Actions and Reflections

[carys-virago-blog-deactivated20]

I often hear people say that men are shamed for showing emotion (this is correct and I’m not denying it), whilst it’s considered acceptable or even positive for women to show emotion. This idea that women are expected to show emotion, or are praised for doing so, or gain any social capital that men don’t from expressing emotion is completely untrue.

Women’s emotions are utterly mocked, demeaned, disregarded and ultimately used to silence and dismiss us. People claim that women’s emotions make us irrational, inferior, and less capable of responsibility. Women are denied positions of power, due to the belief that their ‘emotions’ will get in the way. Women were subjected to medical abuse with diagnoses like ‘hysteria’ for displaying emotion. Our emotion is mocked, pathologized, and ultimately used to demean and oppress us.

‘Being allowed to show emotion’ is not a ‘privilege’ that women have over men.

[kropotkhristian-deactivated2019]

You guys, as a US labor historian, let me tell you: It is actually very significant that US union membership actually increased in 2017. Like it probably won’t get huge play on the major media outlets, but that is a big fucking deal. That hasn’t happened to any significant degree since the 1970s. Unions have pretty much only declined since 1976. But unions added over 200,000 members last year, most of whom were under 35. That is a massive deal. That is building people power. That is a huge reason to be optimistic.

Keep it going. Join a fucking union y’all. iww.org

[actionsandreflections-blog]

3/7/18

I feel now more than ever that I have a place in the revolution. I feel like I can finally see the big picture, I am aware of the risks, I know people who have made it a lifestyle. I am in it for the long haul. But I am afraid I’ll be consumed by it. What if my radicalization leads to my isolation? I can’t let that happen. What we need now more than ever is unity within the left. I feel like that's the major problem right now, the state and the bourgeoisie have been very successful at repressing any major leftist movements. The 60′s were a different time, they have so many more tools to use against us now. There are so many more reasons to be distrustful of our comrades... Will the people be able to use the tools of our time to find solidarity? And can we stop all fighting on fucking Twitter and get in the fucking streets?

We need to revamp labor movements, we need an antiwar movement, we need to cause a ruckus in the belly of the beast. We need *normal* people to connect with the radical left. We need to unite workers. We need to fight against white apathy. We need to fight the indifference that we have towards our comrades in the global south. We need to educate our communities, our youth, we need to learn from our elders. We need to END the sectarianism and the bullshit social climbing within radical circles. 

[actionsandreflections-blog]

Literary Analysis of  “Critical Thought in the Face of the Capitalist Hydra: Contributions by the Sixth Commission of the EZLN”

Over time, repression in the form of capitalist dominance has manifested in different ways, in which the EZLN stresses that they must constantly adapt to those changes. This book is a collection of dialogues from seminars or “seedbeds” that are held with words from prominent Zapatismo leaders. It is a book including the philosophy and methodology of the Zapatista, and how to think critically in an ever-changing capitalist system.

The EZLN goes beyond analysing the inequalities caused by capitalism in the past, rather they strive to ready themselves for what is ahead. They also strive to consistently acknowledge how the capitalist system affects people of different situations and “geographies”. The EZLN balances recognizing the interconnectedness of all struggle (lucha) under capitalism with shedding light on important differences in how inequalities manifest regarding race, gender, class, location, etc. The Zapatistas clearly define their own narratives of who they are and what they believe, while also adding that their identity and beliefs are subjective and subject to critique.

This book outlines and stresses the importance of the subsistence economy within their communities, where they do not have to sell their labor power in order to survive. This economic model empowers them to create autonomous communities that collectivize work within that community. This includes incorporating the reality that the communities need to use pesos in order to combat the greater surrounding capitalist economy: “We need money to pay for gasoline in pesos, they don’t accept kilos of maize or beans. This is what we struggle against, what we combat” (p. 78). By creating autonomous community banks, they organize fairer lending options and more debt forgiveness than in the larger global economy, in order to pay for things like medical supplies and fuel. This way they don’t have to take money from the “bad government” or regular profit-prioritized banks.

The book also sheds light on the effects of colonialism in regards to the quality of life and equality of indigenous women: “for many years we ever had the opportunity to say what we felt, thanks to the teachings of the conquistadors and the bad governments” (p. 94). In these sections, Zapatista women tell the stories of the cruelty of the hacienda owners and the subsequent influence it had on the treatment of women within their own communities by their husbands and fathers. They also talked about the Zapatista women’s eventual organization within themselves despite their lack of education and opportunity and their eventual rise into regional authority positions within the EZLN and their communities.

In the final section of “Our struggle as Zapatista Women” they confront the plague of consumerism that affects the poor in Mexico: “...those poor-poor abandon their families, their community, and they go work in the United States, to Playa del Carmen, or to other countries just to be able to buy that cell phone, that pair of pants, shirt, or stylish shoe…Why do we say they are poor-poor? Because they are poor like us, but they are poor thinkers because they leave their communities and when they come back they bring bad ideas with them…” (p. 104). They recognize this key aspect in the cycle of capitalist dominance, that the poor are trapped into seeking to be wealthy, and not to think about the wealth of their community in other ways.

Critical Thought in the Face of the Capitalist Hydra is a text that attempts to introduce the reader to the forward-thinking methodologies of the Zapatista movement. Through their analyses, they attack the hydra from all sides, while vigilantly watching as it tries to regenerate itself. Through their disciplined struggle, they continue to preserve their ways of life through autonomous living.

[actionsandreflections-blog]

Capitalism and Colonialism: Economic Systems Based In Oppression

This paper will discuss the continuities between colonialism and the development of capitalism as structures of domination. I will discuss structural parallels between colonialism and capitalism regarding economics, class systems, race, and gender. I will use these parallels to demonstrate the continuities between colonialism and capitalism, which include but are not limited to: perpetuation of hierarchies, exploitation of the labor force, military interventions led by global north in the global south, and the global north’s economic dependence upon the global south through accumulation by dispossession.

