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BOB POTTER: The high will be in the low 80s, but it is going to be rather windy, west northwesterly winds at 20 to 30 miles an hour. And that has prompted the Weather Service to issue a wind advisory for area lakes this afternoon. Tonight, partly cloudy skies, still a 20% chance of showers in the evening period primarily.

The low by morning will be in the middle to upper 50s. Then tomorrow, a slightly better chance of rain, 30% chance of showers and thunderstorms. Skies are still supposed to be partly cloudy, though. And the high tomorrow once again should be in the low 80s in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area.

Well, the stock market opened the trading session with a slight advance, but has given up that territory now and has turned lower. This appears to be yet a third day of light to moderate trading. Analysts say institutional investors have been absent from this week's activity in large part as concern over interest rates and corporate earnings has slowed their buying.

As of 11:30 Central Time, the Dow Industrials stand at 2,885.15. That's down 8.41 from yesterday's close. The transportation index is off a little better than 2 points. The utilities are down a quarter of a point. Trading volume is actually slower today than it was yesterday at this time. So far, 74.5 million shares changing hands in the first three hours versus 78 million yesterday.

This is member-supported Minnesota Public Radio. And this is KNOW Minneapolis-Saint Paul. In the Twin Cities area at last report, sunny skies, 72 degrees, the wind from the west gusting to 24. And the time is exactly 12 o'clock.

Minnesota Public Radio's coverage of rural issues is made possible by a major grant from the Blandin Foundation, supporting a clean Mississippi River environment. And our coverage of regional public policy issues is supported by a grant from the Northwest Area Foundation.

We have for you during the noon hour today a documentary about migrant farm labor in Minnesota. Every summer, for more than 60 years, Hispanic farm workers have come from South Texas to the Red River Valley of Northwestern Minnesota and Eastern North Dakota. They come to work in the sugar beet fields, doing jobs that the local residents don't want to do. The work is more attractive than farm workers can find back home in Texas, however.

But in recent years, some white residents of the Red River Valley have become angry and resentful about the increasing number of migrants going to their area. They complain about migrant workers who go on welfare in Minnesota. And they say the Hispanics bring crime to their communities. Hispanics, for their part, say they are the victims of prejudice.

Minnesota Public Radio reporters Dan Gunderson of station KCCM in Moorhead and John Biewen of our Main Street radio team prepared this special report called Season of Discontent-- Migrants in the Red River Valley. The first part of the report is narrated by Dan Gunderson.

SPEAKER 1: Unit calling, go ahead.

SPEAKER 2: Minnesota, Texas, last name, Lopez, L-O-P-E-Z, first name, Adam--

DAN GUNDERSON: A Moorhead police officer answers a call to the 20th Street area on Moorhead's east side. It's one of several trips he'll make to this neighborhood tonight.

SPEAKER 3: Starting there at the 1900 block of 20th Street, we have a high amount of calls. And that's all here in our beat tonight. A lot of problems going on there, you know? I mean, we go back there night after night after night.

[SIDE CONVERSATION]

DAN GUNDERSON: A local resident, , who wishes to be identified only as Bruce has lived in the 20th Street neighborhood for most of his life.

BRUCE: The shooting took place right in the backyard of this house. And, of course, right after that, they put-- if you look right back here, you see they put up an 8-foot fence behind there. And they were nervous. You see that they have-- in their garage, they have some wire mesh over the windows in the back of the garage. They're feared.

DAN GUNDERSON: The shooting incident last summer involved a domestic dispute among several Hispanics. It has raised the level of fear among neighborhood residents. Among many white residents, the 20th Street area is known as Little Tijuana or Mexican village.

And because it's one area where housing is available to Hispanics, large numbers gather here in the summer months. Last summer, as many as 200 people crowded into a 17-unit apartment. The building shows the results of heavy use. Few windows or patio doors have screens, and much of the front lawn is worn to bare dirt.

MARY LARSON: A very small minority of the people that come up are actually get work in the fields.

DAN GUNDERSON: Mary Larson is president of the Fargo-Moorhead Apartment Owners' Association.

MARY LARSON: And the rest of them have nothing to do all day long, but spend their money on fun things and have parties in their apartments. And yeah, they do. They trash the apartments. And with the number of people that are involved in those things and in those apartments, damage has got to be-- is going to be done. Plumbing fixtures ripped off the walls and holes in the walls having to redo the carpeting-- many, many landlords have enormous amounts of problems with that.

SPEAKER 4: Buenos dias. Buenos dias. Come on.

SPEAKER 5: Buenos dias.

SPEAKER 4: Buenos dias.

SPEAKER 5: Buenos dias.

SPEAKER 4: Buenos dias.

DAN GUNDERSON: Moorhead police officers are getting a basic introduction to Spanish. This year for the first time, the class is required for all officers. The force has had no bilingual officers in the past.

LEA SHARROCK: We need to gear up on our own-- from our own standpoint.

SPEAKER 4: Buenos dias.

LEA SHARROCK: And because this problem is not going to go away, it's going to continue. I'm positive of that.

DAN GUNDERSON: Moorhead Police Chief Les Sharrock.

LES SHARROCK: In past years, your migrants coming up have been pretty family oriented. They come up as a work unit, as a family unit. And they work out in the fields, and then they leave. They buy food and stuff here. And usually, you don't even know they're around in terms of problems. That's starting to change.

And we're seeing the younger individuals that seem to be more problematic than the older ones. And we have problems year round that are non-migrant related. But when the migrants come in, we have problems with shoplifting, domestics, drunk driving, traffic violations, drug laws. And certainly, the drug problem is directly attributed to them, to the migrant and Hispanic-type population. So that's a fact.

ABNER ARAUZA: There is always a group of people that attract the attention of any community in a very negative light.

DAN GUNDERSON: Abner Arauza is a former migrant worker. He now heads the Minority Student Affairs department at Moorhead State University.

ABNER ARAUZA: And to try to deny that there are those who abuse the social services, that there are those who are pushing drugs is useless. They are there. To say that that is part of the culture or that that is normal or even accepted-- it's not. The majority, the great majority of Hispanics frown on that and look at that in a better light as anybody else in the community.

DAN GUNDERSON: Josie Gonzalez is also a former migrant. She's now a Clay County social worker.

