#also bracero

[fakeoldmanfucker]

But to get serious for a second, Phil's family life reminds me a bit of my own family's. Him being a bipolar kid of a bipolar father, with a stern mother... it's not exactly how I grew up, I was fortunate enough to just get the depressive side of the manic-depressive (this is a joke), but my sister wasn't.

Just finished the prologue for There But For Fortune...letting everyone know I absolutely am going to be insufferable about this.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive (Daily updates!)

An older (published in January 2024) but interesting and comprehensive look at long Covid's effect on Latino families and communities in the US.

By Lygia Navarro and Johanna Bejarano

Editor’s note: This story first appeared on palabra, the digital news site by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. It is part of a series produced in partnership between palabra and Northwest Public Broadcasting (NWPB) with the collaboration of reporters Lygia Navarro and Johanna Bejarano. *Some people interviewed for this article requested anonymity to discuss private health issues.

Victoria* is already exhausted, and her story hasn’t even begun. It’s late January 2021 in rural Sunnyside, Washington. The town of 16,000 people is a sleepy handful of blocks flecked with pickup trocas, churches on nearly every corner, and the twangs of Clint Black and Vicente Fernández. Geometric emerald chunks of farmland encircle the town.

Thirty-nine-year-old Victoria drags herself back and forth to her parents’ bedroom in a uniform of baggy burgundy sweatpants, scarf, knit hat and mask. Always a mask. As the eldest sibling, her unspoken job is to protect the family. But COVID-19 hits before they can get vaccinated.

When Victoria’s mamá got sick and quickly infected her papá, Victoria quarantined them. She shut them in their room, only cracking the door briefly to slide food in before retreating in a fog of Lysol.

Working in the health field, Victoria knows if they make it through the first 14 days without hospitalization, they will likely survive. Yet, caregiving drains her: Keeping track of fevers. Checking oxygen saturation. Making sure they’re drinking Pedialyte to stay hydrated. Worrying whether they will live or die.

Five days in, COVID comes for Victoria. Hard. Later, when she repeatedly scrutinizes these events, Victoria will wonder if it was the stress that caused it all — and changed her life forever.

At the pandemic’s onset, Victoria’s family’s work dynamics fit the standard in Sunnyside, where 86% of residents are Latino. “Keeping the members of your household safe — it was hard for a lot of families,” Victoria says. Living in multigenerational homes, many adult children, who’d grown up in the United States with access to education, had professional jobs, and switched to working from home. Their immigrant elders, who’d often only been able to finish fourth grade, braved the world to toil in fields, produce packing plants, supermarkets, or delivery trucks. As Leydy Rangel of the UFW Foundation puts it: “You can’t harvest food through Zoom.”

More than three decades ago, when 6-year-old Victoria’s family migrated from rural northern Mexico to this fertile slip of land cradling the zigzagging Yakima River, their futures promised only prosperity and opportunity.

According to oral histories of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation — who white colonizers forced out of the Yakima Valley in 1855 — the valley’s fecund lands have fed humans since time immemorial. Soon after the Yakamas’ removal to a nearby reservation, settler agriculture exploded.

By World War II, employers were frantic to hire contracted bracero laborers from Mexico — themselves descendants of Indigenous ancestors — to harvest the valley’s bounty of asparagus, pears, cherries and other cornucopia. This was how Victoria’s family arrived here: her abuelo and his brother had traveled back and forth to Washington as braceros decades before.

Victoria’s path took similar twists, in a 21st century, first-gen way. She moved all over the country for her education and jobs, then returned before the pandemic, bringing a newfound appreciation for the taste of apples freshly plucked from a tree that morning, and for the ambrosial scent of mint and grapes permeating the valley before harvest.

Today, agriculture is the largest industry fueling the Yakima Valley, the country’s twelfth-largest agriculture production area. Here, 77% of the nation’s hops (an essential ingredient in beer) and 70% of the nation’s apples are grown. Latinos, who constitute more than half of Yakima County’s population, power the agricultural industry.

While the area’s agricultural enterprises paid out $1.1 billion in wages in 2020, 59% of the low-wage agriculture jobs are held by undocumented folks and contracted foreign seasonal laborers doing work many Americans spurn. Latinos here live on median incomes that are less than half of white residents’, with 16% of Latinos living in poverty. Also in 2020: as they watched co-workers fall ill and die, Latino farmworkers repeatedly went on strike protesting employers’ refusals to provide paid sick leave, hazard pay and basic COVID protections like social distancing, gloves and masks.

“Every aspect of health care is lacking in the valley,” Yakima Herald-Republic health reporter Santiago Ochoa tells me.

In interview after interview, Yakima Valley residents and health care workers sketch in the details of a dire landscape:

The state’s busiest emergency room. Abrupt shutdowns of hospital facilities. Impoverished people without transportation or internet access for telehealth. Eight-month waits for primary care appointments. Nearly one in five Latinos uninsured. More than half of residents receive Medicaid. Resident physicians cycling in and out, never getting to know their patients. Not enough specialists, resulting in day-long trips for specialized care in bigger cities. With its Latino essential workforce risking their lives to feed their families — and the country — by summer 2020, COVID blazed through Yakima County, which quickly became Washington’s most scorching of hot spots. Not only did Yakima County tally the highest per-capita case rate of all West Coast counties (with Latinos making up 67% versus, 26% for white people), it also saw more cases than the entire state of Oregon. Ask Latinos here about 2020, and they shiver and avert their gazes, the trauma and death still too near.

Their positive tests marked just the beginning of terrifying new journeys as COVID slammed Victoria and many other Yakima Valley Latinos. Mix in scanty rural health care, systemic racism and a complicated emerging illness, and what do you get? Chaos: a population hardest hit by long COVID, but massively untreated, underdiagnosed, and undercounted by the government and medicine itself.

It won’t go away The cough was the first clue something wasn’t right. When Victoria had COVID, she’d coughed a bit. But then, three months later, she started and couldn’t stop.

The Yakima Valley is so starved for physicians that it took five months to see a primary care doctor, who attributed Victoria’s incessant cough to allergies. Victoria tried every antihistamine and decongestant available; some brought relief for three, maybe four weeks, and then returned spasms of the dry, gasping bark. A few minutes apart, all day long. The worst was waking up coughing, at least hourly.

Victoria had chest x-rays. An ear, nose and throat specialist offered surgery on her nose’s deviated septum. As months passed, the black hair framing Victoria’s heart-shaped face started aging rapidly, until it was grayer than her mother’s.

Over a year after the cough began, an allergist prescribed allergy drops, and Victoria made a chilling discovery. Once the drops stopped the cough for a month, then two, Victoria realized that the extreme fatigue she’d thought was sleep deprivation from coughing all night persisted.

“The exhaustion comes from within your soul, it overpowers you,” she says. “It’s intolerable.”

And her mind was foggy. When interrupted at work every 10 minutes by a coughing jag, Victoria hadn’t realized COVID had substantially altered her brain. “There are things in my brain that I should have access to, like words, definitions, memories,” she says. “I know that they’re there but I can’t access them. It’s like a filing cabinet, but I can’t open it.”

Before long, the cough resurfaced. Sometime in 2021, reading COVID news for work, Victoria learned of long COVID: new or lingering health issues persisting at least three months after COVID infection.

How to get help if you think you might have long COVID Talk to your doctor, and if your doctor doesn’t listen to your concerns, bring a loved one to advocate for you at your next appointment. Bring this article (or other materials on long COVID) to show your doctor. Ask your doctor about seeing specialists for long COVID symptoms, such as a cardiologist (for dysautonomia symptoms like dizziness, heart palpitations and shortness of breath), a gastroenterologist (for digestive problems), or a neurologist (for chronic nerve pain). Ask to be referred to a long COVID clinic (if there is one in your area). Now four years into the pandemic, there is still no treatment or cure for long COVID. COVID long-haulers (as they call themselves) have reported over 200 varied symptoms, with fatigue, dizziness, heart palpitations, post-exertion exhaustion, gastrointestinal issues, and brain dysfunction among the most common.

