David Bacon

THE VALLEY OF SAN QUINTIN, BAJA CALIFORNIA -- You can hardly blame 38-year-old Celerino Garcia if he didn‘t join the celebrations marking this week’s victory of the National Action Party (PAN) over Mexico‘s long-governing ruling party. Just eight months ago, he and his older brother were sitting in a jail......

When two dozen supporters of Baja California’s best-known independent union marched into a meeting organized by government officials at a swanky Tijuana hotel last week, the city‘s long-simmering labor conflict suddenly turned violent. Three hundred well-dressed listeners had already filled the seats in the main hall of the Camino Real......

It was hardly your typical L.A. gathering. Four hundred workers marched in from the city’s street corners, mobilized by the Day Laborers Union. Hotel workers came from Palm Springs and farmworkers from the Central Valley -- all part of a throng of 20,000 immigrants who overflowed the Sports Arena last......

Photo by David Bacon Hollywood a rustbelt? That’s what some studio workers are beginning to call it. Clinton administration trade policies are coming home to Los Angeles with a vengeance, they claim, affecting workers far removed from the auto and steel industries. According to Michael Everett of the Hollywood Fair......

Mike Cruz didn‘t play the immigration card before the union election. Maybe he thought he’d win without it. But then employees at his RCR Classic Designs furniture factory on Avalon Boulevard voted 33-21 to join the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) last August. After that, workers started......

Photo by David BaconBERKELEY -- AT 7 A.M. LAST THURSDAY MORNING, the insistent twang of Philip Muldari once again crossed that inch of airspace between lips and microphone, beamed out over the transmitter high in the Berkeley hills, and welcomed listeners to KPFA's morning show. The staff is back on......

Photo by David Bacon WATSONVILLE — When state Labor Board agent Mauricio Nuño read out the vote totals, after counting the ballots cast in the Coastal Berry union election two weeks ago, José Rojas couldn’t keep from crying. Rojas had campaigned for the United Farm Workers for a full three......

Photo by David Bacon ORANGE COVE, CA — The name of this town of 9,000 souls describes its life and landscape precisely. Nestled in a finger of the San Joaquin Valley, carved into the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas, it owes its existence to a single fruit. "That’s all there......

I'm going to sing you a story, friendsthat will make you cry,how one day in front of Kmartthe migra came down on us,sent by the sheriffof this very same place . . . The thumping bass strings of a bajo sexto punctuate a simple 2/4 rhythm as a couple of......