Well, an “investigation” uncovered child labor violations at a Michigan blueberry farm.
Investigation Uncovers Child Labor at Michigan Blueberry Farm
And Wal-Mart and the Kroger supermarket chain have severed ties with one of the country’s major blueberry growers after an ABC News investigation found children working in its fields. At Adkin Blue Ribbon Packing Company in South Haven, Michigan, a five-year-old child was found working alongside his seven- and eight-year-old brothers. As part of the ABC News investigation, four fellows from the Carnegie Corporation spent weeks in fruit and vegetable fields in Michigan, New Jersey and North Carolina. Congratulations to Democracy Now!’s Kieran Krug-Meadows, a Carnegie fellow, who worked on that report for ABC.
I dunno. I’ve had a really bad morning this morning, and so that is probably coloring how I am reacting to this news. But I feel vaguely triggered by the damn thing, rather than relieved or excited that migrant workers in Michigan are getting some air time.
I think I worked at that field–I’m not sure, because blueberry fields are a dime a dozen in Michigan. But it certain is in a city where I worked, and it certainly has the same name of the place where I worked.
And it just pisses me off that it’s been almost 25 years since I worked there….12 and 13 hour days, some times longer…with other kids my age….25 years of more and more and more kids spending their summers in the fields, their time after school in the fields…and it’s only just now that somebody “discovered” the story. That somebody is going to use this story as a way to build a resume.
I don’t doubt that Krug-Meadows is a good person, who has committed to at least a certain type of media justice. And god knows, YES do we need attention brought to the very real fact that farm worker violations are NOT only happening in California or Florida.
But…I can’t help thinking about that family. The kids are younger than I was when I was out picking…but they are by no means not “normal.” And I can’t help thinking about how desperately that family must need money, and how guilty those kids must feel right now. They know, kids fucking KNOW why they are out working when others are playing. They know that with their work comes food to eat and money for a place to live. And now it’s gone.
And just like kids blame themselves for a parents divorce, I can promise you those kids are blaming themselves for “getting everybody in trouble.”
There is no link to the story on the Democracy Now website, so I’m not sure what the full reported story is here. All I am going on is the blurb on the DN website.
But I am thinking of the 4 dollars a pint blueberries that are “on sale” at our local Meijers, and that I was paid 25 cents a bucket (about the size of a can of paint) when I was picking, and that farm worker wages are notorious for never increasing, even over the period of 25 years…and I’m thinking of the people I know who were picking when they were four and five years old, and how one girl I know was the youngest in the family so she wasn’t driven as hard by her parents as her older brothers and sisters were…and how that caused resentment in her family. She was “babied” for being a baby. And it wasn’t fair.
I’m thinking about how angry everybody is at those rapists and observers who stood around and watched as brutal violence played out right in front of their faces, I’m thinking about 25 years, and the formation of community identities and the way the dew shimmers like diamonds on the dark green leaves and how the only thing you can hear in the morning fields are crows and swishing berry branches…
25 years.
So more people can make careers off of pointing out injustices that nobody cares about.
Take pictures, take pictures.
And smile while you drop your cleansing blueberries into your morning cereal.
- Share
November 2nd, 2009 at 12:18 pm #
http://www.heraldpalladium.com/articles/2009/10/31/local_news/944482.txt
here’s a link to a full news story. I grew up in SH, and like most who grew up there, I was only barely aware that there were children in those fields. Which makes me feel like an idiot now.
November 2nd, 2009 at 12:52 pm #
I think every journalist, especially those reporting on/from poorest communities, should read this. It raises some really, really difficult questions.
November 3rd, 2009 at 6:28 am #
“I’m thinking about how angry everybody is at those rapists and observers who stood around and watched as brutal violence played out right in front of their faces, I’m thinking about 25 years, and the formation of community identities and the way the dew shimmers like diamonds on the dark green leaves and how the only thing you can hear in the morning fields are crows and swishing berry branches…”
ayayay, mujer. THIS.
November 3rd, 2009 at 1:39 pm #
Er, whose blueberries? Is that last paragraph directed at someone?
I wish I could afford fresh fruit.
I don’t get what you want. Someone brings attention to this, and they’re wrong. But if they didn’t, they’d be wrong. That’s how I feel this post comes across, anyway.
November 3rd, 2009 at 4:43 pm #
did i say i wanted something?
November 4th, 2009 at 12:17 am #
Came here from Ballastexistenz – your words stir me strongly. What comes to me is the sense of prying eyes, looking and looking and you can’t stop them and you can’t make them go away. It’s like they’re trying to eat you with their eyes. They feed on you in some way that’s hard to describe – sometimes I wonder if they use other peoples’ emotions because they can’t feel their own? Does that even make sense? Like, in order to be so ‘together’ all the time, they have to completely disown any real, genuine feelings. Until they see something outside themselves that reminds them of the feelings, and then they can go watch somebody *else* have the feelings rather than suffering through all that themselves. Like a kind of projection?
It’s kind of scary, really – totally lacking in any kind of warmth, compassion or fellow-feeling, more like a scientist looking at some bugs under a microscope.
Ack. Late night, meander-y ramblings.
It reminds me of when I was a little girl learning to play the violin. Most of the time my father never said anything about it, almost as if he didn’t even notice that I played the violin. But then, as soon as visitors came, hey! Trot out that fiddle, let’s show everybody what you’ve got! I steadfastly refused, hid in the closet. Even though I had no words for it at the time, I knew clearly that he saw me as his pet poodle, his trained seal balancing a ball on her nose. He saw me as a possession rather than a person, and only cared about my talents when they made *him* look good. The rest of the time it was as if I didn’t exist.
Sorry, tired-brain blorp from the unconscious of a total, random stranger.
Thanks for putting your writing out where we can see, it’s very powerful.