Marching for CA's Future Through Today's Desolation
New America Media, News Report , David Bacon, Posted: Mar 18, 2010 
TULARE, Calif. -- As the March for California's Future heads up the San Joaquin Valley toward Sacramento, participants are coming up hard against the reality of the economic crisis in rural California. The march began in Bakersfield on March 5, the day after widespread protests swept through the state's schools and universities. It is a protest against the impact of state budget cuts on education and social services, and marchers are finding that valley communities are among those that feel their effects most strongly.
"Watsonville has a 27 percent unemployment rate," said Jenn Laskin, a teacher at Renaissance Continuation High School there. "It's the strawberry capital of the world, and strawberries are a luxury. In a recession, people stop buying them, so workers no longer have a job in the fields. I have many students who have both parents out of work, who grow food in our school garden for their families."
But in the Central Valley, she thinks, things seem worse. "The towns we've been passing through feel a lot more desolate," Laskin explains. Those include the small farm worker communities of Shafter, McFarland, Delano, Pixley and Tulare. "I see a lot of fields with nothing planted at all. I was in a Mexican restaurant in Pixley and there was not a Mexican in sight. The problems I see in Watsonville might even be sharper here. I see more need here, and I'm guessing probably fewer services."
She's not far off. The official unemployment rate in December in Kern County was 16 percent. Since Bakersfield, a major urban area, has a lower rate, towns like Shafter and McFarland have even more jobless. Crossing into Kings and Tulare counties, unemployment jumps to more than 17 percent in each.
The march's call to restore the promise of public education is the motivator keeping Laskin, and the march's other Watsonville participant,