Marisol Medina-Cadena, Pendarvis Harshaw
Feb 17, 2023
Check out a beautiful piece that KQED's Rightnowish did with worker leaders at a prescribed burning training. This training was led by a coalition that included our member organization North Bay Jobs With Justice! Worker leaders are reclaiming the power of their labor and building a worker-led vision of land stewardship in the midst of the climate crisis.
Published by KQUED on February 17, 2023. Click here to view original article.
"From the Soil" is our six-part series, about land and life in Northern California.Â
On a crisp afternoon at the Bouverie Preserve in Glen Ellen, a group of twenty one farmworkers suit up in firefighter gear. Women and men take turns helping each other strap on backpacks and fire helmets in preparation for another intense day of prescribed burn trainings. These are carefully planned low intensity fires set under specific environmental conditions, intended to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires.
Many of these immigrant and Indigenous farmworkers typically work in the grape fields throughout Sonoma County, but extreme drought, flooding, and massive wildfires have made these jobs more precarious.