Since I first started writing the Foothill Agrarian blog (16 years ago this month), I’ve dedicated this space to building community. Initially (and almost exclusively), I wrote about farming and ranching in the Sierra foothills. Occasionally, I’d take on a more controversial topic, but mostly my posts focused on the challenges and joys of trying to raise sheep and earn at least part of my living doing it. On helping my neighbors understand the good, the bad, and the difficult of being a shepherd. Over the last two years, however, most of my posts have described my experience with caregiving and grief. I’m astounded that my posts have been read more than 494,000 times since February 2009. This is my one-thousandth post.
While I’ve tried to write about difficult topics (none more difficult than those I’ve discussed since 2023), I’ve mostly shied away from politics. My focus has always been to build up my community - I’ve largely avoided argumentative essays. But today, I find that I am compelled to speak out about the topics below.
Social media has the ability to both build up community and tear it apart. Increasingly, platforms like Facebook and X seem focused on the latter - they are either echo chambers for confirming our personal worldview, or shouting matches where facts and nuance don’t matter. I’m choosing to disengage from these platforms, at least for now. Maybe for good.
I realize that many of my friends may disagree with what I’ve written below. To those of you who are close enough friends to have my phone number or email address, I hope we can talk about our perspectives. To those who are casual friends only on social media, I realize that you may decide to unfriend me over these perspectives. I’m entirely fine with that - I firmly believe that the solutions we need to these issues won’t be found in a Facebook post.
I spent this past week in the company of the brightest rangeland scientists and range managers in the world. Scientists from the best universities on the North American continent. Scientists from federal agencies like the Agricultural Research Service and the U.S. Geological Service. Range managers from the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM). I listened to research talks on how sheep grazing can be used to manage invasive species and reduce fire danger. I talked to range conservationists who are participating in (and sometimes leading) collaborative efforts with ranchers and environmentalists to ensure that grazing remains part of federal land management. I learned about new tools that ranchers are using to adapt to the impacts of wildfire and drought.
This morning, many of these scientists and managers found themselves fired through the action of a federal “agency” that has never been authorized by Congress, let alone by the U.S. Constitution. They were fired simply because they were vulnerable. Because they were still in their probationary period. Not, as the emails they received suggested, because of performance problems - all of the people I know who were fired had consistently received positive performance reviews. Reviews that they can no longer access from their personnel files.
I’ve spent most of my professional life working on issues related to rangelands. Being a westerner, many of these issues have involved federal agencies like the Forest Service and BLM. I’ve lived through the “Cattle Free by ‘93” movement, President Clinton’s Rangeland Reform ‘94 initiative, home rule movements in Nevada and elsewhere. I’ve seen the federal rangeland and research work force expand and contract through the efforts of six administrations. This time is different. This time it is short-sighted, arbitrary, and mean-spirited.
In my experience, when a new president takes office with a desire to reduce government spending or change policy direction, they’ve done so thoughtfully and strategically. I have not always agreed with this change in direction, but there has always been a deliberative process. Is this program relevant? What will we lose if we cut that agency? What will we gain?
These cuts have not been thoughtful. As one friend remarked this week, they’ve used “a giant meat cleaver to cure a problem that requires a scalpel.” They’ve been implemented with the greatest degree of meanness possible. Federal employees have been told they are underperforming and lazy - living off the public dole - simply because they chose civil service as a career.
Several of my friends have urged me to “wait until the dust settles - don’t jump to conclusions.” I’ve been told, “let the process play out - they’ll learn that some of what they’ve cut is important to their constituents.”
I’m struggling with this advice. In the first 3-plus weeks of this administration, the “dust” seems to be the objective. Chaos is the strategy. Thoughtfulness - and empathy - seem to be in short supply - indeed, we are told that thoughtfulness and empathy are the antithesis of bold action and the “will of the voters.”
