Half Moon Bay, California, population 11,975, burst into the news on Monday afternoon when a gunman killed seven on the outskirts of town.
I've been to Half Moon Bay a few times, and I have friends who live there. When I visit, I see the posh parts--like the Ritz-Carlton resort and other somewhat less luxurious coastal hotels and amenities. Many who live in the small city and nearby communities like Montara commute to San Francisco or over the mountains to Silicon Valley. I think of it as exurban San Francisco, and it lies within densely populated San Mateo County.
I was thus surprised to hear NPR repeatedly refer to Half Moon Bay as "rural" in the news coverage the morning after the shooting.
When I started thinking about it, though, I realized that the town does have rural and agricultural aspects. In particular, when you approach Half Moon Bay from Silicon Valley (rather than from San Francisco, via Devil's Slide), you drive past nurseries and other agricultural enterprises. Further, the small city is known for its pumpkin festival.
There's also the fact that the killings happened at two agricultural establishments--one the Mountain Mushroom Farm where the shooter is said to have lived. The victims were Asian and Hispanic and all were farm workers, some of them migrant. The shooter was also a farm worker, and the killings are now being characterized as "workplace violence." Still, I've found it odd that the place is being depicted as essentially rural, when its character of Half Moon Bay is really much more nuanced than that. Indeed, as I think about it, it's a great example of dramatic inequality crammed into a compact space.
NPR's subsequent coverage included this description of the community. Note the "close-knit" cliche associated with rural places.
Half Moon Bay is a close-knit community known for its ranching, farming and fishing, officials said in a news briefing Tuesday. That sense of security and closeness was shattered with Monday's tragedy.
Here's how the Washington Post characterized the town:
In Half Moon Bay, a tranquil agricultural town about 40 minutes from San Francisco, local officials were anguished as their home joined a grim fraternity of American communities scarred by gun violence.
Postscript: Follow up coverage of the shootings indicates that several of those murdered lived in San Francisco. This means they had a lengthy commute from a very expensive housing market to farmworker labor.
This is a characterization of Half Moon Bay from the Los Angeles Times:
Half Moon Bay is a rural beach town where the bedrock industry is vegetable and flower farms, though many, particularly the flower farms, have closed in recent years, affecting job opportunities. Farm owners have also pointed to the state’s extreme weather, with floods and heavy winds, devastating their fields and the surrounding infrastructure.
About 2,500 to 3,000 farmworkers live in the town at any given time, officials said. Many settle in the wealthy community after finding steady work, often living in mobile homes or trailers on the farms where they’re employed — just a short drive, but out of sight, of the town’s multimillion-dollar coastal homes.This part of that story touches on the extreme inequality in Half Moon Bay:
Eric DeBode, executive director at Abundant Grace Coastside Worker in Half Moon Bay, said his charitable organization primarily serves the homeless population of the Half Moon Bay area but also farmworkers. The organization runs a farm whose produce is given for free to the very people working low-wage farming jobs that produce much of the area’s food.
A “large portion of folks we serve,” DeBode said, “are making the food we eat and aren’t able to afford it themselves.”
On Thursday, another organization serving farmworkers and other community members was overflowing with goods in the wake of the massacre.
Volunteers were stacking boxes of produce, snacks, eggs, milk and frozen chickens at Ayudando Latinos a Soñar. The group had gathered mounds of clothing, and its food pantry was overflowing from the community response.
A man emerged from a Lexus outside the group’s small, bright yellow building and dropped a bag on a table with a thud. “You said you needed underwear,” he said before returning to his car.
The community’s interest will wane eventually, said volunteer Victoria Sanchez De Alba. But, she said, unacceptable housing conditions for workers will remain: “Why can’t we hold these farm owners accountable?”
She added that, oftentimes when housing violations are reported, “officials red-tag the housing and the families get displaced.”
DeBode called the housing conditions on the farms “shocking” and “deplorable,” adding that farmworkers and the tourists who come to the area “are living in two different worlds.”
Monday’s rampage stunned the entire community. The gunman opened fire at the two rural locations.
The Associated Press also covered the extreme inequality in Half Moon Bay as part of its coverage of the murders:
The state’s labor department is looking into possible labor, workplace safety and health violations at the farms where the shootings happened, a spokeswoman for the Department of Industrial Relations said Thursday. Newsom’s office said some of the farmworkers told him they made $9 an hour and lived in shipping containers. The state minimum wage is $15.50.
“The conditions farmworkers shared with the Governor ... are simply deplorable. Many workers have no choice but to tolerate the conditions provided to them by their employers,” Newsom spokesperson Daniel Villaseñor said in a statement.
2 comments:
Lack of definition and invisibility: these are two things that came to my mind when reading this blog. First, the idea of an ocean-side community being considered "rural" never clicked until reading this. Something about coastal towns being referred to as rural didn't make sense, and then I realized that when looking at the more objective definitions of rurality, these communities can easily qualify as rural. But upon reflection, I think it stems from my own misunderstanding that rural does not equal landlocked or remote within the "interior" of the country. Moreover, when I think of places like Half Moon Bay or Astoria, OR, it's hard not to think that coastal and rural are not mutually exclusively. Coastal communities are more likely to be tourism hubs, with that problematizing people's understandings as to what the community actually is when you strip that away. And so I, and many others, often think of these towns as idyllic spaces separate and distinct from both urban and rural. But this can lead to several issues, including those highlighted in this article. Because of tourism and the focus on a "coastal" experience and scenery, there is a "sweeping under the rug" of the people who are unseen in these communities. And this can lead to a lack of oversight and care for people like the ones in Half Moon who are living in shipping containers and are paid below the state mandated minimum wage. It is a reminder that the liberal policies and pontification in the urban centers does not always reach the more rural places in the state. And that can lead to dangerous outcomes, like the ones in this horrific incident.
As someone who frequently visits Half Moon Bay with my family, I thought this question was thought-provoking when considering the cultural connotations of "rural" and rural-tourism. I know that for a lot of people in the Bay Are, including my family, the major draw of Half Moon Bay comes from going the quietness and beauty - like rolling fog meeting dramatic cliffs above the Pacific. While serenity and nature do make a place rural, it seems like they are inextricably linked to the idea of rurality in popular imagination.
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