JOSIE GONZALEZ: And I thought that discrimination was very bad in Texas. It's so blatant. When I came to Minnesota, I was-- it's like there is no discrimination in Minnesota. There is no discrimination. Everyone treats you so nice. But as I've grown up, and as I've worked in this position, I have seen the discrimination.

My husband works for the newspaper for The Forum. And he gets out very, very late in the evening. And in the morning hours, he's followed home. He's been followed home. I don't know how many times because of that. And I'm sure they wouldn't have followed anybody else. My children have been followed in stores. I've experienced discrimination in the school system with my children, people making derogatory comments about Mexicans and other racial comments about other people of color.

[SIDE CONVERSATION]

DAN GUNDERSON: While accurate numbers are difficult to get, it's estimated about 10,000 migrant farm workers will come to the Red River Valley this year. Only about 5,000 jobs will be available. The Red River Valley is a flat expanse of some of the richest farmland in the world spreading from the banks of the meandering Red River of the North into Eastern North Dakota and Northwestern Minnesota.

The valley leads the nation in the production of sugar. And migrant workers are an integral part of the sugar industry, helping to thin the sugar beets so they grow to maximum size and weeding the fields when chemicals don't do the job.

Entire families can be seen working their way down the seemingly endless rows of sugar beet plants. A family can earn thousands of dollars over the summer averaging about $5 an hour. That's double or even triple the pay they can earn in Texas if work can even be found in Texas.

JOHN BIEWEN: This is John Biewen. An old Union Pacific engine has reached the end of its line at the edge of Crystal City, Texas. Crystal City is a town of 9,000, situated in a seemingly arbitrary spot in South Central Texas's rolling brush country about 40 miles from the Mexican border.

From here, it's a 30-hour drive to the Red River Valley of North Dakota and Minnesota. But walk up to anybody in Crystal City and mention Moorhead, or Crookston, or Grand Forks, and you're likely to get a nod of recognition. I went there for years, they'll say. Or I'm going next week.

CHOIR: [SINGING IN SPANISH]

JOHN BIEWEN: It's standing-room only on a Sunday morning in May at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in the middle of Crystal City. Sacred Heart is a white clay cathedral topped by a rounded Spanish cupola, light streams in through the many stained glass portraits of saints.

This is a special day at the church. Once a year, migrant farm workers are invited to bring their cars and trucks to the church parking lot after mass to have them blessed for a safe journey north and a safe return.

LEO MARTINEZ: [SPEAKING IN SPANISH]

JOHN BIEWEN: Father Leo Martinez says a Traveler's Prayer then walks around the parking lot sprinkling holy water on dozens of cars and trucks. Some people open their hoods and ask the priest to sprinkle the holy water on their engines.

Are you going north?

SPEAKER 6: Wahpeton.

JOHN BIEWEN: You going to Wahpeton, North Dakota.

SPEAKER 6: Mm-hmm.

JOHN BIEWEN: Do you go every year up there?

SPEAKER 6: Yes, for four years.

JOHN BIEWEN: How many of you go?

SPEAKER 6: We're eight in the family.

JOHN BIEWEN: Will you all get in this truck?

SPEAKER 6: Yes. All of them, eight and a friend.

SPEAKER 7: Up north, hopefully, we'll be traveling to Minnesota. Hopefully, everything will go great on our way over there, and the Lord will bless us all the way over there and back again.

NOEMI COMPION: A good percent, 70% to 80% of the people migrate.

JOHN BIEWEN: Noemi Compion manages the Crystal City Office of the Texas Employment Commission.

NOEMI COMPION: This whole area consists mostly of seasonal employment. And they grow all different kinds of crops all year round. And the area for it were called the Winter Garden area because overall, all year round, we have crops that are constantly harvested.

JOHN BIEWEN: Compion says the unemployment rate in Crystal City approaches 20%. But just as important, the jobs that do exist are sporadic and low paying, near the minimum wage and sometimes, as we'll see, well below it. A lucky 300 people have year-round work at the local Del Monte cannery, but most work is in the fields, weeding and harvesting spinach, onions, carrots, cabbage, and other vegetables.

Pablo Aguillon, who is executive director of Community Agency for Self-Help, a local social service agency, says it is not for fun or adventure that Crystal City's people have gone north every summer for the last half century.

PABLO AGUILLON: A lot of it has to do with the shortage of jobs in this area during the summer months. The crops that prevail around here in summer are mostly grains, sorghum, wheat, stuff like that that is not labor intensive. So people around here in summer had nothing to do, and pretty much, they still don't have anything to do. So they were forced to go elsewhere to seek employment.

JOHN BIEWEN: South Texas along the Mexican border is one of the nation's poorest regions. In 1988, the per capita income in Crystal City's Zavala County was $6,500. That's less than half the average income in Clay County, Minnesota, where Moorhead is located.

JUAN DURAN: All these people that are all around here are farmworkers. All of them I know. I know them by name almost.

JOHN BIEWEN: Juan Duran leads me on a drive through one of Crystal City's poorest barrios on the east side of town. Duran is an intense, strongly built man with a thick mustache and a slight paunch. Born in Mexico, Duran has lived in Crystal City since he was a small child.

He still lives with his mother, a couple of brothers, and their families. Now 45, Duran is a migrant farm worker who travels every summer to Hillsborough North Dakota 40 miles north of Fargo. And he's part of a small organization in Crystal City that advocates for migrants.

JUAN DURAN: The only way in recent ages-- in recent months, the only way that the family has survived is because they stick together. They sweat it out together. And they live in the same house. You find their sisters. Even though the brothers are married, they stay in the same house in order to survive.

JOHN BIEWEN: The houses here are tiny, one room shanties. Some of them sided with unpainted wood or tar paper.

JUAN DURAN: There's people living there. There's children there. That house over there has an outhouse over there in the back.

JOHN BIEWEN: Duran says the relatively new cars and trucks parked in front of some of these houses don't indicate wealth but the importance of a reliable vehicle for a migrant family.

This is the home of Juan Duran's friend, Francisco Medina. In the yard outside Medina's modest house, along with the caged chickens, are a couple of cars long dead, a washer and dryer, and other junk. But the grass is freshly mowed. And Medina serves iced tea in the shade under a mesquite tree.

[ROOSTER CROWS]

FRANCISCO MEDINA: For the last maybe 20 years, I've been in Minnesota and North Dakota. But before I was-- before I was getting married, I was going with my father to Ohio. And then we've been to Colorado too. So like I say, all my life we've been migrant. Part of that we was migrants here in the state of Texas. It used to be a lot of work on north of Texas too for the migrants, but now they got a lot of machines that they not using the migrants. That's the reason.

