Fucking hell.
A Georgia parolee works the fields.
In the wake of Georgia’s Arizona-esque immigration bill, thousands of immigrants who were content to do the work that — as Stephen Colbert pointed out months ago — few if any Americans want to do, have fled the state, leaving crops to rot in the fields. Needless to say, somebody has got to pick these crops, and who better than the O.G. Croppickers — black folks!
Georgia, which passed an Arizona-style immigration bill in April that is due to take effect next month, has seen thousands of undocumented immigrants flee the state. A state survey released last week found 11,080 vacant positions on state farms that needed to be filled to avoid losing crops.
At the same time as the survey’s release, Deal, a first-term Republican, announced a program to link the state’s 100,000 probationers with farmers looking to fill positions, the vast majority of which pay less than $15 per hour.
The AP reported the first group of probationers began working last week at an Americus farm owned by Dick Minor, the president of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association.
I read about this over at The Reid Report — I urge you to head over there and read her take on this fuckery — and, needless to say, I’m stunned and sick to my stomach.
Here’s the AP:
Republican Gov. Nathan Deal started the experiment after farmers publicly complained they couldn’t find enough workers to harvest labor-intensive crops such as cucumbers and berries because Latino workers – including many illegal immigrants – refused to show up, even when offered one-time or weekly bonuses. One crew who previously worked for Mendez told him they wouldn’t come to Georgia for fear of risking deportation.
Farmers told state authorities in an unscientific survey that they had more than 11,000 unfilled agriculture jobs, although it’s not clear how that compares to prior years or whether the shortage can be blamed on the new law.
For more than a week, the state’s probation officers have encouraged their unemployed offenders to consider taking field jobs. While most offenders are required to work while on probation, statistics show they have a hard time finding jobs. Georgia’s unemployment rate is nearly 10 percent, but correction officials say among the state’s 103,000 probationers, it’s about 15 percent. Still, offenders can turn down jobs they consider unsuitable, and harvesting is physically demanding.
The first batch of probationers started work last week at a farm owned by Dick Minor, president of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association. In the coming days, more farmers could join the program.
So far, the experiment at Minor’s farm is yielding mixed results. On the first two days, all the probationers quit by mid-afternoon, said Mendez, one of two crew leaders at Minor’s farm.
“Those guys out here weren’t out there 30 minutes and they got the bucket and just threw them in the air and say, `Bonk this, I ain’t with this, I can’t do this,’” said Jermond Powell, a 33-year-old probationer. “They just left, took off across the field walking.”
Mendez put the probationers to the test last Wednesday, assigning them to fill one truck and a Latino crew to a second truck. The Latinos picked six truckloads of cucumbers compared to one truckload and four bins for the probationers.
“It’s not going to work,” Mendez said. “No way. If I’m going to depend on the probation people, I’m never going to get the crops up.”
Conditions in the field are bruising, and the probationers didn’t seem to know what to expect. Cucumber plants hug the ground, forcing the workers to bend over, push aside the large leaves and pull them from the vine. Unlike the Mexican and Guatemalan workers, the probationers didn’t wear gloves to protect their hands from the small but prickly thorns on the vines and sandpaper-rough leaves.
The harvesters carried filled buckets on their shoulders to a nearby flatbed truck and hoisted them up to a dumper, who tossed the vegetables into a bin.
Temperatures hovered in the low 90s with heavy humidity Thursday, but taking off a shirt to relieve the heat invited a blistering sunburn. Tiny gnats flew into workers’ eyes and ears. One experienced Latino worker carried a machete that he used to dispatch a rattlesnake found in the fields.
By law, each worker must earn minimum wage, or $7.25 an hour. But there’s an incentive system. Harvesters get a green ticket worth 50 cents every time they dump a bucket of cucumbers. If they collect more than 15 tickets an hour, they can beat minimum wage.
The Latino workers moved furiously Thursday for the extra pay.
The Reid Report has screenshots of some of the comments on these articles, and yes, they are as horribly racist and xenophobic as one might imagine. You really need to read the rest (which includes a quote from Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin) to truly grasp the horror of what is going on in Georgia.
Make no mistake, this isn’t about black and white. The plutocrats are just getting started. Pretty soon they’ll be laughing as blacks, whites, and latinos all fight for the opportunity to make 50 cents a day picking crops for rich people.
This is where we are, America.
And this is where we were:
Are you fucking awake yet?
[via The Reid Report; first image via Politico; second image via Georgia Department of Archives and History]
***[For the record, I realize slaves weren't paid minimum wage... or any wage... the title popped into my head after I read the bit over at Joy's place about working for a quarter and the ensuing comments.]
