Viewing party for TEDxTampaBay

TEDxFruitvale is almost here! If you’re hosting a viewing party, or considering doing so, register it now via this simple form on the viewing parties page. Tomorrow we’ll have a random drawing of all registered viewing parties: the winner gets $200 (we’ve doubled it) to pay for refreshments for your viewing party. All you have to do to be entered to win is fill out that form.

We’ll hold a random drawing tomorrow, and the winner will be notified via email.

We’re also offering a competition for the viewing party with the most attendees. The gathering with the most attendees (as evidenced by a group photo or a sign-in sheet*) will win a $200 donation from the Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation for your organization (if winner is a student group or nonprofit) or your charity of choice (if you’re hosting the party as an individual).

Register now!

*TEDx rules limit viewing parties to 100 attendees. If more than one group attracts 100 people, all with proof of attendance will win. In order to prove attendance, you must submit your attendee list and/or group photo via email to Liz@tedxfruitvale.org.

The Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland is named for the cherry and apricot orchards that dotted this once rural and agricultural area. Fruitvale is now a busy, urban district—vibrant with locally owned Latino businesses including street food carts, lavandarias, joyerias, and carnicerias. Today, if you walk along the streets of Fruitvale, you’ll hear Spanish spoken by immigrants from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua; you’ll smell the aroma of grilled meats wafting from taquerias; see mobile cart hawkers selling skewers of brightly colored fruits; and experience a lively street culture. But if you look closely, along the edges of fences in people’s backyards, you can still see the fruit trees the area was once known for.

Peel back the layers of history and you’ll find that Fruitvale’s Spanish-speaking roots go further back than many people know. In the early 1800s, before the orchards were planted, the area that is now Fruitvale was part of one of the most important Spanish-speaking settlements in Alto California. In 1820, 45,000 acres that spanned what is now San Leandro, parts of East Oakland, North Oakland, and Berkeley were given to Sergeant Luís María Peralta to reward him for his years of military service to Spain. The Peralta grant was one of the last Spanish land grants given by Mexico’s Spanish government before Mexico gained its independence that same year.

Prior to being gifted with that large swathe of land, members of the Peralta family had been some of the earliest Californios, the name given to Spanish speaking settlers from Mexico and Spain. Peraltas were present when some of the first Missions, including the San Francisco Presidio, Mission Santa Clara, and the pueblo of San Jose, were developed. Members of the Peralta family established some of the earliest Spanish-speaking communities in the East Bay, including the area that is now known as Fruitvale.

The Peraltas made their living as cattle ranchers and horsemen, developing a brisk trade in hides and tallow. They also built a culture around the ranchos that included rodeos and other celebrations. Business was good and times were easy for the Californios under the Spanish government. Unlike many immigrants today, the Californios had access to land and were established enough to have their wives and families with them. However, as is true with today’s agriculture, their economic success depended on the hard labor of others—primarily Native Americans and landless Mexicans.

Good times for the Californios were short lived. The war between Mexico and the United States from 1846 to 1848 resulted in Mexico ceding California to the United States. Though the United States government was supposed to honor the land grants, the Californios gradually lost their land. As the war ended, the Gold Rush brought floods of immigrants from other parts of the country who saw the Californios as foreigners, despite the fact they’d lived in California for generations. Many newcomers squatted; others hired lawyers to challenge the titles. Slowly the Peraltas and other Californios, who had benefited from the largesse of the Spanish government, were pushed out to make room for the new settlers.

In the mid-1800s a new wave of settlers began logging the hills and canyons above the present day Fruitvale district. This required a railroad, roads, and access to water. A logging road was built along the route that is now Park Boulevard and a dam was erected at the top of the canyon. A reservoir just above what is now Fruitvale Avenue supplied the area downstream with water. The once rural district soon became more densely settled, with small farmhouses set among orchards, gardens, and carriage houses.

