Community Voz Radio: "No Way to Treat a Guest" series
/Community Voz is C2C's ecofeminist radio show, coming to you from the Deep North in the Pacific Northwest, presenting the grassroots work that local people are doing across intersecting movements. Our radio shows are engaging conversations about issues and news you probably won't hear anywhere else, including white supremacy, racism, settler colonialism, and patriarchy. We believe in community radio and alternative media, which highlights the character, beauty, and courage of the voices of people on the ground that need to be shared with everybody. As the organizers and activists on our show come from impacted communities, you will hear multiple, varying voices each week. Community Voz is facilitated by Junga Subedar, co-founder of the Racial Justice Coalition (RJC) and is often joined by Rosalinda Guillen (Community to Community), Michelle Vendiola (Red Line Salish Sea, RJC), and Maru Mora Villalpando (Latino Advocacy, NorthWest Detention Center Resistance). Thank you for tuning in!
The April 4th Community Voz radio discussion, Part 3 of the "No Way to Treat a Guest" series, centered around a number of dates significant to the labor movement in our country, which include the birth and death of Cesar Chavez, along with the 50th anniversary - on the day of the broadcast - of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Guests discussed their reflections on the contributions of these men, the reasons they were under attack while they were alive, and where the labor movement is at today in terms of protections for immigrant workers.
The show was hosted by Junga Subedar; featured guests were Rosalinda Guillen, Executive Director of Community to Community Development, Michele Stelovich, President of the Northwest WA Central Labor Council, and David Bacon, a renowned photo journalist and immigrants-rights advocate.
The seemingly impossible struggles of brown and black workers to obtain safer working conditions and reasonable pay prompted Chavez and King to be on the frontlines in their defense. King's support of striking black sanitation workers in Memphis, leading up to and including the day of his assassination, occurred during the same period that Cesar Chavez was immersed in organizing and empowering the strike by Filipino and Mexican farmworkers against grape growers in California.
Thanks to those like King and Chavez who put their lives on the line, and brave workers who stepped forward to join together for their rights, much was accomplished to protect workers' safety and rights. Today, most Mexican farmworkers in Washington state are completely unrepresented by any union or bargaining organization, which leaves their destiny almost exclusively controlled by whatever corporate farms they are employed by. In the last few years, under the H-2A visa program, the importing of workers from Mexico has increased dramatically. As these workers are so overwhelmingly isolated from the surrounding community on the sole farm they can work for while they are in this country, they are at much greater risk for abuse than other farmworkers.