"Visual Quotations"

Photographs by Richard Freeman

Farmworkers March for Justice!

New York state has a law that specifically excludes farmworkers from the labor laws which protect workers in other industries. For two summers, 2003 & 2004, I accompanied a group of these workers who marched from Rochester, NY to Albany over a 10-day period. There, on the capital steps they met a group that had been marching from New York City and held a large rally demanding that the state legislature pass a bill that would include them in the state's labor laws. To this day, they are still struggling. We have on video a state representative (Republican) telling a young 16-year old who helps his parents in the field during the summer that they (the state) keeps the wages low precisely so that he and his family can have work. I marched both to give support and to help a friend who was working on a documentary. Here are a few images I managed to take between shootings.