We must save the farm land and the protect the people who work in the fields. We can not survive if we have no top soil or water.

Woody Guthrie said it all!

When I was a little girl a plane when down not far from where I lived in California in the late 40’s. All these years later the words still haunt me and we are further away from solving this problem then ever!


The crops are all in and the peaches are rott’ning,

The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;

They’re flying ’em back to the Mexican border

To pay all their money to wade back again


Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,

Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;

You won’t have your names when you ride the big airplane,

All they will call you will be “deportees”


My father’s own father, he waded that river,

They took all the money he made in his life;

My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees,

And they rode the truck till they took down and died.


Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,

Our work contract’s out and we have to move on;

Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,

They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.


We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,

We died in your valleys and died on your plains.

We died ’neath your trees and we died in your bushes,

Both sides of the river, we died just the same.


The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,

A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,

Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?

The radio says, “They are just deportees”


Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?

Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?

To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil

And be called by no name except “deportees”?

All people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect! I was born and raised in San Francisco and in the 1940’s and 50’s we were taught in school that when the treaty was signed with Mexico annexing California in 1848 Spanish was the official language of California for ever. We were all bilingual and there was a respect for the Californio’s who were descendants of the “original” Latino people who were living in California before the war with Mexico. If you are not a native American or a Californio then you have no right to complain about the “illegal immigrants”! I love the tee shirts and signs that show Geronimo with the Statement “Show me your papers!”