Voices from the March (Irene Gonzalez)

Robbing Rose's Flowers to pay Wal-Mart
By Brandon Ortiz on April 5

Willie Pelote from AFSCME has an excellent column in the California Progress Report about how "economic" incentive programs at the state and local level subsidize mega corporations like Wal-Mart, which in turn drive mom-and-pop stores -- like the one owned by Irene Gonzalez's foster parents -- out of business.

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A Turlock Easter
By 260 Miles of Blogging on April 4

Today was Easter Sunday and a very busy day. We started out with a big Easter Breakfast at Denny's and then started our walk from Livingston to Turlock. UFCW has been amazing to us, agreeing to provide lunches through the end of this week. They've been bringing lunches out to our route for 7 days now already. During the break, one of our core walkers, Irene Gonzalez, asked me to stay out of the back room of the Blogmobile. I noticed a couple of bags that weren't in there before but resisted the temptation to peek. We arrived in Turlock at around 3 PM. Irene then suspiciously took off again.

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Marcher becomes a casualty of budget cuts
By Peter Feng on March 15

For all the talk about painful budget cuts, Sacramento's neglect of state highways proved literally painful for core walker Irene Gonzalez.

Irene, a Los Angeles juvenile probation officer and Central Vally émigré who is marching the entire 260 miles from Bakersfield to Sacramento, sprained her ankle Saturday two miles outside of Tulare.

The accident occurred on a severely cracked and pock-marked road along Highway 99 that is surrounded on either side by a wasteland of empty fields contaminated by agricultural runoff.

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