason: Venezuela’s inflation rate now stands at 1,299,744%.

     The country’s previous ruler, Hugo Chavez, and its current ruler, Nicolás Maduro, engineered a complete economic collapse by draining the national treasury and then borrowing billions. Today, $50 billion of their bonds are in default, and “90% of the population live in poverty.”

     Officials in South Sudan, the world’s newest country, also looted some $7 billion from its national treasury and parked the funds in bank accounts in Kenya and Uganda. A war over who will control the country, has caused “perhaps half a million deaths, mostly aggravated by hunger and disease.”

     In Yemen, the rebel Houthi party controls the prized western region, including the ports on the Red Sea, while the government controls the central and eastern regions. The war between the two factions has caused mass starvation and disease for the people. A writer for the Economist said last week, “There are many who do not want peace. Powerful people on all sides are profiting from the conflict.”

     These calamities in these four countries are today’s disasters, and one can predict that at some point in the future, each will subside, and then other calamities in other countries will appear and replace the current crop. Nothing bad stays bad forever, even if the current inflation rate exceeds 1.2 million%.

     Time levels all. An American physicist named John Archibald Wheeler pointed out, “Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.” 

     This brings up a question. “If we know that today’s disasters will recover, what will cause a nation to turn itself around?”

     The English language has an interesting phrase: “The worm has turned.” It describes how a situation can change, when a person, an institution, or even a country that has been weak, unlucky, and unsuccessful can become strong, lucky and successful.

     Two weeks ago in the New York Times, a columnist named Ruchir Sharma pointed out that bubbles happen—think tulips in Holland, emus in Texas, and last year’s bitcoin craze. The bubble’s mood is greed, defined by mania and driven by hype.

     But then the same columnist pointed out that there are “anti-bubbles,” and their mood is fear, trepidation, and suspicion—think war, rumors of war, looting public coffers, famine, disease, an exodus, hyperinflation, a busted economy, and onerous debts.

     Sharma says, “Bubbles and anti-bubbles share one thing; they don’t last forever.” When greed turns to fear, or when fear gives way to hope, then we say, “the worm has turned.”

     The economist Albert O. Hirschman wrote of “exit, voice, and loyalty.” In most market economies, people have a choice, and if they do not like the choices, the products and services offered, they will head to the exit signs. They are free to leave the shop or pack up and leave the country.

     In most democratic countries, people will not leave if dissatisfied with their leaders’ political decisions. Instead, they will speak their minds, and voice their opinions, hoping that others will listen and change the political status quo.

     A third option: people neither leave or say anything. Instead, they choose silence and remain loyal. They adopt a wait and see position. Hence, exit, voice, and loyalty.

     Yes, time changes all. It will heal gaping wounds, rectify deep injustices, knock down the powerful and mighty, and lift the downtrodden. The 18^th century writer and thinker William Blake said, “Eternity is in love with the productions of time. In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy. The cut worm forgives the plow.”

The Emancipation Proclamation

by William H. Benson

December 27, 2018

     Jill Lepore, Professor of history at Harvard, published this fall her most recent book, These Truths, A History of the United States. In it, she writes a most riveting account of the days leading up to Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation.

     On September 22, 1862, Lincoln announced that “he would free nearly every slave held in every Confederate state in exactly one hundred days—on New Year’s Day 1863.” Later, Lincoln explained to his cabinet. “I said nothing to anyone, but I made the promise to myself and to my maker.”

     Like a prairie wildfire, word spread south and west, to those bound in chains, stuck in bondage. Jill Lepore writes, “Across the land, people fell to their knees. A crowd of black men, women, and children came to the White House and serenaded Lincoln, singing hosannas.”

     Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, said that “in all ages there has been no act of one man and of one people so sublime as this emancipation.”

     Some wondered if Lincoln would keep his promise. The former slave Frederick Douglass said, “The first of January is to be the most memorable day in American Annals. But will that deed be done? Oh! That is the question.”

     In December, Lincoln spoke to Congress and said, “We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.” On Christmas Eve, day ninety-two, a concerned Charles Sumner, Senator from Massachusetts, visited Lincoln at the White House, and asked, “Would the president make good his pledge?” Lincoln assured the worried Senator that, yes, he would keep his word.

     On December 29, 1862, day ninety-seven, Lincoln read his draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet and invited their comments. Salmon Chase, secretary of the the Treasury, suggested a different ending, “I invoke the considerate judgment of all mankind and the gracious favor of almighty God.” Lincoln adopted Chase’s words. 

     “Ninety-seven, ninety-eight. Ninety-nine: New Year’s Eve 1862, watch night.”

     That night an overflow crowd gathered at the Shiloh Presbyterian Church to hear the black abolitionist, Henry Highland Garnet, preach. “At exactly 11:55 p.m., the church fell silent. At midnight, the choir broke the silence: “Blow Ye Trumpets Blow, the Year of Jubilee has come.”

