. >>> when we come back on a second look, john steinbeck wrote about farm workers. the reality in salinas was more violent. >>> the salinas valley is a mostly peaceful and pastoral place. but that was not always so. we take a look back in this year 2000. >> reporter: in the 1930s, california farm workers began to demand better working conditions, wages were low and they lived in poverty. but agriculture was making people rich. green lettuce had pushed to the top of the grocery store. half of the nation's came from here. >> the exporters were given more money. the needs of the workers who are neglected. >> reporter: federal law prevented filipino women to enter. >> he went home into barracks, had very rudimentay work there. they formed an alliance with the white packing. the strike was effective for a few weeks until the white packers settled with managers. the filipinos was standing on the sidewalk in salinas september 16, and the fresh still fresh in his mind. trying to make a living on the packing ship. on that day that herb henry remembers, strikers were trying t

"i think," said john steinbeck, "we call this the american spirit.">> i believe that desperate times deserve desperate songs, you know? and you know, and what is the fight today? the fight -- that song and, you know, that artist, and i try to contribute in my own way, it is continued links in the chain, you know? and that it, during every epoch, there are those that, there's two sides to history. like, one of the things that i think the occupy movement's been very successful is both bringing class to the fore and identifying the fact that we are not one homogenous nation that high-fives each other at the super bowl. that we, there are different elements. this is a country, on the one hand, of lynchers and napalmers. and on the other hand of people fighting to desegregate lunch counters and working towards peace, you know? it's, there are two americas. i write songs for an, for not just america. i think that it's important that it's a global struggle. i don't look at myself as, while i'm very patriotic in the sense that those who have struggled for soc

john steinbeck might have. >> it took him a while. >> it took him a long time. these are the lost and depraved of the world. you deliberately chose to write about them. you describe them sleeping in boxes, picking trash, eating dead dogs, selling their bodies. what are they like? who are they? >> you know, i love them. they're my friends. they're people i truly -- they're for the grace of god, right? i mean, who's to say we won't fall into bad times? >> the grace of a border. >> the grace of a border. yeah, i always tell people, if i had my choice, i'd have been born in hollywood. i'd have been jimmy stewart's grandson, but that wasn't the choice. you know, here's t scenario. as the dump, for example, exists today. the one i write about in the first books was in a different location. it moved to this place which is actually in a weird way beautiful. it has a view of the ocean. and there are islands off the shore. and it used to be a canyon. kind of an edward abby desert canyon with a little seasonal waterfall, deer, quail down in there, coyotes that fed out to t