My grandfather, Jesus Garcia, worked various jobs. Working killed him, in the form of a heart attack suffered after falling off a ladder picking apples in Hood River, Oregon. I was very young, I have no real memory of him. I have long been interested in him, what he thought, what he experienced. Before my mother was born, I learned that he was a coal miner for a time in northern New Mexico, for the Swastika Mining Co. This was during the days when Mother Jones traveled the country, organizing miners working for oppressive companies like Swastika. My mother says he was in a cave-in once, he kept working to provide for his young family. He didn’t have a union to fight for him, and who knows, had he joined a union he might have been killed for trying. I am in the first generation in my family to have the chance to go to college, I joined a union, now I work for one. Yet I wonder how much things have changed. Still, the rich get richer exploiting the land and the weak, still there are a relative few working to help the masses find their power.
