2021Jessica Culley Learning from Nelson
By Elizabeth Henderson
I came to know Nelson through my work on the Agricultural Justice Project (AJP). The injustice of exposure to toxic materials was so vivid to Nelson that he invested CATA resources and time in this project which is dedicated to keeping (or maybe bringing) fairness to organic food and agriculture. Nelson sought work free of toxics and also access to food free of toxic residues for CATA members by providing gardens where they could grow their own. He hired Richard Mandelbaum, a young organic farmer and herbalist, to write a guide to organic growing for CATA members and to represent CATA in the early meetings of AJP, but Nelson was always there behind Richard, guiding his work and influencing our group decisions. The CATA board members reviewed the Food Justice Standards as we developed them. Nelson’s firm insistence on human rights and on including those who do the work when standards are written and decisions are made shaped AJP.
Despite all the pressing deadlines of raising money and organizing projects, Nelson took time to develop deep relationships and placed a high value on direct face to face communication. Two memories stand out.
In 2012, Nelson invited me to visit CATA so that I could gain a better understanding of their work and help train the whole staff about AJP. I spent three full days with CATA. From the CATA Glassboro office, Nelson drove me to visit the Bridgeton office, to get my advice about their new garden plot. It was basically a deep lot that had been a garden but had been used as a parking area, more or less flat with compacted soil and little organic matter. I suggested planting buckwheat right away as a cover crop, then oats over the winter, or doing lasagna gardens where you transform the existing grass into fertilizer by smothering it with layers of wet paper, cardboard and compost, and then plant through all of that.
From Bridgeton, we drove to Kennett, PA., to visit to the Kaolin Workers Union HQ where I met Jesus, staff person for the union. Later, reading the mushroom workers’ contract, I learned that this union had improved conditions by making clear work hours, seniority, dispute settlement, and union representation for workers when they discuss grievances with the company, but wages were still just barely above minimum - $7.36 an hour.
In the evening, I observed Manuel Guzman do a pesticide training for six workers at a produce farm. Although the men had worked all day in 100 degree heat, Manuel kept their attention using a combination of posters, pictures and props and asking a lot of questions to bring home to them the dangers of the pesticides in use and the symptoms of heat stress. I was shocked at the contrast between the farmer’s neat country home with flower beds and the worker housing where piles of stinking veggie wastes covered with flies tormented us during the training. An hour with a loader could have turned those wastes into a compost pile.
The next day, Jessica Culley and I led the AJP training. First Nelson spoke at some length about why AJP was necessary, and the approach of Popular Education. (a set of tools for empowerment and liberation: story, analysis and judgement, what we want to achieve and how – next steps.) We did a thorough review of the Food Justice Certification standards with special attention to freedom of association, labor contractors, H2A, and at will law.
That evening, despite a sagging muffler that made me wonder if we would make it, Nelson drove us to Cape May to visit the beach, a peaceful scene of dolphins and nesting birds. Nelson scanned the waves with a fisherman’s eye and I learned about his time working with fisherpeople in Puerto Rico.
I wish I had a recording of our third day. Back at the office, Nelson gave a long talk about the history of CATA. There were many details that were new to me. From 93 – 95 CATA had a women’s organizing project in Puerto Rico – organic gardens for the wives of migrant workers to grow food while the men were away working. From 1995 – 98, Nelson was a member of the Small Farm Commission where he stressed worker exposure to pesticides as a critical issue. He led CATA in creating the Farmworker Health and Safety institute and providing Worker Protection Standards (WPS) and HIV trainings – using Popular Education methods. Nelson represented CATA at meetings of the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture, but left when the campaign refused his request to take a stand in opposition to H2A. The day ended with a long and fascinating discussion of relations among farmworker organizations and whether they should focus on mitigating the injustices of H2A or push for open borders and much better working conditions for farm workers. Nelson advocated an immigration system based on human rights. I went home with a pesticide training card valid for five years and a much better understanding of the enormous obstacles to justice for farmworkers.
My other memory is about a one day 20-hour round trip to Burlington, VT, that we made together to confront Ben & Jerry’s and meet with Migrant Justice over a serious misunderstanding that was underway. Nelson insisted that the only way to clear it up was to talk face to face. So he and Kathia Ramirez drove five hours from NJ to pick me up in Rochester for another five hour dash to northern Vermont.
As background, it was in 2015 that Migrant Justice was ramping up its pressure campaign to get Ben & Jerry’s to sign on to the Milk with Dignity program. AJP had our own fish to fry with B & J. We had been talking to Rob Michalak, the B & J “social mission” director, for at least 4 years through our common attendance at meetings of the Domestic Fair Trade Association. I was on the DFTA membership committee that evaluated whether B and J could become an associate member of DFTA. Rob told me a lot about the B & J Caring Dairy Program that paid dairy farms that supplied the cream to make improvements in their environmental conditions. I made some suggestions about improving worker conditions. So when B & J asked AJP to comment on revisions to Caring Dairy, it seemed like a reasonable thing to do. AJP signed a confidentiality agreement with them. However, when things heated up with MJ, B & J made a public
statement to the effect that they did not need Milk with Dignity since they were already getting advice from AJP, thus breaking our confidentiality agreement and making it look like we were speaking for Vermont farmworkers.
Brendan O’Neal, a founder of MJ, got the impression that AJP was trying to muscle in on MJ’s territory. He sent appeals to all their allies asking them to write appeals to AJP not to meet with B & J. Rather than dither around with flurries of messages back and forth, Nelson took the bull by the horns and off we went. And at the B & J meeting, we urged that they make the labor section of Caring Dairy a requirement for farms that participated so that the results would not be like what happened with Food Alliance certification where a farm can get high grades for environmental conditions and never do anything for workers. We also discussed the need for outside verification of farm worker conditions since there was quite a discrepancy between MJ's survey and the voluntary Caring Dairy reports from farms. Nelson informed Rob that we had no intention of speaking for the MJ farmworkers and that the best path for B&J was to meet directly with MJ, listen to their demands and also meet with the farmers to hear their side of the story. After meeting with B&J, we drove across town to the MJ office to tell them what had been said. That trip amounted to a lot of miles, but cut short what could have been an endless string of accusations and complaints from well-meaning but misinformed MJ allies.
Since Nelson retired and moved back to the home he and his wife had built in Puerto Rico, I have kept in touch, asking for Nelson’s advice on AJP and doing my best to take it. Convening the AJP Advisory Council of stakeholders was a step he urged us to prioritize. He always responded to me emails within a day or two. My May 3 email went unanswered. We dedicated the May 11 gathering of the Advisory Council to his memory. He will live on in our hearts.