JOHN BIEWEN: Medina is 57 and the father of 11 children. He says the older ones have gotten educated or married and are out of migrant work. But he says it's too late for him to change livelihoods. Medina, his wife, and their three youngest children will go north in a couple of weeks to work for a sugar beet farmer near Felton, Minnesota, just outside of Moorhead. But he says like in Texas, the farm work in the Red River Valley isn't what it used to be.

FRANCISCO MEDINA: Especially on these last two years, it's been-- I mean, too short of work. You say you work mostly just June and July, and that's it. And then in August, you don't have nothing until start the crop again of the potatoes and the beet.

JOHN BIEWEN: So what do you do when you're not working up there?

FRANCISCO MEDINA: Well, I say taking a rest. That's all. I'm not working because there's no work. But if there's going to be work, then I'll be working.

JOHN BIEWEN: Medina says his family earns about $10,000 a year doing seasonal farm work. They survive with the help of food stamps. Juan Duran.

JUAN DURAN: You can't get rich. None of us got rich from that work. We simply got our one block, one lot, one-- our house and that little square of land. And we have a little garden here or chickens. And that's all we have. This is it, I mean, after all these years of work.

JOHN BIEWEN: Crystal City is over 90% Hispanic. There's a lot more Spanish spoken in the town than English. Yet until the 1960s, the local political power was in the hands of the white or Anglo minority. Then local activists created a third political party, Raza Unida or United Race, and got Mexican Americans elected to virtually all the city council, school board, and judicial seats.

Pablo Aguillon of Community Agency for Self-Help says that transformation has opened up some opportunities for educated Hispanics in Crystal City, but hasn't done much for the large number of farm workers.

PABLO AGUILLON: I suppose that we were able to control the numbers and control politics and get our people employed, and elected, and stuff like that. But we've never been able to do anything about the economy. Even now, Mexican Americans don't-- not in our area or not landowners. They're not business owners. I shouldn't say business owners because we have some. But by and large, they're all Anglo. And so the economy is still pretty much controlled by the minority, by the Anglo, you know?

JOHN BIEWEN: Bees Golden Bowl restaurant on the strip in Crystal City is run by Anglos largely for Anglos. At breakfast time, everyone in the small cafe is white, most of them men in cowboy hats. Kenneth Coleman, a farm chemical salesman, voices a common perception of migrant farm workers.

KENNETH COLEMAN: I guess you'd call them a double dipper because they come down here and follow them in Minnesota, and go to Minnesota and follow unemployment on them down here. So they're not so dumb. I don't think. 90% of them are just-- they'll go up there and work, and come down here and do virtually nothing, sit on the street corners. They have new pickups. But they work the whole family. That's all I got to say about it.

JOHN BIEWEN: Farmer Bruce Fraser, whose family owns a thousand acres south of Crystal City and employs hundreds of Hispanic field workers, says he respects those workers.

BRUCE FRASER: I don't have any problem. I go to work. I speak Spanish all day long. I provide a fair wage. When my workers see me down the street, they yell at me, say hi. Their kids know me. And the average worker working my onion fields making $8.75 an hour.

JOHN BIEWEN: But farm workers reply that the landowners always make such claims. The reality they say is quite different.

Before dawn on a Saturday morning, workers arrive at an onion field about 30 miles from Crystal City. It's just after 6 o'clock, and the sky over the large flat field is turning a light gray. About 50 men, women, and teenagers spread out across one end of the field, five rows apart. Each has a five gallon bucket, a bunch of burlap sacks, and a scissors-like tool for clipping the roots and stems off the onions.

The workers don't talk much. They're focused on their job. Some of the older men and women work on their knees to spare their backs. The pay is by the bushel on this day, $0.60 for a sack or two large buckets full. The onions are small. Many of them no bigger than a golf ball, and it takes a lot of them to fill a sack.

But the workers move slowly across the field, each leaving a trail of full 50-pound sacks behind them. By late morning, there's a strong breeze, and the temperature has climbed into the 80s. After four hours of work, Adolfo Teus has finished a row. He's leaving, and he's not happy.

How much money did you make working this morning?

ADOLFO TEUS: I don't know. I made 17 sacks.

JOHN BIEWEN: OK, so maybe $9 or so, $9 or $10.

ADOLFO TEUS: Something like that.

JOHN BIEWEN: Why is the pay so low for this?

ADOLFO TEUS: I don't know. That's what I want to know. I don't know. They should be paying about $0.70 or a dollar at least. Onions are too small, and you can't make too many sacks. But they just want-- they got about 10 or 15 years paying $0.50 virtually, and that's it's not enough money.

JOHN BIEWEN: Teus's his son, Adolfo Jr., who is 24, clipped 10 sacks of onions, earning $6 in four hours.

ADOLFO TEUS JR.: You don't make it. I mean, you don't make it. You need a lot of money for gas and all that. So you don't get too much money for this work. I don't think--

JOHN BIEWEN: I talked with several people who've earned $2 an hour or less for this morning's work. That, of course, is illegal. The minimum wage is $3.80 an hour. The farmer who owns this land is a wealthy white man. The workers asked me not to reveal the farmer's name for fear he won't hire them again.

On the way back to Crystal City, migrant Juan Duran explains the fear that keeps workers from reporting minimum wage violations to the Texas Labor Department.

JUAN DURAN: It could be done. But even the farm workers-- they know that if we got organized and try to do something about the piece rate to bring it up to the level of the minimum wage, the grower would say, OK, I'm not going to plant anything. I'm just going to shut off the farm. And I'm going to go into something else. I'm just going to do something else.

And then he fires all the crew leaders. And the crew leaders take it on us, and they say, see what you did? Another one of your mess-- you mess up the whole thing again. And that's why farm workers are afraid to start anything.

JOHN BIEWEN: And according to community service worker Pablo Aguillon, workers in South Texas have to accept low wages because the region has practically an unlimited supply of poor laborers, American citizens as well as legal and illegal aliens from Mexico.

PABLO AGUILLON: There's people all over the place that are willing to work. They need to work. And some are in such a desperate situation that they'll work for whatever wages are available as long as they can put bread on the table, that sort of thing.

