I'm gonna pack my bag...♪
I'm gon' be by the river...♪
early, early in the morning...♪
oh yeah...♪
I started working in the fields at
the age of six.
And everyday, the crop dusters will come over and they will spray you.
Sometimes you do this, your clothes soaking wet.
We'd be in the field, and have
a plane spraying and they spray that
stuff right on top of us. They see us down there working, and they spray that right on top of us.
They are being exposed, everyday, to a witch's brew of toxins.
These chemicals were invented during the Second World War as a nerve gas by the Nazis to use against people and it was
only after the war it was realized that
these chemicals that would kill people
can also kill insects. And there's a long
long list of health problems that result.
The Environmental Protection Agency has
estimated that 20,000 farmworkers every
year get pesticide poisoning. That
doesn't include all the farm workers who
will then have health problems 5, 10,
20 years down the line.
Every day you get sprayed with pesticides, it gotta make
you sick in the long run.
As a farm worker you didn't have a voice. You couldn't
talk, you couldn't speak your piece, you
couldn't speak your mind, because if you make
too much noise
you're out of a job. You have to accept
the treatment or you couldn't take
care of your family.
In the case of a human farmworker pesticide
poisoning, causation is almost impossible
to prove. How do you do that?
You can't give methyl bromide to half a
group of experimental human subjects and
keep it away from the other half.  You
know, you can't conduct experiments like
that. But you can ask questions like
why a particular group of people who you
know have been exposed to pesticides are
showing symptoms: endocrine problems,
cancers, reproductive problems, all of
these have been linked in animal studies
to various pesticides.
While the impact of pesticides on human beings is
difficult to prove, their impact on the
environment
is obvious.
In the 40s and 50s, Lake Apopka was a premier bass fishing lake.
But in the 1940s they began growing
crops here and of course in the 1940s
50s and 60s they used some of the worst
pesticides. So because of farm runoff,
Lake Apopka became very polluted,
and it just kept getting worse.
The pollution on the lake became its most
prominent feature.
By 1998, the lake
became one of the most toxic sites.
in the United States, on the verge of ecological collapse.
Faced with little choice, the government purchased the land
from the farmers for over $100 million
in order to begin the massive
cleanup process.
I remember the day my sister came home,
said "well they just gave us our chicken and
told us not to come back no more".
I was teething I said "oh, you know how they do",
I say "that means seem to know where
they'll call ya'll back next year." She said
"no", she said, "there's no more work." Found that they
actually they actually did close the pond, mm-hmm.
Farm workers were the big losers on Lake Apopka.
They spent several million
dollars looking into the alligators'
reproductive problems. They spent
millions of dollars on wondering how
birds died. Not a cent for the workers
who were getting cancer, who were having
birth defects, who were developing all
sorts of diseases related to pesticide
exposure. And the final insult was a half
a million dollars was put in the state
budget for a little clinic to help these
2,500 people and Governor Scott vetoed
it. So they're back to square one.
They're
sick, they're getting elderly,
and every year that goes by the problem
unfortunately gets smaller just by
attrition.
It just make you lose hope, so I'm at the
point now in my life where I don't
believe what any of them say. If you keep
getting disappointed,
you just keep getting disappointed.
We had
hoped to get some justice for the farm
workers. But right now I think what the
community would like to see is to have
their legacy remembered, to validate
their experience, validate their place in
history.
Thank you very much Mr. Speaker,
as a co-founder of the congressional
out-of-poverty caucus, I rise today to
recognize Linda Lee and Geraldine
Matthew. These extraordinary women are
among a group of farm workers in Florida.
Now these workers are suffering from an
array of diseases that have been linked
to long-term pesticide exposure. Although
these women are desperately seeking some
relief and good health, what they ask
for more than anything else is their
dignity. I would therefore offer my
profound and earnest gratitude to these
incredible women, to their community, and
to farm workers across the country for
theirs truly are the hands that feed us.
Thank you and I yield the balance of my time
thank you very much.
I think this is a big moment for the
African American women farm workers in
the state of Florida. I mean all my life,
I did farm work and I've never, ever, saw
a senator go after the big boys like this
lady did.
They know that they might not get any
compensation. They might not get any help
in their lifetimes, but they want to see
things change for future generations.
I admire them tremendously.
I think Betty and Linda and Geraldine
are heroes.
