Eugenio's Blog!

During the academic school year, I ask myself “Do I really want to be a lawyer?” at least every other week. Reading, briefing, reading, and reading isn’t really my ideal of a great time. However, I greatly enjoyed my experience last summer as well as my clinical semester this past spring. And this week, I fell in love with this summer’s legal adventure.

The managing attorney, an outreach worker, and I visited agricultural and seafood camps in the northeastern part of the state, in and around Elizabeth City, North Carolina. Elizabeth City is about 3 ½ hours east of Raleigh, so we spent Tuesday and Wednesday night in a hotel. Checking into the hotel, the manager-on-duty asked me “Sir, are you traveling for business or pleasure?” For the first time in my life, I was able to say I was traveling on business.

The office received a telephone call from a client saying that some shady dealings were happening at the camp which farms cabbage and potatoes . . . or, as I say now, potatuhs.

A lot of farmworkers throughout the country are undocumented immigrants, who tend to come originally from Mexico. Because of their immigration status, many protections are not applied to them. However, this week in Elizabeth City, I was able to meet a large farmworker population that I never thought existed: farmworkers, camps of them, who are U.S. Citizens.

These workers, who are overwhelmingly African American (I only saw one person who appeared to be European American), work for the same $5.15 an hour as everyone else in the state. I saw one worker who seriously had to be at least 60-years-old. On the other end, I saw workers who were high school students, farmworking for the summer. They’re originally from Atlanta and they needed some school clothes for August, so they decided to join this crew of farmworkers for the summer. The rest of the workers were 20 or 30-something-old men who used to be seriously addicted to alcohol and drugs, but who are in the process of getting clean. Many of them had ordinary working and lower-middle income jobs before farmworking, and a few of them had college degrees. All of the workers understood the inherently racist power structure of the camp by calling their work "modern day slavery."

The living conditions at the agricultural camps, of course, were sub-par, but what encouraged me most about these workers is their dedication to improve it. Because the farm-owner locks the kitchen on the camp, the workers needed to find a way to eat meals. The workers created an eating area outside which was composed of a few upside-down buckets as chairs, a couple of logs for a stove, a tub of ice as a refrigerator, and a sheet of drywall as a table. Overlooking a small pond with mosquitoes and wasps as constant nuisances, the workers appropriately called this eating locale the Swamp Café.

Although $5.15 an hour is not a wage in which most people are proud to earn, the workers were rightfully proud of their accomplishment – they each had the courage to start a new, clean life.

They’re born-again workers and productive members of society. Respectfully, this blog posting is dedicated to those individuals I met in Pasquotank and Perquimans Counties this week.

"Gun shots every night in the ghetto
Crooked cops on sight in the ghetto
Every day is a fight in the ghetto
Oh oh oh oh oh ghetto
Got kids to feed in the ghetto
Selling coke and weed in the ghetto
Every day somebody bleed in the ghetto
Oh oh oh oh oh ghetto"

Akon, Ghetto

Chatting with President Jefferson Davis about what went wrong :: Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, Virginia.

Continuing on this Confederacy craze, I visited the mecca of all meccas this past weekend . . . Raleigh, North Carolina seems like a Yankee fort when compared to . . . Richmond, Virginia.

As y’all know, Richmond served as the capital city of the Confederacy. To keep this history alive, the Museum of the Confederacy was built in 1896. My fraternity brother V and I visited the Museum and the White House of the Confederacy, the residency of President Jefferson Davis. After that, we visited Hollywood Cemetery, “the Arlington of the South.”

According to our White House tour guide, since I visited both the residency and final resting place of President Jefferson Davis, I have the right to identify as an honorary Virginian and a Southerner-in-Training. If I live in the South for 25 years, I get to drop the “in-Training” part.

Start the clock.

I have finished my first full week of work in Raleigh, and I think it’ll be a worthwhile summer. In this first week, I have come across some interesting things while on the job:

1/ While outreaching to the agricultural labor camps, I came across a sign on a door which read: “Is there life after death? Knock on this door to find out. Solicitors not welcome!” There was also a gun on the sign.

2/ A farm-owner who hires Thai workers called the office and asked, “Does anyone in your office speak Asian?”

3/ A similar farm-owner who hires Thai workers needed to verify the identity of one of his Thai workers. The farm-owner told me that he called the Taiwanese Employment Agency asking for records on the worker. The farm-owner’s hunch was right . . . the Agency didn’t have any records on him [forehead slap].

So this is what you've been reading in the news . . . the United States is oh so generous with its humanitarian aid -- it provides more aid to lesser developed countries than any other developed country. You hear statements such as the following:

1/ Bush announced that the United States will provide $674 million in additional resources to respond to African humanitarian emergencies.

2/ The United States has already provided $1.4 billion to Africa this year through the United Nations and separately pledged $15 billion to fight AIDS in Africa over the next decade.

What the media fails to mention, however, is that from the per capita global perspective, the amount of aid the United States gives to humanitarian missions is nothing short of pathetic.

In general aid to lesser developed countries, the United States per capita falls second to last.

Oh, and in case you think the statistics will improve because Americans were "incredibly generous" opening their wallets to the tsunami relief . . . think again.

In case you don't want to scroll down the list of countries, I'll just tell you where the United States fell: it is 25th on the list -- 1/45th of what the top donor pledged.

Dedicating a Magnolia Flower to the Fallen Soldiers of the Confederacy :: Confederate Cemetery, Raleigh.

I've settled in Raleigh, North Carolina after my overnight in Charleston, West Virginia. I start orientation bright and early Friday morning . . . a bit nervous.

The drive from Chicago went by rather quickly. My little brother made me a CD before I left, and it was the only CD that I listened to the whole trip. Sure, I listened to NPR every minute I could, but as for CD music, I only listened to the one my brother made me.

Unfortunately, a part of Iowa lost itself in Charleston Wednesday. I left my gray Iowa Law hooded sweatshirt in the hotel room. I've contacted the hotel staff, but it has not come up. This would usually merit Charleston being placed on the boycott list, but the state’s Appalachian Mountains made the West Virginia travel incredibly enjoyable. I'll decide later . . .

Before I left Iowa City, I decided to cash in a part of my LexisNexis points to download 10 i-tunes. In an effort to assimilate into country culture, seventy percent of my songs are country songs. I will list them below because I encourage y'all to download them – legally, of course.

Celebrity:: Brad Paisley
Little Moments:: Brad Paisley
Mississippi Girl:: Faith Hill
When the Sun Goes Down:: Kenny Chesney
What's a Guy Gotta Do:: Joe Nichols
Suds in the Bucket:: Sara Evans

and my favorite this week . . .

Nothin' to Lose:: Josh Gracin

My roommate has classified these songs as pop-country . . . not like the "blue-grass country" on which she was raised. Regardless, I think, it's a step in the Southern direction.

For the record, I’ve been called “Sir” at least five times each day since I’ve left Chicago – I love this place! I’m considering wearing a hat now just so I can tip it in the presence of a lady.