JOHN BIEWEN: So by comparison, the $5 an hour that the average farm worker makes in the Red River Valley is good money. And since even the lower paying work is scarce in Texas in the summer, seasonal workers, who don't have jobs arranged in the Midwest, go north anyway with the idea they have nothing to lose.

Juan Duran has spent several months in the Red River Valley for every one of the last 27 years. He says he and many other migrant workers view the valley as their second home. Being seen as a problem in your second home, Duran says, is frustrating.

JUAN DURAN: Our families were conditioned to think it's springtime. Get up and pack everything. Put it in the truck and the pickup and on the station wagon. Let's go up north. Let's go to Minnesota. This is the thing to do. But the thing is that the farmer told the head of the household we don't have work for you anymore. It's 1989. It's 1990. I don't need you. I don't want you.

But the kid was born in Halstad, Minnesota. He has a little baby and his girl. All he knows is that when spring comes, it's get up and go. And he goes. And they feel that it's like going to see old folks, go back to where you been. And they get there, and they find themselves out of place, no work.

Where they go? They go to cheap motels. And they're stuck up like sardines in small motels around Fargo-Moorhead for days without any work, watching TV, drinking beer. And here comes somebody say, look at the migrants. They're doing-- they're throwing beer cans. These are the migrants. Look at them. Tell them to go home. They bringing in drugs.

And they going around and getting all-- yeah, but they're not thinking about what we brought into this community for years. They are seeing the product of progress they have come to this land. Progress came with all those years of hard work. And we just an excess to that progress. We just being left out. And we're not a necessity anymore. And it seems like some people just want to get rid of us.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[SIDE CONVERSATION]

DAN GUNDERSON: This is Dan Gunderson. It's about 20 minutes to 8:00 in the morning. And in the lobby of the job service office in Moorhead, more than a dozen Hispanic men and women are waiting for the office doors to open. For Roberto, it's the first time he's come to the Red River Valley as a migrant worker. He's arrived with four other families, all here for the first time.

ROBERTO: Couldn't find a work where we live at. That's why. Outside of Lubbock, the minimum wage went up. And the guys don't want to pay that much for hoeing. Usually, they pay about $2.50, $2.75 an hour. Last year, they paid $3.35. And this year, the guys that I worked for-- they said they can't afford that much. So I decided to go somewhere else.

JOSIE GONZALES: [SPEAKING SPANISH]

DAN GUNDERSON: Josie Gonzalez works in the Clay County Social Service Migrant Center. After having their offices overwhelmed last year, the county rented this empty office building in the city's industrial park to accommodate the growing number of migrants who are seeking assistance.

JOSIE GONZALEZ: The majority of people that come in our office are destitute. They're expedited for food stamp services. And anyone who comes into our office before 4:30 gets service that same day.

DAN GUNDERSON: The demand for emergency shelter is one of the few available gauges of how sharply the migrant farm worker population has increased in the Red River Valley. Five years ago, Clay County spent $30,000 to house 124 families. Last year, the county spent a quarter million dollars to house more than 500 families.

Across the river in Fargo, the county social service office is not flooded with migrant workers. Benefits are lower in North Dakota and more difficult to qualify for. And North Dakota does not have the emergency housing program that's available in Moorhead. Clay County officials say the migrants bring thousands of dollars into the county through federal programs like food stamps. And their emergency housing funds go to local property owners.

But many white residents of Moorhead and other communities in the Red River Valley feel the migrants are getting a free ride at the expense of local taxpayers. Moorhead State University sociologist Michael Hughey says those perceptions cause bitter resentment.

MICHAEL HUGHEY: Most of the people in this area are what of Norwegian background, in other words, themselves, the descendants of immigrants. And they have the understanding that all immigrants in the past worked their way in. They underwent the assimilative process. And they found jobs, and they worked hard. And they melted and have become Americans, right?

There is a perception, which tends to be directed mainly toward Blacks and Hispanic peoples. And this, of course, is in the aftermath of the civil rights movement that they walked in without paying the price, without doing the hard work.

DAN GUNDERSON: In the past, there was generally a balance between the number of migrant workers who came to the valley and the number of jobs available. And most farmers provided housing for the migrants on their farms, but now less than one third of farmers provide housing.

Jimmy Nelson has several hundred acres of sugar beet fields just south of Moorhead. 40 years ago, his father hired nearly two dozen migrants to work his fields. Jimmy says the need for migrants has steadily declined. And this year, he has a crew of three. He stopped providing housing five years ago.

JIMMY NELSON: I might-- maybe stick up-- or buy a trailer and stick it in there. But there again, with the county codes and now you have to-- if I get a trailer, it costs me more to put in the sewer system than it does to buy the trailer and hook up everything.

RHONDA LUNDQUIST: Most of the housing is governed by Minnesota Department of Health standards, which are basic standards for safety and sanitation. They're not stringent. They're not extreme standards at all.

DAN GUNDERSON: Rhonda Lundquist is homeless program coordinator for the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency. She oversees a $100,000 appropriation from the state legislature aimed at finding a solution to the problem of adequate housing for migrant workers.

But she had a difficult time finding anyone who was willing to take the money. The funds are now being administered by the Moorhead Migrant Issues Task Force. Farmers can get a $1 match for every $2 they put into migrant housing.

But a recent survey by the Red River Valley Sugar Beet Growers Association showed that a majority of growers are not interested even with an economic incentive. City residents and local officials have directed some of their resentment at growers. They say the growers are avoiding their responsibility to care for migrant workers. Jimmy Nelson says he and other growers are being blamed for a situation that's not of their making.

JIMMY NELSON: Because they want to get a job with us, it makes it look like we're asking them to come all up, and I guess we're not.

DAN GUNDERSON: But more and more migrants are coming to the valley, and signs of Hispanic culture are becoming more visible in the mostly white community. Efforts are being made in the schools and by a community migrant issues task force to integrate the two cultures, but little common ground is visible for two cultures who are dependent on each other economically but unwilling to integrate socially.

CHOIR: [SINGING IN SPANISH]

DAN GUNDERSON: A Spanish language mass is being held on Sunday afternoon at Saint Francis de Sales Catholic Church in Moorhead. The service is organized by the Crookston Catholic Diocese. It's part of an effort by Brother William McDonald to serve the migrants' needs. Brother McDonald also hopes to help create an awareness of the cultural gap through seminars on the subject of prejudice.

