Baldemar Velasquez Draws on Years of Farm Worker Activism to Organize in Anti-Union South

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Baldemar Velásquez, founder and president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee of the AFL-CIO, has been organizing migrant workers since he worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s. An Ohio delegate at the Democratic National Convention, Velasquez has been working to organize migrant farm workers in North Carolina --more than 90 percent of whom are undocumented. On Monday, Velasquez was part of a Southern Workers Assembly here in Charlotte that brought together farm laborers along with others who work in the manufacturing and service industries. Their challenge is significant: The South is the least unionized region in the United States and union density in North Carolina is just 2 percent.

Transcript of Amy Goodman's interview with Velasquez on today's Democracy Now: http://democracynow.org/stories/13074

Did you know Velasquez worked with Martin Luther King Jr on the Poor People's Campaign?

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