The following article was published by David Bacon and re-published on the People’s Tribune on May 1, 2024. All photographs by David Bacon. To see the full set of photos click here.
SANTA MARIA, CA | APRIL 28, 2024
Strawberry workers paraded through Santa Maria on a May Day march, demanding a living wage. Most are indigenous Mixtec migrants from Oaxaca and southern Mexico
Workers and supporters walked from the center of town to the Fairgrounds, where the annual Strawberry Festival takes place every year at the beginning of the strawberry season. Marchers walked along the sidewalk, looking through the bars of the fence surrounding the festival’s carnival rides, some shaped like giant strawberries. Most workers’ children had never been to the festival or ridden on one of the rides, because they are too expensive for workers making $16 an hour, the minimum wage. Yet they and their parents pick the strawberries that the festival supposedly celebrates, and create the wealth that all of Santa Maria depends on.
Signs in the march demanded a strawberry wage of $26 an hour. As the march stopped at a park, and then across from the fairgrounds, workers at an open mic made impassioned speeches in Mixteco about how impossible it is for a working family to survive when rents are skyrocketing in the Santa Maria Valley, along with the price of gasoline and food. Workers have organized brief strikes at the beginning of the harvest in the past several years, and the growers have hired union busters instead of listening to the families and raising their wages.
According to one worker, Matilde, “It’s necessary to pressure the ranchers so they value our work. Without us they have nothing. We do all the work, so why should we get so little? People have to unite, and we need big demonstrations. I am willing to help organize this, because it will make life a lot better. I hope it will happen soon.”
The march was organized by the Mixteco Indigenous Community Organizing Project and the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy.
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