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Organizing for Our Lives: New Voices From Rural Communities

Author: Street, Richard
Date Published: 1992


Twenty years ago, Cesar Chavez alerted the people of the United States to the dire poverty of America's farm workers. Since then, profound changes have occurred in rural North America, changes brought on largely by an influx of new immigrants and refugees from Mexico, Central America and southeast Asia, this book acknowledges and celebrates the accomplishments of California's rural people, in particular the diversity and courage of our nation's most forgotten, the rural poor. These are people engaged in grassroots efforts to build a new leadership and overcome the cultural isolation and poverty that has traditionally kept them from effectively participating in public life. Told in the words of rural people, this book offers six inspiring stories of struggle and empowerment. The individuals in this book have organized to change both the cultural and political landscape of their communities. Their stories include those of East Indian and Mexican parents cooperating to improve their children's education; farm workers and farmers forming a coalition of campesinas and their families; Asian refugees establishing a new life in California through their art and farming skills; farm worker families organizing a cooperative housing community; and Mexican and Central American farm workers struggling to rise above the poverty of shanty towns in the canyons of San Diego county.

Price: free
Number of Pages: 205