WILLIAM MCDONALD: We've got more and more of the Hispanic people settling in town in Fargo-Moorhead in East Grand Forks and Crookston here. So this is becoming a reality. And it's time that the citizens-- let's say the people who have lived here for a long time begin to address the issue. I think we begin to take a look at the actions of how many sermons have been preached on racial justice in local parishes. I think we-- as churches, we've got a lot-- we've been real slow on that.

DAN GUNDERSON: Sandy Holmberg is head of the Moorhead Ministerial Association.

SANDY HOLMBERG: If you ask people around town if they're prejudiced, most of them will say no. These people are welcome. So it's a real subtle level of prejudice going on. Some of them are outright anti-minorities. Keep those people out of here. We don't need them. They don't look like us, or dress like us, or whatever.

I think it-- morally, I think the church has-- the church, all of us have a responsibility to speak out against prejudice. And I try to do that. But I can't say what happens in other churches around town.

SPEAKER 8: Please stay with us and enjoy an hour of Latin music and a view of Hispanic culture. [SPEAKING SPANISH]

DAN GUNDERSON: A Spanish and English language radio show is beamed weekly from a local college radio station. It's one of Abner Arauza's efforts to introduce Hispanic culture to the area. There are no reliable numbers, but as many as several hundred Hispanic families now call the Red River Valley home. Hispanics like Abner and Josie, who settle in Moorhead, find, even as professionals in the community, many local residents often treat them in the same prejudicial ways that migrant workers are treated.

ABNER ARAUZA: It hasn't been more than like about a month ago that one of the neighbors was telling me-- he said, you know what? When I'm really-- I think his words were like, I'm really glad that you turned out to be a good neighbor because when you were going to buy this house, there were a number of people who wanted to do things to stop you from buying this house because of what it would do to the neighborhood.

DAN GUNDERSON: Within a decade, there may be dramatically fewer migrant workers needed in the Red River Valley. Machines to thin the beets may be perfected by then. Chemicals may control all weeds, or congress may act to eliminate the import quotas, which now protect domestic sugar producers from cheaper sugar produced abroad.

Efforts to break the migrant lifestyle through training and education will continue, but the season of discontent in the Red River Valley is only a symptom of a much larger problem. There is a growing population of Hispanics and other minorities in this country who want to work and who will take almost any job for almost any pay.

45-year-old Juan Duran, who we first met trying to organize the workers in the Winter Garden fields of Texas, has now traveled to the Red River Valley for the season and is hard at work in the sugar beet fields.

JUAN DURAN: I say these federal programs-- as good as they are and as well intended they are, this is just a patch, you know? I mean, they're just holding the-- it's like there's a big damp. And it has a hole. And they just put their finger in there trying to stop the water from breaking away.

And it's something that's like saying this situation in the cities right now with the agricultural workers-- same thing is getting out of hand. It's going to blow up. I mean, people are going to-- it's like a cook room, you know?

[SIDE CONVERSATION]

DAN GUNDERSON: Season of Discontent-- Migrants in the Red River Valley was written and produced by Dan Gunderson and John Biewen with Dan Olson, editor Kate Moos, technical directors Alan Strickland and Bill Nicholson, executive producer George Bouzy.

BOB POTTER: Stephen Cooper, Minnesota commissioner of human rights is in the studio now. We'll visit with him for the balance of the hour about some of the issues raised in the documentary. And maybe we can move on to some other race issues as well in the state of Minnesota. Stephen, welcome. Nice to have you back.

STEPHEN COOPER: Well, good afternoon. Thank you for having me.

BOB POTTER: How much, first of all, of the department's workload do you think deals with migrant farm workers?

STEPHEN COOPER: Our total caseload-- it probably constitutes under 10% of the total caseload. But you've got to remember, we handle such a wide range of things. We handle age discrimination, gender discrimination, disability discrimination. The migrant cases primarily come in under race or national origin discrimination.

So they probably constitute less than 10% of our total caseload. But somewhat disturbingly, we're seeing a significant increase in the number of cases coming out of that community in the state because we think discrimination and hostile feelings is on the increase in the state of Minnesota, which, of course, is disappointing.

BOB POTTER: Mm-hmm. So race relations are not improving in the northwestern part of the state or elsewhere, where there are migrant workers.

STEPHEN COOPER: Yeah, or elsewhere. I mean, you may have noticed in the paper down in Albert Lea about a month ago, there was a refusal to hire somebody who was bilingual because the allegation went they didn't want to have to offer services to Spanish speakers.

Throughout the state, we see the problems mainly throughout the farm areas and the state areas where there is a demand for migrant labor. You tend to see this class system get set up where the way they sort of mentality. Well, sure, it's interesting. As I was listening to the report, I think a part of the report fed a number of the stereotypes we have and reinforce them.

I think a lot of times we suffer from three things. First of all, we suffer from selective empathy. And second of all, we suffer from false or exaggerated stereotypes. So when I say selective empathy, I just think in the last few weeks, there's been a lot of concern about saving the jobs at the Schmidt Brewery.

Last year, and the year before, and the year before that, there was tremendous concern about the farm economy and the drought and making sure that government was there to help out farmers, and government was there to help out businesses that were dependent upon farmers when those sorts of changes, such as the drought or economic conditions have changed.

Of course, farmers throughout the history of our nation-- or not throughout the history, but certainly throughout this century-- have been an economy that government has been very concerned to preserve, even if it meant pouring in lots of state and federal dollars. Both the state and the federal government do that routinely.

A couple of years ago, when the Iron Range was hit with economic hardship, we moved quickly to try to help out folks that were dislodged from their jobs. And I think I mentioned the Schmidt Brewery thing right here in Saint Paul. That selective empathy-- we feel empathy. We feel an obligation to our fellow citizens for those kinds of problems.

But if job shifts have happened so that there's less opportunity for work up in the Red River Valley or elsewhere in the state, that same empathy isn't there. And that's quite disturbing. And the only reason it's not there I think is because there's an ability we have to not feel that sense of humanity towards people who we think are in some way different than us.

And sometimes it gets us selective as we see in Central Europe today, where you'll see people who have lived together in the same communities for thousands of years saying, well, that's a Serb. I don't like Serbs. Or that's a Czech. I don't like Czechs. Or that's a Pole. I don't like Poles.

In the United States, it's not quite that bad. But when we come to racial differences or color differences, we still are pretty bad, and we really-- that refusal to feel empathy that we would quickly feel for groups that we identify with and then get angry that people are saying, well, why should we feel empathy?

