Today's Stories

October 24 / 26, 2008

Mike Whitney
Down for the Count

October 23, 2008

Allan J. Lichtman
What Voter Fraud?

Todd Chretien
Why I'm Not Voting for Obama

John Ross
No Child Left Behind, Mexican-Style

Peter Morici
Strategies to End the Crisis

Mats Svensson
Short Film Clips at a Checkpoint

Marlene Martin
Don't Let Them Execute an Innocent Man

Robert Jensen /
Pat Youngblood
Looking Beyond the Election and Beyond Elections

Margaret Kimberley
Rightwing Obama Love

Deepak Tripathi
Post-Bush Scenarios

David Morris
Why Joe the Plumber is a Socialist (And You Are, Too)

Website of the Day
Voting While Black in North Carolina

October 22, 2008

Brian Cloughley
Kid Killers are Barbarians

Heather Gray
Raising Hell in the South: the Legacy of J. L. Chestnut, Jr.

Jeff Birkenstein
McCain's Disdain for Spain

Ralph Nader
The Song Remains the Same: Convergence and Avoidance in the Presidential Election

DC Larson
The Growing of a Heartland Nader Raider

David Swanson
Colin Powell, Not Qualified for Government Service

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor Race and the Election: When the "Real" America Enters the Voting Booth

Larry Everest
9/11 and the Imperial Adventure in Afghanistan

Robert Fantina
Anything to Win

Martha Rosenberg
The Financier's Playbook

Stephen Martin
Giving It Up to the Combine

Website of the Day
Brokers with Hands on Their Faces

October 21, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Wealth's Apostles

Paul Craig Roberts
How Inflation Works: Why I Can't Buy an Old Ferrari

Corey D. B. Walker
Empire and White Supremacy

Steve Breyman
How to "Win" in Afghanistan

Eric Toussaint
The Economic Crisis and Latin America: Time to Delink

Wajahat Ali
Boo Radley Comes Out to Play: the Emerging Muslim-American Electorate

Robert Weitzel
Wasting a Vote for Lincoln's Radical Ideal (Or Why I'm Voting for Nader)

Brendan Cooney
Palinoscopy: an Exploration of Why Liberals are So Obsessed with Sarah Palin

Dave Lindorff
Cuba's Oil Reserves: a Game-Changer?

Marqueece Harris-Dawson / Bob Wing
When You're a Black Candidate There's No Such Thing as a Safe Lead

Patrick B. Barr
Socialist, Socialist, SOCIALIST!

Omar Barghouti
The Boycott and Palestinian Groups: Countering the Critics

Website of the Day
How to Dismantle a US War Plane (and Get Away With It)

October 20, 2008

Michael Hudson
The ABCs of Paulson's Bailout

Anthony DiMaggio
The Scandal That Never Was: ACORN, Rightwing Media and Election "Fraud"

Tariq Ali
Zardari Bans My Books

Uri Avnery
Is Akko Burning?

Bill Quigley
Hammered by the Swedes

Ben Rosenfeld
The Politics of St. Joe, Martyr to a Lie

David Michael Green
Payback's a Bitch: McCain on the Ash Heap

William S. Lind
The Afghanistan Advantage

Chris Genovali
Drill, Baby, Drill (Wink, Wink)

Stephen Martin
The Last Man in America

Howard Lisnoff
Bad News for War Resisters

David Yearsley
Organ Meat

Website of the Day
Our Brother is Sick: the Steve Ferguson Cancer Fund

October 17 / 19, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Blow Ups and Bombers

Jeffrey St. Clair
Inside Hanford: a Trip to America's Most Toxic Place

Pam Martens
How the Banksters are Making a Killing Off the Bailout

Paul Craig Roberts
Government of Thieves

Mike Whtney
No More Investment Banks

Michael D. Yates
Bowling Alley Blues: Racism Dies Hard in Johnstown, PA

Suzanne Smith
The Energy-War Connection: McCain Said It, Why Don't We?

Carl Boggs
Prosecuting Bush

Ralph Nader
Closing the Courthouse Doors

Fidel Castro
The Global Crash

Dave Marsh
The Great Levi Stubbs

Saul Landau
Denial, the Election Musical Comedy

Jo Guldi
The Floods of Heaven

Kevin Zeese
Now the Cost of War Really Matters

Larry Everest
Afghanistan, Not a Good War Gone Bad

Steve Early
Stop, in the Name of Joe!

David Macaray
Hey, Joe

Ben Terrall
When Ike Hit Haiti

Missy Beattie
Palin and God's Children

Don Monkerud
American Exceptionalism

Helen Redmond
Health Care Now's Big Con

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger's Delta Vision: Canals and Dams to Bail Out Big Ag

Wajahat Ali
Bush Gets Stoned

Farzana Versey
The White Tiger's Stripes and Gripes

Vladimir Frolov
Medvedev to Obama: We Come Not to Bury America, But to Buy It

Kim Nicolini
Frozen River: At Last, a Great Movie That's Neither Hip Nor Cool

Poets Basement
Gibbons, Corsale, Davis and Fleming

Website of the Day
The Real Sarah Palin?

October 16, 2008

Mike Whitney
The End of Friedmanite Economics: an Interview with Robert Pollin

Jonathan Cook
The Acre Riots

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Is Obama Playing to the Gallery? Or Has He Lost the Plot in South Asia?

Alan Maass
A Supreme Injustice: the Death Penalty Case of Troy Davis

Chuck O'Connell
Our Needs Do Not Fit on Their Ballots

Mary Lynn Cramer
Krugman's Prize: Iconoclast, Apologist or Propagandist?

