Viva Brother Nagi
Kerning Cultures
Kerning Cultures Network
4.9 • 529 Ratings
🗓️ 16 February 2023
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Nagi Daifallah was a young farm worker from Yemen who moved to California in the early 1970s, when he was just 20 years old. He went on to become one of the organisers of the influential 1973 grape strikes in California, led by Cesar Chavez.
But one night, after a day of striking, he was beaten to death by a local county sheriff outside a restaurant in Lamont, California.
Although the sheriff who killed him never faced justice, Nagi’s story - and the movement he helped organise - went on to make real change to farm workers’ rights in America, and continues to inspire Yemeni American activists today.
This episode originally aired in April 2021.
This episode was produced by Suzanne Gaber and Will Thomson, and edited by Dana Ballout. Additional support on this episode from Alex Atack, Nadeen Shaker, Zeina Dowidar, Shraddha Joshi and Abde Amr. Sound design by Alex Atack and Mohamad Khreizat.
Support this podcast on patreon.com/kerningcultures for as little as $1 a month.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi everyone, it's Dana. We're taking this week to finish up a couple of our episodes, |
| 0:09.0 | so in the meantime, we wanted to re-air one of our favorite episodes from the Kernan Culture's |
| 0:13.5 | archives. This one came out in 2021, and it's about a little-known hero of the farm labor movement |
| 0:19.4 | in California. |
| 0:22.5 | His name was Najidai Fala. |
| 0:27.0 | It's an incredible story that changed the lives of farm workers in California and the rest of the country. |
| 0:29.2 | We'll be back next Thursday with a brand new episode. |
| 0:31.7 | See you then. |
| 0:35.6 | The old and is predictable. |
| 0:36.9 | They've seen it happen. |
| 0:37.7 | And one story that always kind of captures my imagination. |
| 0:41.1 | The streets lost culture. |
| 0:45.3 | And you're listening to Kearning cultures. |
| 0:51.5 | A quick warning before we start, this episode contains descriptions of violence from the very beginning. |
| 0:58.3 | The night was on August 15, 1973. |
| 1:03.6 | It was around 1 o'clock in the morning, |
| 1:05.5 | and they were outside of a restaurant to nodging |
| 1:09.1 | and some of his striking colleagues. |
| 1:12.8 | And the Bakersfield sheriffs, they had it in for the farm workers. |
| 1:17.8 | This is Ray Cordova. |
| 1:19.0 | He's a union organizer in Orange County, California, who was part of these tumultuous strikes happening in 1973. |
| 1:26.6 | And he's talking about one of his union colleagues, |
... |
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