Damien Thompson Testimony for SB.21.087 (March 2021)

Damien Thompson Testimony for SB.21.087 (March 2021)

SB.21.087, public testimony, advocacy, Colorado legislative hearing, Agricultural Workers' Bill of Rights

Damian Thompson gives testimony in favor of SB.21.087 (aka Agricultural Workers' Bill of Rights), placing the voting actions on this particular piece of legislation in historical dialogue with events such as the New Deal and Jim Crowe laws in southern states. He argues that SB.21.087 is a movement in the right direction to address extant systemic injustice for the exploitation of BIPOC agricultural workers' labor in the US food cycle.

Damien Thompson

March 17, 2021

Mitchell Christensen

Damien Thompson

SB.21.087 ("Agricultural Workers' Bill of Rights")

[0:12]
[Thompson]
Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Dr. Damian Thompson; I am a teacher, the descendent of black South Carolina sharecroppers, and a small farmer here in Colorado. I am speaking in support of SB.21.87. Our food system is rooted in systems of a racist exclusion that have been informed-that have informed the American experiment from its inception. By the time of the American Revolution, racist ideas were used as justification for the enslavement of Africans in perpetuity and the theft of indigenous lands. Today, we are forced to contend and confront the contradictions that the people who labor to grow our food are denied the same recognition and human rights protections under the law. The New Deal provided an opportunity for the United States to address these historic wrongs. At a time when economic opportunity and security and labor protections were being catalyzed by white workers, Jim Crowe politicians, such as Mark J. Wilcox of Florida, fought to maintain, and I quote, “a difference in the wage scale of white and colored labor”. History has judged Representative Wilcox harshly for using his legislative power to uphold racism. Today, you have an opportunity to craft a different legacy for yourselves. If this committee fails to take action, it represents a clear endorsement of a harmful status quo that systemically advantages the property rights of white settler landholders by systemically disadvantaging a mostly BIPOC, largely latinx agricultural workforce. In conclusion, this is not as the opposition would have it: an argument about values of individual good or bad producers. The reality is that these exclusions are representative of an entire system that must be changed. It is for these reasons that I implore you to vote in favor of SB.21.87 for agricultural workers rights. Thank you.

Damian testified on March 17, 2021 for the Senate Business, Labor, & Technology Committee.