Photo by Edgar Franks – Image download available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TI5VI1Z0vlMXxBhZMG0pvqL8NbxfrEtI/view?usp=drivesdk

January 17, 2024 Press Release, Community to Community Development and Families Unidas por la Justia

OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON- 

Media Contacts: Edgar Franks – edgar.franx@gmail.com   (360) 972-5412 

Rosalinda Guillen   rosalindag@foodjustice.org  (360) 381-0293

Liz Darrow – Jan 23rd on site in Olympia (360) 220-9065

Farmworkers are essential to our food system. Yet they are still the poorest in the state. Just four years ago during the pandemic they were declared essential; while farmworkers kept food on the table for you during that crisis their wages did not go up.  

Farmworker leaders of Community to Community and Familias Unidas por la Justicia invite the public and the press to witness testimonies of lived experience of farmworkers in their communities and workplaces through the Tribunal process. Farm workers created the tribunal space as a way to raise their voices and invite lawmakers to hear not just the current issues in rural Washington State but also solutions that need policy changes and new innovative legislation. Farmworkers take the opportunity to present the real life power of visionary solutions and self-determination of a Movement seeking to restore justice to our food, land, and cultural practices. 

Join Tuesday January 23, 2024 anytime 12:30pm and 6pm. 

Farmworkers will march to the capitol @ 12:30pm

Location: United Churches of Olympia,  110 11th Ave SE Olympia WA 98501

Farmworker Tribunal @ 1:30 pm – 3pm

Location: State Capitol, Cherberg JAC A/B/C first floor 

Tribunal Declarations and Dinner 4pm – 6pm

Location: United Churches of Olympia,  110 11th Ave SE Olympia WA 98501

This month, the three-year phase-in of ESSB 5172 extended the rights of overtime pay to all agricultural workers. The victory of overtime which was expected to bring economic relief for hundreds of thousands of farmworkers, has opened up a new front of retaliation by the industry. If they speak up, the profit-driven agriculture industry retaliates by pushing policies like the H2A program to drive down wages and displace local farm workers.

 As Octavia Santiago, Executive Board Member of Familias Unidas por la Justicia states “people who don’t work in the fields are not feeling the negative effects of the H2A program. They don’t know that the H2A program is displacing the local workforce, causing families to lose income.” 

“We are feeling an urgency to address climate change, because it is a bread and butter issue for us, any climate crisis directly impacts immediately our health and our livelihood. Climate justice is worker justice, that is why this Tribunal is urgent for us.” said Alfredo Juarez, Community to Community Development.

At the Tribunal, Farmworkers present evidence from lived experience of exploitation in the workplace, call for accountability for the agricultural companies responsible, and demand recognition and redress from Washington State.

Media coverage for the Farmworker Tribunal is essential because equity and justice is not yet clearly rooted in WA State’s agricultural industry or economy. There will be opportunities to interview farm workers and advocates.