When you look at Minnesota-- and one of the analogies I like to use a lot-- every year a lot of people come up to Minnesota in the springtime and leave Minnesota in the fall. And they go to Texas, and/or they come from Texas. And, of course, that's the Minnesota snowbirds, the folks from Minnesota that are retired and like to go down to Texas when it's warm down there and like to come up here when it's warm here.

If they were treated, and if they were regarded in the same manner that people were coming up here to work, not to vacation, not to recreate, but to work-- if folks in Texas down in McAllen, or Harlingen, or all those other towns down there in the valley were treated in the same manner, we would be outraged. We would be just absolutely-- beside ourself, some of the stereotypes. And I get off of the selective empathy and--

BOB POTTER: Yeah, dealing with those stereotypes.

STEPHEN COOPER: A number of the stereotypes that the report touched upon-- first, the crime issue. It's interesting. There's this stereotype that migrants and Hispanics are involved in crime, in our crime problems when, in fact, we see in Minnesota, the group of people have the lowest crime rate, dramatically lower than whites, is Hispanics.

The crime-- if you go and look at the populations through checking by conviction records, or arrest records, or things of that nature, you find Hispanics have much lower crime rates than do whites. Yet the false stereotype that Hispanics lead to crime is perpetuated. And it's totally false, the idea that they're a drain on our economy.

Minnesota, at least recently-- and I haven't checked the statistics for the last couple of years. But Minnesota has been a net benefit state as opposed to a net detriment state in terms of the number of dollars that other states spend on Minnesotans, homeless folks who may have migrated down to Arizona or California because of the cold weather. Other states spend more on Minnesotans than Minnesotans spend on people from other states.

As was mentioned in the report, a lot of the money that goes to the migrants is federal money. It's money that comes from the federal government. And people forget that when people spend money, it boosts your local economy. It's a net gain to the local community, often in areas where they're thinking of it as a net detriment.

BOB POTTER: Although I suspect the people in those communities would argue that their tax dollars are going to support unemployment comp, and welfare benefits, and schooling, and all the other services that are provided.

STEPHEN COOPER: Yeah, and as I say, when you total up all the dollars, you find that there's a lot more money that's generated by the presence of the migrants than spent. And people are very resistant and very reluctant to believe that because they believe stereotypes like the one you just said-- all were paying for the schools or were paying for this. The reality is that more money is coming into the community than the community is spending.

Then there's the other simple thing, which is just flat-out racism. And it's just a belief. We've done-- there's been communities around the state that have complained, jeez, we've got our schools, and let's use schools. Our schools are overstretched because all the migrants have decided to live here and stay here as if-- and of course, the idea-- the word "migrant" suddenly strips a person of the fact that they're no longer considered US citizens.

I mean, could you imagine somebody in Saint Paul who had a job opportunity in Denver, or in Chicago, or in New York going there and finding out we don't want Saint Paulites here? These are Chicagoan jobs. These are Los Angelen jobs. These are New Yorker jobs. Get out of here. We'd be stunned.

As Americans, we believe-- and it's one of the great geniuses of our country. We believe in the right to travel throughout the country so that when economic opportunities shift unlike other countries, we have the ability to shift with it. If there's great job opportunities in Houston, people can go to Houston. If there's great job opportunities in Chicago, people can go to Chicago.

That's one of the strengths of our economies, not the weakness. But I can just imagine how somebody who applied for a job in Los Angeles or San Diego was told, I'm sorry, you're the best applicant, but we're not going to consider you because you're from Saint Paul, or Minneapolis, or Fargo, or Moorhead.

BOB POTTER: There was a phrase in the report I'd like you to comment on, which was the idea of essentially breaking the migrant worker pattern. Is that considered a desirable thing, the idea that maybe these folks will not go around from state to state doing agricultural work, but maybe settle someplace, take up new professions careers, et cetera?

STEPHEN COOPER: Yeah, and one-- and that's where we see racism come the most pronounced. People mouth rhetoric that they really don't believe when it comes, yes, that's desirable. It's desirable to give people the skills and the opportunity to have a better life and a more fruitful life than the economic life you have as a migrant.

But when we see that-- and that's happening in Minnesota. We see people going to school here. We see people-- and then there's resentment towards that. My goodness, why are they going to school here? The theory-- and it's a very discriminatory, very racist one-- is, no, we mean settle down somewhere else, not settle down here.

And I started to mention that thing with the schools. They're one of the school districts we took a look at, where the public was quite concerned about all the new migrants and saying, there's 48 migrant families and 72 children-- I'm just approximating the numbers. I don't remember them exactly-- and what a strain that is on the local school system.

Well, that was-- those facts were true, but they left out the interesting facts that there were 150 new white families or European families and with three times as many total children as the migrants. The one group they viewed as a burden-- people moving in from Iowa, or from North Dakota, or South Dakota.

They never thought twice about it. It seemed totally natural to them that if you lived up on the Iron Range, and times were rough, you'd move to another area. Or if you lived out in North Dakota, and you lost your farm, you'd move to another area. Or if you're in Iowa, and you wanted to come north, you'd move to another area. So nobody counted all those, the much larger number.

But if you were a Hispanic, and you'd been on the migrant agricultural life, and you decided you were going to go to school at one of the great vocational institutes we have in Minnesota that we can be real proud of-- and we do have excellent vocational institutes throughout the state that our state has placed them throughout the state-- you don't have to come to Saint Paul. If you want to get a degree in auto mechanics, you don't have to come to Minneapolis for those kinds of things.

When they start to avail themselves of that, the North Dakotan, who's never spent a day in his or her life in Minnesota, is welcomed. The person, who's spent 27 years of their life up here every summer working to make our economy work in the fields, is resented. That's racism. There's no other way around it.

BOB POTTER: How do you get around that? How do you combat that? Other than enforcement of laws and rules, how do you change people's minds about the selective empathy and the stereotyping?

STEPHEN COOPER: You make them think about it. And a couple of the people in the documentary were talking about churches addressing it. And that's a very important place. Churches, when they have chosen to, have been one of the best educators on race issues and on discrimination issues.

If you recall back to the '50s and '60s, churches were very involved in helping us understand ourselves better and helping us think about our weaknesses here, and it is a weakness holding us accountable. And, of course, schools is the second area. It's very important that schools be involved. And that programs like yours. I mean, today's program is certainly a step that helps do that.

