A 1965 program sent American high school students to pick crops in California heat to test whether they could match Mexican migrant workers' productivity. Growers opposed the experiment because they preferred Mexican labor that tolerated poor conditions, informal housing, and fewer demands for facilities. Participants endured long, grueling weeks of field work and gained firsthand appreciation of the physical demands and persistence of migrant laborers. Participants emphasize that adequate wages, safe working conditions, and union representation are essential to attracting and protecting farmworkers. Public reactions included imagining political figures doing field work and pushing back against negative migrant stereotypes.
What you have to remember is the growers hated this program, Carter said. They wanted their Mexicans, the Mexicans that sleep in their cars. They don't complain. You don't have to provide toilets or stuff. Now, suddenly, you have middle class white teenagers doing the work. Now, you did that job for six weeks. I give you credit for it, Smerconish said. But what do you think about the contemporary debate as to, Well, if we simply paid people more, they'd go into the fields.'
Do you think their mouths would ever form the sentence, Adequate wages and safe working conditions'? So yeah, I can cross Sunset Blvd. at rush hour, but if the traffic doesn't stop, I'm going to get killed. So, unless these jobs pay adequately and there's protection for the workers how about unionizing them? Then the union provides the workers. So, those part of the equations are never mentioned.
Carter said the job gave him such a great understanding of Mexican labor, what it really takes to do these jobs. So when we hear, Oh, they're rapists and criminals,' we kind of go, I don't think so. I know we did it for six weeks. They do it for a lifetime. Smerconish said he learned about Carter and his student co-workers in an L.A. Times article, where Carter also mentioned he wrote a script about his experience.
Collection
[
|
...
]