Common Forms for Uncommon Actions: The Search for Political Organization in Dust Bowl California
Author: Hamilton, James
Date Published: 1999
This study addresses the forms of social criticism penned by migrant farmworkers who worked the California fields in the late 1930s and early 1940s through the examination of mimeographed newspapers published in a California migrant labor camp. It concludes that the inability of migrants to organize for effective political action was due not only to lack of resources or the strength of the status quo (which was sizable), but also a failure to find a cultural means by which migrants could collectively see their situation, organize, and work to change it.
Date Published: 1999
This study addresses the forms of social criticism penned by migrant farmworkers who worked the California fields in the late 1930s and early 1940s through the examination of mimeographed newspapers published in a California migrant labor camp. It concludes that the inability of migrants to organize for effective political action was due not only to lack of resources or the strength of the status quo (which was sizable), but also a failure to find a cultural means by which migrants could collectively see their situation, organize, and work to change it.
