Migrating towards change: why farm workers suffer and how they can bring about change

The January 2023 mass shooting of farm workers in Half Moon Bay near San Francisco brought to light intolerable conditions field laborers often still endure. United Farm Workers President Teresa Romero will discuss the hardships and exploitation agricultural workers face and how they are the result of fundamental injustice and indignity built into the system of farm labor in this state and nation dating back more than a century and a half. She will also address progress achieved by the United Farm Workers, the important work remaining to be done to improve working and living conditions, other issues such as immigration reform, and her own journey as a Latina and an immigrant.

The first Latina and first immigrant woman to become president of a national union in the United States, in 2018 Teresa Romero became only the third president of the United Farm Workers since Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and others founded the union in 1962. Rising through the ranks of the UFW after arriving in this country without speaking English, she is proud of both her U.S. citizenship and her Mexican and Zapotecan heritage.

Most recently, Romero led farm workers in a campaign—including a grueling 24-day, 335-mile march up the Central Valley to Sacramento in the searing heat of summer—that last year convinced Governor Newsom to sign a UFW-backed law making it easier for farm workers to vote in union elections free from abuse and intimidation.