Pastors arrested with farmworker organizers

WOODBURN, OR -- Presbyterian and Lutheran ministers, union organizers and observers were arrested by Marion County sheriff's deputies as they reached out to Hispanic workers in Oregon's strawberry fields.

The Reverend Rebecca Hazen, pastor of the McKenzie Valley Presbyterian Church in Waterville, who was accompanying a Pineros Y Campensinos Unidad del Noresta (PCUN) union organizer and a free-lance cameraman, was arrested June 3 for criminal trespassing in the second degree after defying a grower's demand to leave a Hispanic migrant worker camp.

Hazen told the Springfield News it was an "act of civil disobedience" to stand up for the rights of migrant workers and risk arrest. She says she would do it again. On June 5, the Reverend Edgar Brandt, a Lutheran minister and executive director of the Oregon Farm Workers Ministry, was arrested along with one PCUN organizer and two students from Oregon State University's Chicano Student Organization.

PCUN asked Rev. Hazen to act as an observer as it set out to organize strawberry workers at the beginning of the harvest season. PCUN has been out in force handing out literature and talking to workers about their right to be paid the new state minimum wage of $5.50 an hour, and other labor rights.

"We were supposed to stand at the edge of the field and be a presence," Hazen told the newspaper. "We didn't do anything but stand in the rain."

She acknowledged that her role as observer changed to participant when she and her two companions entered the camp without the property owner's permission. Rev. Hazen visited two workers' quarters before being arrested. "I had seen enough," she said. "I was educated enough to do what union organizers call 'taking action.'"

PCUN says organizers and observers are being harassed by guards who have been posted at farm entrances. The union said farm foremen are threatening workers with job loss if they are seen talking with union organizers. A union organizer and observer were treated for minor scratches, bruises and sore backs after being assaulted by a labor contractor June 3.