Exhibit honors immigrant farm workers

BANGOR – Every day in America, supermarkets fill with people looking for just the right thing for dinner, nutritious food for their child’s lunchbox and fresh produce for their salads.

Most of us buy our food and give little thought to how the food got there or the hands that pulled it from the ground or plucked it from a tree, said Jonathan Falk, executive director of Peace through InterAmerican Action. Yet, every year thousands of migrant workers come to Maine to harvest blueberries, broccoli, apples and other crops, to work on eggs and dairy farms, and to plant and thin trees.

The workers often make long journeys from Central America, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean, and elsewhere in the U.S. They are part of a workforce that often goes unseen and underappreciated, Falk said, but that plays a vital role in our state’s economy.

To bring more visibility to this work and, more importantly, the people who perform it, the Maine Migrant Health Program is introducing “Farmworkers Feed Us All,” an exhibit of photographs and audio by photojournalist Earl Dotter and audio-documentary reporter Tennessee Watson on the lives and experiences of Maine’s migrant farm workers.

In cooperation with Bangor’s Peace through InterAmerican Community Action, MMHP will hold a reception 4-6:30 p.m. Thursday, May 15, in the Round Reading Room on the main floor of Bangor Public Library. The event will be an opportunity to see the exhibit and hear from MMHP, PICA and former Maine farm workers.

Earl Dotter is an award-winning photojournalist who has documented the occupational health and safety conditions of workers for more than 35 years. Tennessee Watson is a former outreach worker for MMHP who now teaches and produces multimedia projects at Duke University Center for Documentary Studies.

The May 15 reception will honor Olivia Perez Zamora, a former MHHP farm-worker youth intern and now a student in the University of Maine nursing program.

Zamora,, who came to Maine from Mexico two years ago and is from a family of agricultural workers, is one of only seven recipients nationally of the 2008 Migrant Health Scholarship Award from the National Center for Farm Worker Health.

Agricultural work has always been one of the most dangerous occupations, Falk said. Many farm workers toil in isolated places with rough conditions, long hours, exposure to pesticides and low pay. They often have very limited access to health care and do not receive protections afforded to many other workers.

MMHP is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing access to health care for Maine’s migrant and seasonal farm workers. MMHP’s mobile clinics and outreach workers travel to harvest locations throughout the year offering medical and nursing care, access to dental services, health education, case management, transportation and interpretation.

PICA is a 20-year-old grassroots organization that works from the ground up, starting with person-to-person connections, to promote human rights and community sustainability across our hemisphere.

The use of real-life stories by the “Farmworkers Feed Us All” exhibit makes the unseen visible and creates dialogue. This supports the goals of PICA’s newest project, “kNOw US and THEM,” which examines the connections among immigrants, small-farm workers, manufacturing workers and other Mainers affected by international trade. The spelling of the project’s name underscores the notion that the more people know about each other, the less they will have an “us” and “them” mentality about those whose basic concerns and experiences may not be very different from their own.

The portable “Farmworkers Feed Us All” exhibit will be on display through June 30, at Bangor Public Library.

It is made possible through support of the Harvard School of Public Health-NIOSH Education Research Center, the Maine Initiatives Harvest Fund, the Maine Department of Labor and private donors. During the harvest season, it will be displayed at community spaces in harvest areas so that featured farm workers may see the finished product and celebrate their hard work.

PICA member and Bangor resident Dennis Chinoy said, “Both the ‘Farmworkers Feed Us All’ exhibit and the ‘kNOw US AND THEM’ project help us make the acquaintance of people whose labor benefits us all. Theirs is work virtually none of us could manage without, done by people whom we rarely, if ever, see.”