The main driving force in the shift from feudalism to capitalism in the 16th century was primitive accumulation, which happened during the time of colonization. Primitive accumulation is the combination of the enclosing of the commons (common land and resources) in Europe, the expropriation of resources in the Americas, as well as the exploitation of labor through the slave trade (Chowdhury, 10/6/17). In Marx’s Capital, he defines primitive accumulation as “nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production”(Chapter 26). This can be seen during the transitionary period between feudalism and capitalism, where the means of production stayed in the hands of the nobility and/or the capitalist class, whereas the producers of the product were enslaved laborers, and through time the enslaved labor class became the modern working class. Through this transition to capitalism, workers became alienated from the product of their labor as well as each other.

Capitalism’s success was dependent on the exploitation of workers, starting with the colonial period. It first began with indentured servitude of poor, white Europeans,  and then with the enslavement if the dispossessed indigenous groups of the Americas and the kidnapping and enslavement of Africans (Chowdhury, 10/6/17). This method of acquiring a labor force was necessary in development of capitalism, as Spain and Portugal needed the cheapest labor possible to make the most profit (and surplus) to continue to invest in colonizing the global south in order to consolidate capital and power in the global north.

Upon abolition of slavery, exploitation of labor continues to be integral to perpetuating capitalist systems, which includes acquiring the most cost effective labor as possible through repression of labor force and maintaining a labor surplus. An example of this can be found in the story told by the film “The Salt of The Earth”, where the mining company in which the protagonists worked for controlled the means of production and had a monopoly on the marketing of general goods in the area, where workers and their families would be paid in company currency, lease company housing and buy goods from the company store. The mining company had control of the entire economy of the mining town, ensuring that they can keep wages low and easily replace whomever objects (Biberman, 1953).

Another continuity between colonialism and the development of  global capitalism is the perpetuation of socio-economic, gendered, and racial hierarchies. Hierarchies put in place during colonial times continue to benefit capitalists in the same ways that it benefitted the Crown and European nobility during the beginnings of primitive accumulation. European superiority through gendered, racial, ideological and religious means, justified the exploitation and acquisition of resources during colonization. Marx’s analysis of racism is that it is a tool to divide the working class, as an estranged and isolated labor force is easier to control in order to benefit capitalist interests (Bohmer, 10/8/2017).

Federici argues that gendered division of labor was exasperated by primitive accumulation during colonialism and that this division led to the de-valuing of labor that is coded as women’s work. She argues that primitive accumulation “introduced in the social position of  women and the production of labor power[…] the development of a new sexual division of labor subjugating women’s labor and women’s reproductive function to the reproduction of the work force; the construction of a new patriarchal order, based upon the exclusion of women from waged-work and their subordination to men; [and] the mechanization of the proletarian body, in the case of women, into a machine for the production of new workers.” (pg. 12)

This economically based, gendered hierarchy prevents women’s autonomy and denies an identity outside of capitalist modes of production, even in the domestic realm. During slavery, women were responsible for creating the next generation of slaves along with being workers. Capitalism and the concept of the nuclear family continually perpetuate these gendered “labor reproduction” roles for women that originated from slave labor: “Bodies (wombs) became public territory controlled by men and the State, and procreation was directly placed at the service of capitalist accumulation” (Federici, p. 89)

In more recent years, the increasing globalization of the world economy has led to a “feminization of poverty”, where the “worldwide rise in poverty in the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries associated with global economic restructuring and neoliberalism has affected women disproportionately, and that the new poor are disproportionately women (and children)” (Robinson, 247). However, the feminization of poverty also refers to the feminization of the general economy, as well as the increase of jobs that are coded female: “the types of work, labor relations, income, and insecurity associated with ‘women's work’ have been spreading, resulting not only in a notable rise in female employment, as well as transformation, or feminization, of many job traditionally held by men” (247). Robinson also argues that employment of women over men is also due to patriarchal structures, where the employer has more leverage over a female worker and her wage. Feminization of the economy and the general work that is being done in Latin America also leads to more people earning lower wages, since work traditionally done by women is valued much less than work traditionally done by men.

Along with racism and sexism, the demonization of poverty and classism were major justifiers in exploiting workers. Professor Bohmer explains parallels between slave society ideology and capitalist ideology (9/28/17). He first says that ideologically, in a slave society, slavery is good and natural, assuming that there always needs to be people to be enslaved, because of various reasons, being race, gender, etc. It is a type of paternal justification for slavery, the slave owner assumes they are only doing what's best for society. This normalizes racial oppression with the justification that slavery is a part of an inherent natural order.

This type of thinking is similar in pro-capitalist ideology: capitalists are good, they are productive, efficient, provide jobs, and believe in a lack of regulation of the market. Capitalists believe people are naturally competitive, desire to gain capital, and that those who lack capital or desire to accumulate capital are naturally destined and even deserve to live in poverty. Capitalists believe that hard work and ability leads to success, and that failure is largely an individual's fault. This ideology demonizes the poor and codes them as lazy and unproductive, but it also enables the erasure of how capitalist perpetuated hierarchies prevent the impoverished from empowering themselves. In this way, slave society ideology and capitalist ideology both justify their means of exploitation of the labor force.

