# data[].attributes.headline
"The power of supermarkets is rooted in their gross revenue."

# data[].attributes.subject
"The power of supermarkets is rooted in their gross revenue."

# data[].attributes.body
This quote was chosen to shed light on the root of the issue. The reality of the industry, is that the grocers   control the market, they decide the demands and the prices for them, and therefore are the cause of the issue. If they are willing to pay more for their produce, the lives of those at the bottom would improve dramatically. "So while middle-class consumers enjoyed a bounty of cheap and convenient food, small farmers, farm workers, low-income consumers and supermarket employees suffered to make it all possible. Instead of embodying the supposedly inherent superiority of capitalism, the supermarket demonstrated how it produced winners and losers," (Hamilton, 2018, p. 13). This explains the control the grocery store industry has on farming and the prices within that field.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A meme has recently been circulating on social media, suggesting that supermarkets are the embodiment of American capitalism, concrete proof of the superiority of free enterprise over socialism. "I will never understand," declares the meme, produced by right-wing activist organization Turning Point USA, "how a socialist can walk into a grocery store and think, 'Man I hate capitalism!' "

The meme is new, but the idea that American-style supermarkets can be "weapons" against socialism is dated. During the Cold War, American propagandists imagined supermarkets as ideological armaments: Abundant, affordable food stacked high on supermarket shelves was meant to illustrate the advantages of the American way of life, proclaiming that only democratic capitalism could provide for the basic needs of ordinary citizens. The notion made for effective anti-communist propaganda 60 years ago, as the American food system outperformed socialist food provisioning at the national level. But the American supermarket was built upon foundations of significant power disparities for both farmers and consumers, inequalities that in our contemporary food system threaten to undermine the merits of capitalism today.

Cold War propagandists often turned to the American supermarket to celebrate the advantages of capitalism. One 1955 film aimed at high school students portrayed a British socialist wandering through the aisles, amazed at how ordinary American citizens could afford to stuff their shopping carts full of prepackaged produce. The result: The Brit instantly disavowed his left-wing politics. Such films were part of the U.S. effort to win the Cold War through economic and ideological warfare.

In 1957, the U.S. Department of Commerce worked with a supermarket trade group to build "Supermarket USA," a fully functioning 10,000-square-foot grocery store airlifted onto communist soil in Zagreb, Yugoslavia. Millions of socialist citizens were invited to gape in awe at towering stacks of sugary breakfast cereals and frozen foods. Every hundredth visitor was given a free bag of groceries. American propagandists expected ordinary citizens and communist leaders, including Marshal Tito, to be visibly stunned by the power of American free enterprise to deliver abundance - no minor claim, given Yugoslavia's repeated experience of famine during and immediately after World War II.

"I can think of no better way in penetrating the Iron Curtain with our philosophy of life than the supermarket," Max Mandell Zimmerman, founder of the Super Market Institute, informed Congress at a 1957 hearing. Militant rhetoric of the power of America's food system to undermine communism was so pervasive that at the 1962 International Food Congress Expo, exhibitors erected a four-foot diameter "Living Salad Bowl" and a "tree of sausages" to "provide the Free World a potent weapon of contrast" with the hunger, shortages and long food-shopping queues experienced by citizens of communist Europe and Asia.

Although such claims seem absurd today, from the late 1940s into the 1970s such rhetoric provided justification for the internationalization of American food systems, particularly the increasing power of U.S.-based multinational agribusinesses, as they spread throughout Latin America, Europe and Asia.

Even in its own time, much of the Cold War rhetoric was laughable - and that was before adding the tree of sausages in. Yet as Slavenka Drakulić recounted in her 1991 memoir of growing up in communist Yugoslavia, her first visit to an American supermarket was, in fact, stunning. It was not the mere sight of fresh strawberries in midwinter that mattered. It was the entire American food system, from farm to fork, that impressed Drakulić, not the spectacular displays so prized by propagandists.

In other words, a socialist citizen would never have walked into an American supermarket - whether in 1957 Zagreb or 1991 Manhattan - and declared, "Man, I hate capitalism!" Rather they likely would have expressed a sense of admiration for the abundance enabled by America's industrial agriculture and modern food-distribution systems. Soviet Deputy Premier Anastas I. Mikoyan spent $9.29 at a Giant Food supermarket in Maryland in 1959 and admitted, "We don't have stores like this in Russia."

Though the comment was not intended as an indictment of state socialism, in later years it would seem prescient, as Soviet leaders repeatedly failed to deliver on the promise that collective farms could provide affordable, abundant food through state-owned shops. When Soviet factory workers declared "Use Khrushchev for sausage meat!" in a 1962 protest over rising food costs, they were directly challenging the economic legitimacy of communist rule.

