From a local community college campus, I'm Alfonso Neal, and this is the indiVISIBLE Hour.

A question that always seems to pop into my mind as the evening calm settles in is, where did I come from?

I'm sure this is something we all wonder, but why?

Well, because all human beings desire those feelings of belonging and connection. The relationships we form with family and friends often transcend time. And in our lifetime, digging into our past informs how we imagine our future in the present.

On this episode, we sit down with Orice Jenkins, a recording artist, performer, educator, and genealogy researcher from Hartford, CT. Orice is the author of Chesta's Children. A genealogy blog exploring his deep stateside roots as a descendant of enslaved Americans and serves as the executive director of Musica Franklin, an afterschool music program for youth in Franklin County, Massachusetts.

And with that, let's get started.

To learn more about Orice's work, visit: www.oricejenkins.com

From the LAVA Center. I'm Alfonso Neal, and this is the indiVISIBLE Hour.

In April, The LAVA Center hosted its first indivisible stories event as part of the project's speaker's series to promote, highlight, and share community members' stories, triumphs, and struggles.

We invited Claudia Rosales and Patricia Lopez, both migrant farmworkers and local farmworker labor leaders, who have played an instrumental role in organizing and providing workers with the tools needed to secure better working conditions—especially during the Covid Pandemic years, where farmworkers were still out in the fields, risking their health and well-being, harvesting, the produce going into daily meals for those of us locked indoors—and championed the need for improved and robust labor laws that would guarantee sick days, overtime pay, and regular breaks for farm workers nationwide.

It's a challenging role, but as they both said and I quote, "We will do whatever it takes to improve the lives of the Latino community's workers and their families; we don't mind the fight because, at the end of the day, someone has to do it, we can't just sit around and wait anymore."

So, let us now listen in on Claudia and Patricia's stories.

On Saturday, March 4, 2023, The LAVA Center, in partnership with the Pioneer Valley Workers Center, held an opening reception for the "No Somos Maquinas (We Are Not Machines): Farmworkers' Resistance in the Connecticut River Valley" exhibit as part of its Spring Showcase.

Through words and portraits, the exhibit explores the exclusion and lack of fundamental workplace rights for farmworkers, the U.S.'s broken immigration system and the historic yet still modern conditions compelling them to act and fight for justice.

During the opening reception, our microphones were available for anyone who wanted to share their thoughts or feelings about the exhibit's images and stories to do so freely and without prompts. For some, it was a sobering realization; for others, it was just another example of the many historic wrongs behind our nation's idyllic veneers.

[Audio intro: Cesar Chavez, co-founder of the National Farm Workers Association, which became the United Farmworkers Union, speaks about the 1965 Delano grape strike and boycott.]

Further Reading

• Gonzalez, Juan. Harvest of Empire. Penguin Books, 2011.

• Chomsky, Aviva. Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal. Beacon Press, 2014.

• Grubbs, Donald. Cry from the Cotton: The Southern Tenant Farmers' Union and the New Deal. University of Arkansas Press, 2000.

• Pawel, Miriam. Union of Their Dreams: Power, Hope, and Struggle in Cesar Chavez's Farm Worker Movement. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010.

• Sowards, Stacy, K. Sí, Ella Puede!: The Rhetorical Legacy of Dolores Huerta and the United Farm Workers. University of Texas Press, 2019.

A conversation with folklorists Michael and Carrie Kline and educator Doug Selwyn considering how to invite people best to tell the stories that matter to them, on their terms, without asking leading questions or causing anxiety or discomfort in the storyteller. The Klines, who recently returned to the area after thirty years of story-gathering, music-making, and community-building primarily in West Virginia, have rapidly settled back in among locals and have helped the towns of Northfield and Deerfield surface stories of their histories as they celebrate anniversaries of their founding. Selwyn, a retired K-12 teacher and university professor of education, frequently used oral history and story-telling/story-gathering processes in his classrooms from third grade to graduate school. 

Everyone has a story, a piece of history worth sharing, or a breakthrough idea too good to keep hidden. That’s why we’re here to listen.

Welcome to the indiVISIBLE hour. A program dedicated to collecting and preserving the oral histories, personal stories, and folklore of agricultural workers and their communities here in Franklin County, MA, and beyond.

We aim to create a space to uplift and amplify our communities’ unique voices and perspectives.

If you have a story to share or want to learn more about indiVISIBLE and how you can be involved, contact us here.