Fred de Sam Lazaro, executive director of the Under-Told Stories Project at the University of St. Thomas, wrote about the future of Minnesota’s immigrants in a commentary published in the Minnesota Star Tribune.
From the story:
I first set foot in the U.S. 50 years ago this month, arriving in San Francisco years before many more would come through that gateway into America in pursuit of career and fortune in Silicon Valley. ...
Minnesota was not a north star for many migrants when I got here, but that would begin to change in the years that followed, including after a landmark event that happened also to be my first assignment for what was then the “MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour” on PBS: the Hormel meatpackers strike in Austin, Minn., in 1985.
The immigrants were European back then, and even hanging around that picket line, I might have seen one nonwhite face – had I carried a mirror with me. But these days, stop by any meat or poultry plant around shift change and the most striking shift you’ll see is demographic, with Latino, Black and Asian workers milling in and out.
Those long-ago striking meatpackers lost their battle to preserve a comfortable middle-class livelihood that, paradoxically, afforded their children education and career options far beyond the drudgery of meat factories. How the offspring of today’s meatpackers, roofers and personal care attendants fare in the years ahead will be one proxy for how, or even whether, Minnesota’s legacy of strong civic engagement, philanthropy and education will beget a society that can live up to the billing of that long-ago book on America.