And so, supermarkets were effective weapons in the Cold War not because they made for effective propaganda but also because they provided abundant food when the Soviet state could not.

Yet the United States' food abundance came with costs. Supermarkets were the endpoint of an industrial agriculture supply chain that, over the course of the 20th century, came to rely ever more on monocropping, animal confinement and chemical inputs. Farmers in the United States and abroad lost autonomy as the demands of the supermarket-driven food economy narrowed their choices for how to grow their crops and raise their livestock.

Consumers found an astounding array of affordable choices in supermarket aisles, but the easy availability of highly processed foods promoted obesity while branded packages obscured what was happening on the farms far removed from shoppers' daily consciousness. U.S.-based multinational agribusinesses, from grain-trading firms to international supermarkets, grew in power during and after the Cold War, using market mechanisms rather than political institutions to govern and regulate food chains. Hyper-competition in the supermarket industry also pushed firms to lower retail worker wages, avoid locating stores in low-income neighborhoods and ignore American agriculture's reliance on underpaid migrant farm labor.

So while middle-class consumers enjoyed a bounty of cheap and convenient food, small farmers, farmworkers, low-income consumers and supermarket employees suffered to make it all possible. Instead of embodying the supposedly inherent superiority of capitalism, the supermarket demonstrated how it produced winners and losers.

If modern supermarkets are to serve as symbols of the benefits of capitalist enterprise, meme-producing organizations might do well to devote their attention to how supermarket-driven supply chains continue to hurt or constrain the freedoms of farm laborers, smallholder farmers, low-income consumers and supermarket employees. If a socialist walks into a supermarket that fights modern slavery in American farm fields, supports decent incomes for small farmers, offers healthful food in inner cities and respects the human dignity of its employees, then indeed it would be hard to imagine her or him declaring "Man, I hate capitalism!"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Perspective | The great American supermarket lie

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A meme has recently been circulating on social media, suggesting that supermarkets are the embodiment of American capitalism, concrete proof of the superiority of free enterprise over socialism. "I will never understand," declares the meme, produced by right-wing activist organization Turning Point USA, "how a socialist can walk into a grocery store and think, 'Man I hate capitalism!'

# data[].attributes.headline
"Food means life, it means memories. My grandfather used to tell me that its okay to buy an expensive plate of food once in a while." 

# data[].attributes.subject
"Food means life, it means memories. My grandfather used to tell me that its okay to buy an expensive plate of food once in a while." 

# data[].attributes.body
I chose this quote because it was spoken by a former migrant worker turned farm labor activist. It displays the generational effect of farm labor. Not only that, it displays the beliefs passed down to each generation, that the work they do is not easy, and it is okay to go out and appreciate it every now and then. "A mother gave a glimpse into the daily routine of MFWs and how their work schedules affect meal preparation: “[I] get up at five in the morning to prepare food, breakfast and lunch. I make food, tortillas, and lunch for all of us. There are no places to buy lunch in the fields; sometimes the food wagon comes around. Then at seven o'clock [I] have to go to work…” [I] sometimes doesn’t get home from work until seven or eight o’clock at night, after picking all day.”" (Kilanowski, 2011). This puts the quote into context, the workers don't have time or money to cherish food daily, therefore when they do they should, because they are the reason its on our plates in the first place.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Migrant Farmworker Mothers Talk About the Meaning of Food

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
To describe the meaning of food in the family life of migrant farmworker mothers; specifically to describe their understanding of the relationship of dietary intake to health, the environmental contributors to their families' dietary intake, and the use of foods in the commemoration of family occasions.

# data[].attributes.headline
"The entire supermarket business goes out of its way so that you're not reminded of where your food comes from."

# data[].attributes.subject
"The entire supermarket business goes out of its way so that you're not reminded of where your food comes from."

# data[].attributes.body
I chose this quote because it puts the issue into perspective. Grocery stores paint an image of ease and pleasure, in their ads, in their stores, and with their employees. This quote just proves the effort put in by grocery stores to remove any and all possible thoughts of food production from thought while in their stores. "Of course, the idea of combining good-for-you and gourmet isn't new, as evidenced by the ultra-successful Whole Foods Market enterprise. Although Whole Foods' primary business is natural and organic foods, the global chain also excels at restaurant-quality entrees, fresh meat and produce, and tempting baked goods and chocolates." (McTaggart, 2009 p.7) In this description they make a point to paint that picture of ease and excitement for you, to ensure the disconnect, you can't possibly think about where your food may com from when there are 150 different kinds of cheese to think about.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Milner Library proxy server will allow authorized individuals to use the indexes and databases when connecting through a computer off-campus.

