Last week, dozens of farmworkers and advocates representing the Alianza Campesina de la Costa Central, a partnership between two organizations — Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE) and Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project (MICOP) — showed up to the County Board of Supervisors hearing to share their personal stories of financial hardships during the public comment period, and to ask the board to agendize the topic of a wage ordinance for a future meeting.
The Alianza Campesina was formed as a way for farmworkers on the Central Coast to organize and advocate for themselves, in part inspired by the decades-long fight for workers’ rights and by the deaths of two farmworkers — Jose Velásquez and Rosa Sanchez — who were both tragically killed in work-related accidents in a two-week span last September . Earlier this year, the group released a report detailing the struggles of farmworkers in Santa Barbara County, who, according to the report, continue to work for wages that remain “stubbornly low” despite consistent inflation and increases in the costs of basic necessities.
One second-generation farmworker, Blanca Antonio Aquino, said that her family and the families of many of her coworkers live under a different type of “normal,” which requires shopping at secondhand stores and garage sales and relying on food distribution events to put food on the table. This strain is especially hard on the children of farmworkers, she added, as there is often not enough money for them to participate in after-school activities like their schoolmates from wealthier homes.