1
The state, begun as a series of missions,
used native men & women as cheap labor,
edified through occasional public floggings.
As the indigenous populations began to die,
they were replaced by immigrants from China
used to build railroads,
with pickaxes and blasting caps.
And when the Chinese were too many,
the US Congress passed exclusion acts.
2
In Wheatland, hops pickers, fired upon
by Yuba County sheriffs and their henchmen
for attempting to protect themselves
against exploitation and unsafe working conditions,
retaliated by rioting; were beaten and cuffed.
3
In Cocoran, the Mexican strikers were refused relief.
Some infants starved. Some workers died.
The farmers dumped their milk into the sewers,
and burned acres of corn, rather
than provide for upstart laborers.
4
Old man Nakagawa, divested of his property in 1942,
returned to Marysville following the war
and opened a small grocery.
5
While then-governor Ronald Reagan
stood in the capitol’s rose garden,
members of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense
entered the senate chambers,
armed to protect their community
from the abuse of power exhibited by Oakland police.
6
When the Islamic mosque on Tierra Buena Road
was set ablaze by arsonists,
the neighboring Sikhs opened up their temple
as a place of worship
for their historic enemies.
7
The rains still bring the rivers to a crest.
[Here’s where you imagine the rest.]