Images captured by photographer Ernest Lowe tell the story of Central Valley farmworkers and the activists who fought for improved conditions in the 1960s. Last year UC Merced hosted an exhibition of some of those photographs, and now has acquired the complete collection - which the university has made available free to the public online. To discuss the historical significance of this collection, Valley Edition Host Kathleen Schock spoke with UC Merced’s Mario Sifuentez, director of the Center for the Humanities and associate professor of history, as well as Emily Lin, head of digital curation and scholarship. Read entire article at
Listen to the conversation here.
The clock is ticking for CARES Act grants, which are set to run out at the end of the month. In Fresno, these funds helped to finance the COVID-19 Equity Project, a network of community based organizations providing COVID assistance to vulnerable communities. To find out what will happen to this project if the federal government fails to provide more funding, Valley Edition Host Kathleen Schock spoke with Pao Yang, president and CEO of The Fresno Center, Cheri Cruz, director of public relations at The Fresno Center and Tania Pacheco-Werner, co-assistant director of the Central Valley Health Policy Institute.
• Aug 27, 2020
As fires continue to ravage Northern California, farm workers in the San Joaquin Valley now have to protect themselves from poor air quality on top of COVID-19. One farm worker says it’s made working in the fields even harder.
Oralia Bautista is 34 years old. Six days a week she commutes with her husband from Fresno to pick tomatoes in Firebaugh. While working, she always wears a mask.
“It helps filter out the bad air we’re breathing, but it s also hard because well, it’s hard to breathe with the mask on to begin with,” she said.