In California’s Heartland, a New Resistance Movement is Taking Root  By Mark Arax

I confess I haven’t managed to finish reading any books lately, but have several I will finish soon. In the meantime, I’d like to recommend this article about Fresno, California, by Mark Arax. (The link will get you past the paywall.)

Arax is the author of “The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California,” a book I have not read, but would no doubt find of great interest, especially now that I’ve been introduced to his writing. The article is not just an example of superb journalism, but of exceptional writing. Here’s his lede:

“Driving down the last steep grade of Tejon Pass, you come upon a fold in the earth of middle California where the tentacles of Los Angeles end and a new place begins. If you’ve never made the trip, the crossing is one of the true demarcations in the American landscape, the West’s Mason-Dixon line, though you won’t discern it at first because the plain below hides under a cover of soot and smog.”

Allow Arax to take you on a journey into the cultural divide that is Fresno. The contrast between Haves and Have Nots is rampant across the country, but exists here in plainly visible microcosm. Is it possible to bridge the gap, a gap illustrated by the twenty-year difference in life expectancy between south-siders and north-siders?

A team of three women are determined to bring back the fight that faded since the days of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Herta. Educated and well-organized, Phoebe Seaton, Veronica Garibay, and Sandra Celedon are emboldening a grass-roots movement while working to fix a broken and discriminatory system.

“They secured enough funding from the California Endowment, a nonprofit foundation with more than $4 billion in assets, to send teams of organizers into the poorest communities to right those injustices. Often, it took years of troublemaking — activists and residents working side by side — to realize change.”

The article is accompanied by photographs by Devin Oktar Yalkin—in black and white, of course.

Why should you care about California, or Fresno in particular? Do you eat? It’s almost certain that California supplies a significant portion of the food you consume, so we all have a hand in the issues that arise from this agricultural juggernaut that consumes a vast portion of the West’s fresh water supply.

The people who produce this bounty we depend on should not have to live in substandard conditions. The impacts of climate change will be hitting them hard. We need to follow the work to bring social justice to Fresno, as we deal with similar problems across the country.