During colonization, Spain regularly used military intervention in order to accumulate resources and dispossess native peoples of their land. The use of force was necessary to protect the interests of the Crown and Church. During colonization, the military was directly pillaging the Americas by royal decree and papal bull, but as the means of production shifted from European government into the hands of private corporations, covert military intervention has been used to protect capitalist interests. One example of this is the many assassination attempts by the CIA to overthrow the Cuban government: “Even after the missiles were withdrawn, the Kennedy administration continued its attempts to overthrow the Cuban Revolution[...] the Senate investigators interviewed many of the players involved in the assassination attempts, from the highest levels of the CIA down to the Mafia hit men they had hired[...] We have found concrete evidence of at least eight plots involving the CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro from 1960 to 1965” (Assassination Plots, pg. 552). These examples of covert U.S. intervention in Latin America show the continued dependence on it’s exploitation.

The global north also has a history of overt military intervention during the rise of socialism in foreign countries. The global north has also been dependent upon the global south for resources to trade globally since colonization. The United States and Europe both have capital investment in the continued acquisition of resources in Latin America, and socialist ideologies forming there would potentially endanger this. In the foreward of the Galeano text by Isabel Allende, she writes:

“We were in the midst of the Socialist government of Salvador Allende, the first Marxist ever to become president in a democratic election, a man who had a dream of equality and liberty and the passion to make that dream come true… If one had been able to read between the lines, one could have concluded that Salvador Allende's government was doomed from the beginning[…] On September 11, 1973, a military coup ended a century of democratic tradition in Chile[…]This was a strategy designed in Washington and imposed upon the Latin American people by the economic and political forces of the right. In every instance the military acted as mercenaries to the privileged groups in power.” (Galeano, p. 7-8)

Military intervention had been used to protect the dominance of capitalist ideology, often under the guise of “national interest” rhetoric (Chomsky, A). However, national interest can be equated to the interests of the capitalist class within the global north.  Corporations owned by those in the global north essentially control the resources of the global south, in order to accumulate capital, at the expense of the global south.

This is also major reason why the global south is largely underdeveloped, because the means of production are owned by foreign companies, and most surplus produced in Latin America solely benefit those companies through global trade. For example, Galeano states: “For those who see history as a competition, Latin America's backwardness and poverty are merely the result of its failure. We lost; others won. But the winners happen to have won thanks to our losing: the history of Latin America's underdevelopment is, as someone has said, an integral part of the history of world capitalism's development” (2).This relationship is another re-telling of the original relationship between Spain and its colonies.

The rise of neoliberalism and the globalization of capitalism heavily relied on the exploitation of the Latin American region. Latin American and Global Capitalism: a critical globalization perspective explains the relationship between Latin America’s economic stagnation and the continued growth of the global north. During the rise of neoliberalism, Latin America experienced the “lost decade” of the 1980’s, where the region experienced a “contraction of income and economic activity. Its share of world trade dropped by half from about 6 to about 3 percent” (254). However, Latin America had increased its production in the amount of wealth that it contributed to the world capitalist economy as “the volume of its exports to the world increased significantly throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s” (255). This pattern demonstrates a siphoning of the wealth being generated in Latin America, where wages and economic growth did not reflect its increase of exports.

This is a continued pattern of the relationship between the colonizers and the colonized: the wealth generated by the producers remains in the hands of the first world capitalist class. Robinson further summarizes that “Latin America continued to generate wealth that fueled the world capitalist economy even as the region stagnated… The social crisis in Latin America is not as much a crisis of production as it is of distribution” (256). The global capitalist economy continues to grow, all while dependent on the unequal distribution of wealth in which Latin America never sees the profit that it produces. This relationship demonstrates how primitive accumulation originated in colonialism still continues today.

In conclusion, there are many ways that one can trace the roots of capitalism to the time of colonization of the Americas. Many of capitalism’s influences on the world echo an imperial control over the global south that reflects its roots in colonialism. With capitalism dependent on the racial, gendered, and class-based subjugation of workers, it continues to prevent Latin America from thriving. To this day, the accumulation by dispossession continues, but instead of in the name of the Crown, or the name of God, it is in the name of the global north’s self proclaimed right to the world’s riches.

[actionsandreflections-blog]

Book Review: Chaining Oregon by Kay Atwood

Chaining Oregon: Surveying the Public Lands of the Pacific Northwest, 1851-1855 was written by Kay Atwood and published by the Mcdonald & Woodward Publishing Company in Blacksburg, Virginia. The cover art consists of a General Land Office map drawn by William Ives in 1851, consisting of the Willamette River and surrounding areas. Within the text there were various other maps, drawings and photos of the land that was surveyed during these years. Kay Atwood was a historian based in Ashland known for her vivid writing style and thorough research. In this book, Atwood described in great detail the journeys of several land surveyors that mapped the Oregon Territory between 1851 and 1855, including the physical hardships of the job, the politics of land management in new territories, and the effects that their work has had on today’s Oregon. Kay Atwood’s goal of this book was to answer her own question: “by whom surveyed”?

In the preface of Chaining Oregon, Atwood included these thoughts: “As my interest in Pacific Northwest history deepened, my curiosity about these men grew. Who were they and how did they contribute toward settlement? I began my research ten years ago between my professional obligations and sometimes instead of them, the story of the surveyors took shape”(pg. xi). The original idea behind the book was born out of Atwood’s desire to learn more about the Pacific Northwest, who specifically surveyed it, and how that has affected today’s Oregon. Atwood saw the importance of unearthing the histories of the men who essentially legitimized the Oregon Territory in the eyes of the U.S. government.

Atwood showed the effects of their surveying by including information about how the settlers and native populations of the areas were affected by American surveying. Atwood writes: “At the same time that they enhanced Euro-American settlement west of the Cascades, the surveyors helped destroy ancient traditions on lands long held sacred by native peoples”. Here Atwood describes the double edged sword of land surveying, and how it legitimized white settlers concepts of land ownership, while aiding in the dispossession of Native Americans.

