A Statement in Solidarity with Black Lives Matter

The National Farm Worker Ministry board and staff endorsed the following:

The National Farm Worker Ministry (NFWM) calls on people of faith and conscience to be in solidarity with Black Lives Matter, a movement to dismantle white supremacy, end violence against Black lives and, center Black voices as we work together toward justice. Together with NFWM’s member organizations and farm worker partners, we join in the call to justice with and for the communities who are subject to government-sanctioned violence, intimidation, and economic exploitation.

NFWM is a faith-based organization that stands with farm workers to struggle against unjust labor conditions in U.S. agriculture. NFWM remains committed to ending violent and exploitative economic systems that especially target communities of color. Farm workers long have suffered racially based economic exploitation along with physical, emotional, and spiritual harm. Today, the multi-billion dollar agribusiness system depends on 2 to 2 ½ million farm workers–mostly Latinx, Black and Indigenous people–who produce our food. Always essential but only recently recognized as such, farm workers long have suffered from low wages, dangerous environmental health conditions, sexual violence, and ongoing intimidation – including family separation, ICE raids and detentions.  

NFWM continues our 50-year commitment to struggle for racial and economic justice with and for our farm worker partners. It is out of this history that we stand in solidarity with Black Lives Matter.

The Board of Directors and Staff of the National Farm Worker Ministry

June 2020