I object. I know that President Trump won the last election. I know that some of my friends voted for him. I also know these friends to be thoughtful and empathetic people. I hope they can see how wrong this approach is. I hope they’ll say something.
And so I’ve been thinking about what I can do. What I can say. I know my small voice won’t have much of an impact on national policy, but I think I can make a difference in my chosen profession. And in my community.
In 2002, Sierra College (a community college in Placer County) published Standing Guard: Telling our Stories, which shared the personal stories of Japanese Americans from Placer County (and throughout the West Coast) who were sent to concentration camps after President Franklin Rosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 in 1942. At the invitation of my friend and fellow farmer Howard Nakai, I went to the book release event at Sierra College’s Rocklin campus nearly 23 years ago.
Howard, who took over his family’s fruit orchard near Penryn as a teenager, had been imprisoned at Tulelake. A U.S. citizen at the time of his internment, his story was one of the first-hand accounts of those dark times included in Standing Guard. Sixty years later, Howard spoke at the Sierra College event about what it felt like to be sent away from his community simply because of his ethnicity and the color of his skin. But what stuck with me most about his talk that evening in Rocklin was a story of community. Howard related how his Portuguese neighbor had taken care of his farm during the war. Of how the refrigerator in his house was stocked with cold beer and steak when he finally returned home. Of how it felt to actually have a farm to come home to.
While there were Japanese families who lost everything when they were sent away, Howard’s story was not unique in Placer County (or in other farming communities). Both of my daughters participated in the Future Farmers of America chapter at Placer High School. On the front wall of their classroom, an incredible handmade mosaic of the FFA emblem - made entirely from vegetable seeds - has hung since the late 1940s. This mosaic was made by Japanese families over the course of a winter shortly after World War 2 ended. They presented it to the Placer High agriculture teacher, Frank Bonito, who had cared for their farms during their imprisonment. I’m grateful that current Placer FFA members share that heritage.
Mr. Bonito must have been an amazing person. I’ve also learned that he expanded the Placer High FFA program during his tenure to include students of all ethnic and racial backgrounds. He invited the first female students to join the Placer FFA chapter. Another former Placer High agriculture teacher told me that if you look at the records of State Farmer Degrees and American Farmer Degrees from that period, Mr. Bonito left his mark on an entire generation of Placer County students, farmers, and leaders.
Now, as I read news reports about legal immigrants being detained, of a new internment camp at Guantanamo Bay, I’ve wondered what Howard Nakai and Frank Bonito would be thinking if they were alive today. More importantly, what would they be doing? I wish I could ask them both.
The virtual communities we’ve created through social media have had many benefits. I can talk to (and learn from) shepherds all over the world. I can stay in touch with high school and college friends who I wouldn’t see otherwise. But social media, at least for me, has some critical negatives, too. Social media allows us to amplify the shrillest voices amongst us. We can be rude, disagreeable, and mean without looking each other in the eye. For every upside to a virtual community, at least lately, there seems to be two or three downsides. I am going to step back. I’m going to focus on the communities where I live and work.
I suspect Mr. Bonito and Howard Nakai didn't use the terms “diversity” or “inclusion” to describe their approach to living and working in the Placer County agricultural community. But based on my interactions with Howard, and what I’ve learned about Mr. Bonito, empathy and mutual respect guided their interactions with their neighbors. These are principles I’ve tried to live and work by. These are the principles that I admired and appreciated in my community during Sami’s illness and passing. And these are the principles that it pains me to see abandoned in our current public discourse.
Putting these words down, however, is just the first step for me. Living the principles of empathy and respect for ALL people in my community is far more important than just writing about it. I know that I’m imperfect in this regard, but I keep working at it. Rather than demonize those with whom I disagree, I hope to provide an example of tolerance and acceptance. Of thoughtfulness and empathy. I hope to speak up more than I have in the past, especially on behalf of those who have no voice. I hope to live up to the example of community provided by people like Howard Nakai and Frank Bonito.
No comments:
Post a Comment