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Today we have Flor Martinez Zaragoza from Celebration Nation A K A
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flower in Spanish. Hi,
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Floren. Love your Instagram and everything that you do and stand
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for. Now, I know everyone is talking about robots taking
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our jobs. Is it true that A I and robots
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will affect our farm workers?
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As we see A I coming in,
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it's already here. There's already machines out in the field,
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little by little, they're bringing them out and we start seeing
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a lot of displaced farmworker families.
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So this, this means basically when you replace a worker,
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you're taking their livelihood,
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you're taking their job,
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they're not going to be able to maintain and survive their family
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And that's just really,
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it's just, it's just a terrible situation,
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especially having the nonprofit that we have Celebration Nation and we serve
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farmer communities, you know,
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being in need, giving them food,
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the basic resources. We've been seeing a lot of more people
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coming in and so what we already see like there's gonna be
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an overwhelming amount of need.
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So a lot of them are also undocumented.
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So a lot of them won't be able to just find a
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job just as quickly.
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Right. They do ag work because it's one of the only
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jobs that they're gonna be able to get.
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And so now that their choices are very limited to none at
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all, you're looking at a lot of our comunidad,
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like, what's going to happen?
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Right. Like, are they going to move back to,
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like, the countries like Mexico?
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Are they going to be out in the streets?
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Right. Like Questa Paan?
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in a way, maybe it will help them when they,
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since they won't have to do the labor being on their
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knees in the dirt under the sun and the pesticide exposure.
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But all those things are still going to happen.
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Like there's still gonna be so many pesticides on our food.
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And that's actually one of the,
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the biggest issues here that if we don't know who is watching
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our food, if we don't have a human eye or a
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human touch on our food,
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like we already have a crisis in our food system.
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A lot of people are getting sick from the food.
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A lot of people don't even know that pesticides play a big
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role in a lot of cancers.
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You know, we see a lot of farmworkers getting cancers all
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the time and it's because of the pesticide exposure that they end
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in the workplace. So them being removed isn't gonna remove the
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pesticides being sprayed on our food.
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We might even see even more of it because nobody's really there
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to say something about it.
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Right. And when we think about farm records,
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we might think that,
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you know, a lot of times that they might not have
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historically, they've been underrepresented,
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they need us to be pretty much speaking it for them and
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fighting for them. But I think it's all about getting up
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to date, becoming informed on what's happening and just wanting to
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not let machines take over our food system because our food is
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either medicine or poison.
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And so it's really important that we know who's in control of
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that and if machines are in control of that,
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do we really control any part of our food system?
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And at the end of the day,
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like I'm watching, I pay attention,
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like who's bringing out these machines and it's a lot of like
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anti immigration companies and we know this because they're connected to like
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bringing certain politicians out,
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you know, sponsoring their trips to come out to certain
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areas, right? And so when you see like their logos
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there and you see they're the ones bringing out the machines,
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we see that their motives aren't necessarily like positive.
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It's more to like literally remove Ar gente from this country.
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it's such a weird motive,
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right? And it's all back to capitalism,
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but also these weird motives.
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It's not with good intention,
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what they're doing. Definitely.
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And Flor what can we do to help families and farm
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workers. Honestly, like I,
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I really admire the work that you do because you're,
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you're, you're about it.
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Like you don't just post about it.
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You're about it. We see you out there,
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you know, doing the work.
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So we really, really admire that by the way.
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Just have to say that thank you.
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Yeah. And then sometimes when you guys don't see me post
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enough, it's because I am out there trying to like figure
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It's a lot of moving pieces.
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And sometimes I even get like anxious that like we don't talk
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about it enough as a community because this is directly impacting not
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just our comunidad but like so many of our undocumented communities
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So I think at the end of the day,
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the biggest solution is literally like immigration reform.
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We need citizenship for Ar Gente because when they have a voice
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like they'll be the ones to speak up about pesticide exposure
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They'll be the ones to speak up about how they're treating
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the land, how they're treating the food,
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how they're treating the water porque.
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At the end of the day,
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we always see that it's always indigenous,
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the indigenous people. And we have to remember that we are
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the indigenous people, our farm workers are the indigenous people and
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there's actually a couple of bills on the table that actually is
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like the simplest way to legalize so many of our Gente,
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by the way, no one is illegal.
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I'm stolen land but all hr 1511 and s 26 06.
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Those are called the registry bills.
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Last time Ar Gente had Amnesty was in 19 86 and that
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was the last time they gave millions of people papers.
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That's when they allowed people to,
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that were working in the fields to sign up and get citizenship
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And that was so long ago and Argenta had been fighting
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for so long. So it's something.
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So these bills are literally the same thing.
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We're not even asking for a new law.
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We're asking for these bills to be updated.
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So update the registry.
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That's the whole hashtag and we want to see more of it
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because elections are coming up and it's getting serious and we don't
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see enough of you know,
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rallies and protests on these bills and they're just a simple solution
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And I just really hope we call our representatives,
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call your house representative,
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call your senate representatives,
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tell them to update these bills because on the day we have
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people power, we have local power and it's so important,
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especially in the election coming up,
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vote for your house reps,
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voting for your senate reps because as you guys saw,
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you know, the ban on tiktok,
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I think that was a really good example of how you build
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I, I feel like there's so much like,
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again, bad that we know about the robots and
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A, I kinda coming into the field.
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But is there any good whatsoever?
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I mean, so at the end of the day,
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I mean, if there is machines coming in,
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they should be helping the farm worker not replacing the farm worker
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because at the end of the day,
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yeah, maybe it'll help.
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For example, then farmers don't have to have this labor where
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they're on their knees or literally breaking their back every single day
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Right. There's so many ways that it could help them
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continue their work, but in the end,
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they're literally just completely replacing them,
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just like any job or any,
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any labor like work like machines help.
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But it should not be to the extent where they're being replaced
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I most definitely agree.
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Well, thank you so much,
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Flori really appreciate you coming on and breaking down what's going on
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and just giving us the facts.
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Yeah, because I was a little lost at first and I
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like I thought it would help them,
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you know, not replace.
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So I appreciate you coming on and giving us,
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you know what's really going on?
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I know you plugged your social shortly.
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But where can people find more information that you want to again
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put out there so people can follow you and be updated?
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Yeah. So you can follow me personally at Flower in Spanish
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and then the nonprofit at Celebration Nation org.
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We're actually going to be talking more about this whole conversation on
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our nonprofits platform as well because a lot of farm workers,
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I mean, if you're talking about them being displaced,
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that means our nonprofit is going to me,
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it's gonna be working like triple time now.
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because we do have a lot of more families coming to
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us for food or help on housing and it's overwhelming to be
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honest. And so it's like we want to prevent.
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Thank you so much flo do our part.
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We got to get the word out.
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People have to know what's happening.
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Exactly. That's what we're doing here.
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That's why we wanted to do this segment too so people can
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know what's going on.
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But Muchos gracias, so we really appreciate you coming on,
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Ok? We, we're in this together.
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