Basically, most forms of prejudice and discrimination cannot stand the daylight if you are held up to the scrutiny of logic, common sense and really forced to think about. That's why people get so angry when you make them talk about those things because our biases are stubborn. And they don't want to be exposed. And they don't want to come out. And then you get angry about it.

And it's funny you can talk forever about certain things. But if you talk about things that people know they're on weak ground about, their first defense is often anger. The first thing they come with is they get pissed at you. They just don't like the fact that you're making them actually be consistent and think about what they're saying.

BOB POTTER: Minnesota Human Rights commissioner Stephen Cooper is with us today as we talk about a number of race issues in the state of Minnesota. Let's move on briefly from the migrant situation to the more general problem of racism in Minnesota. What kind of a-- what kind of a report card would you give Minnesota on the racism issue today?

STEPHEN COOPER: Well, I think that we'd be down there in the C range.

BOB POTTER: Really?

STEPHEN COOPER: Minnesota was, for a long time, one of the great motivators for the whole country. I mean, people like Hubert Humphrey and others who really brought the issue or helped-- and they weren't alone of course, but they helped bring the issue to us nationally. But Minnesota suffers as most the country has suffered from in the last 10 years of thinking the problem was solved when it wasn't.

And we're seeing very disturbing things. Hate crime activities in Minnesota have doubled in the last year. We find our hate crime levels are much higher than comparable states, probably two times higher. In fact, there's more hate crimes that take place in the metropolitan area than in the states of Washington and Oregon put together.

BOB POTTER: Give me a definition of a hate crime--

STEPHEN COOPER: Hate crime is a crime that you commit against somebody because of their race or other demographic reason, maybe their religion. For instance, a couple examples in the metropolitan areas-- we've had four cross burnings in the last year. Three of those were because of race, and one of those was because of either national origin or religion. That was the one out there at the synagogue where the Russian immigrant had come over. It was part of that congregation.

So we've had-- other sorts of things are beatings and murders. We've had the skinheads attacks, and we've had various other things of that nature. Those are hate crimes sorts of things, everything from calling you up at night and saying, blankety, blankety-blank, get the heck out of this neighborhood. We're going to burn your house down to actually doing something about it. All of those are hate crimes.

BOB POTTER: Yeah. Well, how about housing patterns in Minnesota? Are they becoming more segregated or less?

STEPHEN COOPER: Well, National Geographic, about two years ago, did that study of all American towns. And Minnesota had, I think, 4 of the top 10 and had the number one spot. New Ulm, Minnesota, is the most homogeneous city in the country with something like 95% or higher German American. And three other Minnesota towns were on that list of top 10, if my memory serves me correctly.

Basically, Minnesota's a very segregated state. We're one of the most white states. And even beyond that, Minnesota's housing patterns-- you and I both could sit here, and you could get out a map of Minnesota. And I could say, well, that's a Norwegian town, and that's a German town, and that's an Irish town, and that's-- you don't use a term like Scandinavian in Minnesota. It's too general.

Basically, you have Norwegian, and you have Swedish, and et cetera. Minnesota tends to continue to be very segregated. And it's something that actually, in the metropolitan area, we've started to see some progress, but still not the sort of progress you would have expected over all these years, a disturbing thing along that line.

And I haven't had the chance to confirm it with our own data, but the Atlanta Constitution, a newspaper in Atlanta, Georgia, did a survey. And one of the folks at the Humphrey Institute, in fact, was instrumental in helping do that. Of all the states in the union, as far as likelihood of getting a mortgage, if you had identical financial data, but whether you were African American or European American, Minnesota was one of the five or 10 worst states.

In other words, we were most likely to discriminate in the granting of loans solely based on somebody's race. I think the reason for that is I don't think we have a whole lot of people sitting there saying, hey, this person's African-American or this person's European American. But it's influencing them on a subconscious level. And we're not sufficiently concerned about it to catch ourselves doing it.

When I go into the high schools-- just jumping a little bit to the mood-- when I go in the high schools, I find the overwhelming majority of kids tell racist jokes and have no idea there's anything wrong with it. They say, well, what's wrong with that? It's just fun.

Of course, sociologists and psychiatrists show us that one of the number one ways that we perpetuate our biases is with racist jokes because I couldn't come up to you and start saying racist things. You'd say, hey, that's inappropriate. But if I tell you the racist joke, I give you the same message, but I do it in a way that you associate with humor and good times.

Same way we sell stuff on TV. What's McDonald's ad? McDonald's ad is food, friends, and fun. What does friends and fun have to do with McDonald's? Nothing, but it increases the probability you'll go there, so friends and fun. And if you associate racist jokes with friends and fun, you're selling racism, even though you may not even think about it that's what you're doing.

BOB POTTER: It seems like we've backtracked to some extent in this area. After the 1960s, there was quite a bit of consciousness about that. And now we see all this additional increase in racism. Why is that? And particularly among the young people.

STEPHEN COOPER: Yeah, I think the young people-- unfortunately, a large part of the responsibility for that I think has to go to the message that's been coming out of Washington. And for about 10 years, most of the years that young people have been conscious of these issues-- they've been sending a message, there's not a problem. Don't worry about it.

We have had tremendous backsliding. And if we look at almost all the data we see in 1990, we've slipped all the way back to 1970 levels. In other words, we've lost 20 years of progress. From '70 to '80, we were moving forward. And from '80, to '90, we were moving backward.

Young people weren't alive when Martin Luther King was alive, when Medgar Evers was alive, when Malcolm X was alive, when John F. Kennedy was alive, when Robert Kennedy was alive, when Hubert Humphrey was alive even. Most everybody in school these days-- that's about as meaningful to them as the Persian War is to me. I mean, it's things that are before the time period when I was alive. It's interesting to hear about, but what does it have to do with my day-to-day life?

BOB POTTER: But by the same token, the schools are much more integrated than they were 30 years ago.

STEPHEN COOPER: No, that's not true. The schools are more integrated in the metropolitan area, and that's about it.

BOB POTTER: OK.

STEPHEN COOPER: You go through most of the state, and most of the schools are not integrated. And even in the Metropolitan area, it tends to be only the urban schools-- that is to say the city itself, not the suburban schools-- that approach. And interestingly enough, when I talked at North High, and I asked kids if they told racist jokes, virtually nobody did. That was an integrated school. They understood day to day that hey, that's my friend John I'm talking about here.