Atwood also thought it was important to include the political aspect of these projects. Throughout the book, the author references the influence that political affiliation and family ties had on who controlled the surveys and who was dealt out contracts. Often, the Surveyor General was accused in local newspapers of injustice: “...I am informed that Mr. Preston, knowing that he will be speedily removed, has let to his favorites contracts to survey all the best portions of the country.”

Kay Atwood set out to give a detailed history of the lives of the men who did this work, and in doing so shed light on the political, social and geographical implications it had on everyone in that time and leading into the future. Along with trying to humanize these surveyors, she also tried to accurately describe all sides of the story. While Atwood described the accusations and political skirmishes that occurred in the book, there was no telling whose side the author would be on. The book overall was a narrative not to teach a lesson, but to purely uncover a whole spectrum of outcomes from the work of these surveyors.

Above all, Kay Atwood set out to answer her own question. Through her own curiosity and desire to shed light on this obscure bit of history, she stumbled upon the extraordinary lives that surveyors led in the Oregon Territory, along with their integral part of forming the Pacific Northwest of today.  This book reads as a very detailed, unbiased and thorough account of the development of the western United States, accounting the good as well as the bad. With these men who laid down the foundations of Oregon as the focus, Atwood painted a picture of the 1850’s as a time of political, social and environmental transformation.

[actionsandreflections-blog]

Transcribed Interview: Family History

I decided to interview my grandma. She has always been a storyteller and I know a lot about my family’s history already, but I wanted to dig deeper and create a written record of her knowledge. My grandma is a poet, a photographer, and an active member in her community. For work she farmed for most of her life, and was also a janitor for her local school district, and a mother of three boys, as well as many foster kids. I would like to make this paper into a written record of her stories.

ME: Yea I was supposed to come up with questions, but I didn't.

GMA: Oh well just go by that.

ME: I guess I kind of wanted to know more about the dairy industry, and what it was like being a part of that.

GMA: You want when I was born, my age?

ME: I guess I want to start on how we got this farm.

GMA: Ok, well let's do the beginning so you got a got a little bit of trace, I was born in San Diego, March 17th, 1946, and when I was a year we moved to Newberg Oregon and had 15 dairy cows, and that would've been...1947, and then in 1948 we moved up to the lower farm, and share-farmed with my uncle and aunt, and we...

ME: Did they own the farm?

GMA: No, Walt Mavis did. We lived in the little house, and they milked about probably 35 cows by hand, no machines, probably for about the first 5 years and then they got milking machines, and we didn’t have power down there either.

ME: What year was that? How old were you?

GMA: 18 months old when we came to my uncles place in the Wynoochee, and they had no electricity for the first 2 years probably, and then they had a generator, and then they had two milking machines, and mom would have electricity in the house from a little wire that led from the milking barn to the house, and she always knew when dad was coming up for dinner because they cut the generator and it would be back to no electricity.

ME: So, you... when, did your family buy the farm?

GMA: yea, ok, when I was 9 in 1955, my mom told my dad (she was Depression Dust Bowl Oklahoman, my dad was Kansas/Colorado) that she wanted her own farm, she wanted to buy this farm, Parker and Margaret Askew's place and Dad said "Rachel we don’t have two dimes to rub together" and she said "well go to the federal land bank in Chehalis and get a loan" and he goes "you have to have money down" and the place cost $24,500 it was 185 acres, the barn was built in 1931 so it was, not old, and this house was built in the '20's....Anyway, so dad said "we don’t have two dimes to rub together" and she said "I have money" and he goes "well where might that be? it’s not in the bank." and she said "it’s in a rusty can on top the cupboards in the kitchen!"

ME: I think you've told me this one before!

GMA: yep on top the cupboard, and so he gets a big ladder (cuz those old cupboards were so tall) and it was behind all this other stuff in front, and she had saved... everything from babysitting’ the neighbors kid, from selling cream and vegetables, everything she made from when they got married in 1944, till 1955, 11 years… she had over $500 in that can! And she knew if she put it in the bank that my uncle and my dad would have spent it on something for my uncles place, and so they took that money down to the federal land bank and the man said "Rachel! you got way more than enough money here for a down on that place, you can go home and buy frank somethin’ rusty for your new farm!" and that’s how they got this farm, 185 acres,  and $24,500 which in ‘55 was a lot of money, but this house, when the homesteaders came to this farm, when the homesteaders came up this valley there was no road, it was called Chehalis county not grays harbor, and they thought if a road was ever put in it would be on the west side of the Wynoochee, well it was put on the eastside. So there were 8 or 9 swinging bridges that those farmers would carry their 80 lb. cans of milk across those swinging bridges to meet the milk truck and then the Askews’ built this big barn, its 80 some feet by 40 some big, it’s a gothic, and I can give you pictures, it was built in ‘31, and in ‘35 they brought this farm house with two teams of horses from across the river up the incline and set it on this basement and it’s not off a half an inch. And that was before they had power, that was in 1935 I think, or ‘37. So there was no power until 1955 we lived up here, we moved up here in 55, I’m sorry, in 1952 when we were still down at my uncles place the PUD told the farmers that if they would cut and skin and plant the cedar poles that they would bring the wire, and that’s when we got electricity in 1952. so we moved up here to the other place on December 20th, 1948, and then Christmas Eve of 1955, we moved the last batch of calves up the road to this farm, and she was having a lot of trouble walking and so much pain and mom took her to the emergency and she had appendicitis Christmas eve!  That’s when we got our last animals moved up to the farm. Then, I was raised here I learned to swim in the Wynoochee, but it was  just 7 days a week, 12-16 hours a day depending on time of year, ya know, the crops... and my dad, we had a big manure shed out there that he would haul all the manure from the barn and dump by hand with the wheelbarrow, and in the spring, he would unload it all by hand, into a manure wagon and spread it on the fields, and when I was I think a junior in high school, I musta been about 16, he got a John Deere tractor with a loader and he was able to unload it with the loader instead of doin’ it by pitchfork, it was amazing the work they did... I have pictures of that.

