A life was snuffed out in the pursuit of a quota

Today Mel Buer reports from the scene of a large raid at two cannabis farms in California in which one worker was killed and a couple hundred others were arrested.

She previously reported for Hell World on a farm workers march back in April

Something that feels productive good and true

We lost the great Val Kilmer this week and so naturally I have been thinking back to my favorite role of his as Doc Holliday in Tombstone. “A man like Ringo has got a great big hole, right in the middle of him. He can never kill enough, or steal

Welcome to Hell WorldLuke O’Neil

And about lessons in solidarity learned over years in the restaurant industry.

Lessons in Solidarity from the Service Industry

Today Mel Buer writes about lessons learned over the years working in the restaurant industry and how those can apply to fostering a general sense of solidarity among workers everywhere. It’s a great piece and also kind of gave me PTSD. Working in restaurants for so many years was certainly

Welcome to Hell WorldLuke O’Neil

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A life was snuffed out in the pursuit of a quota

by Mel Buer

On Thursday federal agents with Customs and Border Patrol, aided by the California National Guard, raided two cannabis farms in Ventura County. Hundreds of workers were rounded up into vans at the two locations. Rapid response teams had been following agents throughout the county for weeks, trying to head off many of the raids before they had a chance to snatch people up. On Thursday morning, while conducting their usual patrols, they noticed that Border Patrol agents were driving into the military base nearby. One organizer with VC Defensa, Leo, noticed the unusual activity and put out a call about an imminent, large-scale raid. Folks jumped into action.

Almost as soon as the raids began, community members were on the ground to meet them. The roads into the farms were blockaded by National Guard and police, preventing any ingress into the properties themselves, but people came anyway. As word got out, more and more arrived. I spoke with one activist who was on the ground all day on Thursday, who told me that at first she wasn’t sure if they could hold them off. “When we first got out there, there were maybe 25 people,” she said. “Then there were 30, then 50.” Community members, activists, family members of the workers being detained inside, and concerned strangers made their way to the blockades and settled in for a long fight.

According to social media and news reports, federal agents first tried to disperse the crowds using tear gas and smoke, to little avail. Suddenly they found themselves in a stand off. At every blockade a group of demonstrators waited chanting slogans and organizing together. 

By the time my reporting partner Sean Beckner-Carmitchel and I arrived on scene at Glass House Farms near Camarillo, the sun was setting on the valley, and hundreds of people could be heard chanting “Chinga la Migra!” from nearly a mile away. As we drove toward the intersection of Las Posas and Laguna Road, we found it difficult to find a place to park–a line of parked cars stretched on for over a mile on both sides of Las Posas, with more arriving every minute. After a while we found one, shouldered our backpacks, and made the half-mile hike up to the intersection.

Read this recent piece by Sean Beckner-Carmitchel in Hell World

It is happening here

Three days of escalation by the feds in Los Angeles

Welcome to Hell WorldLuke O’Neil

A tense scene greeted us upon arrival. The road toward the farm is flanked on both sides by working fields stretching out as far as the eye can see. Over 100 demonstrators filled the road, standing shoulder-to-shoulder against a thick line of Border Patrol agents and National Guard kitted out in riot gear–helmets, gas masks, and shields. A fellow reporter noted the dark irony of their formation: they had formed a border across the road that stretched only 15 feet into the farmland on either side. As family members and others yelled across the caution tape, others tried to negotiate with individual guardsmen on the flanks to try and retrieve cars left in the farm facility. As their conversations continued, guardsmen trampled plants underfoot and leaned on their shields.

Many of them held long wooden batons or carried riot munitions weapons, their unmistakable neon-colored barrels glinting ominously in the dusk. A few demonstrators had parked their cars in the dirt near the skirmish line and turned their headlights on in order to illuminate the darkening highway. It wasn’t long before the last of the light faded and we were in the darkness together, waiting.

