The more things change...

"The workers in the valley [Imperial Valley, CA in the 1930's] lived in 'primitive, even savage' conditions, the commission [from FDR's National Recovery Administration investigating what was happening] concluded, in camps characterized by 'filth, squallor, and entire absence of sanitation, and a crowding of human beings into totally inadequate tents or crude structures built of boards, weeds, and anything that was found at hand to give a pitiful semblance of a home at its worst.'

As dismal as the camps were, however, the commissioners found the lawlessness of the Valley law enforcement officers even more horrifying. 'Freedom to assemble and to speak out thoughts and convictions must not be interfered with,' the report concluded, 'especially by those who, as peace officers, are sworn to uphold the law.' " (p. 124)

...

"The Associated Farmers [an association of growers in Imperial Valley organized to fight farm workers' demands for living wages] argued that strikes were not about higher wages; instead they were Communist tools to promote revolution, to plant the 'red rag of sedition' on American soil.  ...  The growers designed their propaganda to exploit anxieties about challenges to racial, gender, and sexual norms. According to anticommunist speakers, Reds menaced more than democracy and capitalism: they taught poor (mostly brown) people to be ungrateful, children to disrespect their parents, preachers to ignore the Gospel, and men and women to stray from their proper roles." (p. 128)

....

"Conservatives also worried that the Reds were brainwashing men of the cloth and -- in a perverse and sneaky twist -- using the pulpit to spread their anti-God platform. Nothing angered conservatives more than the knowledge that 'so-called ministers' of the coastal communities were helping their enemies. To counter these Social Gospelers, consevatives asked fundamentalist preachers to use their sermons to spread the word that Communists and liberalism were against the word of God. The Imperial Valley growers pioneered the technique of using the churches to disseminate the antigovernment message; later in 1934, during the fevered battle over who would be the next governor, other business leaders would perfect it." (p. 129)

....

"'After more than two months of observation and investigation in Imperial Valley, it is my conviction that a group of growers have exploited a communist hysteria for advancement of their own interests: that they have welcomed labor agitation which they could brand as 'red' as a means of sustaining supremacy by mob rule, thereby preserving what is so essential to their profit, cheap labor; that they have succeeded in drawing into their conspiracy certain county officials who have become the principal tools of their machine," (p. 145, from a formal report by General Pelham Glassford, who was sent by the federal government to try to resolve labor difficulties in Imperial Valley.)

....

All of these quotes are from the book, Right out of California: the 1930's and the big business roots of modern conservatism by Kathryn S. Olmsted. There were so many times in reading this book that I felt as though if you replaced dates and names with current ones that the author could have been writing about the past year or so. Believe it or not, this book was written in 2015, before the last presidential election, before the race protests, before the ever-present boogyman of socialism being thrown around to justify... well... everything. Never has Santayana's quote, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," felt more accurate. 

A little background on the book. This is essentially about book about the rights (or lack thereof) of farm workers in California in the 1930's... their efforts to receive a decent wage and not be forced to live in squalor, with equal energy being spent by the growers to evade any type of responsibility towards them. The recorded comments about the workers being Mexican and Asian, and thus do not deserve any better (and worse, the comments that they would be just fine and dandy with their lot except for the union organizers in their midst) are egregious. The second that white people, in the form of Okies, arrive on the scene, then things begin to change. It is a painful book to read. I had to take quite a few breaks from it because one can only handle so much injustice at a time.

The growers do all the usual horrible things... use vigilantes to violently break up protests while the local law enforcement stand by, then blame the workers for inciting violence; burn down or evict workers from what little housing they have because they participated in a strike; arrested workers for vagrancy or other trumped up charges to instill fear. You know, the usual bad guy stuff.

And then it gets a little more complicated. The federal government, concerned with the violence and threat to the food chain due to crops rotting in the fields not being picked, steps in. Sort of. The field then moves from the immediate issue of striking workers to the broader field of needing public approval. This is where the threat of communists under every rock comes in. 

The story arc goes like this: anyone wanting to aid the workers is a communist because otherwise the poor, ignorant people of color would be quite happy. The poor, ignorant people of color, when unhappy are a threat to the well-being of civilized, productive (ie white) members of society. It is all the fault of the communists that there is this threat looming and they must be found and wiped out at all costs. Your wives and daughters are not safe. Your neighborhoods are not safe. The communists will turn your God fearing nation into something that is akin to Hell. If you love God, you will not let this happen! 

Now, in full disclosure, there were communist party members organizing the workers. But when it comes right down to it, the workers didn't care so much about the politics of the situation, they wanted to be able to live in a home with clean water and sanitation as well as feed their families. No one else at that time was willing to help. 

And here is the real moral of the story. If you do not want people to become radicalized, make sure you treat them well. Allow them to support themselves and live with dignity, without fear of harm. It's really that simple. It was true in the 1930's, it's true today. But ultimately it comes down to not wanting to share what you have, particularly with people or color. The author makes a very compelling case that the fear of socialism is deeply rooted in racism. 

The other thing that blaming the strikes and violence on communists did was to give middle class people an out, because once again, they sat by the sidelines while the extremely rich did atrocious things to the extremely poor. The extremely wealthy growers needed them to do sit by because if your average person stood up in mass to protest the treatment of others, government officials would not have been able to look the other way. Instead, the middle class were fed a constant stream of fear mongering about 'them'. All those people who looked different who were going to hurt 'good' people. By buying into the lie that 'those people' were dangerous and not worthy of, well, anything, then the middle class could sit comfortably by and not worry their heads about the hurting humanity who picked their food. Peace of mind was well worth the price of a little hand wringing every now and then. 

For Christians to buy into this fear mongering about other human beings is beyond the pale, yet they did it in the 1930's, and sadly, they are still doing it today. This is not how we are called to be. We are to be a people who love beyond measure, even those whom we do not like, even those who we consider an enemy. We are to be generous... wildly generous, yet, so much of what I hear on the radio is about making sure that we are managing our money well, which is usually code for amassing a lot of it so we can have nice things, and oh yeah, give some to charity now and then. We are to care for the hungry, the hurt, the prisoner, and social outcast. We are not to be afraid. What kind of a God do people worship if they can be persuaded that a human created social system is going to be the end of them? My God is a lot bigger than that. 

As a society we don't bother with history very much anymore. We don't know where we've been, the battles that have been fought, the hurts that have been dealt. We are an untethered people as a result since we can neither gain wisdom from the good in our past nor as forgiveness for the bad. An ignorant populace is also at the mercy of any charismatic demagogue who happens to come along and makes it seem that this is a brand new threat that no one has faced before and that he is the only one who can save them. We must do better.

He has told you, O man, what is good;

And what does the Lord require of you

But to do justice, and to love kindness,

And to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8, ESV)

I long to see outpourings of justice and love and kindness and humility.