Who will do the work when farmworkers detained and kept out of fields?
Editor:
On May 2nd a white school bus full of workers en route to farms owned by Lynn-Ette & Sons was pulled over by unmarked cars near the town of Albion. Everyone on the bus – seasonal and year-round migrant workers from Guatemala and Mexico – sat up straight.
The men in uniform entered the bus and read from a list of names that Lynn-Ette & Sons claims they did not provide. Fair enough, we live in a surveillance state; there are other ways to build a list…but Occam’s Razor makes me dubious.
Were the people marched off that bus citizens? Were they criminals? Were they organizing to push for fair labor practices from Lynn-Ette & Sons? All I know for sure is that they make up some of the roughly 80,000 people who feed New Yorkers, half of whom are believed to be undocumented.
What is the plan here? These jobs which most US citizens won’t take due to the intense physical demand, poor pay, and exploitative employer practices…who will fill them? Robots? Poor people, more likely. When my job in the nonprofit arts sector disappears and I find myself needing to contribute to the economy directly with my hands, I’m going to appreciate that my predecessors had organized, so that I have rights like sick leave, safety standards, fair treatment, and though it’s not a living wage, at least not below $15.50/hour.
When I’m twisting heads of cabbage like we used to let children (the other population that will work for unlivable wages) am I going to be totally isolated? Am I going to be gripping tight to my seat on the bus when it is stopped and the next batch of brown people are disappeared? And when that bus eventually makes its way to field thirty minutes late, will my overseer hold me responsible? Will I be blamed for the circumstance of my survival like so many innocent immigrants in this country are every day?
And I don’t mean every day since January 20. I mean always: America is in a constant state of exploiting and disappearing the most vulnerable people existing between its borders. Especially those people who speak up. But since January 20, things have gotten scarier, and migrant families in NY State have resorted to never leaving the house at the same time, for fear of being abducted all at once, losing any footing they have in the land where the albeit imagined good life might still be built.
I appreciate Lynn-Ette and Sons making a statement about the arrests demanding, “transparency, due process, and human dignity” in all “enforcement actions” (ie. ICE Raids), but I can only hope they treat their workers with the same qualities. United Farm Workers, who many of the farmers detained last Friday are said to have been in the process of joining, would claim differently.
If I were a suit at Lynn-Ette & Sons, I would do something affirmative that shows my support for these workers, something beyond a letter. I’ll believe Lynn-Ette cares about its workers when they join the chanting crowds that continue to grow outside of the Buffalo Federal Detention Facility in Batavia. I’ll believe them when they allow their year-round, local resident workers to organize.
Tyler Barton
Hamlin
