no shade for maria isabel vasquez jimenez

A humanitarian crisis (4.00 / 1)

This is further evidence that what we have in this country is not an "immigration problem," which narrowly defines the problem as somehow residing with and resulting from immigrants.

The injustices and tragedies we are facing stem from the addiction to cheap labor and the callous refusal to see cheap laborers as human beings who deserve to be respected and protected.

That addiction to cheap leader also led to the ICE raid in Postville, Iowa, last month. Those arrested frequently worked 15-hour shifts for less than minimum wage, without getting paid overtime and without benefits or protections. They were exploited and mistreated; and for the great crime of being willing to work in such deplorable conditions, ICE arrested them, denied them legal counsel, separated them from their families, railroaded them through the "justice" system, and threw them in prison.

The whole situation is utterly deplorable. We cannot, we must not tolerate it. How can anyone watch this happening without paroxysms of outrage?

I can't figure out how life just goes on as normal when this sort of thing is happening in our midst. A young pregnant woman collapses from lack of shade and water? ICE terrorizes a whole community and tears hundreds of families apart? And everybody is OK with this? What the hell is going on here?

I am beside myself with fury and hardly know what to do with myself.

I'm grateful to have the Sanctuary, this charming, friendly, supportive place where I can vent and learn and grow, where I can figure out how to channel my rage into effective action.

Rouse the rabble!

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by: MaryRW @ Sat Jun 07, 2008 at 10:47:50 AM CDT

Sanctuary (0.00 / 0)

I hear you, MaryRW. I have many moments actually where I have to turn away. I feel very rooted to it, and like you cannot really understand how it is easy for others to go about day to day without feeling something must be done immediately. In those moments I can get overwhelmed, like a fuse blows.

We won't tolerate it. We do not, thats why we are here together. Thanks so much for all your words and thoughts and heart.  

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by: nezua @ Sat Jun 07, 2008 at 18:31:14 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

The thing is nothing will (0.00 / 0)

change as long as Americans are persuaded to beleive that migrants are less than human, "just deportees", no names no humanity.

So much hate.

My parents were migrant farm workers and as a child I worked with them in the fields, I know first hand what hard work this is and how horrible the conditions can be.  

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by: mariachi mama @ Sat Jun 07, 2008 at 18:44:44 PM CDT

I identify (0.00 / 0)

I identify with Maria Isabel and other laborers.
I do the same kind of labor on my own land in the tropics and the heat is pretty brutal from June to October, often well over 100 F for 4 or 5 hours at midday. In 1996 while working 12 hour days on my farm in late May my kidneys failed from the heat, but I didn't realize that until I couldn't move the next morning. I have never recovered completely from that and at the time I was incapacitated for weeks.
It is very easy to die in the heat and it can happen very quickly, especially from sunstroke.
You can easily die after falling down with a chill within 15 minutes. That's happened to me also, but ice and shade were nearby.
Now we do not work in the sun from 11 to 4 in deep summer. Also, plainly, the UV is getting more intense over the last 20 years, I can attest. Isn't it perfectly obvious to the looney anti-immigrant movement that stoop labor is hellish? Why do they have to make life even more horrible for the workers?
Some humans really embarrass me. Farm contractors who operate like this deserve a very special place in a very hot hell.
I feel that US citizenship must be renewed when the native born reaches the age of 21.
Before they can have their permanent passport, the person born in the US must work for 3 months stooping, packing or working construction in the cold or the heat. Only then can they be considered to have experienced enough {a minimum at least} to have empathy and understanding for the field worker/immigrant. The very sad thing is that many of the very worst contractors were not so long ago immigrants themselves. That's hard to understand.

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by: RC @ Sun Jun 08, 2008 at 13:17:29 PM CDT

What a Great Proposal! (0.00 / 0)

i love that idea, RC.  

