In September 2006, the United Farm Workers (UFW) launched Camp Justice, an initiative that brought volunteers to sleep, eat, and live at the UFW’s historic Forty Acres facility outside Delano, California to help organizers speak with thousands of Central Valley farm workers about their wages and working conditions.

“Every day they would go out to the fields to educate workers about their rights,” said Giev Kashkooli, political and legislative director for the United Farm Workers of America. “They became a little community. The National Farm Worker Ministry helped organize the volunteers, held prayer services and, well, the employers didn’t really like it, so NFWM provided a calming space for the volunteers to come back to.”

Organizers would arrive in valley fields and vineyards by 6 a.m. to speak with farm workers before they began work under the state farm labor law’s access rule, according to the UFW.

Video from Camp Justice, 2006: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Poz31Z6ZBLw