At the back of the crowd, volunteers had placed what looked like hundreds of pounds of food, water, and masks in a distribution station. Some had arrived with truck beds full of provisions and were passing them out to bystanders. It was clear that they intended to keep the barricades for as long as they needed in order to see their neighbors released, or to give them time to escape. As I took some video of the piles of water, I overheard conversations in a group nearby. “I just talked to one girl who can’t find her mom,” the organizer said. “She won’t answer the phone and her car is still parked somewhere in there. She’s been crying for hours.”

At another blockaded intersection in the distance, dozens more protestors faced off against agents at their own skirmish line. At one point shortly after our arrival, two firetrucks and an ambulance made their way slowly toward that intersection, where some demonstrators had reportedly been beaten and gassed by the feds. “Do we have any volunteers who can walk over there?” one organizer called on her bullhorn. “There’s injured! We need more bodies down there!” For the next few hours, the lights of the ambulance danced in the distance, surrounded by a deep, unending darkness.

Minutes passed by slowly, and the full moon rose in the distance over the chanting crowd. At one point, an armored truck joined the line on the federal side, turning on its headlights and illuminating the crowd. For the rest of the night, its two spotlights would roam over the road and stop briefly on individuals or press, searching for the first spark of violence that would allow its operators to unleash the hell they so desperately wanted to mete out to those in attendance.

Every 20 minutes or so the crowd would part to let a car pass out of the blockade: these were workers, presumably U.S. citizens or folks with papers, who were allowed to leave. Demonstrators clapped as these vehicles passed; the drivers all carried the same look–one of recent trauma, disbelief, anger, deep sadness. They turned out onto Las Posas and disappeared into the night.

After a few hours, a rumor spread that the warrant these federal officers were operating under was set to expire. Demonstrators watched as the formation became restless, jockeying together, reforming. Individual officers played impatiently with their riot guns. Sensing the tension, the demonstrators locked arms and walked backwards up the road, giving folks a chance to pack up and escape without being grabbed or hurt. 

As they returned to their cars and filed back down the road, they came to another intersection where Border Patrol were trying to make their getaway. The feds teargassed demonstrators in their cars, causing panic. We arrived at the intersection just as the last canisters finished–cars kicked up the powder and sent it off in the wind. Pedestrians coughed violently on the side of the road. A thick fog filled the air and blinded me momentarily as I walked the highway to get pictures of the canisters left behind.

The next day, the gravity of the situation became more clear. Workers reportedly hid from advancing lines of heavily armed agents in greenhouses for hours. On Friday afternoon, some workers were still unaccounted for. Many were injured. The rumor rolling through the press gaggle outside Glass House farms in Camarillo on Friday was that some workers were still hiding, unaware that the operation had ended and that they could return to their homes. One family member we spoke with outside the gate hadn’t seen her uncle in over 24 hours. She was waiting, worried, with her friend for any mention of him. Among those unaccounted for were a college professor, a disabled veteran whose car was found with its windows smashed out, and dozens of others–men, women, young teenagers. 

One man died after he reportedly fell 30 feet and broke his neck while being pursued by agents during the raid. His family took him off life support Friday afternoon. By all accounts, he was a glorious human being. A family man, a father, and the sole supporter of his family, working hard to give his children a chance in this grand, American land of promise.

A life was snuffed out in the pursuit of a quota. He was forced to make an impossible choice by the federal government: Detention or death. 

Mel Buer is a multimedia journalist who covers movements, labor and community for The Real News Network. She currently lives in Chicago.

In the meantime here is some potentially good news.

Judge says immigration agents must stop ‘roving patrols’ that have upended Southern California

A court ruling Friday orders a halt to a chaotic and relentless 36-day immigration crackdown that’s upended life across Southern California.

CalMattersWendy Fry, Sergio Olmos

Thank you as always for reading Hell World.

My new book of poems and short stories We Had It Coming is available for pre-order now.