Yesterday afternoon, Baldemar Velasquez, president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), spoke in the Knight’s Room of Pius XII Memorial Library and then held a rally at Grand and Lindell with FLOC and United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) for the legalization of immigrant labor. The Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) was also present to protest the rally.

FLOC is lobbying for passage of the Freedom Act, which would grant residency to workers who are currently working, paying taxes and committing no crimes. The committee’s other campaign is a boycott of the Mt. Olive Pickle Company, which has violated the rights of its cucumber pickers but has yet to be held accountable. Some of the violations include a lack of outhouses and water for people working in North Carolina during the summer. Instead, some crew leaders have made their workers pay for beer, which dehydrates the body. Velasquez noted that only California and Ohio have union laws for immigrant laborers.

Velasquez also spoke Tuesday at Webster University, University of Missouri-St. Louis and Washington University, focusing on a different topic for each audience. His focus at SLU was “Listening to God’s Calling: The Struggle of Migrant Workers.”

“We want to reach all groups of people, students in particular–they’re the young, they’re the leaders of tomorrow and they’re the ones that can have a role in shaping policies and impacting business practices. It’s not too early to start talking to people,” Velasquez said of FLOC’s school visits. “They also can invest a lot of energy in these struggles for justice. Students have always been good allies of our movement over the years and it’s important that people in St. Louis get to know about these issues and do something about them. We’ve got to get those store owners to question and set some kind of policies of what kind of conditions the products they sell on their shelves are produced in.”

Velasquez spoke about growing up as a migrant laborer in southern Texas, traveling to Ohio and Michigan to find work and feeling unwelcome everywhere.

He said he was mad at God for a long time because he felt there was no way to change his life, that workers had no voice. He organized his first union when he was 20 years old and continued working for labor rights, but always with an air of vengeance, he said.

He finally realized in 1986 that God had put him in that situation so he would learn the struggle of the workers.

He said his goal changed from one of retribution to one of reconciliation. At the time he was near the end of an eight-year campaign to get Campbell Soup Company to admit responsibility for the workers who picked the tomatoes the company used. There was no direct relation between Campbell and the workers and the three-way labor agreement between the two groups and the labor contractors made labor history.

Velasquez said that companies are not often legally affiliated with illegal labor but they are morally responsible because the system exists for their benefit.

He said that despite that most people often think immigrants move to America, usually they have been brought over the border by contractors who go to Mexico in search of cheap labor.

Velasquez also said legalized citizens often get false green cards because some companies will only hire illegal workers as they have no legal rights.

“I don’t care if they’re not the employer. They’re the ones that make the decisions that effect our lives,” Velasquez said of the companies at the top of the labor chain, “which, to me, is the significance and the meaning of a true democracy, where people have a voice.”

He particularly stirred the crowd, drawing applause and a few shouts of consent, when he spoke about American values as supporting rights for the workers.

“When we say ‘boycott Mt. Olive’ to get justice for those workers at the bottom of that industry, it’s about the things that we hold dear as Americans, that God gave a blessing to this country, to give freedom to people because they are based on God’s principles of equity and loving one another as ourselves,” he said.

“But sometimes we want to subvert and contort these (institutions) and twist them for the benefit of some people over other people–that ain’t America,” he said. “We want democracy and liberty and freedom and justice; for whom? Just for some people? Who is (that) for? As an American I want to say for everybody.”

He added: “Since Sept. 11 we see ‘God bless America.’ I believe that. But I know that God’s not going to bless anything that is not of his nature or that he would disapprove of.

“If you want to get America to be blessed by God, then you’ve got to get America right with God. It ain’t the issue about whether God is on my side or God is on our side it’s whether you are on God’s side.”

After his remarks, Velasquez and his supporters assembled on the southeast corner of Grand and Lindell boulevards to rally with USAS members against Mt. Olive and in support of the Freedom Act.

Already assembled before the group arrived were about 20 members of the CCC, ready with signs like “Stop Terrorism, Stop Immigrants,” and “Immigration Moratorium Now,” and chants like “Remember 9-11!” and “Amnesty Never!”

At one point the CCC members were chanting “Amnesty,” to which they answered “No!” and FLOC activists answered “Yes!” simultaneously.

Although the two groups stood almost shoulder to shoulder and one CCC protester entered the FLOC lines chanting “USA!” and accosted USAS member Emily Weiss as she spoke to the group, there were no major problems between the two camps. After the rally, FLOC members went to south city to leaflet at Chippewa Avenue and Kingshighway.

“It’s important that Baldemar visited St. Louis because we must get out the word about exploitation of immigrant workers and explain the negative effects of globalization on the little guy,” said Dorothy Gilles, coordinator of St. Louis’ FLOC support committee. “We must reach as many people as possible to explain the need for an immense change in our immigrant system.”

Velasquez last spoke at SLU last spring as a Great Issues Committee guest, and based on that event’s turn-out and the fact that FLOC was bring Velasquez to St. Louis, VOICES decided to sponsor the event.

Diana Hammer, a graduate student working with the VOICES project in the Office of Mission and Ministry, said, “We hope that the University community will come away with a sense that faith is an integral part of daily life. Vocation, or work that is spiritually meaningful, is something that all of us are searching for.”

In addition to VOICES, sponsors of the event include: School of Social Service, the School of Nursing’s Student Diversity Committee, United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), JUSTICE and the Wefel Center of Employment Law.