Farm worker tragedy should remind all

I'm reading about a farm worker, a 17 year old girl who was pregnant, who died of heat exhaustion that could and should have been avoided working in California grape fields. Here is an article about what happened and the regulatory responses so far.

http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/990485.html

This infuriates me and is a subject near and dear to my heart. I have always had radical solidarity with farm workers as Americans are increasingly dependent on them yet seem increasingly to take them for granted and not recognize the hardship, difficulty and danger of that work. As fewer Americans get their fat asses or skinny thonged fashion butts out of a chair to actually do something in a garden, they have less awareness of the backbreaking and dangerous work in the fields that they depend on to pick THEIR food and THEIR grapes for their wine tasting tours.

Those of you who are younger may not know much about the hero of the United Farm Worker movement, Caesar Chavez. Do read this about him:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesar_Chavez

He was one of my heroes growing up. I and fellow students would obey all of his calls for boycotts, noticeably grapes and lettuce. I remember not eating grapes for years as a result. He was a remarkable man of great ethics. Who speaks for farm workers now?

Now we just have smart big mouth conservative commentators who snark at "illegals" and the Catholic Church "filling their pews" without providing equal time to the reality of the hardship of doing the work, finding the workers to harvest America's food, and the corrupt middlemen. I'd have more respect for my conservative colleagues if they actually focused on the dramatic crisis of not having enough farm labor, legal or illegal, and the dangers of this work. No one paid any attention with another Maria died in 2005 being crushed by equipment, again in grape fields. Now this Maria is bringing attention though it took weeks to gather momentum outside of the local news area.

Not so long ago an entire strawberry crop was lost because the farmer could get no one to harvest. Conservatives snark that if farmers "paid a good wage" that "Americans would do field work." Are you serious or drunk? Americans won't do anything but play Game Boy.

Americans seem to think that their food comes from a plastic factory, cranked out right next to the Wii.

Though perhaps as the ethanol fiasco has pushed corn and other feed prices through the roof, maybe people are beginning to wake up that food comes from the results of low paying, dangerous and backbreaking work by farmers and harvesters. One of my greatest disappointments in my conservative colleagues is their ignoring of the farming and field worker crisis. All they do is snark about illegals, the Church, and farm subsidies.

I think that our young people have an opportunity to take a break from Web designing jobs and check out what is going on in the field worker industry. This summer I think students and other young people should try the work (though be careful) and see what is involved. Farmers cannot find people to milk their cows, and farmers cannot find people to work their fields, and the workers who do so are still working in harsh conditions. I think students should contact the UFW on field trips and find out what they can do to witness to what is going on and improve things before this country has a real food crisis.