P. Sainath
The Race May be Over, But Race Isn't

Andy Worthington
The Shrinking Case Against Binyam Mohamed: Justice Department Drops "Dirty Bomb Plot" Allegation

Peter Gelderloos
Enric Duran, the Good Thief?

Stephen Martin
The Nourishment of Idleness: Where Has All the Money Gone?

Douglas Valentine
Why I'm Voting for Obama

Website of the Day
The Mormon Worker

October 15, 2008

Steve Conn
The Real Story of Troopergate

William P. O'Connor
The Legend of John McCain

Robert Weissman
The Partial Nationalization of US Banks: Public Ownership, But No Public Control

Jonathan M. Feldman
Before the Second Wave of Crisis: an Alternative to the Triple Failure

Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Race in America: Is a Vote For Obama a Vote Against Racism?

Conn Hallinan
Targeting Unions in Colombia

Justin Podur
The Financial Economy and Real Economy

Karl Grossman
The New Nuclear Navy

Dave Lindorff
Is the Government Really Turning Socialist?

Eric Walberg
The Quiet Russian

Martha Rosenberg
Of Blood and Eggs

Uri Avnery
A Fairy Tale

Monica Benderman
No More

Website of the Day
Contractor Misconduct Database

Weekend Edition
October 24 / 26, 2008

Death in the Central Valley

How Maria Fell

By DON SANTINA

It was hot in the vineyard east of Stockton on Wednesday, May 14, 2008. Hotter than the day before when the temperature reached 90 degrees by the early afternoon. Hotter than usual for May.

Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez started work at 6 am in the vineyard, suckering. Suckering is an important and labor intensive step in the process of producing premium wine. As winter fades away, multiple new shoots appear on the vines. Most of these must be thinned and removed so that the remaining shoots will carry healthy fruit clusters which will eventually mature into premium grapes. No machine can do this work. Wednesday, May 14, was Maria’s third day on the job. She was pruning young vines which were only a few feet high, so there was no shade. She was seventeen years old.

Over in the mall on Pacific Avenue in Stockton, shoppers idled in and out of the same name brand stores found in every other mall in the United States. Although home foreclosures were rising, life for most people in the other part of the Central Valley continued as it had for decades. Jobs and housing were still more or less secure, many of the high school graduates went to at least a year or two of community college, many family vacations included trips to theme parks and water skiing, and spring was the time of Little League and high school proms.
Maria and her novio, Florentino Bautista worked in the same vineyard that Wednesday, May 14. There was no water available for the workers until 10:30 am when it was already 75 degrees. When the water cooler arrived, it was placed a ten minute walk away from where Maria was suckering the young vines. Workers said later that the foreman did not allow long enough breaks to walk to the water. Maria pruned the precious grape vines for eight dollars an hour.

The vineyard where Maria worked was owned by Fred Franzia, the fourth largest wine producer in the United States. Franzia and his family own 35,000 acres in California and produce sixty one million gallons of wine a year. Fifteen years ago, his company was indicted by the government for conspiracy to defraud: selling five thousand tons of cheap grapes which were camouflaged as expensive grapes by covering them with zinfandel leaves. Franzia pled guilty and paid a fine. It was pocket change for someone who benefits from several generations of family wealth earned by several generations of indigenous labor.

Maria and Florentino came to California from Oaxaca, Mexico in February. They were childhood sweethearts who left home because there wasn’t enough work for them in Oaxaca. Not since the NAFTA treaty allowed North American producers to dump their subsidized yellow corn on the Mexican market and wipe out local farming. Hundreds of thousands of jobs were lost. Like many in the disrupted and brutalized indigenous community, Maria and Florentino took the long and dangerous road north to look for work. They planned to get married and return home in three years. Meanwhile they would send money back to help their struggling families in Oaxaca.

Politicians and editorial writers call Maria an “illegal.” An “illegal” does not have documentation, or “papers.” My grandmother also left her home in Venezia when she was a young woman to look for work thousands of miles away. When she came to the United States, the locals called her a “wop.” Wop means “without papers,” but my grandmother was luckier than Maria. She found work washing dishes in a hash house that hired wops. She worked long hours, but not under a relentless sun in an open vineyard.

By 3pm on Wednesday, May 14, the schools let out and other teenagers began piling into the Pacific avenue mall, searching for camaraderie, checking out new video games and sports clothing and generally hanging. Some girls tried on dresses for the upcoming end of the school year dances. Headsets and cell phones hung from almost every ear. Outside the air conditioned mall, the temperature rose above 95 degrees.

At 3:40 pm Maria fell to the ground. She was unconscious when Florentino and other workers reached her. There were no medical emergency procedures in place in the vineyard, so she did not receive medical treatment until she was taken to a clinic and then to the hospital an hour and a half after she fell. Doctors in the hospital said her core body temperature was 108.4. Maria never regained consciousness.

Governor Schwarzenegger attended Maria’s funeral in Lodi and offered condolences to Florentino. He assured the television cameras that protections for farm workers were in place and would be enforced. Five months later, in October, the governor vetoed a bill that would have improved conditions for farm workers. Between Maria’s funeral and the governor’s veto, five more farm workers died from heat exhaustion: Jorge Herrera, Ramiro Carillo Rodriguez, Maria de Jesus Alvarez, Abdon Feliz, and Jose Macarena Hernandez. Since the governor took office, fifteen farm workers have died from heat-related conditions.

It is now fall in California. Most of the crops are in, and the winter season approaches. There are few workers in the fields. But in the spring, and the summer, the workers will be back in the fields. Another season. Another Maria.

Don Santina is a cultural historian who lives in California. He can be reached at lindey89@aol.com

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