Rounding up brown people, day one.

So the rounding up of Brown-skinned people began yesterday in Southern Kern County, around the town of Bakersfield and the various farms that surrounds it. As a result, 75% of the agriculture workforce has stopped showing up for work, afraid of deportation, mis-identification and worse. There is already rampant racial profiling going on; rounding up people at Home Depot and at Gas Stations. Brown-skinned people. Even cars driving down the 99 Highway, which is the major highway through the valley, are being pulled over and detained. 

The people of Bakersfield, an overwhelmingly Right-wing populace (the new/old guy got 60% of the vote), have noticed it and are concerned. So should you, because this is going to impact your groceries.

Right now it's Citrus picking season. In this part of the state that's mostly Oranges. People tend to think of Florida when it comes to Oranges but the truth is that about 40% of the crop is in the Central Valley of California. And right now, that's work that's not getting done.

This time of year evenings get very very cold in the low desert. Not snow-storm cold, but destroy your crops cold. a workforce reduction this big at this crucial time means that the amount of Oranges available to consumers is going to drop dramatically. As per supply and demand rules, that means the price is going up. Way up.

Hang on tight friends, because Lettuce and spinach harvest start in a couple of weeks. Grapes just finished but maintenance time is underway now and that's not getting done.

Kern County has been rated one of the top three agricultural counties in terms of production in the nation, and the workforce is being rounded up to be sent to camps. Right. Fucking. Now.

A couple of things to point out here. I find it interesting that the first roundups, which everyone said would be in Chicago, are happening in California and specifically in the district that used to be represented by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and current head of Truth Social Devin Nunes. Nunes used to brag about his dairy operation in the area, which is actually in Iowa.

Everyone knows that the big dairy operation in Bakersfield is Larsen's (home of Sam the Hippo! who dies years and years ago). Side note: I remember that poor Hippo, which had been abandoned by some carnival that came through town. It was kept in conditions that would have Peta protesting for miles today. But when I was a little kid, the sheer novelty of there being a Hippo at the local Dairy was kind of amazing. 

Nobody has yet said where these people are being kept.

So how does a lefty blogger from San Francisco know all of this? Welp, I haven't always been from here. I grew up and spent a sizeable chunk of my childhood right where these raids have been happening, and while I don't go there anymore there are people in this world who think I should still know what's going on. I haven't lived there in 43 years, but still it happens.

The white middle class neighborhood I grew up in is mostly Latino now, I've been told. I don't keep in touch with anyone who still lives there. I remember book burnings when I was a kid. Nazi rallies. Fuck them. I am proud to say I escaped all that bullshit, and got most of my close friends and all of my family out of there. Okay, I mostly just shouted words of encouragement but it still happened.

But there was always a migrant worker population. I went to school with many of them. Many were allowed to come to school late because they worked on farms in the mornings. A few even got school credit for it.

None of these people were adding to the crime rate. None of these people were taking jobs other people wanted. Try farming sometime. I quit after 2 hours. It's hard work, and occasionally brutal work and I don't recommend it (I was terrible at it) yet they do it day after day after day because they want to feed their own families. Because what they had before was even worse.

A New York (now Florida) real estate developer is never going to understand the balance of migrant workers necessary to keep the food chain running. Neither is the former leader of a hedge fund, or someone whose whole farm (and/or political) experience has been talking about it on television. Neither is the white and nearly translucent Nazi fuckhead who is the new/old guy's closest advisor on brown people. Neither are the Billionaires of DOGE.

We need to let people know where the people rounded up are being kept. That's where the protests need to be. 

And becuase I love you, now that they've all left us, The Band.