Long COVID is far from a mysterious illness, as it’s often called by the medical establishment and some media. There are precedents: for at least a century, historical documentation has shown that, while most recover, some people remain sick after viral or other illnesses. Yet funds for research have been severely limited, and sufferers ignored. Myalgic Encephalomyelitis – sometimes called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, or ME/CFS — is a prime example. Like ME/CFS, long COVID afflicts many more women (and people assigned female at birth) than men, with women comprising as many as 80% of COVID long-haulers. Most long-haulers are in their 30s, 40s and 50s — the busiest years for women with children, who often put their own needs last.

What should have been instantly clear, given how disproportionately Black and Brown communities were hit by COVID, was that long COVID would wallop Americans of color. Yet, the U.S. government waited until June 2022 to begin tracking long COVID. Even now, with 18 months of data showing Latinos are the population most impacted by long COVID, palabra is among the very few media outlets to report this fact. Are the nation and the medical community willfully ignoring Latino long-haulers — after sending them into clouds of coronavirus to keep society’s privileged safe?

Fighting for a diagnosis When Victoria mentioned long COVID, her doctor didn’t exactly ignore her: she listened, said “OK,” but never engaged on the topic. Same with Victoria’s allergist and the ear, nose and throat specialist. All they could do, the doctors said, was treat her symptoms.

“I’m highly educated and I know that you have to be your own advocate. But I kept asking, kept going on that line of thought, and they had nothing to say to me. Absolutely nothing,” she laments.

Victoria understood science on long COVID was limited, but still expected more. “All of the treatments we tried, it was as if COVID hadn’t existed. They should at least say that we need to investigate more, not continue acting like it wasn’t a factor. That was what was most frustrating.”

Just as Victoria fought to have her illness validated by doctors, 30 miles away in the northern Yakima Valley town of Moxee, 52-year-old Mar��a* waged a parallel battle. Both felt utterly alone.

When the pandemic began, María became the protector of her husband and children, all asthmatics. When she fell ill New Year’s Day 2021, she locked herself in her room, emerging weeks later to find her life unrecognizable.

Recounting her struggles, María reads deliberately from notes, holding back tears, then pushes her reading glasses atop her head. (María moved here from northern Mexico as an adult, and feels most comfortable in Spanish.) Her dyed brown hair, gold necklace and lightly made-up face project convivial warmth, but something intangible behind her expression belies a depth of grief María refuses to let escape. When I tell her I also have long COVID, and fell ill the exact same month, she breathes out some of her anxiety.

María’s long COVID includes chronic, full-body pain; memory lapses so severe she sometimes can’t remember if she’s eaten breakfast; such low energy that she’s constantly like a battery out of juice; unending shortness of breath; joint inflammation; and blood flow issues that leave her hands a deep purple. (The only time María ventured to the hospital, for her purple hands, she says staff attempted to clean them, thinking it was paint.) Like Victoria, María used to enjoy exercise and hiking in the valley’s foothills, but can do neither anymore.

María has no insurance, and receives care at the Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic, created in 1978 out of the farmworkers’ movement. The clinic’s multiple locations are the valley’s main providers of care irrespective of patients’ ability to pay.

Whereas Victoria’s doctors expressed indifference to the idea of COVID causing her health complaints, María’s doctors not only discounted this connection, but made serious errors of misdiagnosis.

“Every week I went to see my doctor. She got so stressed out (at not knowing what was wrong with me) that she stressed me out,” María says. “My doctor told me, ‘You know what? I think you have multiple sclerosis.’” María saw specialists, and afterwards, even without confirmation, María says her doctor still insisted she had MS. “I told her, ‘No. No, I don’t have multiple sclerosis. It’s COVID. This happened after COVID.’ I was really, really, really, really, really, really insistent on telling them that all of this was after COVID.”

Latinos uncovering the connections between their ill health and COVID is rare, partially due to the plummet in COVID coverage on Spanish-language news, says Monica Verduzco-Gutierrez, a long-hauler and head of the University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio long COVID clinic. There has been no national public education on long COVID, in any language.

“It’s hard for people to understand what the real impact of long COVID is now and in the future,” says Lilián Bravo, Yakima Health District director of public health partnerships and the face of COVID updates on Yakima Valley television early in the pandemic. “We’re looking at a huge deficit in terms of people’s quality of life and ‘productivity.’”

Eventually, María’s doctor sent her to another specialist, who said that if she didn’t improve within a month, he’d operate on her hip. María’s never had hip problems. “He said, ‘Well, I don’t know what you’re going to do,’” and then put her on a strong steroid medication that made her vomit horribly, María says. She hasn’t tallied what she’s spent on medical bills, but after paying $1,548 for a single test, it must be many thousands of dollars.

Meanwhile, María’s family and friends kept insisting her maladies were psychological. “I never accepted that. I told them: ‘It’s not in my head. It’s in my body.’” It wasn’t until more than a year after becoming ill that María finally saw a rheumatologist who diagnosed her with long COVID and other immune dysfunctions. “I told her, ‘Yes, I knew that my body wasn’t working. I knew that something was wrong.’ I felt like I could relax. Finally someone is telling me that it’s not all in my head.” Once María was diagnosed, her extended family switched to asking how she was feeling and sympathizing with her.

Victoria, on the other hand, has never received a long COVID diagnosis. At Victoria’s request, her doctor referred her to the state’s only long COVID clinic, at the University of Washington in Seattle, but Victoria’s insurance, Kaiser Permanente, refused to pre-approve the visit — and the clinic wouldn’t accept cash from her. At present, the clinic isn’t even accepting patients from the Yakima Valley or any other part of Washington — they are only accepting patients in King County, which includes Seattle.

Victoria’s family hasn’t accepted her health struggles either. “I’d say, ‘I know that you think I’m crazy,’” Victoria says, chuckling, as she often does to lighten her discomfort. “My mom would fight with me: ‘You forgot to do this! Why are you so spacey?’ ‘Mami, it’s not that I forgot. In reality, I completely lost track of it.’” If Victoria is fatigued, her family asks how that’s possible after a full night’s sleep. “I’ve found that I have to defend myself. When I try to explain to people, they hear it as excuses from a lazy person — especially being Latinos.”

Karla Monterroso, a 42-year-old California Latina long-hauler since March 2020 who spent her first year bedbound, says, “(With long COVID), we have to rest in a way that, in our culture, is very difficult to achieve. We really judge exhaustion.” In fact, pushing physically or mentally for work can make long-haulers much sicker. Karla says Latino ethics of hard work like those of Victoria’s parents “aren’t the principles that are going to serve us with this illness.”

Long COVID diagnoses in Latinos are still too rare, due to untrained family medicine physicians and medical stereotypes, says Verduzco-Gutierrez. (Doctors might see blood sugar changes, for example, and assume that’s just because of Latinos’ high rates of diabetes, rather than long COVID.) She says “misinformation on long COVID” is rampant, with physicians claiming long COVID is a fad, or misdiagnosing the bone-deep exhaustion as depression. When Verduzco-Gutierrez’s own doctor invited her to speak to their practice, the assembled physicians weren’t aware of basic research, including that the drugs Paxlovid and Metformin can help prevent long COVID if taken at infection. In Washington, physicians must complete training on suicide, which takes 1,200 to 1,300 lives in the state yearly, but there’s no state-wide training on long COVID, which currently affects at least 498,290 Washingtonians.

