— Kim KellyWhen twenty-four-year-old Yemeni United Farm Workers organizer Nagi Daifullah was murdered by California police during the Salad Bowl Strike in August 1973, Detroit’s Arab diaspora rallied to demand an inquiry into his death. One demonstration in South Dearborn, Michigan, drew about five hundred people, most of them Arab autoworkers. There, Patricia Proctor, a Detroit-area UFW organizer, noted that many of the Arab immigrants staffing the auto plants had started out as farmworkers in the California fields, underlining the strong connections between the two communities.
Replicated under Fair Use from Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor by Kim Kelly.