ME: What was it like being a girl?

GMA: we just all worked hard, there was no difference, us girls, worked as hard as the boys, we weren’t as strong as the boys physically, but I threw bales, drove hay truck, washed milkers, my sister washed the barn, and when she got married I had to do that… I ran baler, I never mowed hay much, dad always did that, but, I raked a lotta hay, we did pretty much everything the boys did, we just weren’t as physically strong, but, we were real respected there were never put downs, and then as your grandpa jerry and I got married, we moved to Alaska for ‘67-‘69 from Coffman Cove, Alaska and took over the farm again and then I ran the hay crews, and when we came back we always had girls on the crew, and boys, and everybody got along good, if there were any kind of put downs they got fired, I only fired one boy and that was because he was kept tormenting the other kids and fighting with ‘em so I told ‘em he just need to get his paycheck and go home... and the other kid I fired he just wasn’t pulling his weight, and he was staying with grandma and grandpa, he was so embarrassed! he begged me to hire him back and which I did that same afternoon, and then he worked, because he was too embarrassed to tell grandma! Fred was his name, but out of all the kids, and they wanted to work, the kids would be calling us, coming by, calling me on the phone, you know, wanting farm work, to work, make money.

ME: So, when was that around?

GMA: That would been in the 70's, cuz we came back in ‘69 and that’s when we took over the farm in the 70's and 80's and then we quit dairy farming in 1982, but we started switching to beef cattle and then we still put in bales of hay for alotta years. We still hired kids to work, and they were all wonderful. But the best help, the best workers we ever had was your dad, and your uncles. Jerrod, Kevin, Arnie, they were the best. Yep.

ME: What was it like working with Darigold? Was it a contract?

yea it was and we got paid if your milk was always clean and never, if you had dirty milk or ever got antibiotics in it or something you were degraded, and so you got lot less price and we always kept everything clean, and so we were grade A and we had a base that you, it was like shares I guess and you got paid really top dollar for that, and then if you had over that base then you got a little less, but we were always grad A dairy with Darigold and they were a fine outfit to sell for. We always milked with 3 milk buckets on the flat, you called it, cuz you always locked your cows in the stanchions, and you carried bucket from cow to cow. but, well in ‘73 we had to switch to a bulk milk tank, which was more sanitary, instead of cans. And then we were having to choose to go either milking parlor or pipeline and that’s when we decided to get outta business, and we got out when the price of dairy cattle were real high so we got out at a good time and then we started raising beef.

When you were raising beef were they just over there (across the river)?

We had em over here, and we had an old cow named Red. I went to Badgett’s, they had a big auction and we bought, mom and I did, 48 calves, raised em on the buckets, powdered milk, and that was the tame herd, and the one calf we named her red, she would moo in the spring and take the whole herd across the river, and in the fall she would come over here and moo at the gate and we would let her into the pastures. and when she dies, that’s when the rest of ‘em wouldn’t come back and that’s how i ended up with the wild cows...and they came back the first year or two but as their new calves came on, they just didn’t have this leadership of old Red, so that’s how we got all those wild cows across the river. They wouldn’t come over to the barn anymore.

ME: That’s crazy!

GMA: It was crazy. and we trapped 26 with Kevin and H&H meat Co. and so we trapped 26 in the round pen, and I think 15 didn’t get trapped. and there was originally 43 of ‘em... and so they started reproducing again and we trapped some more, and then the rest of ‘em...people hunted them because we couldn’t catch ‘em. pretty crazy.

ME: So people hunted them? Did you let them?

I let them they paid me cheap, I didn’t charge ‘em very much, and they would get over...like you would a elk. and it was work. and then we had 3 really crazy ones and I had a hunting party goin’ in because they kept going down to the neighbors, they didn’t want em with their cows cuz they were purebred Saler's and they didn’t want our cows, ya know, breeding their Saler show cows. And Sue called and said "call off your hunters we got the game department going in" and they got the last 3. and they were gone and I was so relieved, I mean the weight off my back… no more worries.

ME: I kind of wanted to know more about grandpa, when did you meet him?

GMA: Ok, I was workin’ in the restaurant, my first job was washin’ dishes in the smoke shop restaurant in Aberdeen and his sister in law was there as a waitress and she introduced him to me, and he kept asking me out and I didn’t want to, and then finally i went out with him and then we just started going fishing and he took me over to meet his grandparents and it was probably a 9 month friendship, nothing serious, I mean holding hands maybe, after 6 months! (laughs) I was kind of done on guys, I mean I was like snail slow… (laughs) And so finally he won me over and we got married on my 21st birthday on march 17th of ‘67, went to Alaska ‘til you know, ‘til your dad was born up there, and then we came back to farm. but he was in Vietnam, see he woulda been, oh gosh, I think he got outta Vietnam in '65 so... and he was in there what ‘63 to ‘65 he was in Vietnam, but he was only there 10 months, he wasn’t like today’s kids that go 3 and 4 times to Iraq or wherever, he was there for 10 months and then he came out. It messed him up, his mother said all three of her sons were never the same, one brother was in Cuba, his other brother Dave was in panama, and Jerry was in Vietnam and she said "I wish you could’ve known them before they went in the service because they were completely different human beings then when they came out" they were... um... never the same. and we had a good life here, it was ya know.... 7 days a week, 12-16 hours a day (laughs) pretty much depending on the season... I mean in winter you had a little more down time to relax but summer was just sun up to sun down. and then we took your dad and uncles when we quit dairy, we took em camping out to Sequim, did a road trip for three nights, and then um, I think it was 1985 we went to Yellowstone, so that’s basically the only trips we had in 16 years... And we did go to a few couple funerals in Yakima and two weddings overnight in Yakima and that’s pretty much it. (laughs)

ME: Wow, yea in class we are talking a lot about labor movements and stuff like that although you weren’t really wage earners I guess since you had property and stuff?