Cultural skepticism about medicine — and entrenched stigmas about illness and disability — mean Sunnyside conversations about aftereffects don’t mention COVID itself. Victoria’s relatives push traditional herbal remedios, assuming that anyone still sick isn’t doing enough to recover. “(People suffering) feel like they’re complaining too much if they try to talk about it,” Victoria says. Meanwhile, her parents and others in her community avoid doctors out of stubbornness and mistrust, she says, “until they’re bleeding, when they’re super in pain…, when it’s gotten to the worst that they can handle.”

“People in this community use their bodies for work,” Victoria says. “If you’re Latino, you’re a hard worker. Period,” says Bravo. “What’s the opposite of that, if you’re not a hard worker? What are you? People don’t want to say, ‘I came to this country to work and all of a sudden I can’t anymore.’”

Victoria sees this with her parents, who’ve worked since the age of 10. Both have health issues inhibiting their lives since having COVID — her dad can’t take his daily hour-long walks anymore because of heart palpitations and shortness of breath, and her mom began getting headaches and saw her arthritis worsen dramatically — yet neither will admit they have long COVID. Nor will their friends and family. “If they noticed the patterns of what they themselves are saying and what their friends of the same age are suffering after COVID,” Victoria says of her community, “they’d hear that almost everyone is suffering some type of long COVID.”

Long COVID’s deep impact on Latinos The “back to normal” ethos is most obvious in the absence of long COVID messaging while as many as 41 million adults now have — or have recovered from — long COVID nationwide. “The way that we’re talking about the pandemic is delegitimizing some of (long COVID’s) real impacts,” says Bravo of the Yakima Health District.

Even with limited demographic data, statistics show a nationwide reality similar to Victoria’s Sunnyside. Through a recurring survey, the Census Bureau estimates that 36% of Latinos nationally have had long COVID — likely a vast underestimate, given that the survey takes 20 minutes to complete online (Latinos have lower rates of broadband internet), and reaches only a sliver of the U.S. population. Experts like Verduzo-Gutierrez believe that true rates of long COVID in Latinos are higher than any reported statistic. California long-hauler Karla Monterroso agrees: “We are underdiagnosed by a severe amount. I do not believe the numbers.”

This fall, a UC Berkeley study reported that 62% of a group of infected California farmworkers developed long COVID. Weeks later, a survey from the University of Washington’s Latino Center for Health found that, of a sample group of 1,546 Washington Latinos, 41% of those infected became long-haulers. The Washington results may also be an undercount: many long-haulers wouldn’t have the energy or brain clarity to complete the 12-page survey, which was mailed to patients who’d seen their doctor within the prior six months. Meanwhile, many long-haulers stop seeing doctors after tiring of the effort and cost with no answers.

“Our community has not bounced back,” says Angie Hinojos, executive director of Centro Cultural Mexicano, which has distributed $29 million in rent assistance in Washington and hasn’t seen need wane. “That is going to affect our earning potential for generations.” The United Farm Workers’ philanthropic sister organization, the UFW Foundation, says union organizers hear about long COVID, and how it’s keeping people out of work, frequently.

Cultural and linguistic disconnects abound between doctors and Latinos on long COVID symptoms, some of which, like brain fog and fatigue, are nebulous. If doctors lack patient rapport — or don’t speak their language — they’ll miss what patients aren’t sharing about how long COVID changed their lives, work and relationships. That’s if Latinos actually go to the doctor.

“If you’re working in the orchards and your muscles are always sore, it’s just part of the day-to-day reality,” says Jesús Hernández, chief executive officer of Family Health Centers in north-central Washington. “If you’re constantly being exposed to dust and even chemicals in the work environment, it’s easy to just say, ‘Well, that’s just because of this or that,’ and not necessarily be readily willing to consider that this is something as unique as long COVID.”

Even Victoria says if not for the cough, she wouldn’t have sought medical advice for her fatigue. “There are a lot of people out there that are really tired, in a lot of pain and have no idea why. None,” says Karla, who was a nonprofit CEO when she became sick. “I have heard in the last three-and-a-half years the most racist and fatphobic things I have ever heard in my life. Like, ‘Oh, sometimes you got to lay off the beans and rice.’ I have a college education. I’m an executive. I am in the top 10% of wage earners in my community. If this is my experience, what is happening to the rest of my people?”

Conspiracy theories and misinformation As Yakima Valley’s Latino vaccination rates continue dropping, I hear all the COVID conspiracy theories: the vaccine has a chip that’ll track you; the vaccine makes you and your children infertile; COVID tests are rigged to all be positive; that hospitals get paid more for COVID patients. Victoria laughs at the most absurd one she’s heard. Her mom’s explanation for her health problems nearly three years after COVID: the vaccine.

Across the Latino United States, social media algorithms and WhatsApp threads promoting COVID disinformation proliferate. Last summer, Latino Center for Health co-director Dr. Leo Morales did a long COVID community presentation just south of Yakima Valley. The audience’s first question: Are vaccines safe? “This is where we’re still at,” Morales says. “That’ll be a big stumbling block for people…in terms of getting to talking about long COVID.”

One morning in early November, Morales and his team gather in Toppenish at Heritage University, where 69% of students are Latino, to present their survey data. Neither presenters nor attendees wear masks, an essential tool for preventing COVID transmission and long COVID. “The only conversation that I’m having about COVID is in this room,” says María Sigüenza, executive director of the Washington State Commission on Hispanic Affairs.

Yakima Valley health institutions are also ignoring long COVID. Of the two main hospital systems, Astria Health declines interview requests and MultiCare reports that of 325,491 patients seen between January and November 2023, 112 — or 0.03% — were diagnosed with long COVID. The Yakima Valley Farmworkers Clinic, where María’s doctor works, refuses to let me speak to anyone about long COVID, despite providing patient information for the Latino Center for Health’s survey. Their doctors simply aren’t seeing long COVID, the clinic claims. Same with the other main community provider, Yakima Neighborhood Health Services, whose media officer responds to my interview requests with: “It’s not going to happen.”

“I think they’re not asking, they’re not looking,” Verduzco-Gutierrez says. “Do the doctors just…look at your diabetes or your blood pressure, but not ask you, ‘Did your diabetes get worse when you had COVID? Did your blood pressure get worse? Did you not have blood pressure problems before? And now do you get dizzy? Do you get headaches? Do you have pains?’” She believes that many, if not most, Latinos with long COVID aren’t getting care, whom she calls “the ones that we’re missing.”

An uncertain future The outlook for Latinos with long COVID is grim. Cultural stigma and ableism cause now-disabled long-haulers to feel shame. (Ableism is societal prejudice and discrimination against disabled people.) Disability benefits are nearly impossible to get. Long-haulers are losing their homes, jobs and insurance. Latinos’ overrepresentation in sectors that don’t offer sick pay and are heavily physical — cleaning, service, agriculture, construction, manufacturing, homecare and healthcare among them — may automatically put them at higher long COVID risk, given ample anecdotal evidence that pushing through a COVID infection instead of resting can lead to long COVID. Latino care providers will become ill in greater numbers, imperiling the healthcare industry.

But Latinos may not be clear on these factors, says long-hauler Karla Monterroso. “My tío had said…'We must be defective because we get sick more than the white people.’ And I’m like ‘No, tío. We are exposed to the illness more. There’s nothing defective about our bodies.’ I’m afraid for us. It’s just going to be disability after disability after disability. We have to start in our small communities building caring infrastructure so that we can help each other. I am clear: No one is coming to save us. We’ve got to save us.”

Disability justice advocates worry about systems unable to cope with inevitable disabling waves of COVID in the future. “(Latinos) aren’t taking it as serious as they should,” says Mayra Colazo, executive director of Central Washington Disability Resources. “They’re not protecting each other. They’re not protecting themselves.” Karla sees the psychology behind this denial: “I have thought a lot about how much it takes to put yourself in danger every single day. (You have) to say ‘Oh, it’s fine. People are exaggerating,’ or you get that you’re in existential hell all of the time.”

