It's June 29. A group of protesters is marching in front of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office on Golden Gate Avenue in San Francisco, chanting slogans and waving signs as traffic rushes by. Television cameras zero in on the demonstration. The protesters walk to Union Square, handing out brochures and talking to anybody who will listen.

Another Bay Area interest group pushing a pet cause? Not quite.

These protesters were conservative Republicans from Kings and Fresno counties. They were farmers, mostly from the remote Westside, stung by water cutbacks from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River delta that are threatening their way of life.

They were doing something that conservative Republicans aren't generally associated with: Political activism, 1960s style.

As water concerns and survival worries mount, Westside agriculture is getting increasingly vocal in public demonstrations.

It's putting media-shy farmers in the spotlight as never before.

"They're typically private people. That's part of our problem. We haven't been very vocal about what we're doing," said Sarah Woolf, spokeswoman for the Westlands Water District, the giant Westside entity at the epicenter of a region hard hit by drought, endangered-species water cutbacks and runaway unemployment.

The new wave of political action has created interesting combinations. It's not unusual, as in April's March for Water, to see growers and workers walking side by side, wearing the same shirts, chanting the same slogans.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, it was different. Then, Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers movement were locked in a bitter battle with growers.

Now, growers are learning a few lessons from their workers.

At the Pelosi protest, members of the Latino Water Coalition were fearless in approaching media and Pelosi staffers, Woolf said.

"I think it's something we haven't historically done. We don't know how to do it very well," Woolf said.

According to her, the relationship between growers and their workers on the Westside is closer than in other areas of the San Joaquin Valley where the work is more seasonal. Because Westside ag is mostly mechanized -- and has a year round growing schedule -- employees tend to be skilled farm hands who stay long term, Woolf said.

So growers have been drawn into the struggles of their workers, some of whom they've had to let go after years of loyal service.

Phil Brooks, a farmer in Kings and Fresno counties, said he's painfully aware of what's happening to his employees and former employees.

"These people want to work. They are embarrassed to be in food lines. I think everybody realizes now how much we rely on each other," he said.

Brooks himself has been involved in almost all the protests of the last several months, but he said it feels strange.

Others, even those with previous political experience, said the same.

"The ag industry as we know it in California is going to die if we don't get this (water) thing fixed," said Paul Newton, a Stratford-area grower and former chairman of the Kings County Republican Central Committee.

Newton said he hasn't particularly enjoyed going to several of the recent demonstrations, but felt like he had to.

"I think we're going to do it until we can no longer see any daylight or any gain. I think we're going to continue to do it until we go broke," he said.

Woolf called such activism "unprecedented."

But, according to a couple of academics interviewed for this story, farm protests go back at least to the American Revolution.

"I think farmer activism is not rare," said David Schecter, a political science professor at CSU Fresno. Schecter noted the importance of Shays' Rebellion, a 1786-1787 uprising of Massachusetts farmers protesting crushing debt and taxes, in bringing about the Constitutional Convention.

Still, Schecter noted that there is no long-standing tradition of grower activism in the conservative culture of the Central Valley. He said he found irony in the fact that conservative Republicans are calling for government action on their behalf.

But he said their strategy makes sense -- trying to sell urban voters on the need for an expanded water supply.

That's why farmers have been making a point of going to the Bay Area and Sacramento. Here, in the rural San Joaquin Valley, they are preaching to the choir.

But even in Hanford and Lemoore, the situation on the Westside -- a vast area fairly remote from population centers -- probably isn't as well known as farmers would like.

In a sense, Westside growers are victims of their own efficiency. Mechanized agriculture and giant square plots have made farming so efficient, farmers now make up only 1 to 2 percent of the nation's population.

So the pressure is on growers like never before to make the rest of America know and understand what they're doing.

"I think the farmer is saying, 'Look, we're important people, you'd better listen to us,'" said Don Larson, a retired history instructor at Fresno City College.

Larson pointed out that farmer protests during the Great Depression, which devastated many farms in the 1930s, led directly to the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the starting point for many of the government programs involving agriculture today.

The question for many farmers now is, how effective are the marches, the TV coverage, the rallies, the speeches of recent months?

They have been effective in drawing national attention, according to Schecter.

"You're getting celebrity-status individuals coming out," he said.

Woolf thinks farmers are being "invigorated" by the protests, though she could point to few tangible achievements in terms of policy changes or governmental action.

"Legislators [who] have never been to the Valley know we have a water crisis," she said.

Farmers can point to the involvement of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has come down solidly in favor of new water storage and new ways to get Sacramento River water around the fragile delta. Several ideas have been proposed, including a canal around the delta and a tunnel going under the delta.

Many of them now say they believe farmers' past tendency to avoid the media is no longer viable in the face of current challenges.

"I don't feel comfortable doing this, but me and my family feel like we have to fight for what we work for," Brooks said.

The reporter can be reached at 583-2432.

Year of discontent

--April 14-16: Local farmers join the March For Water, a trek from Mendota to San Luis Reservoir to protest water-delivery cutbacks from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River delta to the Westside. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the keynote speaker.

--June 15: Farmers from Kings and Fresno counties drive tractors and other slow-moving farm equipment on Interstate 5 to protest lack of Westside water.

--June 29: Several busloads of local farmers go to the San Francisco office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to protest federal rulings cutting pumping in the delta to protect endangered fish species. Farmers chant, march on Golden Gate Avenue and take their message to Union Square.

--July 1: Dozens of local farmers and ag supporters join thousands at downtown Fresno water rally. Speakers demand action to solve state’s drought crisis.

--Aug. 11: Hundreds converge on abandoned almond orchard near Huron to be interviewed and serve as the backdrop for a prime-time satellite interview with Fox News. The issue is again cutbacks on pumping from the delta to Westside farmland.

--Aug. 13: Westside growers and their supporters besiege Rep. George Miller’s office in Concord.

--Aug. 18: More than 100 local ag supporters, farmers and family members attend water hearings in Sacramento, but are mostly unable to get into the packed room. They distribute videos of April’s March for Water and go door-to-door at legislators’ offices in the Capitol.

--Aug. 28: Kings County farmers join Tea Party organizers for demonstration in Sacramento calling for lower taxes and less regulation.

(Sept. 6, 2009)