# data[].attributes.headline
"The history of farm labor in the united states is a history of exploitation."

# data[].attributes.subject
"The history of farm labor in the united states is a history of exploitation."

# data[].attributes.body
This quote was chosen because it states a very large truth, this country often times refuses to acknowledge. Farm labor history in america started with slavery, and has not come very far from it in the last one hundred and fifty years. "The agriculture industry was and continues to be one of the most dangerous in the private sector. In 2011, 570 of them died, which is seven times the rate of the national average among workers in private industries. They often support families off meager wages and live in isolation during seasonal work. And since many are undocumented, they often live in fear that any grievances could get them deported, said Gray" (Kelkar, 2016, p. 14). This explains the horrible conditions, and the danger these workers and families subject themselves to every time they step into the field, and it while it begs several questions, the biggest one to me is, Is my produce worth another persons life?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Blocking farm workers from a federal right to organize unions would guarantee, "a continuance of virtual slavery until the day of revolt," a New York politician warned his colleagues during a hearing in the 1930s.

Eighty years later, with Mexicans having largely replaced black Americans in the fields, farm workers lack the federal rights afforded to most laborers - even as they face some of the toughest working conditions in the country.

In several states, efforts to expand these rights are moving forward. California passed an historic law on Monday entitling them to the same overtime pay as most others, while New York faces a lawsuit for excluding farm workers from a right to organize and also a Senate bill that would change that. But the bulk of farm workers in the U.S. remain excluded from freedoms outlined in the National Labor Relations Act from 1935 and the Fair and Labor Standards Act from 1938 - exceptions said to be written by politicians who represented Southern plantation owners.

"The entire agricultural industry's greatest subsidy is the lack of protection for agricultural workers," said Margaret Gray, who interviewed 160 farm workers in New York's Hudson Valley for her book, "Labor and the Locavore: The Making of a Comprehensive Food Ethic."

"The system was dependent on the exploitation of slaves. That legacy carries through and directly affects farm workers," she said.

The decision to exclude farm workers from certain labor protections was established during the New Deal Era.

The workers - who were almost exclusively black - were never included in the discussions, nor did representatives mention race. But New York Rep. Vito Marcantonio was the principal voice of dissent, saying they should be able to organize against "the most outrageous exploitation in America."

"A continuance of these conditions is preparing the way for a desperate revolt," Marcantonio said.

Despite Marcantonio's efforts, the National Labor Relations Act passed. Another politician later said farm workers were excluded from the rights because the act would not have gone through the Senate "with such a disproportionate representation of rural people."

California, with a $54 billion agricultural industry and about 417,000 workers, has by far the most productive farms in the nation. It has led the country in addressing these disparities, most recently with a bill that will expand when farm workers are entitled to better overtime pay.

On Monday, Governor Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill 1066, which in 2019 will start phasing in new rules to provide overtime pay for more than eight hours of work a day, or 40 hours a week. It will lower the current 10-hour-day threshold by half an hour each year until it reaches the new standard by 2022.

During his first year in office in 1975, Brown had also signed a landmark agreement that gave farm workers the right to organize.

But farm workers in many other states are still trapped in conditions that were outlawed for most others in the 1930s.

The agriculture industry was and continues to be one of the most dangerous in the private sector. In 2011, 570 of them died, which is seven times the rate of the national average among workers in private industries. They often support families off meager wages and live in isolation during seasonal work. And since many are undocumented, they often live in fear that any grievances could get them deported, said Gray.

"It almost replaces the need for racism, because there's a new fear-based system by the state if you're undocumented," Gray said.

Law Professor Juan Perea of Loyola University Chicago traced the origins of these laws for the Ohio State Law Journal in 2011.

"The original, Southern desire to preserve an exploited, economically deprived non-white agricultural labor force pinned to the bottom of the social and economic hierarchy continues to manifest itself full force," Perea told the NewsHour. "The only difference today is now it's brown and black people."

An agricultural worker survey in 2010 under the U.S. Department of Labor revealed that 75 percent of farm workers in the nation were born in Mexico and 53 percent of respondents were undocumented, making statistics often difficult to acquire. The U.S. Department of Agriculture states that there were more than 1 million of farm workers in 2012, making up less than 1 percent of the waged workers in the country " and continue to be one of the most economically disadvantaged groups. "

The New York Civil Liberties Union echoes Perea's sentiment in a civil suit against New York that it filed in May. It states that a worker at one of New York's biggest dairy farms was fired for meeting with people who help farm workers organize to talk about getting English classes and gloves to protect the workers from dangerous chemicals.

