Daniel J. O'Connell (Author)
Daniel O'Connell is executive director of the Central Valley
Partnership, a regional nonprofit organization and progressive
network of labor unions, environmental organizations, and community
groups spanning the San Joaquin Valley. Trained as a
multidisciplinary ethnographer, he holds an MS in International
Agricultural Development from University of California, Davis, and
a PhD in Education from Cornell University. As a politically
engaged scholar, his work is dedicated to achieving social, racial,
environmental, and economic justice in California.
Scott J. Peters (Author)
Scott Peters is a professor in the Department of Global
Development at Cornell University and a historian of American
higher education's public purposes and work. He has spent the past
twenty years as a leader in the civic engagement movement in
American higher education, most recently serving as faculty
co-director of Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public
Life (IA). He is the lead author of Democracy and Higher
Education: Traditions and Stories of Civic Engagement. He is
also co-editor of the Cornell University Press book series,
"Publicly Engaged Scholars: Identities, Purposes, and
Practices."
In the Struggle is a definitive study of the forces that
have shaped the politics, environment, and economics of the San
Joaquin Valley, one of earth's precious areas that produces the
fruits and vegetables that feed the world, yet where workers and
their families are relegated to poverty, and the land is desecrated
by poisons and contamination. Agribusiness corporations want to
replicate this model throughout the world, and this book gives us
practical, attainable solutions to fight back. We are all the
beneficiaries of the harvest; we all have to take action for land
justice, farmworkers' rights, and a healthy environment. --
-Dolores Huerta, Cofounder, United Farm Workers; Founding
President, Dolores Huerta Foundation
In the Struggle is a devastating indictment against
California's agribusiness and just as importantly, the various
institutions, including the University of California, that are
implicated in enabling its stranglehold over the lives of far too
many Californians. It is also a wonderful primer on
community-engaged research drawing from the courageous praxis of
those who dared to speak truth to power; it is a must-read for
activist-scholars. -- Robyn Magalit Rodriguez, author of Migrants
for Export: How the Philippine State Brokers Workers to the World
and Founding Director, Bulosan Center for Filipinx Studies
Years ago, when I was president of the Association of American Law
Schools, I chose as the theme for our annual conference, 'Engaged
Scholarship.' In the Struggle illustrates the importance of
keeping our work grounded and why I chose that theme. In a series
of gripping and illuminating chapters, Daniel J. O'Connell and
Scott J. Peters put us in conversation with the scholars who were
pivotal in pulling back the curtain on California agribusiness and
populated the landscape with real people, with real lives, with
real dignity. It is rare for a work of scholarship to be so moving.
This is one of those books. -- Gerald Torres, Professor of
Environmental Justice, Yale School of the Environment, Yale Law
School
This sure-footed book follows a breed of scholars who pried open
the secrets of California's Central Valley. In the dust of the most
industrialized farm belt in the world, they found that the
plantation South-its lords and serfs, its brutal execution-had come
West. Their long battle for justice is not yet won. But their ample
lessons are ripe for picking by a new generation's fighters. --
Mark Arax, author of The Dreamt Land
In the Struggle is required reading for anyone who seeks to
understand the devastating impacts of agribusiness' powerful hold
on the San Joaquin Valley of California. By telling the stories of
resistance through the eyes of the scholar activists whose research
documents these harms, the book brings this critical historical
record to life. -- Mary Louise Frampton, Professor, University of
California Davis School of Law & Counsel, National Land for
People
This book is SO IMPORTANT, because it is about the future of
agriculture, informed by scholars who defended the foundations of
agrarian democracy in California. They knew that the future of
agriculture was not about 'get big or get out' and 'farm fence-row
to fence-row,' it is about diverse, equitable communities and
self-renewing, self-regulating natural systems! -- Frederick
Kirschenmann, Distinguished Fellow, Leopold Center for Sustainable
Agriculture, Iowa State University
In the Struggle is an urgent read for anyone who cares about
the enduring damage wrought by California's industrial agriculture.
The intimate narratives of scholar-activists remind us that
research is critical in the fight for social and economic justice
and is also dangerous business. Together the quilt of stories
provides detailed evidence of the widespread negative impacts of
industrial agriculture and how scholars allied with farmworker
movements and communities who aim to tell these truths have been
censured, silenced, and threatened-by industry, government, and the
very academic institutions in which they work. Yet, In the
Struggle also brings joy and hope through the personal
narratives of life-long seekers of truth and justice. -- Erica
Kohl-Arenas, author of The Self-Help Myth: How Philanthropy Fails
to Alleviate Poverty; Faculty Director, Imagining America: Artists
and Scholars in Public Life
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