Reinfection brings additional risk of long COVID, research shows, and Verduzco-Gutierrez says, “We still don’t know the impact of what is going to happen with all these reinfections. Is it going to cause more autoimmune disease? Is it going to be causing more dementia? Is it going to be causing more cancer?” She believes that every medical chart should include a COVID history, to guide doctors to look for the right clues.

“If we were to be lucky enough to capture everybody who has long COVID, we would overwhelm our (health) system and not be able to do anything for them,” Victoria says. “What’s the motivation for the medical field, for practitioners to find all those people?” For now, Victoria sees none. “And until that changes, I don’t think we will (properly count Latino long-haulers),” she adds.

Flashes of hope do exist. In September 2023, the federal government granted $5 million each to multiple long COVID clinics, including three with Latino-specific projects. In New York City, Mt. Sinai Hospital will soon open a new long COVID clinic near largely-Latino East Harlem, embedded in a primary care clinic with staff from the community to reach Latino long-haulers. Verduzco-Gutierrez’s San Antonio clinic will teach primary care providers across largely rural, Latino South Texas to conduct 15-minute low-tech long COVID examinations (the protocol for which is still being devised), and will deploy community tools to educate Latinos on long COVID.

Meanwhile, at the University of Washington long COVID clinic, staff are preparing a patient handbook, which will be adapted for Latinos and then translated into Spanish. They will also train primary care physicians to be local long COVID experts, and will return to treating patients from the whole state rather than just the county containing Seattle. After palabra’s inquiry, the UFW Foundation now has plans to survey United Farm Workers members to gauge long COVID pervasiveness, so the Foundation can lobby legislators and other decision makers to improve Latino long-hauler care.

Back at the Yakima Valley survey presentation, attendees brainstorm new care models: Adding long COVID screening to pediatric checkups, given that long COVID most impacts child-bearing-age women, so moms can bring information to their families and community. Using accessible language for long COVID messaging, or, as Heritage University nursing faculty member Genevieve Aguilar puts it: “How would I talk to my tía, how would I talk to my abuelita? If they can understand me, we’re good to go. If they can’t, olvídate. We have to reframe.”

More than anything, personal narratives will be the key to open people’s minds about long COVID — although that path may be challenging. In Los Angeles, Karla has dealt with a lack of full family and community support, in part, she believes, because her body represents COVID. “I am living, breathing proof of a pandemic no one wants to admit is still happening, and that there is no cure for what I have. That is a really scary possibility.”

While Karla does identify as disabled, Victoria and María don’t. Victoria has learned to live and move within her physical limits. At work, she sometimes feels inhibited by her cognitive issues. “I tell my boss all the time, ‘Oh man, you guys hired such a smart person. But what you got was after COVID, so it’s not the same.’” At times, she worries about the trajectory of her career, about how her work’s intense problem-solving wears out her brain. Will she be able to pursue larger challenges in work in the future? Or will long COVID ultimately make her fail?

Victoria tells me she “remains hopeful that there is a solution.” In a surprising twist, her cough completely disappeared eight months ago — when she became pregnant. (Other long-haulers have seen their symptoms improve with pregnancy, as well, likely due to immune system changes allowing a pregnant person’s body to not reject their baby’s growing cells). Victoria is optimistic that her other symptoms might disappear after she gives birth. And that, maybe someday, her parents will admit they have long COVID, too.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Claire Wang at The Guardian:

Those who failed to produce papers were arrested. More than 400 people were detained and forced on a train back to Mexico, a place many had never been.

It’s a scene many fear will come to pass in president-elect Donald Trump’s second term, especially after he doubled down on a campaign promise to “launch the largest deportation operation” in US history, and confirmed he would use the military to execute hardline immigration policies. But this particular episode happened in 1931, as part of an earlier era of mass deportations that scholars say is reminiscent of what is unfolding today. The La Placita sweep became the first public immigration raid in Los Angeles, and one of the largest in a wave of “repatriation drives” that rolled across the country during the Great Depression. Mexican farm workers, indiscriminately deemed “illegal aliens”, became scapegoats for job shortages and shrinking public benefits. President Herbert Hoover’s provocative slogan, “American jobs for real Americans”, kicked off a spate of local legislation banning employment of anyone of Mexican descent. Police descended on workplaces, parks, hospitals and social clubs, arresting and dumping people across the border in trains and buses.

Nearly 2 million Mexican Americans, more than half US citizens, were deported without due process. Families were torn apart, and many children never again saw their deported parents. Hoover’s Mexican repatriation program is, among mass deportation efforts in the past, most similar to Trump’s stated plans, said Kevin R Johnson, a professor of public interest law and Chicana/o studies at the University of California, Davis, School of Law. [...] Since his first presidential run, Trump has invoked President Dwight D Eisenhower’s mass deportation program as a blueprint for his own agenda. During the second world war, the US and Mexican government enacted the Bracero program that allowed Mexican farm hands to temporarily work in the US. But many growers continued to hire undocumented immigrants because it was cheaper. In 1954, the Eisenhower administration cracked down on undocumented labor by launching “Operation Wetback”, a yearlong series of raids named after a racial epithet for people who illegally crossed the Rio Grande. [...] The politics of deportation have always contained an important “racial dimension”, said Mae Ngai, a historian whose book Impossible Subjects explores how illegal migration became the central issue in US immigration policy.

Trump has deployed racist tropes against various ethnic groups, including Mexicans as drug-dealing “rapists” and Haitians as pet eaters, while lamenting a lack of transplants from “nice”, white-majority countries like Denmark and Switzerland. Last month, sources close to the president told NBC News that he could prioritize deporting undocumented Chinese nationals. “He’s been very clear about going after people of color, people from ‘shithole countries,’” she said, referring to a 2018 remark from Trump about crisis-stricken nations like El Salvador and Haiti. Trump could plausibly deport a million people using military-style raids of the Eisenhower-era, Ngai said, but it is unlikely that he can expel 11 million undocumented immigrants. (According to an estimate by the American Immigration Council, deporting 1 million people a year would cost more than $960bn over a decade.) Still, Ngai said, his rhetoric alone could foment fear and panic in immigrant communities. But Eisenhower’s immigration approach also differed from Trump’s in notable ways, Ngai said. Though the administration did launch flashy raids, it also allowed farm owners to rehire some deportees through the Bracero program, essentially creating a pathway for authorized entry into the US. So far, Ngai said, Trump has hammered down on deportations without providing an option for legal immigration or naturalization. “He doesn’t know the whole story of ‘Operation Wetback’,” she said. Deportations also appear to have harmed the local economy.

Donald Trump’s mass deportation proposal hasn’t been the first time the US conducted mass deportations of Mexican-Americans, as it happened during the Herbert Hoover and Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidencies. The deportations were ruinous to economies and were a human rights disaster, and Trump’s plan repeats that but turbocharges it.

[todaysdocument]

News from the U.S. Department of Labor, "Federal Stop-Order on Indio Farmer" (USDL-IX-59S56), San Francisco, August 3, 1959.

Record Group 174: General Records of the Department of LaborSeries: Records Relating to the Mexican Labor ("Bracero") ProgramFile Unit: Mexican Labor Program, General Correspondence

NEWS from the U. S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

James P. Mitchell, Secretary

CONTACT: Tor Torland, Info Officer

630 Sansome Street, San Francisco

YUkon 6-3111, Ext. 647

[handwritten] Mr Robertson

File

Mexican Program [/handwritten]

[stamp] RECEIVED

AUG 4 1959

REGIONAL ATTORNEY

SAN FRANCISCO [/stamp]

FEDERAL STOP-ORDER ON INDIO FARMER

SAN FRANCISCO, August 3: Joseph Munoz, a member of the Coachella Valley Farmers Association in Indio, has been refused further authorization to employ Mexican farm workers in a decision made public today by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Under the terms of public law 78 and the international agreement between the governments of the U.S. and Mexico, Mexican nationals may be imported to work on our farms only if it has been determined by authorities that there are not enough American workers in a specific area to fill farm-labor needs there.