GMA: Yea oh gosh when we started, it mighta been $7 for a hundred pounds, and when we quit it I think in the spring in 82 we were up to 12$ per hundred pounds... and I don’t know what they get now I read somewhere in 2014 they were getting 18 per hundred pounds but their prices, to their prices today, it must be like 8x more, so what these farmers get today, comparison to what we got is... they have way more problems, way more cost than we had.

ME: What did you do when you were in Alaska?

GMA: Well he drove dump truck and logging truck, and we lived in a logging camp... and they only hired on the ability of the workers not what they were like as people, and we had some not very nice people in the beginning, and then they left after that first year, some of the more undesirable families or drinking people left the camp because it was not a law that you couldn’t drink in camp but they wanted to develop it as a family camp which they ended up with a really neat family camp but after the first year or two those people left, and then they started hiring relatives and friends of the people that stayed and they developed a really neat family logging camp. But we came back to farm, because grandpa Ziegler had made a deal with your grandpa Jerry so we moved back here to farm the place. we actually took it over in ‘69 when we moved back but legally we took it over in ’72, I think paper wise.

ME: So, you did dairy cows and then you did beef, and then I think you worked at the school?

GMA: To make extra money when times were really hard I picked daffodils at the daffodil farm, I worked seasonal at heather acres, planting chutes of heather in Elma, daffodils in Satsop, Leisha Creswell, my friend, we picked daffodils together, and we would drive over to Grayland, Westport, and weed cranberry bogs and that’s when you would string up these two foot wide strips of the bog and you just get on your knees very carefully go down in the bog pullin’ out weeds with a regular screwdriver or something, and your dad and uncles would go with us on weekends, sometimes her kids went with us on weekends to make extra money, and we peeled cascara bark, picked evergreen blackberries,  and in the 40's and 50's, Esse's berry shed would drive up the Wynoochee and they had wooden flats they would give us (and I did this from when I was 4 or 5 years old) and I always got to keep my money but  they would drive to each farm and pick up the flats of berries that the farm women had picked during the day and they would pay us in silver coins, because their paper money would fly around. and then, later in my teens, the neighbors were a buying station for fir cones and hemlock and spruce for Simpson timber, and we would go out and get fir cones that the squirrels and chipmunks were throwin' down, in bags, and then we would sell ‘em. and when your dad and uncles were little I was a buying station for Simpson for two years and they paid me to take in the sacks and you have to keep records of the elevation that the cones were got, because they replanted, and they would heat them in a facility and shake all the seeds out and then whatever elevation that batch was from they would go to that area in the mountains or flatlands and re-seed by air and that’s how they planted in those days. let’s see what else, I milked for the neighbors, I milked for Baylous's (your aunt Audrey and uncle Gary) I milked for them for about 10 months and when we sold our cows your grandpa jerry took over milking for em, it was a milking parlor. And then in '88 I had volunteered so much at the high school that the staff kept saying "why don’t you just get a job down here and make money?" and so, Bill, the superintendent called me on this really hot august day, it was in the 90's (Fahrenheit) and anyway I put in for janitor, teacher's aide we called em then, or cook (I got my food service license) and it was really hot and I ran  into the house and he goes "hey pat, yo its bill here, you still want a job down here at this place?" and i said "sure what’ve you got?" and he said "janitor" and I said "sure I can do that it’s just cleanin' up alotta... just like farming cleanin' up alotta messes and poop!" and he laughed and I said "when do I need to come down and train?" and he said " you better get down this afternoon school starts tomorrow" and that’s how I got hired in 1988, and there was no background check, no interview, no nothin’, just come on down! The janitor who I was taking his place, he was movin’ to California, gave me the job description, showed me the janitor closet the mop bucket in the bathrooms and said there you go, good luck! and then I thought I would just be there a couple years or til the boys graduated and then, I was really grateful for that job because grandpa passed away in '01 so i don’t know what I woulda done if i hadn’t of had something to fall back on. and I started out at 7 something an hour, and that was in '88, until the 60 days passed and then I got a raise to 8, and then I ended in 2012, on 16 something an hour which I thought was fabulous money. And all the benefits and retirement so I thought I was very fortunate.

ME: Weren’t you a lunch lady too?

GMA: No I was just the clean-up, I worked in the lunchroom with the kids, I monitored them and cleaned up, and I loved ‘em all and I was like a hurting kid magnet any kid that had a problem or was hurting just flocked to me, and ya know, or they'd be cryin, I don’t know why, I loved the kids, I loved the staff, they were neat people. Yea, I don’t miss the job, but I still miss the kids and staff.

ME: So you were kind of like a counselor?

GMA: oh yea, counselor, I was a teacher. "pick that up, i saw you do that!" I taught in my own way... "I saw you throw that garbage on the floor! I saw you spill that milk and not mop it up now clean up after yourself, didn’t your mother teach you anything!"(laughs) I loved ‘em.

ME: How did you experience the civil rights movement and women’s movements in the 60's? like how did that affect your life?

