Juanita Cox

“(W)ith Hightower, we were very proud, we were able to get even stronger pesticide regulations than what California had at that time….It was the combination of having people in office that cared about the people that harvest the food for this world. It was the power that the union had built in farm workers that said we want you to eat, we’ll get you your vegetables and fruits to the store but we’re not willing to die for it and therefore we’re going to stand up for our rights and say, we feed you, but you need to not kill us with pesticides.”

Juanita was director of the Texas chapter of the United Farmworkers Union. She and her fellow union organizers took the crop sheets that the Texas Department of Agriculture prepared to the fields and gave them to the farm workers to tell them that if they were exposed to these pesticides that the farmer was using, if they felt dizzy or had some symptoms of being exposed to pesticide, then they should take it to the doctors. The crop sheets let the doctors know what the worker might have been exposed to and how to treat it.