SACRAMENTO — To get the movie-star governor's attention on a pet issue -- the plight of California farmworkers -- Fabian Nunez made a movie.
Toting a video camera, the assemblyman (D-Los Angeles) and his staff trekked through fields near Stockton and Bakersfield to interview field hands and labor contractors for a 21-minute documentary.
The Los Angeles Democrat and his crew were not always well received. In one scene, Nunez confronts a field boss about a lack of shade for workers, which is a violation of state law. In another, an angry grower stalks toward the camera, ordering Nunez and the crew off his tomato field. An eerie night scene shows workers toiling in the dark, picking onions by the light of headlamps, "faceless bodies working the soil," according Nunez's narration.
His purpose? To persuade Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign one of his measures, now pending in the Legislature, intended to make it easier for farmworkers to unionize. Making the video -- with taxpayer-funded staff and equipment, though Assembly officials say they do not have a cost estimate -- was an unusual exercise for a state lawmaker. Their persuasive efforts normally stop at letter-writing.
"I saw this as an opportunity to reach the governor in a dignified way, knowing how he thinks and sees the world," said Nunez, "knowing that he really feels for the families of those who have died while toiling in the fields."
A former labor organizer and the son of a onetime farmworker, Nunez screened "California's Harvest of Shame" for Schwarzenegger last week before releasing it to the public on an Assembly website and elsewhere. He got some constructive criticism.
"He said some of the footage is great," said Nunez. But Schwarzenegger chided him for dramatizing the work done at night to avoid the hot sun. "People work night shifts," Nunez said the governor told him.
The documentary was filmed and produced by Gabriel Ortega and Pablo Espinoza, veterans of Spanish-language media company Univision who now work for the Assembly Democratic caucus.
Narrated partly by actor Martin Sheen, the documentary concludes that 2-year-old state regulations mandating water, breaks and shade for farmworkers are often flouted. It claims that 15 farmworkers have died of heatstroke since 2004, two while the documentary was underway.
