Miss Springfield Teen Volunteer calls for justice for migrants, Hispanic community

Presenter: At the local Hands Off! rally April 5, Miss Springfield Teen Volunteer spoke on behalf of justice for migrants and the Hispanic community. She called for a boycott of major produce picked by migrant workers. Victoria Acosta:

[00:00:14] Victoria Acosta: I want to start this off by saying I’m 18 years old and I’m here not just representing my community but my family and my culture and my people who have been overlooked and dismissed for too long.

[00:00:31] If I stutter or my voice shakes, no, it’s not because I’m scared, but because this has been sitting on my heart for so long.

[00:00:40] I’m going to give you a picture and I need you to imagine it in your head as I speak. It’s early morning around 4:30 a.m. You wake up while most of the world’s asleep. You begin getting ready for a day.

[00:00:51] You live in a small one-, maybe two-bedroom trailer right outside a mass production produce field. You put on a white tank top, long sleeve shirt, a flannel along with a mask, bandana and hat. The weather throughout the day will be in the high 90s, even reaching the 100s, quite possibly, but you work too many hours in the hot sun not to cover every inch of visible skin.

[00:01:14] After you finish getting ready, you walk to your empty kitchen to make food for the two to three children you’re currently supporting and get them ready to watch themselves while you leave them for nine hours to handpick each strawberry someone in a grocery store halfway across the country will eat, not knowing the sacrifice it took to harvest.

[00:01:32] During America’s earlyhood, she was supported and funded on the backs of incarcerated slaves working on plantations. After slavery had ended, the accumulated wealth of almost 10 million unpaid slaves brought in $4 billion. That seems like an insignificant amount to the modern day, but that $4 billion in 1860 would have translated to nearly $97 billion.

[00:01:54] Without the prosperity of slaves, America would never have survived economically. All of America’s South is only the wealthy booming economy because of the slaves that laid their lives down to support it. And even after the Civil War and the 13th Amendment, we still seem to be thriving off racism and social class.

[00:02:16] As of 2019, 57% of America’s produce is currently being picked by underpaid and poorly treated migrant workers; 36.4 % are undocumented. In 2020 alone, they brought in just roughly $136 billion in revenue.

[00:02:35] These people are barely over the poverty line, yet they’re working well over 60 hours a week. That’s much more than the regular hours of a full-time job. Yet they can’t even afford the food they’re the ones picking and harvesting. Why buy a bag of apples when you can buy three cheeseburgers for the same price? Which one’s going to keep your child’s belly full, the burger or the apple?

[00:02:55] Not only can they not afford healthy food options, they can’t even afford basic health care if it’s between—I’m so sorry—if it’s between medicine or keeping the lights on in your home, there is no right answer. The price we pay for food is cheap, but the cost of what we are not paying is put on the backs of these exploited workers.

[00:03:18] Optimism is beneficial to most situations, but it seems that America loves to repeat its racial tendencies even in the modern era. The nation has relayed its long-term economic growth on sustained poverty and cheap labor of those unable to protect themselves. Why hire American citizens who are obligated by the government to be supplied with Medicare, stable living conditions, when you can take advantage of a group of people fleeing their home country, leaving everything behind, including family, to start a new life in America?

[00:03:45] Of course they’re going to pick your fruit for barely $10 an hour. They have no other choice.

[00:03:50] They can’t speak up about workplace mistreatment or housing problems due to the fact that they are not legal citizens. They are trapped and being held against the gun of being submerged into homelessness and the risk of deportation or choosing to work day in and day out to achieve the American dream. The fight for equality with migrant workers has been going since the early ’50s and change has been slow to come, if it’s even coming at all.

[00:04:13] We cannot give up. We must continue what Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta fought for. Boycott major produce. Boycott major produce that’s picked by migrant workers. Those produce include cucumbers, oranges, strawberries, grapes, and lettuce. Choose to buy local produce because if anything inspires change in America, it’s a dent in its pockets.

[00:04:38] The Hispanic community makes up around 19.1% of America’s population, making us the largest minority group in America, yet so many of the issues prevalent to our community go unnoticed in the media. The mistreatment and discrimination of migrant farm workers has gone unchecked and unnoticed for 72 years now. If there was ever a time for change, it’s now.

[00:05:00] The food you ate today was put on your plate by a mother or father who just sacrificed nine hours in the hot sun or pouring rain to support their children. So I’m saying it again, they are human. A dollar or two price increase in produce is absolutely nothing compared to the mistreatment, exploitation of migrant workers.

[00:05:18] Don’t let this speech be something you feel bad about and forget in an hour. Make change. Do something. Speak out for those who can, or continue to feed into America’s greedy and disgusting history of the exploitation of minorities. Change must come one day, though. Like the great (Dr. Martin Luther) King said: ‘Sooner or later, all the people in the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace.’

[00:05:39] Are you willing to pay $2 for strawberries if you know what migrant workers went through to pick them? These mass production produce companies have the money to pay them much more than a mere $10 an hour.

[00:05:55] We as a community and as a nation must address the maltreatment of these migrant workers. Let’s pay for cheaper fruits and vegetables, but let’s do it the ethical way. A person can only last so long, and with all your support here, we can help make a difference in the life and living conditions of thousands.

[00:06:11] So next time you eat an apple, or an orange, or even some lettuce, think about who picked it and what they sacrificed to have it on your plate. Thank you.

[00:06:28] Presenter: Miss Springfield Teen Volunteer Victoria Acosta speaks at the Hands Off! rally April 5. Field recording by Todd Boyle for KEPW 97.3, Eugene PeaceWorks community radio. See the entire rally on Todd’s YouTube channel.