I love my state. The landscape, for the most part, is beautiful. From the mountains of North Georgia to the coast. I love, for the most part, the people of this state. But it has always caught me by surprise how some folk can be so giving and loving, yet so incredibly unaware of the annihilation of human rights in Georgia. How they could possibly see this as a solution leaves me speechless.
As for Deal – he’s already under an ethics investigation. No surprise there. What I truly have to wonder is if he’ll ever send ICE to the carpet mills and chicken houses. That’s where a bunch of his money comes from.
Speaking of the chicken houses, many of their workers are refugees who live in the Atlanta area. The owners send a bus everyday to pick up the workers and drive them over an hour to work in the houses. Horrific.
Let all the veggies rot. Those same farmers, you can bet your LAST dollar, voted in the mofos who are about to bankrupt them.
I don’t feel an ounce of pity.
I read the comments at BJ and was horrified. Not at all of them, obviously, but … I cannot believe that people who consider themselves remotely progressive can read this and nit-pick. I’m shocked. I came over here to see if there was a discussion, and there isn’t really, but at least the two comments before mine are totally appropriate. We’re in deep trouble, people, very deep.
(Pace Brecht, it’s time to dissolve the people and elect a new one.)
Hi Pete-
The nitpicking of my blog posts is de rigueur for the folks at Balloon Juice. They think it’s fun to try to make me say uncle.
You’d think after 8 months they’d have figured out that I’m exceedingly strong-willed.
They don’t usually come here to nitpick because people respond with facts not childish bullshit. We have a different caliber of commenter over here.
:)
Oh Georgia. Why is that fucktard Deal continuing to make me have to defend this state? I love this state, don’t wanna move, but damn, loving something/someone can be hard sometimes.
As for the BJ commentators, I’m not at all shocked. I see too many people in denial about just how prevalent racism still is in this country. Just because we have a Black President doesn’t mean this shit is over! If anything, having a Black President just brought the racists out of their caves.
Ok, Im gonna get yelled at, but here goes.
Parolees (and I’m sure a disproportionate number were black given the criminal justice system, but the article doesn’t specify that only blacks were pushed to do this) needed jobs.
Farms needed legal workers due to the anti immigrant law.
Parolees were offered a job doing what thousands of their fellow human beings do to get by. The wages were low, the conditions sucked…but thousands of others in need of work and with poor prospects endure them.
Parolees tried the job out. Parolees had a right to decline the offer with no repercussions.
A large number of the parolees decided that they did not want the job and walked away, again, no repercussions.
Many of those who did stay preferred to work slowly for minimum wage rather than making an effort to achieve available bonuses being enjoyed by other workers. However, the supervisors found their effort to be substandard and bemoaned this fact.
There is nothing racist about offering someone a job, except in such cases when you offer someone a job clearly inferior to the available one they are qualified for for racist reasons. A person who has spent significant time in the criminal justice system is often a little weak in the resume department, and have a recorded history of bad behavior.
I am in favor of job training in the prison system, but even with job training employers reasonably want some assurances that an ex felon can maintain good work habits and refrain from engaging in petty theft against their employer. Personally I would be much more likely to hire an ex felon who had established a pattern of showing up for work, ready to work, even at a menial job, than one fresh out of the pen.
I am also in favor of making job training available for anyone stuck in such a job. I am in favor of offering government subsidies to fruit and vegetable producers in exchange for a better employee wage. (because if fruit and vegetable prices spike it is the poor and working class whose diet and health will be most impacted, even with food aid) I’m for anything you can think of to make the lives of people doing this hard but necessary work a little better.
But I do not see the point of claiming that offering someone paid work is racist just because people of that persons ethnicity were forced to do it for free 160 years ago. Wouldn’t it be worse if these same employers REFUSED to offer work to prospective employees based on skin color?
I understand the optics are shitty. Seeing a black man picking cucumbers reminds you of images of slavery. But think of the alternative…black people being refused employment because “it might look bad”.
Judge blocks parts of Georgia immigration law.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-georgia-immigration-20110628,0,961257.story
Completely off-topic, but why hasn’t this gone viral?
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2010/06/18/103329/eric-cantor-treasury-bonds/
Wow, I hadn’t even seen that!
Very little about this. I pushed it out to my Facebook page, and even Salon has it (though their comment thread seemed to be infested with apologists) but otherwise not much.
The apologists are claiming that since it’s only $15K Cantor has in this fund, it’s somehow trivial or unworthy of comment. Not that he hasn’t done something wrong, it’s that the wrong thing he’s doing shouldn’t matter.
In other words, working both sides of the street is OK for a Repub.
Fits rather well with his smarmy walkout from the talks, though, doesn’t it?
Fits very well with his his walkout.
Think Pete Rose….
Not sure this belongs here, but wanted to share. Why this man still considers himself a Republican, I don’t know. Surely he knows it isn’t his daddy’s party of old.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/06/28/immigration.georgia.mayor/