In Defense of Campesino Dignity & Community Organization
Watsonville- On August 7, Pastor Lawrence Robles, representing All Saints/Cristo Rey Episcopal Church walked out of our meeting where we were looking to discuss a lease extension for one of our community gardens. Bishop Lucinda Ashby and Pastor Robles say that our members in some way are responsible for criminal activity on church property. Now they mention “let’s work on conditions for a 90-day extension, we are committed to clear and frequent dialogue”, however this conversation finally opened after flooding social media networks with the media. As indigenous farmworkers, migrants, and people of color, we have experienced these types of racist accusations made against us far too many times. Too many institutions have a long history of oppression and displacement of families of color, indigenous families, and campesino families. Our frustration is excessive as we see this reflected again in the hostile attitude of Pastor Robles when he blames us for things that are out of our control, when he storms out of our first meeting on August 7 and when he maintains that we must comply with conditions that subject us to to public scrutiny and policing over who can or cannot enter our garden.
On September 18, the second dialogue was attempted, representatives of All Saints/Cristo Rey refused to remove the conditions for a contract extension. Meanwhile, representatives of the diocese and church continue to implement divisive tactics towards our organization.
“We are all Tierras Milperas. The land we have worked has 12 years of our sweat. Land that we have resuscitated. In the last two years we organized ourselves. If they want to kick one out, they'll have to kick us all out."
The new episcopal church administration again refused to respect our organization and tried to make their own biased judgments on individual gardeners. They made baseless accusations about the behavior of our community, without any type of proof or evidence, we feel that the only explanation for their accusations is racism, classism and anti-immigrant sentiment. We will not allow this institution and no other to track the families that care for this garden. We are being unfairly profiled because the Church does not require the same private records from other groups that use Church space. We refuse to be treated differently because we are an organized collective of migrant families. The termination of our lease contract and the conditional 90-day extension have been injustices implemented by the church without any foundation or evidence only to signal us out.
“The father repeats that safety and security and I told him the other time our solutions and the problem would be over, why does he have to repeat security? If the previous father never commented on that, everything was very calm, we were all fine, we had communication, everything was fine, and overnight this father came and changed everything. That we are doing something illegal that this and there were so many things that we were blamed for something that we have done absolutely nothing of what we are accused of. We ask that they give a solution to this, because this has already gone too far.”
Now because of the pain the truths we presented have caused them, perhaps they thought that by deleting their communications on the el camino real diocese's blog and publishing their July notes in September, they think we will forget the damage they have caused? We deserve an open dialogue about the truth to acknowledge this history, repair and restore the respect and trust that they have broken.
The truth cannot be erased by bringing down a web page or asking us not to look back.