     Day one hundred. At 2:00 p.m., in the White House, President Abraham Lincoln picked up his pen, and said, “I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right than I do in signing this paper.” He signed the document. The deed was done.

     Near the document’s conclusion, Lincoln cautions the former slaves. “ And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defen[c]e; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.”

     Lincoln understood human nature. If a laborer works for a landowner, then he or should expect to receive “reasonable wages.” It is a terrible to thing to work hard and receive nothing back.

     “In South Carolina, the Proclamation was read out to the First South Carolina Volunteer Infantry, a regiment of former slaves. At its final lines, the soldiers began to sing, quietly at first, and then louder: My Country, ’tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing!”

     Jill Lepore writes, “American slavery had lasted for centuries. It had stolen the lives of millions and crushed the souls of millions more. It had cut down children, stricken mothers, and broken men. It had poisoned a people and a nation. It had turned hearts to stone. It had made eyes blind. It had left gaping wounds and terrible scars. It was not over yet. But at last, at last, an end lay within sight.”

     As Union troops advanced, and the Confederacy’s power dwindled, black men and women dropped their rakes, shovels, and hoes, and began leaving the fields where they had labored for so little.

     Lepore writes, “The American Odyssey had barely begun. From cabins and fields they left. Freed men and women headed north, south, or west, searching. They were husbands in search of wives, wives in search of husbands, mothers and fathers looking for their children, children for their parents. Some of their wanderings lasted for years. They sought their own union, a union of their beloved.”

     January 1, 1863, the day Abraham Lincoln emancipated the slaves.

Antarctica’s Summer Races

by William H. Benson

December 13, 2018

     Fifty-three runners will compete in the fourteenth annual Antarctica Ice Marathon on Thursday, December 13, 2018. A Russian-made Ilyushin-Il-76TD aircraft will transport the runners from Punta Arenas, in southern Chile, to Union Glacier, Antarctica, on Wednesday, the twelfth, and then the same aircraft will return them to Chile on Friday, the fourteenth.

     While at Union Glacier, runners will reside in double-occupancy tents that the sun heats during the twenty-fours of daylight, sleep in polar sleeping bags, and endure temperatures of just above or below zero degrees Fahrenheit, depending upon the windchill. No chance for a hot shower after the race.

     Participants this year will include fifteen from China, nine from the USA, seven from Australia, and lesser numbers from Indonesia, Mexico, Poland, Ireland, Italy, and other countries. It is an international event. Runners will run two loops of a 13.1 mile-course, equal to a marathon’s 26.2 miles.

     Who would have thought that women and men from all over the world would run a race in Antarctica to re-enact a historical event that occurred in 490 B.C., 2,508 years ago? A Greek soldier ran 26.2 miles from Marathon to inform Athens’s citizens that the Greeks had defeated the Persians.

     Last year’s women’s winner at the Ice Marathon was Kelly Allen McLay of the USA, in 4 hours, 56.37 minutes. Winner of the men’s division was Frank Johansen of Denmark, in 3 hours, 37.46 minutes, and he then joined the Seven Continents Marathon Club.

     This year each runner paid 16,000 Euros, or $18,211 to run.

     Another far more arduous race is now underway during Antarctica’s summer season, November through January, but with only two participants: Colin O’Brady, 33, an American adventurer, and Lous Rudd, 49, a captain in the British army. Both decided, independent of the other, to achieve a first, cross the Antarctic continent solo, unsupported, and unaided.

     Solo means alone. Unsupported means without dogs or food drops. Unaided means without kites that harness the Antarctic’s ferocious Katabatic winds and pulls a skier across the ice.

     Instead, both O’Brady and Rudd intend to ski alone, miles apart, ten to twelve hours everyday, and pull a 300+ pound Norwegian sled called a “pulk,” that carries a tent and a ninety-day supply of high-calorie food, but no change of clothes.

     On November 2, the men departed at the point where the Ronne Ice Shelf meets land, headed uphill toward the South Pole, and once there, they will turn to the right and head to that point where land meets the Ross Ice Shelf, a total distance of 921 miles.

     The first leg is all uphill, and most strenuous, from just above sea level to the South Pole’s 9,301 feet above sea level, just shy of Leadville, Colorado’s elevation. A man tugging a sled in white-out conditions, “like being inside a Ping-Pong ball,” may not notice the uphill climb, but he can feel it.    

     Louis Rudd, “The beginning was crazy. The weight was so heavy.”

     A writer for Wired magazine, said, “It’s straight-up impossible to take enough calories with you to get across the continent of Antarctica.” The two men hope to prove that writer wrong. Both men eat as many calories as they can, but “they still expend more calories that they take in.”

     Both O’Brady and Rudd know the risks, and that Antarctica is unforgiving. In January of 2016, an adventurer named Henry Wolsely tried to do the same, but gave up when only thirty miles from the finish line, after an infection sidelined him. Days later he died.    