Fueled by its position at the terminus of the transcontinental railway, Oakland’s port became an economic center for the booming West Coast. The little town grew into a city, attracting workers from all over the country, and immigrants from all over the world. Oakland has since attracted successive waves of immigrants, including many Latino immigrants from Mexico and Central America. Their presence in Fruitvale has brought the history of the area as a Spanish speaking community full circle, and helped to make Fruitvale one of the most diverse neighborhoods in one of the most diverse cities in the country.

The history of this fascinating area and its people reminds us that we are all immigrants.

Sanjay, an award-winning filmmaker and humanitarian strategist, has worked on far-flung philanthropy projects from Africa to Latin America. Now he’s combining his talents behind the camera with his experience in agricultural projects worldwide to illuminate the lives of the people who harvest America’s food.

The filmmaker and his crew went out to the fields and talked to the workers about their hopes, their dreams, and their everyday lives, as well as the conditions under which they work. Worldwatch Institute’s blog, Nourishing the Planet recently featured Sanjay and his film:

The documentary, which will begin by telling the story of laborers in California and continue documenting labor conditions as the filmmakers head south, will focus on the economics of labor. The film’s co-producer, Jonny Cogut, says that the film is an attempt to get people to understand the sources of the food that they eat. “It’s just amazing how easy it is to get whatever you want without actually knowing anything about how it got there,” he explains. Most of the food we eat we get with the help of migrant workers, many of whom are undocumented.

Sanjay hopes to inspire viewers to develop a “deeper sense of gratitude for the food we eat” — which is also true of our goal for TEDxFruitvale.

Image: 果菜妹 Flickr

This weekend, spare a thought for the people who picked the potatoes in that salad and the peaches in your cobbler, or who slaughtered and processed the steer that became that hamburger. Chances are they were paid very little for this hot, often dangerous work.

As the Inventory of Farmworker Issues and Protections in the United States outlined in painful 65-page detail, federal and state laws treat farmworkers differently than other workers. Children as young as 12 can legally work in the fields, with no restriction on the number of hours they can work during non-school days. Agriculture workers of all ages have fewer legal protections against unfair labor practices such as sexual harassment and don’t even have the legal right to organize. Even in California, where thanks to the activism of César Chávez, farmworkers have stronger legal protections than in other states, a lack of enforcement makes it the top state for farmworker deaths due to heat exposure and other risks.

Here’s a small but telling example of the indignities that farmworkers have to put up with. These two photos were taken by a friend visiting a labor camp for a large sweet potato grower in eastern North Carolina.  The picture of the toilets shows only a part of the line of toilets in the men’s bathroom: Only every three or four toilets are separated by a curtain. None of the facilities has a door. The gymnasium-style showers also provide no privacy whatsoever to workers.

These conditions are legal in North Carolina. In other words, there is no requirement to provide workers with privacy, either when using the toilet or showering.

Can you imagine workers in any other industry being subjected to this?

This Labor Day, please join us in thinking about how we can work toward a day when the people on whom we depend to pick our food will enjoy not only basic workplace dignity, but also the same wage and other occupational protections as employees in other sectors. The reality depicted by photos like these really leave a bitter aftertaste.

The consensus among the six immigration and labor experts and a lone farmer was that No, farms could not function without such labor. Not because they would have to charge higher prices, but because they would not be able to find legal workers, American or immigrant, to pick the food.

Some choice quotes:

From Benjamin Shute of Hearty Roots Community Farm in New York’s Hudson River Valley:

The reality is that right now there are simply not enough trained and willing American agricultural workers to get these jobs done. By removing some of the current skilled but undocumented workers from the equation, food prices would rise not because worker pay would improve, but rather because jobs would go unfilled, apples would go unpicked and food would be in short supply.

If our lawmakers decide that American farmers should hire only American workers, then we as a country have a lot more work to do than just enforcing rules against illegal labor. We need to set a national priority to encourage a new generation of young farmers, and we must adjust our system of agriculture to make farms into places where Americans want to work.

