Party in the Fields!!!!

We did outreach to H2A workers on Monday night. "H2A" is a visa for foreign guest workers in agriculture. Most H2A workers are Mexican, though recently its been used as a vehicle to traffic laborers in from remote parts of the world, like India, Bali, South Africa, Indonesia. An H2A visa is temporary, only lasts 11 months, and workers are guaranteed on average 30 hours of work per week, at $8.53/hour, they get workers comp, inspected housing. At the "good" camps, this is more or less what you see, but at some more exploitative camps you see them not getting paid the correct wage, sitting around for weeks without work, not getting workers comp, not getting enough water in the fields, etc.

The camps we went to on Monday were "good" camps. The guys were all getting paid correctly, didn't have to work when it was too hot, got plenty of water, no pesticide danger, and they were super friendly. Some of them have been coming here for a couple years, and almost all of them have children and wives at home. They were receptive to what we had to say but didn't seem to be having any problems with their work.

I did get invited to a dance on Saturday by one of the workers! But I had to turn it down, alas, as we are having our sweetness party Saturday night. Which everyone is of course welcome to attend, see facebook for details.

That's Peter, our law intern, talking to one of the workers and explaining that our phone number is on the back of the booklets


Thats me and a SAF (student action with farmworkers) intern talking to two of the guys, one of whom has Curly's haircut from the three stooges.

And me again, with my terrible posture, talking to two other dudes. These guys weren't as friendly, though they did teach us how to say "i'm hungry" and "its really hot" in Tarrasco, a native dialect of Michoacan, their home state in Mexico.



yay for my first blog post with pictures!!!! Photos were taken by Omar, our community ed coordinator.