My parents were probably more democrat, because in the early times democrats weren’t as liberal as they are today, it’s gone way in the other direction, because in the beginning they helped the Depression, they helped the poor a lot, so they were probably democrats, but we never talked about it. and then when I was 16 is when they had the march on Montgomery, about Rosie ya know, and I was appalled, it made me sick to my stomach that a certain color of people couldn’t drink out the same fountain or use the bathroom, and I woulda been there marching, now I  was a northerner, north westerner, now if i had been raised in the deep south by southern people maybe I woulda had a different attitude I don’t know, hopefully not, but I woulda been marching with them if I could have. and then we had the free love hippie days, and I was really against Vietnam, I would not have gone I would have gone to Canada, no offense to my country but, I was very stubborn and hated war, and I thought "nobody is gonna make me kill people that I don’t think need killin!" and if they had attacked my family, I always said I could shoot ‘em or defend my own country here, but to  go  over there and stick my nose in some little  country like they were, I wouldn’t have done it I would’ve gone to Canada... and then my folks were fiercely patriotic because of WW2, it was a whole different scenario, because it was the war effort and it was the whole...all the countries. What else, I loved Kennedy, everybody loved Kennedy, he was cute and his kids were cute, and his wife was beautiful, ya know, and I never paid attention to if he was a good president or not I just thought he was really cute and his wife was beautiful and they had cute kids! (laughs)

ME: I was wondering if you knew much about grandma Ziegler during ww2 and like her childhood and growin' up in Oklahoma?

GMA: She was born in Fort Cobb, Oklahoma, very poor, they were share-croppers on farms that’s why she wanted her own farm someday, and I think there were 9 kids, same as my dad there were originally 9 I think, anyway she was born in Fort Cobb Oklahoma, she survived the dust bowl, Depression, it was during the Depression a dust storm, and she said she was laid in the root cellar, for like 10 days, and grandpa went clear into town, team and wagon, and got her some real, store bought pork and beans, and grape juice that she was askin’ for, and she said when he brought that home, she ate the beans and drank the grape juice and started gettin’ better, but a lot of people died from that, the dust, and when she was 16 they came out to California, and then, she picked a lot of vegetables and fruit to make money, very poor times, if you’ve ever read the book Grapes of Wrath that was her story, but she had a sister Jule, who married Slim Lians, he had a farm in Chino, California. And so, they had a place to stay, they didn’t have to stay in the migrant camps, like the other people did, and then they eventually just got jobs.... They were all called Oakies, horribly, a terrible put down. Anybody from South Dakota, North Dakota, Kansas, Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma, it didn’t matter, they were all considered Oakies and they were very put down, extremely looked down on, but all through those states they had signs that said "Come to Golden California!" "Thousands of jobs!" and when they got there, there weren’t any. There were no jobs. And if there were, the different farmers cheated them outta money, they were bad conditions, maybe 1 or 2 outhouses per hundreds of people. If you read the Grapes of Wrath, that’s probably the best story told of those times, because that author went to those camps and wrote that book. And then when the war broke out she went to work for solar aircraft, as a riveter, but she hated the noise so they transferred her into welding, and that’s where she met my dad, he was the supervisor, and he thought she was the cutest thing that ever walked, and he used to throw orange peelings at her, being a supervisor! He tried to get her attention, at lunch, and she didn’t want anything to do with him. And so finally she came around and went to have tea with him and they started dating. He was a welder also but he supervised and he said she was one of the best welders he'd ever seen down there at that plant, they worked for solar aircraft and consolidated, and they built warplanes. and then when the war was over, my uncle worked at the shipyards, my uncle Walt, and that’s when they went to Newberg and bought that little 15 acre place and mom and dad came to visit and Walt Mavis said "well, why don’t you guys move and take over this little place because we’re going to this other place called Wynoochee valley" and so in the spring of '48 we moved there to Newberg and in '48 we came to visit up here in Washington and they just fell in love with it so Walt Mavis said "well let’s get rid of the little farm and you guys can live in the little house, we'll co-farm this place" so that’s how we got up here. And dad was born in Harveyville, Kansas, your great grandpa Ziegler, he was born in 1906 and your great grandma was born in 1921. And he graduated high school at Colorado Springs in 1924.

ME: Did great grandma ever graduate high school?

GMA: No, she had to drop out because of their lack of money, of how many kids there were to feed she LOVED school, we have an award, I have it down at the museum, that she got a really nice certificate for having a hundred straight perfect spelling tests, and she loved school. When she was in 9th grade she had to quit to go help make money to give to the family, because they were so poor. And that’s as far as she went through school. All her life she had insecurity about not finishing high school and not graduating, and she was one of the most well read and educated people by just doing it on her own, she read everything. Very smart, she’s what kept this farm in such good shape and the bills paid, she was meticulous in her bill paying and record keeping... and so, it didn’t matter, but it mattered to her that she didn’t have a high school graduation diploma, always bothered her. And my dad was no good at the bookkeeping, he always did the income taxes, but she was really more educated than he was even though he graduated from high school, because she wanted to be. You can be anything you want!

When I look back upon my grandmother’s version of history, I see the world through her eyes and the eyes of her generation. And although my grandma only ever finished high school, and has barely left her town in Grays Harbor, she has a wealth of real world experience that informs her upon the social and economic problems that she and her parents faced throughout their lives. My grandma and great-grandma, although most likely would not describe themselves as feminists, proved to the world that they could be fiercely strong, smart, and autonomous in times where history assumes women weren’t. Without them, my family’s livelihood, our farm, may have been lost long ago. Though their hard work and talents may have gone unnoticed under the guise of a woman’s duty, I hope that these stories can shed light on my grandmothers’ unique and amazing stories sprung from the lives of ordinary people.