And from Lisa García Bedolla, chairwoman of the Center for Latino Policy Research at UC Berkeley:

The reality is that our food production system depends on the exploitation of its labor force, both authorized and unauthorized. Growers do not pay the costs associated with the myriad of health, environmental and economic challenges for farm workers and their communities; the farmers simply reap the profits.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Swanton Berry Farm in Watsonville, Calif., is just one example of successful growers using union labor. Swanton produces organic strawberries and other produce — all labor-intensive crops — yet manages to make a profit while still paying workers a living wage. This is where the debate should be centered, on figuring out how the United States can finally have a food system that provides a living wage and a safe workplace to all the workers in the food production chain. That would be truly sustainable agriculture.

We’re proud that Swanton Berry cofounder Jim Cochran and one of his longtime workers will joining us on October 14 to tell us why and how Swanton became a model for fair labor practices.

Here’s the data, which comes from the USDA/ERS’s Farm Labor report:

Average hourly earnings of non-supervisory farm laborers stood at $10.22 in 2010, compared to $19.07 for private sector nonsupervisory workers outside of agriculture. In real terms, farm labor wages have risen at about 0.9 percent per year since 1990, compared to 0.6 percent per year for nonfarm nonsupervisory workers. The 2010 wage for farm laborers is comparable to the average wage for maids and housekeepers ($10.17), but lower than the wage for landscaping and groundskeeping workers ($12.23) or for construction laborers ($16.15), according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment Statistics program.  This chart appeared on the ERS website, in Farm Labor, updated in July 2011.

Also on board for the Movement session are Nikki Henderson (left), the executive director of People’s Grocery, which is invested in creating place-based change and health parity through improvements to the food system in West Oakland, California, and Joann Lo (right), the executive director of the Food Chain Workers Alliance, a coalition of worker-based groups organizing to improve wages and working conditions for all workers along the food chain.

We need your help with our Money session, however. We’d like to invite a speaker from an industry that relies on unskilled, largely immigrant labor — from a large (as in million-dollar and above) non-farm company that has implemented fair-labor practices for these workers in the United States. Oddly enough, we’re having trouble finding such a company. If you know of any hotel chains, domestic-worker companies, food processors, or other businesses that fit this bill, please leave a comment or email bonnie@tedxfruitvale.org.

The rules for hosting a TEDx conference require a specific process for participants, including an application process for those interested in participating, and a strict limit of 100 attendees. Alas, this number includes speakers, performers, and all the staff and technicians in the room for the event.

Given these tight constraints, we would like to ensure that our audience represents a diverse mix — farmworkers, farmers and other businesspeople, activists and advocates, students, professors, artists, filmmakers, media, and others. If you can’t attend, we hope that you’ll consider hosting a viewing party to watch the live stream of the event! We’ll be offering several resources for creating a fun gathering around the webcast, with opportunities to interact with the speakers and guests via Twitter and a post-event Q&A.

We determined that given the TEDx rules limiting our number of attendees to a mere 100 — including speakers and support staff! — we will have to ask guests to apply. We very much want to ensure a balance mixture of farmworkers, farmers, students, farmworker and other nonprofit organizations, academics, businesspeople, media, and artists. If you would like to be notified when we begin considering applications, please fill out this form here.

Since then, we’ve reached out to a number of speakers, and we’re pleased to report that we have confirmed two new ones: Robin Romano, the director of The Harvest/La Cosecha, a just-released, searing documentary that follows three under-age migrant farmworkers as they struggle to help support their families, and Nikki Henderson, food-justice activist and executive director of People’s Grocery. They join our speakers Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society; Barry Estabrook, author of Tomatoland, an expose of the Florida tomato industry; and farmer Jim Cochran, cofounder of Swanton Berry Farm, the first organic farm to sign a labor contract with the United Farm Workers. We hope to have even more exciting news in the next few weeks.

Watch the trailer for Harvest, or find a screening near you:

“The Harvest/La Cosecha” Trailer 2010 from U. Roberto Romano on Vimeo.