Do you know who stocks the produce section at your grocery store? The name of the person who sells the food at your favorite corner spot?
Going beyond the disembodied idea of "the hands that feed us," migrant rights advocates are challenging people this holiday season to look past the labor and actually learn about food workers on the ground through a new nationwide art project titled The Humans Who Feed Us.
The project will be available both online and in 35 restaurants and 10 university dining halls around the country, but those numbers are expected to grow as the campaign continues. It features the portraits and biographies of 20 individuals who work in various capacities along the food chain (all the way from harvesting produce on farms to cooking and serving in fine dining restaurants), translating their stories (which are all presented in both Spanish and English), sharing their hopes and dreams, and humanizing food production by highlighting the actual people doing the work.
It's also a timely campaign as Congress continues to debate the details of President Joe Biden's proposed Build Back Better Act, which could provide billions of dollars toward immigration reform to create pathways to citizenship and protect temporary workers. Discussions are expected to continue until at least Christmas.
The Humans Who Feed Us was designed by activist and Latinx organizer Mónica Ramírez and her team at the migrant advocacy group Justice for Migrant Women. Ramírez has had a long career organizing for migrant farmworkers and advocating against gender-based violence, even inspiring the early Time's Up movement, which advocates to end gender-based assault and discrimination in the workplace. She is also a co-founder of The Latinx House, an organization that supports Latinx artists, grassroots organizers, and other community leaders, and was featured as a 2021 "emerging leader" by TIME magazine.
The Humans Who Feed Us expands on a project started by Ramírez in August after she received a grant from the Butterfly Lab for Narrative Immigrant Strategy, which was founded by racial justice organization Race Forward to support the work of pro-immigrant leaders.
"People talk about the hands that feed us, and that has always bothered me. Essentially, it is saying that the only thing that matters isn't even the people — it's about the function," Ramírez explained. "The people who are doing the work to feed us, whether it be through agriculture or grocery stores, they're more than just their hands. They're more than just their job." To this end, Ramírez avoids calling the people highlighted in these project simply "workers." Instead, to her and hopefully everyone else engaging with The Humans Who Feed Us, they're community members.
For the last six years, Ramírez had kept the idea of featuring the invisible labor behind restaurants and dining facilities in the back of her mind. She finally dove into the project earlier this year after interviewing migrant community members working on farms in Ohio, where she was born — her own family was made up of migratory farm workers until they settled in Ohio. "There's an opportunity to build something that could humanize people who are invisible to most, who have so much value and bring so much to our country and to our world," Ramírez said of the project.
The 20 biographies will be displayed around the country in a collaboration with university dining services, student-led organizations, and chefs like Ingrid Hoffman, host of cooking shows across NBC, Telemundo, and Univision. “Working in the food industry for so many years has taught me that behind every step of the food chain is a vulnerable human being at work with little to no protections,” Hoffmann wrote in the campaign's press release.
The 10 universities, including the Ohio State University and the University of Michigan, and 35 restaurants, spread across migrant paths from Florida to Ohio, will also share resources about migrant worker advocacy with diners, alongside the biographies. The campaign currently has more than 100 partners and hopes to expand to 300 by the end of the year. Ramírez wanted to ensure there was a range of locations and settings to share these stories. "I love the idea of being able to have these portraits in a mom and pop restaurant in Fremont, Ohio, and having portraits of these amazing individuals being lifted up by some of the most well-known chefs and some of the greatest restaurants in different parts of the country," she explained.
The stories range from personal tales of migratory work to explorations of dreams and passions outside of the food chain. As Ramírez described, some of the featured community members struggled to talk about themselves. Yoni, one of the young men interviewed for the project, told her that he didn't have the luxury to dream, just work. He's just 16 years old.
When we talk about the pandemic, and the role of farmworkers and others, our communities always knew we were essential. The world finally woke up and understood that.
Antonia Garces is also featured in The Humans Who Feed Us. She's worked for nine years on one of the Ohio farms Ramírez spoke about, picking tomatoes and green beans, and has been involved in migratory work for more than 45 years. Garces speaks fondly about the legacy of farm work within her family, both before her time and as carried on through her kids and grandkids.
"I have five kids, all married. And they're all migrating to Ohio for the green beans and tomatoes. This is our life. I mean, we know how to pick crops, work hard in the field, and we carry our grandkids, too. So they're learning about the hard work we do," Garces said.
Eight months ago, Garces' husband died. They were married at 17 and had physically carried their kids and grandkids from Texas to Ohio every harvest season for the last nine years; it would take them three days to complete the trip. This year, she didn't think she could do it without him. "That emptiness — to go without my husband — especially him being the head of our crew… I thought it would be difficult. But I pulled it off. I said, 'I'm a strong woman. Very strong. And I know I can do this.'" After more than a year of large-scale human loss, Antonia's story may resonate with many Americans.
Unlike many other migrant community members, Garces said she had the privilege of a supportive employer that gave her time to spend with her family and even financially supported her after her loss. "Our boss, where we're working, treats us like family. He went to [my husband's] funeral, and not every employer would do that," Garces reflected. "Not a lot of people have that — they don't have that privilege."
View Yoni and Antonia's portraits below.
According to Ramírez, the second goal of the project is to pressure government leaders to see these people as community members deserving of federal protection. "We're asking Congress to create permanent protections for immigrant workers who are working in frontline and essential jobs," she said. "We can have a Build Back Better Package that also includes protections for immigrant workers."
Along with the campaign, Justice For Migrant Women is urging people to sign a petition demanding a pathway for citizenship and a bill of protections that would make migrant work safer. It's a long overdue action on the part of federal leaders. "When we talk about the pandemic, and the role of farmworkers and others, our communities always knew we were essential. The world finally woke up and understood that. The political leaders finally decided to call farm workers and other people essential, but that was always the case," Ramírez said.
From restaurant employees and food cart owners to agricultural workers, members of migrant communities catalyze the food chain, filling grocery stores and dining tables around the country. The minimum we can do as conscious consumers is recognize their humanity, uplift their stories as we eat our holiday meals, and support their fight for a safer life.
UPDATE: Nov. 18, 2021, 5:15 p.m. EST This story was updated to include more information about The Humans Who Feed Us campaign partners.
Topics Activism Social Good Immigration
