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Call to the
Fields
This coming Sunday, July 27, 2008, I will move into a labor camp
in the most difficult time of the year. North Carolina leads
the nation in heat stroke deaths, many of the past cases happen
in July and August, when men are not only battling the heat but
also nicotine poisoning.
The workers FLOC represents in North Carolina harvest 26
different crops, ranging from cucumbers to tobacco to Christmas
trees. In my farmwork history, I’ve worked in all those harvests
or close to them, row crops, bush or tree crops, but never
anything close to tobacco with its particular challenges.
I
feel compelled to experience what the men go through in what is
considered the worse, the riskiest, and the dirtiest of the
jobs.
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My sense is these men are generally getting a bad rap. Listen to
the talking heads on radio and TV, railing against immigrants,
legal and undocumented, doesn’t seem right to me or truthful.
I
will spend a modest week working with them and hope to write
what these men go through, their hopes, expectations, their
tragedies, and their humanity to the public. It will allow me
the privilege to speak more knowledgeably on their behalf as
president of their union.
I
hope to send out a nightly message and the end of each day to a
select list. It is my desire to shed light from the inside, a
life that most stand in judgment of, without the courtesy of
walking for a season in the other’s shoes.
Baldemar Velásquez,
President FLOC, Toledo
July 21, 2008
Call to the Fields Part V
Call to the Fields Part IV
Call to the
Fields Part III
Call to the Fields Part II
Call to the Fields
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