The lawsuit says the retribution was a violation of the New York State Constitution, which guarantees that "employees shall have the right to organize and to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing."

Excluding farm workers from rights guaranteed in the state constitution is a "racist, holdover policy from Jim Crow," NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman recently told the NewsHour. "It's something that feels absolutely obvious now but was hiding in plain sight before."

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Governor Andrew Cuomo agreed that it was unconstitutional, announcing the administration would not defend the act in court.

Now the New York Farm Bureau, comprised of farm owners who feel they have been abandoned by the government, is attempting to intervene and preserve the exclusion, " because the interest of its members will not be represented."

Gray pointed out an irony in this: the bureau is only able to intercede because of farm owners' right to organize.

"When you look at something like the New York state Farm Bureau, it's a multi-million dollar organization that has probably a dozen lobbyists," she said. "The organizations that represent farm workers, they're struggling financially and with resources."

But she said that empowering farm workers with the same civil rights as most other laborers could be a hard hit to the farm owners' bottom lines, which are already depleted by the rising costs of resources and competition from other countries. Any proposed changes are always met with mountains of resistance, she said.

"Leave it to New York City politicians to get it all wrong about agriculture and family farmers," Assemblyman Marc Butler (R,C-Newport) wrote in a statement in response to Cuomo. "Gov. Cuomo and others like him have done much to vilify the family farmer."

Which may be why Brown signed the overtime legislation without providing comment. A spokeswoman told the Los Angeles Times that he is letting the signature speak for itself.

His decision was commended by the U.S. Department of Labor, which is the arbiter of the wage bill that excludes farm workers. In a follow-up email, a spokesperson said that Congress wrote the federal statute that the department is tasked with enforcing.

The National Labor Relations Board, which enforces the federal act that protects employees who want to organize, said the same thing - unless Congress changes America's slave-era agricultural worker rules, it's not part of the board's job to protect them.

"We enforce legislation as it is enacted," said the board's spokeswoman Jessica Kahanek in an email.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
When labor laws left farm workers behind -- and vulnerable to abuse

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Blocking farm workers from a federal right to organize unions would guarantee, "a continuance of virtual slavery until the day of revolt," a New York politician warned his colleagues during a hearing in the 1930s.

# data[].attributes.headline
"In this country they arent poor, they are screwed."

# data[].attributes.subject
"In this country they arent poor, they are screwed."

# data[].attributes.body
I chose this quote because it captures the essence of this movie almost immediately. It shocks the reader into the severity of the problem, and forces them to immediately see the role they are playing in the issue. '“It almost replaces the need for racism, because there’s a new fear-based system by the state if you’re undocumented,” Gray said.' (Kelkar, 2016, p.15) This explains that not only are these people getting paid extremely low wages in a for the most part flourishing society, they also have no rights within it, therefore they are "screwed" as it is stated in the movie. The need of farm labor workers outweighs justification for freedom.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Blocking farm workers from a federal right to organize unions would guarantee, "a continuance of virtual slavery until the day of revolt," a New York politician warned his colleagues during a hearing in the 1930s.

Eighty years later, with Mexicans having largely replaced black Americans in the fields, farm workers lack the federal rights afforded to most laborers - even as they face some of the toughest working conditions in the country.

In several states, efforts to expand these rights are moving forward. California passed an historic law on Monday entitling them to the same overtime pay as most others, while New York faces a lawsuit for excluding farm workers from a right to organize and also a Senate bill that would change that. But the bulk of farm workers in the U.S. remain excluded from freedoms outlined in the National Labor Relations Act from 1935 and the Fair and Labor Standards Act from 1938 - exceptions said to be written by politicians who represented Southern plantation owners.

"The entire agricultural industry's greatest subsidy is the lack of protection for agricultural workers," said Margaret Gray, who interviewed 160 farm workers in New York's Hudson Valley for her book, "Labor and the Locavore: The Making of a Comprehensive Food Ethic."

"The system was dependent on the exploitation of slaves. That legacy carries through and directly affects farm workers," she said.

The decision to exclude farm workers from certain labor protections was established during the New Deal Era.

The workers - who were almost exclusively black - were never included in the discussions, nor did representatives mention race. But New York Rep. Vito Marcantonio was the principal voice of dissent, saying they should be able to organize against "the most outrageous exploitation in America."

