TEDxFruitvale - U. Roberto Romano - Children in Our Fields

I'm a film maker and photojournalist who's spent the past 15 years of his career documenting child labor and slavery around the world. Among my recent projects were "Stolen Childhoods", the first feature-length documentary on global child labor. "The Dark Side of Chocolate", an investigation into child trafficking and slavery in Western Africa, which is were 70% of the chocolate we eat comes from. And "Fields of Peril", the 2010 report on child labor in US agriculture for Human Rights Watch. And it's this a problem that I'm going to talk about today: that because of a double standard in US Federal Law, hundreds of thousands of American children, who pick the food that we eat, are denied the same protections that every other child in America enjoys today. They can work at far younger ages, for longer hours at exploitative wages, and at greater risk to their health. Federal Laws permit a child age 12 to work in a 100 degree heat, for 16 hours a day in a tomato field, but may not permit that child to work in an air-conditioned office. In our own country, we have legalized an early end to childhood that we do not tolerate in others. Nelson Mandela said, "There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children." What I've known now for nearly a decade, is that when children in America in agriculture are concerned, the soul of America is languishing. I first became aware of this problem in 2002 while making "Stolen Childhood". Among the many abuses I documented around the world, were children making bricks in India, children picking coffee on plantations in Kenya, children weaving carpets in Pakistan. After having travelled around the world documenting the worst forms of child labor, you might imagine how astounded I was to find out that it was going on here, in our own backyard. American children picking strawberries in Michigan, American children hoeing acres of sugar beet in Minnesota, American children pulling and cutting onions in Texas. The realization that the same conditions that drove 246 million children around the world into the worst forms of child labor also drove hundred of thousands of American children into a similar life, filled me with anger and with questions. How could it be illegal in all those other countries, and not be illegal here? How could these children and their families not have the right to a minimum wage? Not have the right to overtime? Not have the right to a day off? I thought we were better than that. Clearly something had to be done and since I'm a film maker, I made a film. "The Harvest / La cosecha" chronicles the lives of three migrant children and their families over the course of various harvest seasons. Where the combined evils of poverty, hazardous conditions, and a lack of educational opportunity, robbed them of their future. This is Zulema López, she was turning 12 when I first met her. She is the third generation of migrant farm worker in her family, and she told me that her earliest childhood memories were of her mother teaching her how to pick and clean strawberries. She's been to 8 schools in 8 years, and was afraid that she might not make it to high school. But what really broke my heart was when I asked her what her dreams were, and her response to me was, she didn't have time for dreams. Here, in her own words, it's a little of what Zulema's life is like: (Music) Zulema: In Cenizo, we pick onions. We get on a car like at 5 in the morning and work all the way until like, I don't know... 5 pm. We have to get these big scissors, and one time I actually, cut myself by accident, and I had to put sand on it, so the bleeding would stop. We need the money, so I'm just like, "Mom, I can go help", and she's like, "OK". I make like $64 a week, so I think I'm helping her with that. URR: Even with everyone working, the average farm worker family makes less than $17,500 a year: that's well below the poverty line. These children have no choice but to work. This is Víctor Guapila, another of the kids in the film. He's a sweet, gentle and hardworking 16-year old living in Florida. He's taking a break here from the 1500 pounds of tomatoes that he picks and carries each day. He told me he wouldn't leave the fields unless his parents came with him. Now, his family migrated here legally looking for a better life, but what they found was that the harvests are always uncertain, and the exposure to pesticide a constant danger. (Spanish) Victor: We were putting down plastic... I've never done that in my life. And it's not that difficult, but it's very... toxic. It happened to me this one time, not very long ago... I was working and my skin started to fall off... because they put so many chemicals... and they spray gas and fertilizer. And when I was about halfway through it... I felt like I was going to fall right in the middle of the field... from not being able to breathe. URR: Pesticide exposure levels in the United States are set for the body of a grown man, they don't take into account the developing body of a child. Now, 90% of migrant children don't have a health plan, and 20% of all farm worker fatalities are children. And this is Perla Sánchez, 14, seen here posing with her father. Perla watched her brother die in a hospital waiting room because the family lacked health insurance. And she worries that constantly migrating will keep her from achieving her dreams. She, like so many other migrant children, leaves home before the school year ends, and travels, state to state to state... following the harvest, not returning until weeks or months, after school resumes in the fall. As you'll hear, it takes a toll. Perla: Not being able to finish the school year is sad... To me it is sad... You see all your friends are all happy... They're going to graduate from 8th grade... they're going to go together... they're going to have this prom and all this stuff -- Children: Bye, Perla! Perla: All this good stuff... all the good stuff that you get to do at the end of the year... But you can't do it, because you're a migrant... and because you're a migrant you have to go work... Time doesn't stop because you're doing this... time doesn't stop because you're migrating... Time goes, and as it goes, it goes faster... Grades keep going, you fail, you fail; you pass, you pass. Children: One, two, three... Perla: I have a dream... I have a dream to become a lawyer... I have a dream to help other people stop being migrants... I have -- I have so many dreams to help other people... just like me. URR: But no matter what Perla dreams, the facts are that children who switch schools score 20 points lower on standardized tests, and migrant farm worker children drop out at four times the national rate. Now, despite the unfair circumstances they've been given, these children are still just children, and like Perla, many of them have dreams. Some may want to be doctors, some, engineers, some, police officers... none of them want to remain in the fields. It's our responsibility to make sure that they have equal rights under the law, so that they can follow those dreams, so that they can follow the American dream. I wanted "The Harvest / La cosecha" to make people aware of what went on at the ground level here, in this country, literally, so that, we can begin to define a policy that was fair, healthy and humane. A policy that uplifted our children, rather than grinding them under the heels of profit. If what you see moves you to speak up for these children, you can. You can support the Care Bill that gets rid of these double standards, and you can support current efforts by the Department of Labor to increase safety standards for these children. I'm going to end this talk this morning by honoring a promise I made to María Mojica. María Mojica was the mother of Chui Mojica, a 12-year old I interviewed while making "The Harvest". My promise to her was very simple: that I would let people like you hear her story, and so, this morning, I'm going to honor that promise, and I'm going to let María Mojica have the last word. (Music) (Spanish) María Mojica: I have cancer in my blood due to all the chemicals I've been exposed to because of my job since I was a young girl. The doctors say it is one of the reasons that I have cancer. That is what I inherited from working in the fields. That is why I tell my children that the best inheritance is for them to study. So they won't be where I am now. I think that evey mother would like to see their children fulfilled as adults. I still don't know what they all want to do... but I would like for them to focus on their studies and graduate. Hopefully they will all be together and they will each own a home. That is my dream.