Housing and security, main topics to be discussed at the 2024 Agricultural Workers Convention in Pescadero

Without a doubt, decent and affordable housing, as well as safety for farm workers, will be topics that will undoubtedly be discussed during the 2024 Agricultural Workers Convention, which will take place in the city of Pescadero, California.

Manuel Ortiz interviewed Rita Mancera, director of the organization BRIDGE from the South Coast, who on our Rolling Community Radio spoke for Por la Libre about the details of such an important event in the Bay Area, and gave his opinion on the topics that will guide the event this Sunday.

Manuel: Rita Mancera, director of PUENTE de la Costa del Sur, is already in the rolling cabin, as we said, here in Pescadero, tomorrow the Farmers' Convention 2024 will take place, a great event. We arrived early and we saw the enormous work behind it, a lot of volunteers. Rita, how are you?

Rita Mancera: I am very excited for tomorrow and definitely very grateful for all the people who have given us their time this Saturday to prepare for this event tomorrow.

Manuel: Rita, why don't you start by saying what PUENTE is?

Rita Mancera: We are a social impact organization that primarily serves the communities of the South Coast in San Mateo County: La Honda, Loma Mar, Pescadero and San Gregorio, and our goal is to advocate for equity in access to education, to economic and health security.

Manuel: It is a fundamental organization in recent months, we have already commented on it in other programs, at Peninsula 360 Press we have been talking with different agricultural workers from all over the coast and when we approach here, to Pescadero, everyone tells us about the great work of this organization, of Puente.

Rita, what can we expect at the convention tomorrow?

Rita Mancera: There are going to be many elements, but the main idea of a group of farm workers in this community is to create and expand the movement of farmers to achieve the things they want and need to have a better life, for themselves and their families. families.

The event is organized in different spaces, in the morning we will have the joy of having the presence of astronaut José Hernández, people are very excited to hear his story once again, we did a film session to become familiar with his life, and people got very excited there, I even had a conversation with some teenagers, it is sometimes difficult to listen to their opinions due to their age, and I asked them how they felt about having seen the film, they were talking a lot about how it had inspired them, so I'm very excited about that first part.

After him comes a panel of farm workers, six of them; I think it is a very diverse group in the sense that some of them want to talk about farmers who are aging and the lack of support services that exist for people their age, other people want to focus on the use of pesticides, the protections that exist, and the security message they must share.

There is a person on the panel who just arrived in the United States to work just 5 months ago, so the perspective he brings is how he felt when he first arrived and how he has been integrating into the community and what he has been observing in observing at work, then this panel is going to be very cool too.

Then we have the workshops that were requested by this group of volunteers who have been planning the event: workshops on cardiopulmonary resuscitation, immigration law, work laws, and many more workshops, that part in question is going to be very cool of knowledge, and throughout the day, simultaneously, there will be around 35 organizations providing resources, information, the day will be very dynamic.

Manuel: I understand that not only farm workers come from here, from this region, but from other regions, there is going to be a meeting of farm workers from different parts of California, is that something like that? 

Rita Mancera: Yes, the invitation was opened to farmers in the area of Watsonville, Santa Cruz, Davenport, Pescadero, and all parts of the South Coast and Media Luna, there are people registered from all these places, there is a lot of excitement on the part of our neighbors in Davenport to come, and that is precisely the focus, that it be a regional event and that they can organize and give a message together.

Something they were commenting on is that, no matter where you are from, it is the same region and the same problems, for example, that exist in housing, you see them in Santa Cruz or in Media Luna or in Pescadero.

Manuel: Which is one of the main problems, right? Housing, in addition to these others that you already mentioned.

Rita Mancera: Yes, it is really a problem of social justice, because there are so many reasons why they tell us that housing cannot be achieved, there are so many reasons why they tell us that it is a very difficult, very long-term job, that it is very complicated. . 

The truth is, I am very disappointed to hear those opinions, because in the end the people who have the ability and contacts to make something happen, at the end of the day they say no to us, but they are very happy to go home warm, to sleep in their warm bed, and the people who are advocating for this return to their places where they sometimes do not have heating and where the housing is not appropriate, or where they are crowded together, where they have to remove the mattress so that everyone can fit, So housing is going to be one of the strong points that I hope to hear tomorrow during the day, in addition to access to health, and low wages.

Manuel: One sees so much land here, so green, so beautiful, and one cannot believe that with the important work that our peasants do, and being in one of the richest areas of the world, because we have Silicon Valley here, a few minutes away, there cannot be decent housing conditions for the people who do the most important work, which is growing our food and our flowers too, here there are those who are dedicated to growing flowers.

Rita Mancera: Yes, there are also people around who take care of animals, there are ranches that have chickens, pigs, turkeys, this is a very rich area in that sense, and yes, there is a lot of land; I love to share this part with you because, in the group in which this movement is being organized, particularly the group from the countryside to change, there are also people who on the weekends have participated in a group that explores, that walks, that visits parks. , so I have never heard them say: "we are going to ruin this area and we are going to put a lot of houses in?", no, they do think a lot about this beautiful place, preserving it and keeping it as beautiful as it is and, at the same time, promote fair housing for farmers.

Manuel: Thank you very much, we greatly appreciate you. We are going to be here tomorrow, and there are two people who work with you, who are volunteers right now, who are going to join us in the cabin.

Rita Mancera: Yes, you are going to really enjoy talking to them. Thank you very much for coming to Pescadero. 