"A continuance of these conditions is preparing the way for a desperate revolt," Marcantonio said.

Despite Marcantonio's efforts, the National Labor Relations Act passed. Another politician later said farm workers were excluded from the rights because the act would not have gone through the Senate "with such a disproportionate representation of rural people."

California, with a $54 billion agricultural industry and about 417,000 workers, has by far the most productive farms in the nation. It has led the country in addressing these disparities, most recently with a bill that will expand when farm workers are entitled to better overtime pay.

On Monday, Governor Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill 1066, which in 2019 will start phasing in new rules to provide overtime pay for more than eight hours of work a day, or 40 hours a week. It will lower the current 10-hour-day threshold by half an hour each year until it reaches the new standard by 2022.

During his first year in office in 1975, Brown had also signed a landmark agreement that gave farm workers the right to organize.

But farm workers in many other states are still trapped in conditions that were outlawed for most others in the 1930s.

The agriculture industry was and continues to be one of the most dangerous in the private sector. In 2011, 570 of them died, which is seven times the rate of the national average among workers in private industries. They often support families off meager wages and live in isolation during seasonal work. And since many are undocumented, they often live in fear that any grievances could get them deported, said Gray.

"It almost replaces the need for racism, because there's a new fear-based system by the state if you're undocumented," Gray said.

Law Professor Juan Perea of Loyola University Chicago traced the origins of these laws for the Ohio State Law Journal in 2011.

"The original, Southern desire to preserve an exploited, economically deprived non-white agricultural labor force pinned to the bottom of the social and economic hierarchy continues to manifest itself full force," Perea told the NewsHour. "The only difference today is now it's brown and black people."

An agricultural worker survey in 2010 under the U.S. Department of Labor revealed that 75 percent of farm workers in the nation were born in Mexico and 53 percent of respondents were undocumented, making statistics often difficult to acquire. The U.S. Department of Agriculture states that there were more than 1 million of farm workers in 2012, making up less than 1 percent of the waged workers in the country " and continue to be one of the most economically disadvantaged groups. "

The New York Civil Liberties Union echoes Perea's sentiment in a civil suit against New York that it filed in May. It states that a worker at one of New York's biggest dairy farms was fired for meeting with people who help farm workers organize to talk about getting English classes and gloves to protect the workers from dangerous chemicals.

The lawsuit says the retribution was a violation of the New York State Constitution, which guarantees that "employees shall have the right to organize and to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing."

Excluding farm workers from rights guaranteed in the state constitution is a "racist, holdover policy from Jim Crow," NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman recently told the NewsHour. "It's something that feels absolutely obvious now but was hiding in plain sight before."

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Governor Andrew Cuomo agreed that it was unconstitutional, announcing the administration would not defend the act in court.

Now the New York Farm Bureau, comprised of farm owners who feel they have been abandoned by the government, is attempting to intervene and preserve the exclusion, " because the interest of its members will not be represented."

Gray pointed out an irony in this: the bureau is only able to intercede because of farm owners' right to organize.

"When you look at something like the New York state Farm Bureau, it's a multi-million dollar organization that has probably a dozen lobbyists," she said. "The organizations that represent farm workers, they're struggling financially and with resources."

But she said that empowering farm workers with the same civil rights as most other laborers could be a hard hit to the farm owners' bottom lines, which are already depleted by the rising costs of resources and competition from other countries. Any proposed changes are always met with mountains of resistance, she said.

"Leave it to New York City politicians to get it all wrong about agriculture and family farmers," Assemblyman Marc Butler (R,C-Newport) wrote in a statement in response to Cuomo. "Gov. Cuomo and others like him have done much to vilify the family farmer."

Which may be why Brown signed the overtime legislation without providing comment. A spokeswoman told the Los Angeles Times that he is letting the signature speak for itself.

His decision was commended by the U.S. Department of Labor, which is the arbiter of the wage bill that excludes farm workers. In a follow-up email, a spokesperson said that Congress wrote the federal statute that the department is tasked with enforcing.

The National Labor Relations Board, which enforces the federal act that protects employees who want to organize, said the same thing - unless Congress changes America's slave-era agricultural worker rules, it's not part of the board's job to protect them.

"We enforce legislation as it is enacted," said the board's spokeswoman Jessica Kahanek in an email.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
When labor laws left farm workers behind -- and vulnerable to abuse

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Blocking farm workers from a federal right to organize unions would guarantee, "a continuance of virtual slavery until the day of revolt," a New York politician warned his colleagues during a hearing in the 1930s.