Noted journalist, author, documentary photographer, and long-time labor organizer David Bacon was Thorne Dreyer’s guest on Rag Radio, Friday, March 16, 2012, on Austin community radio station KOOP-FM and streamed live on the Internet.
You can listen to the show here.
Bacon discussed the issues raised in his provocative and heavily-researched article, “How U.S. Policies Fueled the Great Mexican Migration,” which was reported in partnership with The Investigative Fund at The Nation and the Puffin Foundation and which was also published on The Rag Blog.
On Rag Radio, Bacon discussed the role of companies like Smithfield Foods in immigrant displacement, environmental abuse, and the struggle of oppressed workers fighting to overcome intolerable conditions — especially in the Perote Valley of the Mexican state of Veracruz, and in Smithfield’s plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, the world’s largest pork slaughterhouse. And he shows how the struggles in Veracruz and North Carolina are critically interrelated.
Bacon wrote that “the experience of Veracruz migrants reveals a close connection between U.S. investment and trade deals in Mexico [especially through NAFTA] and the displacement and migration of its people.”
Now based in California, David Bacon was a union organizer for two decades, and today documents the changing conditions in the workforce, the impact of the global economy, war and migration, and the struggle for human rights. His books include Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants, The Children of NAFTA, and Communities Without Borders.
He belongs to the Pacific Media Workers Guild and the CWA, was an organizer of the Free South Africa Labor Committee and the Labor Immigrant Organizers Network, and was board chair of the Northern California Coalition for Immigrant Rights.
David Bacon previously appeared on Rag Radio on September 7, 2010, and you can listen to the podcast of our earlier interview here.
Rag Radio is hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement. Tracey Schulz is the show’s engineer and co-producer. You can listen to podcasts of all Rag Radio shows at the Internet Archive.
Angry, shocked, overwhelmed? Take action: Support independent media.
We’ve borne witness to a chaotic first few months in Trump’s presidency.
Over the last months, each executive order has delivered shock and bewilderment — a core part of a strategy to make the right-wing turn feel inevitable and overwhelming. But, as organizer Sandra Avalos implored us to remember in Truthout last November, “Together, we are more powerful than Trump.”
Indeed, the Trump administration is pushing through executive orders, but — as we’ve reported at Truthout — many are in legal limbo and face court challenges from unions and civil rights groups. Efforts to quash anti-racist teaching and DEI programs are stalled by education faculty, staff, and students refusing to comply. And communities across the country are coming together to raise the alarm on ICE raids, inform neighbors of their civil rights, and protect each other in moving shows of solidarity.
It will be a long fight ahead. And as nonprofit movement media, Truthout plans to be there documenting and uplifting resistance.
As we undertake this life-sustaining work, we appeal for your support. We have 24 hours left in our fundraiser: Please, if you find value in what we do, join our community of sustainers by making a monthly or one-time gift.