Munoz was found to be using Mexican nationals to sort tomatoes in his packing shed despite repeated warnings by the U. S. Labor Department and the California Department of Employment that American workers were available for the jobs.

Glenn E. Brockway, regional director of the Labor Department's employment security bureau, issued his decision in a letter to the Coachella Valley Farmers Association. Brockway said, in part:

"All authorizations issued to the Coachella Valley Farmers Association to contract Mexican national workers are hereby revoked with respect to the employment of Mexican national workers by the said Joseph Munoz."

The federal stop-order also specified that because of Munoz's "repeated failure to give preference in employment of United States domestic workers", no authorizations would be granted him in future to use Mexican nationals.

The move came as part of the U.S. Labor Department's continuing policy of strictly policing the foreign-labor importation program so as to ensure first preference for farm jobs to American citizens.

#####

USDL-IX-59S56

[americangirlstar]

I know that we already have two 1940s dolls, but this would be my idea. She’d be a Latina girl living in Los Angeles during the Bracero program. Along with that, there’s also the Zoot Suit Riots, and she feels scared because it’s seems so unsafe to be someone like her.

look if ag really wants to exploit the 20th century for all it's worth then we might as well do something cool with it. ag hire anon

[reasoningdaily]

Black labor, white sugar : Caribbean braceros and their struggle for power in the Cuban sugar industry

Black labor, white sugar : Caribbean braceros and their struggle for power in the Cuban sugar industry

Click the title link to download for FREE from The Black Truebrary

Early in the twentieth century, the Cuban sugarcane industry faced a labor crisis when Cuban and European workers balked at the inhumane conditions they endured in the cane fields. Rather than reforming their practices, sugar companies gained permission from the Cuban government to import thousands of black workers from other Caribbean colonies, primarily Haiti and Jamaica. Black Labor, White Sugar illuminates the story of these immigrants, their exploitation by the sugarcane companies, and the strategies they used to fight back.

Philip A. Howard traces the socioeconomic and political circumstances in Haiti and Jamaica that led men to leave their homelands to cut, load, and haul sugarcane in Cuba. Once there, the field workers, or braceros, were subject to marginalization and even violence from the sugar companies, which used structures of race, ethnicity, color, and class to subjugate these laborers.

Howard argues that braceros drew on their cultural identities-from concepts of home and family to spiritual worldviews-to interpret and contest their experiences in Cuba. They also fought against their exploitation in more overt ways. As labor conditions worsened in response to falling sugar prices, the principles of anarcho-syndicalism converged with the Pan-African philosophy of Marcus Garvey to foster the evolution of a protest culture among black Caribbean laborers.

By the mid-1920s, this identity encouraged many braceros to participate in strikes that sought to improve wages as well as living and working conditions.

The first full-length exploration of Haitian and Jamaican workers in the Cuban sugarcane industry, Black Labor, White Sugar examines the industry's abuse of thousands of black Caribbean immigrants, and the braceros' answering struggle for power and self-definition

Click the title link to download for FREE from The Black Truebrary

[heavensbeehall]

Districts Meta

So when I think about each district, I tend to think of the worst working conditions I have ever heard about in that industry.

District 8? Sweatshops.

District 3? Those stories of the iPad factories in China.

District 8 has obvious parallels to slavery since it takes so much violence to get the work done. (The shot of people picking cotton in the Catching Fire was a bit on the nose.) But also current nondocumented farm workers and Braceros.

Anyway, thinking about labor rights and all that. It is interesting to me that District 8, the garment workers, seem to be the best organized. The description Bonnie and Twill give of the practice runs and masks during their uprising contrast to the spontaneous uprising depicted in the THG movie.

And that got me thinking, is Commander Paylor, now President Paylor, basically a union leader?

[lightdancer1]

Fulgencio Batista is one example among many of people with mixed heritage who did not proclaim himself Black in any way, shape, form, or fashion:

Fulgencio Batista is an example of many things. Of the kind of leaders that the United States sponsored under the quasi-annexation the Platt and Teller Amendments secured. Of the kind of person who has mixed ancestry but did not consider himself Black (his ancestors were Black, Chinese, and Taino, as well as white, respectively). His regime was a brutal corrupt thing that had limited to no popular appeal, hence the ability of a relatively weak and puny movement led by Fidel Castro to depose it.

Batista also 'recruited' Haitian laborers in the sugar industry called Braceros who are in that nebulous 'not quite slavery' concept much like US sharecroppers in the Deep South who did live on cotton plantations and worked themselves to the bone in a region whose economy was very much reliant on their labor.

[universallywonderlandsublime]

Festivals and Gatherings in Amarillo: Celebrate Regional Lifestyle

Amarillo, Texas is a vibrant city that truly comes alive with its festivals and events. From music festivals to cultural celebrations, there is always something exciting happening in Amarillo. These events not only showcase the local Affordable laser hair removal culture but also provide an opportunity for residents and visitors to come together and have a great time. Whether you're a music lover, a foodie, or someone who simply enjoys immersing themselves in local traditions, Amarillo's festivals and events are sure to leave you with lasting memories.

Discover Amarillo: Top Attractions

Before diving into the world of festivals and events in Amarillo, it's important to explore the city's top attractions. Amarillo has no shortage of incredible sights to see and experiences to enjoy. The following are some must-visit attractions that will give you a taste of what this city has to offer:

Palo Duro Canyon State Park - Known as the "Grand Canyon of Texas," this stunning park offers breathtaking views, hiking trails, camping spots, and even live performances at the outdoor amphitheater.

Cadillac Ranch - A unique art installation featuring ten Cadillacs buried nose-first in the ground. Visitors are encouraged to bring their own spray paint and leave their mark on this iconic landmark.

Big Texan Steak Ranch - This legendary restaurant is famous for its 72-ounce steak challenge. If you can finish the entire meal in under an hour, it's on the house!

American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame & Museum - Discover the fascinating history of America's most popular horse breed through interactive exhibits and displays.

Wonderland Amusement Park - A family-friendly amusement park with thrilling rides, water slides, mini-golf, go-karts, and more.

Best Restaurants in Amarillo https://medium.com/@americanlasermad/american-laser-med-spa-amarillo-48d87455dc0d

After exploring Amarillo's top attractions, you're bound to work up an appetite. Luckily, the city is home to some incredible restaurants that cater to all taste buds. Whether you're craving classic Tex-Mex cuisine or looking to indulge in mouthwatering barbecue, Amarillo has got you covered. Here are a few of the best restaurants in town:

The Big Texan Steak Ranch - As mentioned earlier, this restaurant is famous for its massive steaks. If you're up for the challenge, give the 72-ounce steak a try.

Blue Sky - A trendy downtown eatery known for its creative dishes and upscale atmosphere.

Tyler's Barbeque - Serving up tender and flavorful barbecue classics like brisket, ribs, and pulled pork.

Coyote Bluff Cafe - This local favorite is renowned for its juicy burgers and diverse selection of toppings.

El Bracero - A family-friendly Mexican restaurant offering delicious meals made from fresh ingredients and authentic recipes.

Amarillo's Hidden Gems

While Amarillo may not be as widely recognized as some other Texas cities, it is home to several hidden gems that are worth exploring. These lesser-known attractions provide a unique glimpse into the local culture and offer a more intimate experience. Here are a few hidden gems in Amarillo that you shouldn't miss:

Jack Sisemore Traveland RV Museum - Step back in time and explore a collection of vintage RVs dating back to the 1930s.