Manuel: Thanks to you.

Challenges for women farm workers

Manuel: We are already with Mrs. Ana Luisa Ruíz, how is she? Welcome to our Rolling Cabin.

Ana Luisa Ruíz: Hello, good afternoon, welcome and thank you very much for inviting us to this event that we are going to have for farm workers. I invite you all to attend, because there will be many panels and, apart from that, I, as a working woman in the countryside, also invite all women to be present and for us to talk about the quality of rural women.

Manuel: What do you think would be the main challenges for women workers, particularly for farm workers?

Ana Luisa Ruíz: The challenges would be that, also for us as women, everything would be better, that it would be different for us as farm workers.

Manuel: In conversations that I have had here in Pescadero, in Half Moon Bay, I have found that it is regularly women who are organizing to improve living conditions, to ask for things as basic as housing, improvements in housing and other things. things.

Ana Luisa Ruíz: That's right, because we, as women working in the fields, want us to also get home and have a good home, and after working hard in the field we also want to get home and have a suitable place to live.

Manuel: What message would you send to the population in general about the work you do, the important work, for someone who may not know the day-to-day work of what you do here in the field?

Ana Luisa Ruíz: Well, inviting them to value us as much as women, because we are mothers, we are farm workers, and we also want them to support us 100 percent, like men, I think it is better, because we as farm workers have double work, work at home and also work in the field.

Manuel: I thank you very much. 

Getting everything ready for the 2024 Agricultural Workers Convention

Manuel: Now Rogelio Nabor Martínez joins us. Rogelio, how are we? Good afternoon.

Rogelio Nabor Martínez: Well, thank God and very happy for the opportunity He is giving us through this medium.

Manuel: No, you don't give the opportunity to talk. He told his colleague Ana Luisa Ruiz that we see them very busy, we thank them very much for allowing us to take a little of their time. They are preparing for the convention tomorrow.

Rogelio Nabor Martínez: Yes, we are preparing today, because we hope that tomorrow will be an incredible day because it is the first time that we do a convention in this way here in the community of Pescadero, so we are waiting for many people to arrive or many guests who registered for the convention.

Manuel: Rogelio, what do you do?

Rogelio Nabor Martínez:  I am a farm worker, from this area of Pescadero for over 20 years and I work in the fields, I work on an organic ranch here in Pescadero 

Manuel: Where are you from?

Rogelio Nabor Martínez: I am Mexican from the state of Oaxaca and I came here as an immigrant for the American dream and now I have been here for more than 20 years, I made a family, I have three children and we are still here.

Manuel:  Well Rogelio, I'm not going to take up any more of your time because I know that everyone is racing. Thank you so much. Tomorrow you will also be there, I suppose, helping with different tasks. What excites you most about tomorrow, what are you looking forward to at this convention?

Rogelio Nabor Martínez: What excites me most and what we most hope for as a committee or as part of the community, is that tomorrow will be a great day to make ourselves known as a field worker and the importance that we, the people who work in the field, have, and I hope that At the end of the day, many people leave with a good experience from what they are going to hear or learn here from us.

Manuel: Thanks a lot.

Fight and move forward

Manuel: Mr. Gabriel Gutiérrez, he is another of the people who is supporting this convention, we already have him here in the booth. Our cabin is small, it is mobile, we have already told you, so, when we do the exchange, some enter and others leave, we cannot have everyone here together.

We thank you very much, Mr. Gabriel Gutiérrez, for being here with us. 

Gabriel Gutierrez: Thank you. I am also on the trade committee for farmers, and well, in the little that I have learned, I also want to do my bit for all the Mexicans who are here in this country working in the fields or in many tasks that are done today, you want, there is no other, you have to keep going.

Manuel: Tell us a little about yourself, where are you from? how long have you been living here?

Gabriel Gutierrez:  Many years, since 2001 I came the first time, but thank God I go and come back, I had the opportunity to bring my children too, three who are already here, with me there are four, I already have most of my family here too and in Mexico. I am from the state of Oaxaca, which is the southern mountains of Oaxaca, but right now I am living 15 minutes from the capital.

Manuel: And, how are you supporting the preparation work for this convention?

Gabriel Gutierrez: Today I helped a little, but whenever I have the opportunity to do so I do it with great pleasure, because I worked 8 years ago for PUENTE, and now I'm back but I'm helping anyway.

Manuel: Mr. Gabriel, one of the concerns of farm workers here, in California and throughout the United States, is the issue of housing, there is not enough housing and what there is is expensive. What can you tell us about this issue?

Gabriel Gutierrez: At least here in Pescadero, it is a place where there is not much space to live and it is expensive as you just said, but we hope that in the future it will expand and that more housing will be built so that people do not pay so expensive, because If there is not, it is expensive, but if there is competition everything will be more normal, and earning the minimum is very difficult to pay your rent, gas costs, telephone costs, many things, food in the first place. Those who have family are the most affected.

Manuel: There are families who live here in overcrowded conditions, that is, very cramped, in a small house.

Gabriel Gutierrez: Of course yes, just that sometimes many of us are embarrassed to say it, but the truth is that one realizes what friends tell us, that is, how they live, that it is not enough for them and things like that, but being healthy is what is important, You have to keep going forward and forward.

Manuel: Mr. Gabriel, we thank you very much for joining us, it is an honor for us to have you and your colleagues.

You may be interested in: California Dream for All: An Opportunity to Build a Housing Legacy