     Both O’Brady and Rudd carry cell phones and GPS devices to alert their rescuers should they exhaust their food supply, or fall into a crevasse, or develop an infection, or break a leg. Before they sleep, they lay out their solar panels and charge their phones.

     Also, before they sleep, they hang up their wet clothes. Sweat is deadly in a polar environment because moisture can freeze on the skin when motions stops, causing body temperatures to plummet toward hypothermia.

     Every day, the two men feel overpowering pain and utter exhaustion. They slip, fall, get up and trek onwards. On Thanksgiving Day, O’Brady described the first four days as very emotional. “Crying, frustrated, physically rocked.” Rudd says, “It is grueling, a different level to anything I’ve done before. It just takes so much out of you.”

     A one-day marathon in Antarctica sounds exhausting, but to ski nearly 1,000 miles across the frozen continent over three months at a high elevation far exceeds a marathon’s physical demands.

Gaza

by William H. Benson

November 29, 2018

     On November 29, 1947, 71 years ago today, the United Nations voted to partition Palestine between first, the Palestinians, the people and families who had resided on that land for centuries, and second, the recent immigrants, the Jewish Zionists, who had fled Europe after the Holocaust.

     Six months later, on May 14, 1948, Great Britain withdrew from Palestine, and that same day the Zionists created a new nation, Israel.

     The next day, May 15, 1948, armed forces from the neighboring Arab nations—Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq—invaded Israel. The Israelis fought for their lives, with fewer numbers and inferior military equipment, during this, the first of several Arab-Israeli wars.

     Yet, the Israelis won their battle for survival. Daring tactics, a motivated army, and makeshift bombs and rifles defeated their enemies. “Defeat for the Israelis would mean eradication.”

     Fearing the Israelis’ intentions, some 750,000 Palestinians people fled their homes and villages in Palestine, and found temporary shelter in Jordan, on the West Bank of the Jordan River, in Egypt, in Lebanon, and on a strip of land that borders Egypt, five miles wide and twenty-five miles long, alongside the Mediterranean Sea, the Gaza Strip, where two million Palestinians live desperate lives.

     After seventy-one years, the Palestinians’ temporary settlements are now thought of as permanent, yet, they and their children and grandchildren dream of returning to their native villages.

     Since 2007, Hamas has controlled the Gaza Strip. Some countries, including the United States and Israel, consider Hamas a terrorist organization, but others, including Russia and Turkey, do not.

     Hamas’s officials want to liberate all of Palestine from Israeli occupation, establish an Islamic state across Palestine, and allow Palestinians and their descendents to return to their towns and villages.

     To accomplish this, Hamas launches rockets into Israel. They set aloft incendiary balloons that fall on Israeli agricultural fields and that scorches thousands of acres. They march along the wire fence and protest the open-air prison that the Israelis force them to live in. They build tunnels under the fence.

     War between Israel and Hamas has broken out four times since 2007. The last war, in 2014, “ravaged the territory further and left more than 2,000 Palestinians dead.”

     Christopher Gunness, of the United Nations said, “The humanitarian situation was already disastrous. There’s more than a decade of an illegal blockade. It’s collective punishment.”

     Late in October this year, the Israeli government tried another approach, peaceful and calm actions.

     Israeli officials allowed diesel trucks to pass into Gaza where they filled fuel tanks at the Gaza’s sole electrical power plant. For a few days, the Palestinians enjoyed access to electricity, and hospitals, homes, businesses, and sewage treatment plants could operate again.

     The Israelis also allowed $15 million dollars to pass unobstructed into Gaza, donations that Qatar, a wealthy Arab emirate, gave to the Gaza Palestinians. Hamas then paid months of missed back pay to “thousands of civil servants, teachers, and police officers.”

     This de-escalation fell apart though on Sunday, November 11, 2018, when Israeli special forces, dressed in civilian clothes—including some dressed in women’s clothing—drove a civilian car three kilometers into the Gaza Strip, near the southern city of Khan Younis.

     The Israeli commandoes stopped their car in front of a house that belonged to Nour Baraka, a Hamas battalion commander, in charge of “digging attack tunnels and firing rockets into Israel.” In the gunfight that ensued, the commandoes killed seven Palestinians, including Nour Baraka, but were forced to call in airstrikes “to cover their retreat back into Israeli territory.”

     One Israeli commando was killed during the raid; another was wounded.

     In a rage, Hamas responded with a flurry of rockets, aimed at Israeli communities near Gaza, and, in turn, Israeli aircraft pounded targets inside Gaza. By sundown on Tuesday, November 13, 2018, “Israel and Hamas signaled a willingness to end the clashes.”

     One wonders why Israel’s government would signal peace, hoping for a long-term truce, and then launch a covert undercover operation into Gaza. They must know that, “For Israel to return to a policy of targeting individual Hamas commanders—a tactic abandoned in recent years—could raise tensions along the fence.” A fifth Hamas-Israeli war is a real possibility today.

     Will the Gaza Strip Palestinians ever experience peace? If so, may it happen in 2019.