Are Migrant Farmers Better Off Now Than During the Dust Bowl?

Gabe Thompson, a reporter for The Nation Institute Investigative Fund, will discuss his piece "The Forgotten Village: Revisiting Steinbeck's California,” which appears in Virginia Quarterly Review on July 1st and was reported in collaboration with the Nation Institute's Investigative Fund. In it, he visits the same migrant farm camps in California that were featured in The Grapes of Wrath and reflects on how conditions for migrant farm workers are -- if anything -- even worse now than they were then. For instance, many indigenous Mexican farmworkers, who don't speak Spanish, earn just $25 for a full day's work. Adjusted for inflation, that's less than what farm workers in the San Joaquin Valley made in Steinbeck's day.