WESTERN HERALD (Western Michigan University)

March 28, 2010

Multicultural Affairs hosts Cesar Chavez Day

By Josh Holderbaum

Banquet guests learned about the life of a champion for farm worker’s rights and the ongoing struggles of migrant workers Saturday.

The Western Michigan University Department of Multicultural Affairs hosted a fundraising banquet for the Cesar E. Chavez Day Committee Scholarship Saturday evening in the university’s Fetzer Center.

Chavez, whose birthday is March 31, founded the organization now known as the United Farm Workers to help organize migrant farm workers.

Despite Chavez’s victories for migrant workers, it’s their children who need better rights now, according to Norma Flores Lopez, campaign manager for Children in the Fields and banquet keynote speaker.

“We’re trying to do two things — one, advocate and support educational programs that support migrant farm worker children and two, get those children out of the fields,” Lopez said.

Under the Fair Labor Standards Act passed in 1938, children under the age of 18 can’t work in hazardous occupations, such as operating heavy machinery or vehicles, but the act exempted agriculture.

Due to the fact that few migrant worker families earn wages above the poverty line, their children also have to help in the fields — a situation Lopez experienced first-hand.

“I started working at a very young age and I wasn’t on the books until age 12,” Lopez said.

“First my parents gave me smaller duties — bringing them water, bringing them the bucket — every little bit counted. They are still there working. That’s why this is so very relevant to me.”

Due to her family moving around the country to find work, Lopez often had her first day of each school year three months late, sometimes ruining her chances of getting an A in the class.

Despite teachers suggesting that she find a school better suited for her, Lopez graduated top of her class at the Science Academy of South Texas before graduating from the University of Texas-Pan American.

Proposals have been introduced in Congress to eliminate the agriculture exemption in the Fair Labor Standards Act, but opponents often cite the fact that many migrant workers are undocumented.

“People sometimes say, ‘If you don’t like it, why don’t you go back to your own country?’” Lopez said.

“That’s what a lot of people say. My sisters and I were born in Texas. Last time I checked, Texas is part of America. What does this piece of paper have to do with whether they live in third world conditions or not?”

Situations like that with migrant farm workers also wound up changing the life of Sister Rosemary Tierney.

Tierney, awarded the Tri-Community Award in honor of Chavez, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy at the banquet, had spent 12 years in Peru before returning to Kalamazoo in 1979.

“I came to the Diocese of Kalamazoo because I was ill and to heal myself,” Tierney said.

“After two months, I decided I couldn’t sit still anymore. One day the Bishop called me to ask me to work in the ministries. I promised him I could work for two years.”

During those two years, Tierney saw a film on migrant farm worker living conditions.

“I could not consciously return to South America with things like that going on right here in Michigan,” Tierney said.

Tierney co-founded the Diocese of Kalamazoo’s Immigration Assistance Program in 1999 and has also worked extensively in the community.

“I think I can speak for everyone in the community by saying she’s like a mother to all of us,” said Juan Muniz, executive director of the International Media Exchange and Cesar Chavez Day Committee member.

“Everything that has happened here [in Kalamazoo] is because of her.”

The banquet also featured a $1,000 scholarship awarded to two area high school students: Erica Perez, a senior at Covert High School, and Dyami Hernandez, a senior at Loy Norrix High School.

Both plan to attend WMU in the fall, with Perez planning to major in business administration and French and Hernandez in electrical engineering.