Kwahadi Museum of the American Indian - Learn about Native American history and cult

[sonhosdostemposperdidos]

Sometimes you always know what you are interested in and what you are not. I’ve been thinking through the fact that I have always been interested in reading about the past. But in middle school and early high school I was dismissive towards U.S. history

And like that changed with a good teacher but In hindsight my reengagement with U.S. history came alongside a growing obsession and fascination with politics as well as a broader ideological shift leftwards that is still occurring.

I remember reading histories of Latin America, Australia… indigenous people et al while in high school. And in middle school I would read books on the Roman emperors. I was dismissive of U.S. history for not being really interesting… I mean, clearly that changed a bit… but I’ve always been fascinated with borders and connections that transcend these constructed border.

In undergrad I briefly was a chemistry major (that did not last) and my interest in politics made me jump toward poli sci… but also classics before I finally returned to the fact I like learning modern languages and reading about the past. Even with that I had an interest in Religion and meaning and so I ended up with minors in religion and political science. History major though

Through it all thinking about the papers I wrote as an undergrad.. even when they involved the U.S. they always looked outwards

1. A paper on migration policy in the context of U.S- 3mecico foreign policy and catholic bracero labor rights activism

2: the figure from that research motivated my subsequent research on this archbishop and civil rights in San Antonio

3 from there I ended up writing about Protestant missionaries in Colombia

4. The introduction to race meant that when I took. Courses on U.S. indigenous history, I also was called to the fringes of the U.S. and thought about Native Alaskans…

But really from there my research turned south

The paper on Colombia ignited interest in Colombia so during my MA that took over my interest.

Seeing sources in Spanish that could not be made in English rapidly shifted my opinions on the importance and necessity of being multilingual when doing historical research (I already enjoyed Spanish language music so that was easy enough. So I made sure for every historiography I wrote from that point on to at least include Spanish language articles.

In that regard my papers kept recentering the U.S. and the research paper I wrote on U.S.-Colombian relations while bringing Colombian actors into perspective has in hindsight seemed far too U.S. Centric.

This when I applied to phd programs I applied to 7 as a Latin America historian and 3 as a USist (in hindsight my Spanish was not good enough for that but it is what interested me)

But during the process j read Tanya Harmer’s work on Allende’s Cold War which showed me the significance of talking about Brazil when discussing the Cold War in South America

That led me to study Portuguese and do immersion in the language

And well that was ball game.

Because really through everything I have been fueled by rage and anger a current u.S politics and while, in the beginning, that rage was tempered by pure academic interest… the interest started to fade… the rage became an emotional drain. My research while motivated by my commitments cannot be totally fueled by my commitments or my genuine interest fades.

Thus I have continued to move farther away from researching the U.S. lol

[michiganprelawland]

History of Immigration Law in the United States 

By Lucy Clark, University of Michigan Class of 2023

October 26, 2023

Following President Biden's recent decision to continue the construction of the United States (U.S.)-Mexico border wall, it can be helpful to gain an objective view of immigration policies evolution in the U.S. by looking at their history. Since this timeline will discuss both immigration and migration, it will also be helpful to define these terms. Migration refers to a movement across regions[1]. Migration can take place across national borders or within one nation. Immigration, on the other hand, only refers to movement across national borders[2].

1000 AD: Although it is disputed whether he was an immigrant, the first Viking explorer named Leif Erikson landed on the shores of the United States around 1000 AD. chose to include this on the timeline because the Vikings eventually created a settlement in North America following Leif's discovery.

1492: Christopher Columbus accidentally lands in North America

1526-1700s: England and other European countries began sending exploration expeditions to the US to gather resources and establish settlements.

1619: European colonizers began facilitating the forced immigration of African people through the slave trade[3].

1830: Following the establishment of European settlements, colonizers forced nearby Native American populations to migrate to claim more land for themselves. These forced migrations led to massive loss of life within the Native American community[4].

1861-1890: European immigrants continued to settle in the United States in search of resources due to political exile for criminal activity, religious persecution, and personal freedom[5]. Europe underwent a transitional period with crop failures, a change in spiritual tolerance levels, job shortages, and increasing taxes[6]. These changes drove many people from Europe to new lands for better opportunities. Immigrants were primarily from Southern and Eastern Europe[7].

1891: United States Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1891. This new legislation "expanded the list" of countries whose people were excluded from being able to immigrate to the U.S., shortened how long immigrants had to be in the U.S. not to face deportation if from excludable countries, and established what would become the Bureau of Immigration[8].

 1910-1930: Anti-immigration sentiment grew, especially toward immigrants not from European countries.

1921: The Emergency Quota Act was passed. This act limited the number of immigrants to a certain quota, except for immediate family members. This exclusion was the first immigration legislation that preferenced family ties in immigration policy[9].

1933: The government conducted a mass deportation of immigrants, mainly of Mexican descent, hoping to create jobs for American citizens[10].

1940: The Alien Registration Act was passed, which required non-US citizens to register their fingerprints and addresses with the federal government[11].

1942-1964: About 4.5 million Mexican laborers were allowed to immigrate to the U.S. under the Bracero Program, stipulating their labor in the U.S. When this program temporarily ended in 1947, illegal immigration rose dramatically[12].

1952: The Immigration and Nationality Act was passed. This act raised quotes for immigration, set a minimum number of visas the U.S. granted, aimed to reunite families split up under previous immigration legislation, and repealed anti-Asian immigration policies[13].

1965: The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 was passed. This act repealed the quota system for immigration, instead replacing immigration policy with a preference system based on holistic factors, including family sizes, type of labor specialization, and conditions of the immigrant's home country[14].

1966-1980: The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 did not prioritize the immigration of lower-skilled workers. The inability of these lower-skilled workers to legally immigrate led to higher levels of illegal immigration during this time[15].

1986: The Immigration Reform and Control Act was passed, which aimed at combatting rising levels of illegal immigration by establishing punishments for employers who knowingly hired illegal immigrants. This act was partially successful, but many illegal immigrants found proof of citizenship papers through illegal means[16].

1990: The Immigration Act of 1990 aimed at increasing the number of legal immigrants to the United States by raising quotas and restriction guidelines[17].

1996: The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act were passed, which both aimed to increase penalties for illegal immigration[18].

2001: Following the 9/11 terror attacks, immigration policy was expanded to allow for the deportation of suspected terrorists[19].

2012: President Obama extended protections to some immigrants from deportation (history).

2017: President Trump created restrictions on travel and immigration from several majority-Muslim countries[20].

Overall, by looking at how immigration legislation in the United States has changed over time, we can see that the US has become more open to immigration. However, depending on the state of the world and the sitting president, there have been significant restrictions on immigration at times.

______________________________________________________________

[1] Immigration vs migration. Diffen. (n.d.). https://www.diffen.com/difference/Immigration_vs_Migration

[2] Immigration vs migration. Diffen. (n.d.). https://www.diffen.com/difference/Immigration_vs_Migration

[3] The 1619 Landing - Virginia’s first Africans report & faqs. The 1619 Landing - Virginia’s First Africans Report & FAQs | Hampton, VA - Official Website. (n.d.). https://hampton.gov/3580/The-1619-Landing-Report-FAQs#:~:text=In%20late%20August%2C%201619%2C%2020,Virginia%20with%20additional%20enslaved%20Africans.

