Jose Gomez
2006 Commencement
Faculty Speaker
Graduates of the Class of 2006; Parents, Relatives and Friends of the Graduates; Members of the Board of Trustees; President Purce, and Governor Gregoire:
I want first of all to thank my faculty colleagues for entrusting me with the honor of speaking today. I hope that what I have to say is worthy of your trust. You have given me the opportunity to give a speech that I have been waiting more than 50 years to give. I can’t help but reflect back to the spring of 1954. On May 17, the very day that the United States Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, my family was journeying from the Wyoming coal mining camp of Reliance, near Rock Springs, to the small agricultural town of Worland. The coalmines had just shut down, laying off hundreds of coal miners, my father among them.
As our truck, overloaded with the ten of us and our meager belongings, wound slowly north from the State’s southern plains, we listened intently to the radio as it blared out the news: educational apartheid was over in the United States. As a 10-year old boy, I did not fully understand the implication of this ruling, but from the look on my father’s face, I sensed that it was momentous. The news added to the sense of a turning point in our lives as we left behind the ever-present dangers of mining catastrophes, one of which nearly took my father’s life. We were headed for an idyllic life on the farm. In our Dick and Jane books we had read about the fun times sliding down haystacks, gathering eggs and milking cows. I announced that the first thing I was going to do was to find the nearest haystack to slide down. My father promptly and sternly forbade such activity. That was the first inkling that perhaps this farm thing was not going to be so much fun after all.
The very day we arrived at the farm, I talked my brother into disobedience. We slid down the haystack together—for the first and last time. As we tried to get rid of the hundreds of itch-provoking stems of dry alfalfa that had impaled our clothing and somehow crawled up our pant legs, we began to wonder what else in the Dick and Jane books was not true.
In the ensuing weeks, months and years, the harsh reality confronted us. We were now farm workers. That meant long hours thinning sugar beets in the fields of the Holly Sugar Company. We had to chop away every plant except for one every seven or eight inches. Because the young plants grew densely and intertwined, we had to chop with one hand and pluck with the other. This required the use of a short-handled hoe designed to keep us bent close to the earth from sunrise to sunset. The pain as we stood upright after many hours of work was unbearable. At night, the excruciating pain in our backs made it difficult to get the rest we needed for another day of stoop labor. Thankfully, the short-handled hoe, one of the most oppressive tools ever devised for human labor, is now illegal.
At the end of each day’s work, I had to fetch the milk cows from a pasture two miles away. Walking that distance every evening gave me a lot of time to think. I thought about how hard life was for us and how unfair that we had to work so much for so little. My thoughts soon turned to words. And my words turned to oral manifestos of rage and indignation. Day after day, I imagined myself an orator on a stage somewhere, railing against injustices that seemed to seal the fate of the many Mexicans and Mexican Americans who worked alongside us. From time to time, the cows would stop to look at me. I didn’t know whether they were startled, confused or amused!
Now, a half century later, I can still feel, smell and taste those days of oppression as if they were only yesterday. And here I am, finally, on a stage, with an attentive audience at an institution of higher learning. I never dreamed back then that this moment would be within my reach. I hope that my words of rage and indignation today do not startle, confuse or amuse you! Rather, I hope that you see the connection between my experiences and the advice that I will share with you as you now venture forth with diplomas in hand, hopefully to do good in the world.
As a young boy, I did not know of the broken and betrayed cycle of prosperity, especially in agriculture. I did not know of the millions, and now billions, of taxpayer dollars that subsidize agribusiness in this country. I did not know of the billions of taxpayer dollars of free research that state land grant universities provide to agribusiness to produce better crops, more potent pesticides and increasingly efficient mechanization. I also did not know that farm workers, an essential part of the agricultural economy, had been forgotten.
“Forgotten” perhaps is too generous a term. After all, in 1935, when the politicians in Congress decided to grant collective bargaining rights to workers, they purposely excluded farm workers from the legislation that came to be known as the National Labor Relations Act, the Wagner Act. For the past three-quarters of a century, farm workers have suffered from that exclusion.
What should be a full cycle of prosperity is incomplete, because it stops short of the farm worker. No thought is given, for example, to retraining farm workers whose jobs are made obsolete by mechanization developed with taxpayer money. One disgraceful result is our own state’s response to the housing crisis facing migrant workers who pick our crops. Year after year, the best the State of Washington cares to offer are tents!
In 1961, Edward R. Murrow shocked the nation’s conscience with Harvest of Shame, a television documentary that exposed the disgraceful exploitation of farm workers. Nearly five decades later, not much has changed. Farm workers are still exploited. They are still poisoned by toxic pesticides. They continue to live and work in shameful conditions. Child labor is widespread. Is it not a scandalous betrayal of the cycle of prosperity that the very people who harvest food for our feasts of bounty frequently do not have enough food to feed their own children? For farm workers, the cycle of prosperity is a cycle of poverty. So much for the trickle-down theory of economics!
