Cesar Chavez's first major address after his 36-day 1988 fast over the pesticide poisoning of farm workers

ucla | Environ M30 | 2023-05-10T18:40

Table of Contents

    Pesticides are always in the fields and around the towns

    • 📝 link to pesticides by anecdote

    There is nothing we care more about than the lives and safety of our families.

    • 📝 brings importance of keeping family safe

    For 100 years succeeding waves of immigrants have sweated and sacrificed to make this industry rich. And for their sweat and for their sacrifice, farm workers have been repaid with humiliation and contempt.

    • 📝 focused on audience of farmworkers

    But instead of rushing Juan to a nearby hospital, the grower drove him 45 miles across the U.S.-Mexico border and left him in a Tijuana clinic. He was dead on arrival.

    • 📝 expanded to include racism as a portion of the env justice movement and toxicity

    More than half of all acute pesticide-related illnesses reported in California involve grape production.

    • 📝 issue with specific crops

    Who will protect farm workers from poisoning if it isn’t the farm workers’ union?

    The Environmental Protection Agency won’t do it.

    • 📝 the pitfall in bureaucratic government

    Two years ago in Tulare County, California 120 orange grove workers at LaBue ranch suffered the largest skin poisoning every reported. The grower had changed the formulation of a pesticide, Omite CR, to make it stick to the leaves better. It did.

    • 📝 it did

    The chemical companies believe in the Domino Theory: if any chemical is attacked then all chemicals are threatened. No matter how dangerous it is.

    • 📝 insight into agribusiness ideology

    People forget that the soil is our sustenance. It is a sacred trust. It is what has worked for us for centuries.

    It is what we pass on to future generations.

    • 📝 classical beliefs in tradition of enduring crop r

    The growers, the chemical companies and the bureaucrats say these are acceptable levels of exposure.

    Acceptable to whom?

    Acceptable to Johnnie Rodriguez’s parents? Acceptable to Felipe Franco? Acceptable to the widow of Juan Chabolla and her children?

    • 📝 strong appeal to emotion

    Isn’t that the standard of protection you would ask for your family and your children? Isn’t that the standard of protection you would demand for yourself?

    • 📝 upports toxicity masterplot’s emphasis on family