[4] Indian removal act. Indian Removal Act. (n.d.). https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/indian-removal-act/

[5] Immigration to the United States, 1851-1900  :  rise of industrial america, 1876-1900  :  U.S. history primary source timeline  :  classroom materials at the Library of Congress  :  library of Congress. The Library of Congress. (n.d.). https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/rise-of-industrial-america-1876-1900/immigration-to-united-states-1851-1900/

[6] Immigration to the United States, 1851-1900  :  rise of industrial america, 1876-1900  :  U.S. history primary source timeline  :  classroom materials at the Library of Congress  :  library of Congress. The Library of Congress. (n.d.). https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/rise-of-industrial-america-1876-1900/immigration-to-united-states-1851-1900/

[7] Cato.org. (n.d.). https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/brief-history-us-immigration-policy-colonial-period-present-day#immigration-policy-21st-century-2000-2020

[8] Cato.org. (n.d.). https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/brief-history-us-immigration-policy-colonial-period-present-day#immigration-policy-21st-century-2000-2020

[9] Cato.org. (n.d.). https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/brief-history-us-immigration-policy-colonial-period-present-day#immigration-policy-21st-century-2000-2020

[10] Cato.org. (n.d.). https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/brief-history-us-immigration-policy-colonial-period-present-day#immigration-policy-21st-century-2000-2020

[11] Cato.org. (n.d.). https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/brief-history-us-immigration-policy-colonial-period-present-day#immigration-policy-21st-century-2000-2020

[12] Cato.org. (n.d.). https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/brief-history-us-immigration-policy-colonial-period-present-day#immigration-policy-21st-century-2000-2020

[13] Cato.org. (n.d.). https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/brief-history-us-immigration-policy-colonial-period-present-day#immigration-policy-21st-century-2000-2020

[14] Cato.org. (n.d.). https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/brief-history-us-immigration-policy-colonial-period-present-day#immigration-policy-21st-century-2000-2020

[15] Cato.org. (n.d.). https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/brief-history-us-immigration-policy-colonial-period-present-day#immigration-policy-21st-century-2000-2020

[16] Cato.org. (n.d.). https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/brief-history-us-immigration-policy-colonial-period-present-day#immigration-policy-21st-century-2000-2020

[17] Cato.org. (n.d.). https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/brief-history-us-immigration-policy-colonial-period-present-day#immigration-policy-21st-century-2000-2020

[18] Cato.org. (n.d.). https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/brief-history-us-immigration-policy-colonial-period-present-day#immigration-policy-21st-century-2000-2020

[19] Cato.org. (n.d.). https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/brief-history-us-immigration-policy-colonial-period-present-day#immigration-policy-21st-century-2000-2020

[20] A&E Television Networks. (n.d.). U.S. immigration timeline: Definition & reform - history. History.com. https://www.history.com/topics/immigration/immigration-united-states-timeline

[dwaynelop]

Blog about Globe's pandemic advertisment

The advertisement “Sama-sama sa Distansya” is all about the challenges that the Filipinos faced during the COVID-19 pandemic and it is by a telecommunications company in the Philippines called Globe. The advertisement is aired during the pandemic, where people are quarantined and are currently staying and working at home. All the filipinos are the intended audience of the aired advertisment.

Since the advertisement was launched during the pandemic, it is necessarily good for the audience since Globe provides or offers wireless and fixed communication services. Globe Telecom offers regular postpaid plans, mobile data plans, prepaid promos, mobile internet, online shop, and broadband services. The advertisement portrayed the usual life of filipino citizens during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it shows the reality of living a life without being close to each other especially to our loved ones. We all know that when the pandemic happened, we only relied to online communication and since that is the case, the advertisement lets the audience know that the people can be closer together even though they are somewhat distant from each other. There is no media manipulation done in the said advertisement. The advertisement really showed the current set-up of the Filipino people in the pandemic. Some works and businesses closed. As a result of their offices being temporarily closed, numerous employees, both formal and informal, have suffered. In order for several companies, including technology, telecommunications, and particularly business process outsourcing (BPO), to continue operating in the face of the pandemic, the government approved the work-from-home program (Braceros, 2020). The advertisement captured the attention of the audience by providing an advertisement video that is somewhat dramatic and exhibits real-life experiences of the people in our country. This advertisement by Globe also showed that even though tough times happened in the pandemic, we should not overlook those times where we found happiness. A memory is not a memory when both sadness and happiness is not present. With that, the advertisement really inspires people and tells us that being apart makes us stronger together. 

Source:

Braceros, B. (2020, August 24). Online, work-from-home works take the spotlight as PH battles COVID-19. Hire Skilled Filipino Staff - Outsource to Philippines. https://remotephilippines.com/blog/online-work-from-home-works-take-the-spotlight-as-ph-battles-covid-19/

[locustheologicus]

American Dementia

The book "The Great Escape" by Saket Soni tells the story of the 2008 Indian forced metal-workers who organized around their experience of social injustice and marched on DC. They had a famous hunger strike to plead their case in front of congress. For many of us who work with migrants, desperately looking for work, this is a cautionary historical tale of the reality of forced labor (modern day slavery) in this country and the danger that many of these migrants face by those who would take advantage of their desperate situation. In this case, the Indian metal-workers thought they would pay into an opportunity to find stable and ongoing work through a company called Signal Industries. A lawyer by the name of Malvern Burnett found an opportunity to bring Indian workers as cheap temporary labor in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The Indians themselves were placed in debt, paying $2,000 each for green card applications that they were told they would receive after they finished their contract. This, it turns out, was the lie that made temporary slaves out of these men.

The ending of this book caused me the deepest concern; that being the final interview that the author had with Alvin Ladner, the ICE agent that undermined these forced workers and attempted to have them deported. When Soni asked him why he persecuted these workers just over a decade ago he could barely remember who they were. It then turns out that Ladner has dementia.

This hit me on a number of levels. At first I thought about the frustration I face with my own parent's dementia. What bothers me the most is how my mother chooses to remember her past glossing over any uncomfortable realities (my parent's marriage was far from perfect, but you certainly will not get a sense of that now). I struggle with this type of forgetting, with the idea that nature allows us to forget who we are and what we have done. I then also struggle with the social forgetting that is described in this book. We as a nation choke on the ideas of critical race theory which is an academic attempt to discuss social issues from the perspective of those who have been oppressed. Why does this trouble us if our goal is to own our errors in order to achieve the American dream in earnest. We are able to recall the Civil War and even though some may try to alter the narrative overall we can never forget that social injustice of slavery that brought about this conflict. But beyond this we have a tendency to apply a dose of national forgetting to keep ourselves from facing some of our other dark moments.

How can we be responsible agents who can strive to make the world a better place if this type of forgetting happens. It's the issue I have with the Tower of Babel story in the Bible. If we have the power to improve ourselves why would God throw us these curve balls. It's as if we need a consistent dose of humility every now and then. Yes I am sure we do need this to address our arrogance (which I understand is the point of the biblical story), but how can we learn from our mistakes if we forget our errors before we have a chance to be reconciled with what we have done?

I feel that this is the issue that Soni also struggles with in the conclusion of his book as he considers the social ramifications of our American dementia.

Forgetting allowed large parts of the American economy to run on unfree labor even after the end of slavery. It allowed Congress to create, after World War II, the "bracero" program, which important almost a million Mexican laborers into California's fields. After the program was abandoned as a national shame, forgetting allowed it to be replicated in the 1980's in the form of the "guest worker" programs Malvern Burnett mastered.

As troubling as this is Soni goes on to share the following concluding insight.

But forgetting can also mean survival, just as survival can mean forgetting. I think about the range of reactions I got from the Indian men themselves as I started to interview them for this book. Some preferred not to revisit their fugitive years. "We're Americans now," one said to me. "Why do we need to remember?" Others, like Shawkat Ali Sheikh, were willing to recall and be written into this account, but wanted to shield their children from their memories.

This calls to mind the documentary, "The Look of Silence" where a truth-teller goes out to interview those who killed and were killed in the Indonesia atrocities of the mid-1960's. This is a powerful movie that investigates the forgetting or rationalization of genocidal acts that take place.

This is perhaps why the role of the prophet is so important within our faith community. As baptized Christians we are called to be priest, prophet, and king. These are the roles we accept as Christians as we promote the faith and to be evangelizers. As prophets we must always be sure to pronounce on the social truth that we witness. We do this so we can preach the Good News with authenticity.

