Gold medal for farmworker advocacy

Farmworker Advocacy Network members

It's been a great week for the folks in North Carolina who fight for farmworker justice. This week members of the Farmworker Advocacy Network (of which Toxic Free NC is a member) were honored with two remarkable awards:

It always feels good to be recognized in your hometown paper, and that's exactly what happened this week when the Independent Weekly gave the Farmworker Advocacy Network its annual Citizen Award. Check out the article in the Indy and leave a comment if you support justice for the folks who harvest our food in North Carolina!

On a bigger stage, FAN members were also delighted to win a Midsouth Regional Emmy this week for our 2010 documentary, "Harvest of Dignity." This 30-minute short film commemorates the 50th anniversary of Edward R. Murrow's groundbreaking television documentary, "Harvest of Shame," which first exposed the shocking living and working conditions of the people who harvest our food in the United States. "Harvest of Dignity" revisits a North Carolina labor camp featured in the 1960 film, and explores just how little things have changed since then. "Harvest of Dignity" was produced by Minnow Media in association with the Farmworker Advocacy Network.

Want to meet these award-winning advocates in person? Toxic Free NC and other FAN members are available to bring a film screening and discussion to your church, school group or other civic group - contact us to set up a date and get more involved in the struggle for justice in our food system.

Polar vortex, pesticides, red tape can't stop us!

By Neftali & Yesenia Cuello

Yesenia and Neftali braved brutal cold at the Capitol last week to speak out about pesticide safety.

We started working in the fields of eastern North Carolina when Neftali was 12 years old, and Yesenia was 14. We worked in tobacco, blueberries and strawberries every summer for years. We saw pesticides used nearby and were even exposed to the drift, but never knew what pesticides were.

We never heard the word “pesticide” or had a safety training until 4 years later when we joined NC FIELD and our eyes were opened.

All those years we were being exposed to these things on the job, without any knowledge of what they could do to our health. Now we go out into the fields to meet other children who are working there, photograph them and learn about their lives. We meet teenagers, sometimes kids as young as 8 and 9. Not one youth farmworker we’ve met said they’d ever had a pesticide safety training.

 

NC youth working in sweet potato. Photo by Yesenia Cuello

This is why we have to make our voices heard.

Last week we joined a delegation of farmworkers and youth who traveled to Washington DC. We met with members of Congress and the US EPA to ask them for a strong Worker Protection Standard. People shouldn’t be working with these chemicals without training and safety protections that keep them and their families safe. Kids shouldn’t be working with pesticides at all!

We don’t want unsafe pesticides on our food, and we don’t want other kids to have to work around them or with them like we and our other siblings did. We need a strong Worker Protection Standard that makes the fields and our families safer. If you agree, please make your voice heard, too.

Neftali Cuello serves on Toxic Free NC's Community Leadership Council, and is the Secretary of Poder Juvenil Campesino, the youth group of NC FIELD. Yesenia Cuello is President of PJC and serves on NC FIELD's Board of Directors.