They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves . . .

On January 28, 1948, a Douglas DC-3 carrying immigrant workers from Oakland, California to the El Centro, California Deportation Center caught fire and crashed near Los Gatos Canyon, 20 miles west of Coalinga, California. The newspaper reports of the crash mentioned the names of the pilot, Frank Atkinson, co-pilot, Marion Ewing, the flight attendant, Bobbi Atkinson, and the guard, Frank E. Chapin. Not mentioned in the newspaper accounts were the 27 men and one woman who were being flown to the deportation center. The newspaper accounts simply called them “deportees.” 3,000 miles away in Brooklyn, Woody Guthrie was outraged by the indifference shown to the Mexican farm workers in radio and news accounts of the crash. He wrote the words to “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee).” Ten years later, Martin Hoffman wrote the melody we know today. Woody Guthrie’s protest song, written in 1948 still rings true today in the current madness of our country’s immigration policies and the rampaging cruelty of ICE.