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by: nezua @ Fri Jul 11, 2008 at 13:24:53 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

March to & Rally in Sacramento (4.00 / 1)

"If you take her to a clinic don't say she was working [for the contractor]. Say she became sick because she was jogging to get exercise. Since she's underage, it will create big problems for us."

Preventable?

Vasquez Jimenez collapsed at 3:30 p.m., Bautista [her boyfriend] said, and for at least five minutes, the foreman did nothing but stare at the couple while Bautista cradled her.

Bautista said the foreman told him to place the teenager in the back seat of a van, which was hot inside, and put a wet cloth on her.

Later, Bautista said, the foreman told a driver to take the pair to a store to buy rubbing alcohol and apply it to see if it would revive Vasquez Jimenez. When that failed, the driver took the couple to a clinic in Lodi, Bautista said, where her body temperature had reached more than 108 degrees.

"The foreman told me to say that she wasn't working for a contractor, that she got sick while exercising," Bautista said in Spanish. "He said she was underage, and it would cause a lot of problems."

(I don't know how to post a pic here, so here's an empty casket jpg & a full one)

Here's a picture of Isablella. She'd just come to California in February from a Mixtec village in Oaxaca. She was one of the "lucky ones" who made it across the militarized border.

There was a 4 day march after the funeral bearing 3 caskets, "one symbolizing the death of Vasquez Jimenez, one for the fetus she carried and the third for other victims of heat-related illness," from Lodi to Sacramento, where a rally was held to publicize the situation.

No, it's not an issue of "reform," depsite the Kansas City paper's headline. The laws are on the books. They are unenforced & there's neither money nor political will to do so.

Here's a video link to the rally.

UFW President, Arturo S. Rodriguez' address:

This pilgrimage is also about what the governor and the Legislature can do to prevent the needless deaths of more farm workers like Maria Isabel.

More enforcement of the heat regulation or the other good laws protecting farm workers isn't the answer.

The Sacramento Bee reported in 2007 that 36 percent of employers inspected by Cal-OSHA were not complying with the heat regulation. Another story in the Bee last month showed more than half of the employers had no safety plan-the kind of plan that might have saved Maria Isabel's life.

We all know that even a just law is only a piece of paper unless it can be enforced.

We know there are 600,000 farm workers toiling on 80,000 farms, frequently moving from place to place and victimized by a corrupt farm labor contractor system that shields the wealthy from responsibility.

There has never been adequate enforcement of laws protecting farm workers, under either Democratic or Republican administrations.

This governor issued the heat regulation in 2005, after three previous governors refused to act. Yet Governor Schwarzenegger is well aware of the limits of government. One of those limits is that even legal protections issued by a well-meaning governor mean little if we cannot give farm workers a way to use our good laws to protect themselves.

Our union has always believed that given the chance, farm workers could solve their own problems by organizing themselves and winning UFW contracts.

Where farm workers are protected by union contracts, the laws are honored.

And when growers know it is easier for farm workers to organize and bring in the union, employers are much more careful about obeying the law because they don't want to give the union an advantage.

So the answer, sisters and brothers, is self-help-making it easier for farm workers to organize so the laws on the books are the laws in the fields. Then more important human beings like Maria Isabel won't have to die.

Assemblyman Fabian Nuñez introduced a bill in April that would allow off-worksite union organizing (& voting!). Darrell Steinberg, the incoming State Senate leader, was there as well vowing to support it. On the anniversary of RFK's death who (whatever one thinks of the man -- I certainly don't lionize him) had walked w/ the farmworkers. Obummer, of course, hasn't a word to say on the subject.

Since the death, foremen at the Stockton-area vineyard have placed water jugs throughout the grape vines, said the victim's elder brother, who still works for the same contractor.

"They're taking care of everything now, and are putting water all over the place due to what happened," said Jose Luis Vasquez Jimenez, 20. "But there's still no shade."

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by: Arcturus @ Mon Jun 09, 2008 at 17:18:59 PM CDT