For the next few weeks I will be reporting on a speakers’ series called “In the Struggle” being held at the Reedley Peace Center, a program of the First Mennonite Church. The idea for the series came from the Cornell dissertation of Dan O’Connell, who served as Sequoia Riverlands Trusts’ conservation easement officer in Visalia. He transferred to a similar position with American Farmland Trust, working out of Fresno where he also helped start Food Commons, a non-profit linking small producers with local consumers. Dan’s dissertation portrays the contributions of a handful of California college professors who, despite the resistance of their academic institutions, lack of research funds, and political opposition, documented the need for a more sustainable agricultural system in this state. The series goes beyond academic contributions and includes some of those workers in that field today.
We drove to Reedley on the first
cool Friday night of fall, through the clouds of dust from walnut harvesting,
past vineyards with stacks of brown paper sheaves at the ends of the rows,
ready to make raisins from grapes. The
evening light reflected lightly off water in furrows between rows of trees
getting their last drink, through the fine mist of sprinklers running, the
produce of our lands looking secure despite the drought.
The peacefulness of the scenery
contrasted with the subject of the presentation we were headed to hear: the struggle
over the past 80 years to make sense out of the great contradiction we live
with in this Valley, that we are the most agriculturally productive region of
the world with the nation’s highest rates of poverty. In many places, among many people in this
precious valley of ours, just speaking that contradiction will either clear the
room or provoke hostility. Yet we live with its consequences daily, whether we
consciously recognize it or not.
The first speaker in this series was
from Cornell University, Dr. Scott Peters who served on Dan’s dissertation
committee. His field is history, with
expertise in the public mandates of the land grant colleges, which range from
Ithaca, NY where he teaches to the west coast locations of UC Berkeley and
Davis. We learned a great deal about the
development of these institutions and the men (largely) who shaped them. His understanding about the evolution of
education in this country was mind-opening.
But it was his understanding of the
different types of history that helped me most.
Historical narratives, he called them, the storylines that lead our
thinking, the storylines that shape our lives as individuals and
communities. He began with his own
story, a son of two people who grew up on small farms. That’s a critical thread we hear in many
lives: how many generations you have to go back to get to the ancestors who
farmed. Many in this valley don’t have
to go back. I have friends who farm on
small portions of land. Our best Valley
writers can still taste the peaches they raise or feel the handle of the hoe
their grandfather used to run furrows and chop weeds.
According to Dr. Peters, the first
kind of history we write is the heroic one, the one where only good comes from
human efforts. We came, we ploughed, we
dug, we built. See what we accomplished.
The second kind (he called the
counter narrative) responds to the omissions in the first. Yes, we came, and we took, we trampled, we
depleted, we abused, and then we reinforced the pattern so that it takes an act
of Congress (or God) to change. See what damages we have wrought in our
fervor to build.
The third kind Dr. Peters named as
“prophetic,” and it is the one I identify as my own part of this
history-making. What could it have been
like if we’d done it differently, and what can that imagination tell us about
how to proceed?
In my own history in this struggle,
following Paul Taylor’s indomitable lead, carrying his baton, the question is
this. What if we had enforced the
acreage limitation of federal reclamation law on the Central Valley Project,
not to mention the Kings-Kern Army Corp dams and the State Water Project? What if we could now find some way to revoke
the power we’ve given those large landowners far too long by delivering them water
courtesy of the pubic treasury and the rightful, common claim we all hold to
that resource?
Join us for these discussions at the
Reedley Peace Center. Visit www.reedleypeacecenter.org and click on “Calendar”
for the speakers schedule and descriptions or call (559) 994-4297.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Trudy Wischemann is a rural advocate who writes. You can contact her c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.
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