As if that were not enough, today you are well aware of a new wave of Nativism that scapegoats immigrants from Mexico and Central America, many of them farm workers. Those at the center of federal power, who should make amends for 75 years of neglect, instead fan the flames of fear, bigotry and exclusion. Some of them want to make felons of undocumented immigrants who are here only because agribusiness has welcomed them with open arms. Others want to make them “guest workers.” But the proposed legislation is merely a modern version of the discredited bracero program. From 1942 to 1964, that program gave agribusiness an endless supply of cheap labor that they could exploit and abuse. These so-called “guests” would be excluded not only from the National Labor Relations Act, but also from the many other laws that guarantee basic rights and protection to workers. Agribusiness would be immune from the normal market pressures that otherwise could lead to better pay and improved working conditions.
Journalist and Author Dick Meister, former labor editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, recently said of the proposed legislation, “The guest workers…would be second-class workers and second-class residents despite the great importance of what they do. They'd be in effect indentured servants, members of a large underclass with…no opportunity for anything but temporarily filling poverty-level jobs that could be arbitrarily taken from them at any time.”
We should be no more eager to reinstate the bracero program, in whatever incarnation, than to reverse Brown v. Board of Education. The codification of second-class status for immigrant farm workers would be a step backward into history—not merely to resurrect the “separate but equal” doctrine that we as a nation discarded 52 years ago, but to reinstate a “separate and unequal” policy that we repudiated with the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment 138 years ago! For Congress to once again exclude so many immigrant farm workers, this time from the Constitution, would be a travesty. That would ensure that the cycle of prosperity would continue its exclusion and betrayal indefinitely into the future.
I have spoken of but one example of “the betrayed cycle of prosperity,” which in effect is a denial of our nation’s promise of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” I chose the example of the farm workers because after all these years I finally got a stage to express my indignation, and because I feel a special responsibility to give a voice to those who have been silenced through an imposed powerlessness and subordination.
How is all of this relevant to you, the graduating class of 2006? I take you at your word that you are committed to social and political change. That’s what 90% of you gave as a principal reason for seeking a college degree. Judging from the idealism and determination of students alongside whom I have had the honor of teaching and learning, I have no doubt whatsoever that each of you, in your own way, will take up the challenge of doing good, of working for social justice, of stirring the nation’s conscience so that we can abandon the path of betrayal, corruption and exclusion in favor of one that is just, inclusive and accepting -- one that makes Americans’ aspiration to equality not hollow rhetoric, but practical and real.
I would like to offer you some tools to make your tasks easier to accomplish, “to go where there is no path and leave a trail.” These are tools that I wish I’d had when I committed myself to social justice in those cow pastures so long ago. I acquired most of these tools the hard way – through trial and error. They are my graduation gift to you today.
First, cultivate a healthy dose of cynicism. It will keep you honest and will help you to maintain the skills of critical thinking that all of you have already honed so sharply here at Evergreen. By “healthy dose” I mean a “healthful, balanced” amount. Too much cynicism can destroy you. It can make you the victim of whatever injustice you are trying to correct. It can also make you lose your hopeful perspective and render you ineffective.
Second, be realistic. If you are quixotic, you will be ineffective. Whether working alone or collectively, be realistic about what you can accomplish. Know also that institutions yield painfully to change. What you achieve may be only a small step. Take satisfaction from that step instead of becoming discouraged over the many more steps ahead.
Third, maintain perspective. Keeping cynicism in check and being realistic should help you to maintain your perspective. If you find yourself losing perspective, test to see whether you have overdosed on cynicism, and assess your goals to make sure they are reasonable. From time to time, take your eyes off the difficult pathless journey ahead and look behind you. Take satisfaction for a moment from the trail you have made. That satisfaction will help fuel your journey forward.
Fourth, learn how to make a decision the right decision. Notice that I did not say, “Learn how to make the right decision.” I said, “Learn how to make a decision the right decision.” This is by far the most valuable lesson that I learned from César Chávez, and it has served me well time and time again, so let me explain. Particularly as you work collectively with others, you will encounter thorny and complex issues that will require you and your associates to come to a decision. Of course, you must always try to make the right decision through appropriate deliberation. But, once you have agreed to a decision, you must make it the right decision. Assuming that the decision-making was not arbitrary or capricious or flawed, or that new evidence has not entered the picture, your responsibility to the collective entity is to make the decision the right one. This means moving beyond any disagreement you may have with the decision and working hard to implement it, i.e. to make it the right decision.
I offer you these tools, because I know of no graduates of any school anywhere in the nation better able to put them to good use. At Evergreen you have enhanced your skills as critical, independent thinkers. Your study of diverse worldviews and experiences has given you skills to act effectively as a local citizen within a complex global framework. You have acquired the skills that will help you to bring people together across significant differences. In short, you have what it will take to bring about the social and political change that America so desperately needs.
Can you do it?
I would love to hear you respond in Spanish, with the slogan that Dolores Huerta coined for the farm workers in 1972. It was echoed by hundreds of thousands of immigrants recently marching on America’s streets: “Sí se puede!” Its literal meaning is “It can be done” but today means, “We can do it!”
Shout it out with me: “Sí se puede!”“Sí se puede!”“Sí se puede!”
Thank you.