Rotting fruits of anger

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Kathy is calling. “You know the next storm is coming tomorrow,” she says, and I sigh. The incessant rain, the cold, the all-penetrating moisture slowly get on my nerves. And I really have nothing to complain about: so far we have not been left without electricity for a day, I have not lost my job, the trip has not been canceled, and my trip to work, like a friend, has not been extended by an hour, because half the highway has washed away.

But Katie doesn’t have the slightest patience for that, and rightly so. She’s not calling to chat, much less to hear me whine. Kathy wants my money. As well as food, clothes, furniture and toys. She raises money for farm workers in the Watsonville area. There, between the most expensive tourist resorts on the coast, there are also endless strawberry and vegetable fields that feed half the country. But the rain destroyed most of the crop.

Two weeks ago, the Paharo River overflowed its ill-defended banks, bursting an ancient dam and flooding fields, roads and residential areas. A good two thousand people lost their jobs, homes and everything they had in one fell swoop. The number of people seeking help has increased tenfold in one fell swoop, and shelters and soup kitchens are overflowing. Field workers often live in temporary housing owned by large farmers. They continue to take rent even if there is no work at all. Debts thus accumulated are later deducted directly from the meager wages.

“Modern slavery,” Cathy says. “Simply and easily.” But even those who are a little richer and work in the surrounding restaurants and hotels suddenly became homeless. Due to the fact that they could not drive to work on flooded roads, many of them were fired without notice. And now, when many hoped to finally return to their homes, assess the damage and put themselves in order, another flood is already threatening.

“Remember Half Moon Bay?” Katie asks. Earlier this year, an elderly field worker shot and killed six employees and a manager there. A few days earlier, the cost of the damaged car had been deducted from his already ridiculous salary. There is no excuse for mass murder, ever. But not for the conditions in which the perpetrators and victims lived. The governor of California was clearly shocked after the visit. It was inhumane, he told TV cameras at the time. Something must be done there.

“Under what rock does he live?” Cathy remarked cynically then. The poverty of Californian farm workers has also been known to whites since Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath at the latest, though perhaps only from high school English classes. Even I knew about it when I was still living in Switzerland. But would I be so touched if I didn’t meet Cathy and her group? I lean my forehead against the window pane. The rain is drumming on him, he doesn’t seem to let up.

Source: Blick