But what you hear often in the schools that are primarily or predominantly white is no sense that there's anybody being insulted by that. This is a fictional thing. The person who's the butt of the joke is not real. And they don't realize that, oh, yeah, they are. But when you're sitting in an urban school, that's less likely to happen.

So I think some of the benefits of integration and the way that naturally it takes care of prejudices hasn't really been visited in Minnesota as much as it may have been in other places because we still tend to be very, very segregated.

BOB POTTER: Mm-hmm. Do you think that that is likely to change? And you talked about a certain town being a Norwegian town, another one being a Danish town, and so on and so forth. Is there anything so inherently wrong in that that's the way people have chosen to live?

STEPHEN COOPER: Well, the thing that's inherently wrong in it is if you then begin to think that's the real world. And you don't realize-- and you start to-- any time you have-- and again, take the Central Europe example I gave before, where you have people of different ethnicities at each other's throat, calling same sorts of terms you hear about different races here. They call each other lazy. They call each other criminals. They call each other every bad name, drug users, every bad name you can think of.

And for us, it's interesting to think that two different Czechoslovakians would call each other that because we think a Czechoslovakian is Czechoslovakian. But what tends to happen-- it's nothing wrong as long as you don't-- then take with that a whole lot of false understandings about other people that you never work to eradicate. And as you talked about before, if it's not taking place naturally, then you've got to work to do it.

The other thing is it gives us a tremendous disadvantage when we try to be economically competitive elsewhere. If you've grown up in an all-white community, and now you've got the opportunity to be the manager of a company in Chicago or something, and you moved there-- and you've never dealt with people of Puerto Rican descent. You've never dealt with people of Mexican descent. You've never dealt with people of African-American descent.

You have all kinds of false baggage in your mind, all kinds of incorrect-- and so suddenly, they realize you're not relating to them normally. You're kind of acting towards them differently. You're blowing your opportunity to be a success on that job, whereas somebody who had grown up in an integrated diverse community would not have a problem.

They'd be very successful because, hey, no problem here. I don't have the stereotypes that I've got to fight as much. But by and large, I think the key thing is-- and it doesn't matter how you do it. It just matters that you do do it. You don't let all kinds of false images get in your mind that you then react to.

One of the interesting things you see about discrimination-- when you talk to one group of people, and you talk to another group of people, both groups of people-- their conclusions are absolutely correct, even though they come to the opposite conclusions if their data was correct.

But with both groups-- if you go to a group that's all African American, they may have real incorrect data about European Americans. If you go to a group that's all European American, they may have real incorrect data about African Americans. Like on the report where the person was saying the thing about, well, the Norwegians feel that the Hispanics and Blacks haven't paid their dues, my goodness, the Blacks have been here longer than the Norwegians by 200 years.

The percentage of Americans that were African American was much higher 250 years ago than it is today. They've been here. They've paid their dues. They've paid their dues over and over. Take the migrants that they were talking about. Every year they come up here and work in the fields. That's backbreaking work. Yeah, they've paid their dues, but yet you get that false impression.

And the key thing on discrimination is to check your premises. Most of us in Minnesota at least-- we don't have many haters here, and that's really fortunate. One of the things I really like about being commissioner of human rights in this state is as I go around the state, I almost never run into a hater. What you basically run into is folks you can talk to. And when you talk to them, they understand. It's not a question of, jeez, I hate people.

And don't confuse me with the facts. It's more of saying, hey, I've got some things I think are true. When you point out to them they're not quite true, they say, well, OK, I see that. And so we're way ahead of some states in that grounds. And I think we can thank people like Humphrey and others who went before for helping us get over that first hurdle, but we got a lot of work on that second hurdle.

BOB POTTER: Well, thank you so much for coming in. I think we barely scratched the surface. And here, we've talked for about 25 minutes. Thanks a lot.

STEPHEN COOPER: Well, thanks for having me.

BOB POTTER: Human Rights Commissioner Stephen Cooper from the state of Minnesota.

Well, the forecast calling for generally sunny skies or at least partly sunny skies in the south this afternoon, mostly cloudy in the north with a chance of some shower and thunderstorm activity. The temperatures will be in the 70s and 80s this afternoon across the area. There's a possibility of some shower activity tonight as well with partly cloudy skies generally. Lows will be in the 50s.

And then for tomorrow, partly cloudy, a continuing chance of thunderstorms, highs from the low 70s northeast to the low 80s in the southwest. And in the Twin Cities, 20% chance of showers this afternoon and this evening, high today in the low 80s. It's got about 10 degrees to go before it gets there, though. It's going to be windy with wind advisories in effect for area lakes this afternoon.

Major funding for Minnesota Public Radio programming is provided by 3M, maker of 3M data storage products for home office and school. That's our Midday broadcast for today. This is Bob Potter. And you're tuned to KNOW Minneapolis-Saint Paul. Partly sunny now in the Twin Cities, 72 degrees, the wind gusting to 29 miles an hour.

SPEAKER 8: Important events from years past are called history. Important events happening now are called news. And no one on radio brings you more news more often than Minnesota Public Radio's news and information service. We give you the whole story.

BOB POTTER: Quick reminder, today's programming is sponsored in part by Janet Khan and Mike Debelak on their anniversary. Happy anniversary to them. Get the news from National Public Radio in just a moment. Then Beth Friend will be in with today's edition of Takeout. Hi, Beth.

BETH FRIEND: Hi, Bob Potter. How are you?

BOB POTTER: Well, I'm just ducky. How are you?

BETH FRIEND: Great, great.

BOB POTTER: What do you got on your show today?

BETH FRIEND: Today, we're going to meet author Ian Frazier, the man who wrote the bestseller Great Plains. Then we're going to meet performance artist Tim Miller, who's performing in town this week with a piece called Sex/Love/Stories, and a little taste of barbershop quartet music from some local talented folks.

BOB POTTER: Are they going to be in and actually singing on the show?

BETH FRIEND: Yes, right here, live and in person.

BOB POTTER: Well, isn't that nice? Terrific. Beth Friend will be coming in with Takeout in just a few moments. First, we'll go off to Washington, catch up on the latest news now from NPR. It's a minute past 1:00.

SHARON GREENE: From National Public Radio news in Washington, I'm Sharon Greene. New York City is showering African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela with ticker tape. The ANC leader is the featured attraction at a parade where he will receive the key to the--