The Ohio State University at Lima will host a talk on “The History of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee and Farmworkers in Northwest Ohio” from 12:40-2:00 p.m., Thursday, October 19, 2023, in the Life and Physical Sciences Building, Room 100. The event is free and open to the public.
Emily Brown, JD, will present on the history of and challenges facing farmworkers in northwest Ohio, most of whom are Mexican or Mexican American and many of whom migrate seasonally from Texas or Florida. Topics will include low wages and wage theft, advocacy to promote wide-scale legalization of undocumented farmworkers, racial profiling by state and local law enforcement and the Border Patrol in rural northwest Ohio, and the rise of guest worker programs and how they have had an impact on domestic farmworkers. Brown is the director of the Immigration Clinic at Ohio State’s Moritz College of Law.
Dr. Perry Bush will present on the founding of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee. Topics will also include its reliance on the power of nonviolence and the strike by migrant cannery workers in Warren, Indiana, culminating in civil disobedience that in the end brought victory for the workers. Bush is a professor of history at Bluffton University.
For more information about the talk, contact Ohio State Lima’s Temple Patton at 567-242-7190 or patton.112@osu.edu.