“Getting ready time is mainly abrasive… asking, thinking, pondering, and redeciding.”
— Walter Brueggemann, speaking of Advent, in “Celebrating Abundance,” 2017
In last week’s sunless days, it was easier to work at my desk. I found myself reflecting back on the year, a good Advent practice as we prepare to accept the dawning of hope, the true message of Christmas, that things could be different, better… preparing to hear Mary’s Song after the angel brings her the difficult good news that she’ll be pregnant out of wedlock with a son who will change the world and pay the price… hearing Mary’s Song through John Pitney’s verse in “Song for the Wise Ones,” that because of this child there will be newness.
“She pondered a free world, the poor all redeemed, / a world where economies served all. She dreamed / of land’s wealth divided, no terror, no war; / all people satisfied, hungry land no more.”
Thumbing back through this year’s Notes from Home, I see that we’ve been writing scraps of a book together, me the scribe, you the listeners, with the main characters being real people in our region: the Punjabi farmers speaking up to the state Water Board this time last year; the Basin’s irrigation district managers and board members; Tulare County’s LAFCo staff, board of supervisors and Grand Jury; Cuyama Valley’s residents who are organizing to fight off extinction by the thirsty carrot kings.
In this writing I have been guided by the voices of my mentors from the far side banks of Jordan, and responding to the shaky voices of people hearing these words for the first time, saying “Really?” You wonder “Can we believe this?” sometimes in hope, sometimes in dread. My hope is that the book will make it easier to decide.
Those far side voices have been sending chapter outlines in the night, reawakening the stories to fill them. One story that arrived last week was the memory of a family farm eviction near Sacramento that I photographed a month before my 39th birthday, almost half a lifetime ago. What new thing this memory brought up was the silence of that event. Despite TV crews filming on that day, despite the constant streams of phone calls searching for another outcome, despite the father’s bold acts of resistance sitting on his tractor by the road, blocking the driveway, despite the mother’s defiance, spray painting her kitchen cabinets as she left with black words “We Will Be Back,” that was their last day in their home, on their land. I have a thin black and white negative of the last pair of headlights leaving that driveway. All the negatives from that long day show the magnitude of what was being lost, but they are silent. That family never made it back. I wrote it up, interspersed with images, but the story was dead before I finished, nowhere to go.
That was 1989, near the end of that decade’s farm crisis nationwide. California was in denial about having a farm crisis, silencing the pain of its victims. That’s how we normally deal with the loss of farmers here, but I think it’s time to change that bad habit. Once again we’re losing our farmers, said Aaron Fukuda last month, collateral damage from SGMA. We don’t have that many left to lose.
So while I’m putting together the scraps of this book we’ve been writing, I want to suggest a small step we could take. We can start a We the People movement. Here is a draft declaration to which I am hoping that we, as individuals, small groups, businesses, organizations and congregations, could affix our names.
We, the people / of _____________, / stand in solidarity with the residents of rural California / in opposing the unjust provisions in this state’s water laws / which permit voting by wealth in property / rather than one-person, one-vote.
We stand together / for the removal of these provisions / and the return of local control over / the waters, lands and people / who form the foundation / of all other economies.
See what you think, then let me know. You co-authors have much to contribute, I assure you, and I’m open to suggestions. Let’s dream together this Advent.
Trudy Wischemann is a rural advocate who writes. Send her your dreams and visions c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247. This column is not a news article but the opinion of the writer and does not reflect the views of the Mid Valley Times newspaper.
