Open Letter to Trump Supporters and Supermarket Owners

Mark Cramer (author of Old Man on a Green Bike and Urban Everesting)

With COVID-19 threatening the well-being of our nation, the Department of Homeland Security is now issuing letters to produce growers and dairy farms that undocumented field laborers (“illegal immigrants”) are deemed “essential” to the country and “critical to the food supply chain.”

The New York Times notes that “It is an open secret that the vast majority of people who harvest America’s food are undocumented immigrants, mainly from Mexico.…”

Having once toiled six months side by side with undocumented immigrants in a job I could afford to quit but they couldn’t, I’d add that farm laborers have always been essential. Few Americans would move to scorching fields in the middle of nowhere to do back-breaking labor, no matter how high the salary.

So here are my two points:

• If you supported Trump in order to wall away Mexicans, when you sit down at the dinner table and thank the Lord for your sustenance, Homeland Security now allows you to add thanks for undocumented farm laborers before you say Amen.
• For supermarket owners, you have the government’s tacit permission to post a sign in view of shoppers that states: MUCH OF THIS PRODUCE AND DAIRY COMES TO YOU THANKS TO THE ESSENTIAL AND CRITICAL LABOR OF UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS.

We owe these essential farm laborers all the COVID-19 protections that other sectors of the labor force receive. The United Farm Workers is appealing directly to agricultural employers to do the right thing.

The UFW letter is signed with a Si Se Puede!, which means “Yes we can!”. That’s the slogan Barack Obama stole from the United Farm Workers. This is our opportunity to turn Obama’s rhetoric of hope into actual change.

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