[actionsandreflections-blog]

ACA Individual Mandate Repeal Explained (Tax Cuts and Jobs Act)

On December 22nd, 2017, the GOP backed bill called the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was passed by the Senate. Along with sweeping tax reform, the Act also included the repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate. An individual mandate is defined as a requirement by law for certain persons to purchase or otherwise obtain a good or service. In 2010, the original health insurance mandate was imposed in order to restrict the ability of health insurance companies to increase premiums based upon the apparent health of the individual. This means that all Americans were required to sign up for healthcare.

How the ACA works

One of the goals of the ACA (also known as Obamacare) was the regulation of guaranteed issue. This means that no one can be denied health insurance, regardless of health factors of the individual. Another aspect of the healthcare system is something called “community ratings” which basically means that everyone should be charged a similar amount, no one is “punished” with higher prices for having pre-existing conditions. The problem is if no one can be denied health insurance, and no one can be forced to pay more if they are sick, then healthy people can just opt out of the system, until they buy insurance when they need it (after they become sick). But if only sick people buy insurance, then premiums will go way up, because the cost to insurance companies per person will be much greater than it would be if they were healthy. This will spiral into even more people avoiding buying insurance until they need it most.

One of the solutions to this issue is the individual mandate: buy insurance or pay a penalty to the government (95$ or 1% of income whichever is greater). But, the ACA also has an incentive to buy into the system: a healthcare subsidy in the form of a tax credit from the federal government for anyone whose income is less than 400% of the poverty line (so, for example, less than $46,000 a year for an individual or $94,000/year for a family of four). So, the three main components of the ACA: the regulation of insurance prices and those covered, the mandate, and the subsidies are all necessary to make it work. With the individual mandate removed, and no penalties from those who don’t buy coverage, prices of coverage will grow exponentially. Right now, the government still subsidizes all healthcare coverage, but enrollment levels of healthy people will go down significantly now that there is no mandate. Government spending would increase per person covered under Obamacare, because along with forgoing the tax revenue previously generated from the mandate, the government is now subsidizing a more expensive population. Without the mandate it is impossible for the regulatory goals of the original act to met, the government will be spending significantly more, and many Americans will remain uninsured.

[actionsandreflections-blog]

connecting theory and practice 11/17/18    FUJ/C2C protest

Since I missed day one of the field trip due to illness, I will summarize and reflect upon the second day of the trip for the majority of this response paper. On day one, the class went to the Northwest Detention Center, the Wing Luke museum, and then after that we had a group dinner and seminar in the evening. Seminar was cut short, but during that time classmates connected the reading material to the trip and reflected upon their experiences of the first day.

Though I missed the key events of the day I enjoyed bonding with my classmates at dinner and during our free time in the evening. I thought that this part of the trip was important and connected to the overall theme of the trip: solidarity. I felt much more comfortable and excited about going to Mexico after getting to know my peers better.

On the morning of day two, the class walked out to the vans and drove to Bellingham, where we would meet with groups Community to Community and Familias Unidas por la Justicia. We arrived at the church and gathered in the main room. Representatives of both groups introduced themselves and stated their roles and past work done in the organizations. The president of FUJ, Ramón Torres, told us his story of coming to the U.S. to work and how he started organizing. To give us context to what we were about to do later in the day, he and others shed light on very recent and terrible injustices close to home. They told us about the horrible working conditions on farms in the Skagit Valley and other parts of Washington, as well as the norms of H2A working conditions throughout the United States. Workers on a farm in Sumas, WA worked for long hours in the hot sun, without adequate food, water, shelter, or rest. These conditions often resulted in workers becoming injured or ill, in which when confronted with these issues, supervisors for the farm did nothing to help them. Only after a worker became critically ill last summer did anything happen: workers refused to continue laboring in solidarity with their sick friend. As a result of this, some 100 workers were immediately fired, put onto busses and were to be taken to immigration officials.

Members of the community immediately stepped in to house all of these workers and get them back to their families without having to be deported. This chain of events was extraordinary in the examples of cruelty but also of kindness and humanity shown by members of the community in Sumas. After learning about the aims of C2C and FUJ, we drove about forty minutes northeast to the very farm in which this happened last summer. Outside of the main office, we stood and wrote up a list of demands to give to the farm. Getting involved in the demand-writing process made me nervous, but I was also eager to make myself useful. The demand list was read aloud so the people in the office could hear, and we stood outside while some of us delivered the handwritten message through a crack in the door. I was really grateful to FUJ and C2C for letting us get so involved in the process, participation in these kinds of demonstrations with great leadership from Ramon and others is invaluable to me as a person who desires to find ways to exercise my agency and really make a difference.

In the evening, we went back to Seattle and heard Jasmyn Ward speak at Benaroya Hall. Her uncensored stories of the African American experience during the talk were immensely powerful and horrifying, and I shed tears when she spoke about fearing for her son’s survival as a black boy in a racist and heavily policed world. What was really powerful to me about her presentation was that she drove the point home that these stories needed to be told, that educating ourselves and others about the reality of the world is the only way forward.

Through all adversity, every place we went to emphasized community and solidarity. These groups and individuals also were all combatting mainstream rhetoric of forgetting and indifference. For the NWDC protesters, they were there to let the people imprisoned know they weren’t forgotten, and the Wing Luke museum changes their exhibits to reflect the living history of the International District. For C2C and FUJ, it was about remembering the historically excluded rights of farmworkers, and for Jasmyn Ward it was about remembering the African Americans who were enslaved, murdered, and further dehumanized in order to prepare her son for a world where black boys are seen as dangerous criminals as early as twelve.

All of the places we've gone on this trip have shown a light on racial discrimination and how communities touched by these injustices work together to resist and empower themselves. These communities and individuals tell the stories of their own lives, their reality, rather than the whitewashed versions of history. Through education, action, and support from one another, they make the world better for everyone.