By any measure, farmworkers and agricultural communities are among the least protected and least visible populations in the United States. In California, 97% of farmworkers are Latinx, 92% are Spanish-speaking, and over 90% are immigrants. The first finding of a violation of EPA regulations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was made in Angelita C., on behalf of children who attended schools near the use of methyl bromide. While state and federal laws prohibit state-funded discrimination and require agencies to advance environmental justice, farmworkers, parents and children who attend schools near pesticide use, and agricultural communities rarely have access to justice via traditional means.
In response, Californians for Pesticide Reform and the University of California, Irvine are hosting a People’s Tribunal at the Lindsay Wellness Center in Tulare County, California on September 12, 2023. The event is a forum for community members to deliberate over civil rights in the context of pesticide use and exposure. People’s tribunals take the form of legal proceedings run by public figures, legal practitioners, and community leaders. Designed to demand accountability, their claim to authority begins with the argument that members of the community are competent to invoke and apply the law on their own when governments are unwilling to do so. The Tribunal is made possible by a generous grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The Tribunal will feature community testimony on subjects including: (1) Generations of work to address harms to farmworkers and schools from pesticide use in California, with a focus on regulatory gaps; (2) Scientific research to understand those harms, with a focus on links and relationships among pesticide use, exposure, and harm; (3) Local coalition testimony from across the region, with a focus on community experience, awareness of harms, and pressing concerns; (4) Binational and Indigenous perspectives, with a focus on the difficulty accessing enforcement and other services for those who speak Indigenous languages; (5) Community efforts to process, transform, and use public data to understand impacts and potential mitigation of pesticide use; (6) Legal requirements, including civil rights laws, and why they are under-utilized and difficult to enforce in the context of pesticide use; and (7) Potential violations of civil rights law.