In doing this, we can also strive to promote prophetic social ministries; ministries that address social concerns that exist in our society. In lieu of the reality of unjust forced labor, we strive to educate migrants on the topics of safety and health as we prepare them for the workforce. This community comes to our American shores to find work and opportunities. They can unwittingly find themselves in a situation where their desire to find stable work can run into unscrupulous employers who can find profit making opportunities at their expense. Employers like Malvern Burnett and Signal Industries. In the work that we do through Catholic Charities, I hope we can keep these migrants from oppressive and unjust situations.

Perhaps not all of us are called to focus on the prophetic task but at the very least we should all be mindful of the truth and recognize the reality of social injustice. Those of us who are called to promote the prophetic voice, however, will need to periodically step out and remind society of why we need these social ministries.

[pargolettasworld]

Oh, I love educational shorts from this era! I suspect that this was much more likely to have been shown in schools rather than in commercial movie theaters -- Encyclopedia Britannica Films specialized in educational films, specifically designed to be shown in schools, though I think a few might have wandered onto television at some point.

I also think that the perkiness of the narration around the Mexican harvesters comes from this version being made during the middle of the Bracero Program -- possibly another reason that it was updated from the 1939 version, as the Bracero Program started in 1942.

One other thing that struck me was the sequence in the grocery store toward the end, with the woman pushing a shopping cart through the produce section and picking out her own vegetables. That was still a relatively new way of shopping in 1954 -- the shopping cart shown in the film is likely from a design developed in 1946 and patented in 1949. Shopping carts were useful for bigger grocery stores with more self-service than smaller shops, and I can certainly imagine that the parents of a lot of the kids watching this film either grew up going to stores where you told the counter assistant what you wanted and then the assistant fetched it for you, or that was how their parents shopped.

There actually was a produce store like that in the town where I grew up. It was family operated, and it lasted into the current century, until Teddy the owner finally retired. Teddy was an absolute expert at produce -- always had the best stuff, and wholesalers trembled when they saw him coming. He would never let you pick up any piece of produce in his store, because he knew better than you how to select it. You'd call in an order, and he'd pack it in a box for you. By the time he retired, my parents had completely forgotten how to select produce for themselves! The thing that everyone said about this store was that, in addition to the best produce in town, it gave you that "old-fashioned" shopping experience. So I do suspect that a film assuring you that grocery store produce you pick out yourself is fresh and good to eat was reassuring to people in 1954 just getting used to this sort of thing.

I'm here to talk about this educational short but as it's a dry one, and there's an MTS3K of it, I'm giving you that one.

Anyway, I find this short fascinating. It's all about how being able to eat food from far away is neat and you should be excited to do it, basically.

A few notes of particular interest:

The first version of this short (which I've never seen) was from 1939; this one is from 1954. While I don't have the full history of WHY this short was made, both of those timestamps are interesting. In 1939, as the US was coming out of the Depression, it's likely a lot of people were getting food sourced from unknown places for the first time in their lives, and an educational short like this (that likely played at the movies before the main feature) would have explained to them what was up. The fact it was updated in 1954 is also interesting. We were well out of rationing by that point, but I think maybe it was updated because a lot of people were moving from rural areas to industrial areas for work opportunities, and a lot of farm people who'd always known where their food came from suddenly didn't know.

While I can't say what was or wasn't updated between the two editions, the riff of "Did people really need to be convinced about cars at this point?" does a great job finding a spot where an update SHOULD have happened. Not just because my 1954 the US was well into car culture but also because the truck that drives by is clearly pre-war (split windshield is usually a good indicator).

I also think the update was done to focus on how the food stayed fresh during travel because the refrigerated truck only came into being after WW2, so likely this was a push to assure people the food was safe in them.

The implicit acceptance of using migrant workers for harvest is fascinating as someone who has basically always lived in a "they took the jobs!" era of how some people look at migrant labor. Here, it's just stated as what you do to get your crops picked.

The opening narration that just full-out wiped out the fact that pioneer families spent all spring and summer canning so they could have veggies in the winter is just an amazing thing to try and re-write history on. A shit ton of people were still home-canning every season in 1954. To have been in the theater to see first reactions from farm kids hearing that pioneers didn't have winter veggies would have probably been funny.

Anyway, I just find this video interesting, and the MST3K gang do their usual good work, so I hope you had fun with my ramblings.

[dailyhistoryposts]

Dolores Huerta

Hispanic Heritage Month is half over, and we turn to Dolores Clara Fernández Huerta (b. 1930), a Mexican-American labor leader and civil rights activist.

Born in New Mexico and raised by her mother in Stockton, California, Huerta faced racial discrimination in her childhood. She attended Stockton College for a provisional teaching credential and taught elementary school, before leaving her job to begin focusing on activism.

She co-founded the Stock Chapter of the Community Service Organization, the Agricultural Workers Association, and the National Farm Workers Association. She helped refocus on farmworkers, seeing them as the poorest members of society with no rights and no recourse when being mistreated.

Huerta directed the boycott on the Delano grape strike, one of the biggest strikes in American history that successfully ended in the entire California table grape industry signing a collective bargaining agreement.

She has also supported laws such as letting people take the driver's test in Spanish and repealing the Bracero Program.

Huerta has been arrested twenty-two times for participating in non-violent civil disobedience. She serves on the boards of the People for the American Way, the Consumer Federation of California, and the Feminist Majority Foundation. Huerta campaigns to help Latines and women get elected to public office.

Huerta supports labor rights, civil rights, immigrant rights, women's rights, and LGBTQ rights, and has been fighting for intersectionality since the 60s. In 2021, Huerta received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. April 10th is Dolores Huerta Day in California. and Washington State.

[radioprune]

the album asks: the phil ochs album of your choice!! :)

muahaha yes!!!! thank you <3 it's kind of a cop out but my absolute favorite is "phil ochs in concert" so i'm doing that :-)

i'm going to say it now - i know that you were younger then, 'cause you sure are older now / and when i've got something to say, sir, i'm gonna say it now.

bracero - and the local men are lazy and they make too much trouble / besides, we' d have to pay them double, bracero / ah, but if you feel you're falling, you feel the pace is killing / there are others who are willing, bracero

ringing of revolution - okay first of all the intro :-) i play a young bobby dylan etc. but also in tattered tuxedos they faced the new heroes and crawled about in confusion / and sheepishly grinned, for their memories were dim of the decades of dark execution / hollow hands raised, they stood their amazed in the shattering of their illusions / as the windows were smashed by the ringing of revolution

is there anybody here - i'd like to ask him what he's trying to defend / i'd like to ask him what he thinks he's gonna win

canons of christianity - cathedral walls will glitter with their gold / and the sermons speak through silver robes / building castles amidst the poverty / say the cannons of christianity

there but for fortune - show me the country where the bombs had to fall / show me the ruins of the buildings once so tall / and i'll show you a young land with so many reasons why / there but for fortune go you or i

cops of the world - and when we butchered your sons, boys, when we butchered your songs / have a stick of our gum, boys, have a stick of our bubblegum / we own half of the world, oh say can you see? / and the name for our profits is democracy

santo domingo - in the red plaza square the crowds come to stare / the heat is leaning / and the eyes of the dead are turning every head to the widow's screaming / but the soldiers make a big, giving candy to the kids / their teeth are gleaming

changes - UM simply some of the most beautiful lyrics ever but i will go with green leaves of summer turn red in the fall / to brown and yellow they fade / then they die / trapped within the circle time parade of changes

love me, i'm a liberal - sure, once i was young and impulsive / i wore every conceivable pin / even went to the socialist meetings / learned all the old union hymns / but i've grown older and wiser / and that's why i'm turning you in

when i'm gone - another song of pure 100% 10/10 lyrics but i'll say and i won't be laughing at the lies when i'm gone / and i can't question how or when or why when i'm gone / can't live proud enough to die when i'm gone / so i guess i'll have to do it while i'm here

send me an album and i'll tell you my favorite lyric from each song!