Farming Under Threat: The Plight of Immigrant Workers

It's an EmMajority Report Thursday! She speaks with Erik Baker, professor of the history of science & labor at Harvard University, to discuss his recent book Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America. Then, she speaks with Teresa Romero, president of the United Farm Workers (UFW), to discuss the Trump administrations's immigration executive orders and directives, and their impact on UFW workers. First, Emma runs through updates on a major plane crash out of DC in the wake of Trump’s FAA hiring freeze and gutting of the aviation safety committee, the passage of the Laken Riley Act, Trump’s new immigrant detention camp in Gitmo, Trump’s myriad anti-migrant EOs, the confirmation hearings of Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel, Meta’s $25m gift to Trump, Bob Menendez’s prison sentence, and Israel’s ongoing assault on Palestinians, before expanding on the context for the major crash outside of Reagan Airport in DC yesterday. Professor Erik Baker then joins, diving right into the history of America’s particular work ethic strain of entrepreneurialism, unpacking its rise in the early 20th Century’s major job shortage, with unemployment reaching nearly a quarter of the country by the peak of the Great Depression, shifting the dominant ethos from one of hard work to one of creating your own work, and birthing the entrepreneurial spirit that dominates the post-industrialized neoliberal gig-economy of today. Expanding on the evolution of American entrepreneurialism, Professor Baker explores how the rise of this ethos was met with industries eager to exploit it, from the rise of “self-help” and the gig economy to the rise of cryptocurrencies and sports gambling, all encouraging the exploration of alternative, often precarious lines of “work,” wrapping up the interview with a deep dive into how entrepreneurship sees this precarity, and the failures that often result from it, as a validation of the successes, allowing for the spirit to continuously reinvent itself through crisis, personal or economic. Teresa Romero then joins, as she and Emma dive right into the recent threats mailed to various United Farm Workers locations over Trump’s incoming wave of deportations, exploring how, over less than two weeks, immigrants – regardless of citizenship – have been overtaken by an environment of fear and insecurity over their (and their family’s and community’s) safety, with no institution – from school to church to work – safe from ICE’s indiscriminate raids. Expanding on this, Romero unpacks the central role undocumented people play in the US farming industry, and the overwhelming exploitation and abuse they face without institutional backing from unions (or, in theory, the government), with growers and employers – despite their obvious reliance on the labor of undocumented folks – eager to take advantage of the increasing insecurity as Trump’s reforms come into practice, before they wrap up the free half by unpacking the need to create a genuine path to citizenship for farm workers whose presence is so important to our country.

And in the Fun Half: Emma is joined by Brandon Sutton and Matt Binder as they unpack Pete Hegseth and Jesse Watters’ gleeful discussion of Trump’s new 30k capacity migrant detention camp at Guantanamo, and watch RFK’s myriad hypocrisies put on display at his confirmation hearing. Dmitri from Germany unpacks the dearth of non-Zionist perspectives on Gaza in Russian media, and Bob Menendez starts his Eric Adams-esque appeal to Trump, plus the MR Crew unpacks the ridiculousness of “MAHA,” and their experience with the inefficiency (and absurdity) of modern policing, plus, your calls and IMs!

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