Some of the poorest Americans, in California's San Joaquin Valley, get help from a trio of effective reformers

From left, Phoebe Seaton, Veronica Garibay, Sandra Celedon
(Photo by Devin Oktar Yalkin, The New York Times)

California's San Joaquin Valley is the agricultural backbone of the nation's top ag state, but along its swaths of rural glory is Fresno, a city and county divided: "On the Southside, they've hollowed out a crater of neglect, and this is where neighborhoods of Latino, Black and Hmong residents live in some of the worst concentrated poverty in America," reports Mark Arax of The New York Times. "In the span of 15 miles, from the wealthy subdivisions and megachurches of the Northside to the meth-fueled hustle of the Southside, life expectancy drops 20 years. Just beyond downtown, the wide swath of urban poverty finally gives way to the mad plantings of vineyards and orchards. Venture deep enough into Fresno County, and you'll find, tucked inside the bounty like a great shame, rural poverty of the most abject kind."

"Last summer, I picked up the shrinking local newspaper, The Fresno Bee, and saw the return of a force a half-century dormant. Three reformers, all women, were messing with the gravity of things. In the name of environmental justice, Sandra Celedon, Veronica Garibay and Phoebe Seaton advocated for neglected neighborhoods, mobilizing residents who had never been mobilized before. . . A shift in power and public spending was occurring not only in Fresno but also in small towns and rural settlements throughout the valley," Arax writes. "In Los Angeles or San Francisco, agitation of this sort was the usual jostle. Here, civic leaders saw it as a subversive force. A local supervisor accused the trio of peddling climate-change beliefs that did not align with the 'values of Fresno County.' A Northside City Council member called them 'poverty pimps' for rallying low-income families opposed to industrial polluters in their backyards."

The three had a history of successful challenges to the area's status quo of treading on their disadvantaged. "They advocated for state legislation that forced the citrus town Exeter to extend its water to the sticks of Tooleville," Arax explains. "Or when they helped secure an $8 million grant to build a multifamily apartment complex in the farmworker town Lamont. . . . But now Garibay and Seaton were teaming up with Celedon to kill an initiative called Measure C, a $7 billion sales tax to fund highways and roads across Fresno County for the next 30 years. . . . The public hearing to unveil the latest version of Measure C . . . did not go as expected. Southside and rural Latinos, old and young, filled the small meeting room and two adjoining chambers and spilled into the hallway. They had come to deliver a message that Measure C shorted their side of town, ignored the hardships of rural communities and put more money in the pockets of the same wealthy Northsiders. . . . But they never got a chance to speak. There weren't enough Spanish-language headsets to go around, for one thing."

During follow-up hearings, politicians made minor financial concessions. "Southside and rural residents weren’t buying it. The extra money wouldn’t begin to make up for the broken sidewalks, potholed streets, flood-prone roads and buses that did not run from rural towns to city hospitals," Arax reports. "Celedon, Garibay and Seaton didn’t trust that far-right Republicans on the county board of supervisors would direct enough of the revenue to forgotten communities. And who knew what the rural mayors and council members might do with their bigger slices."

Eventually, Measure C made it to the ballot box. "This past fall, the women and their organizers went at it again, rallying support against Measure C, the sprawl-inducing tax," Arax writes. "They knocked on the doors of Southside voters and ventured deep into the Northside, too. They were surprised by how their message resonated across the divide. Northsiders told them the previous Measure C's hadn't improved the quality of their lives either. . . . On Election Day, 58 percent of the county voted in favor of the measure, well shy of the necessary two-thirds. Civic leaders, for their part, have vowed to bring Measure C back."