SACRAMENTO – To mark the historic nature of legislation to provide farm workers with long-overdue overtime protections, Senate Majority Leader Dean Florez and United Farm Workers president Arturo Rodriguez will join farm workers from throughout California on Tuesday, July 20th at 10 a.m. to physically “march” the proposed law from the desk of the state Senate to the desk of Governor Schwarzenegger.

  For nearly 70 years, as a matter of custom and law, the state of California has discriminated against the farm worker. The men and women who work in the fields are the only hourly wage earners in the state who do not receive overtime pay after 8 hours of labor a day, 40 hours of labor a week.

  SB 1121, authored by Sen. Florez, seeks to end this archaic practice that treats one class, one people, different than all others. Earlier this month, the state legislature passed the measure. All that is needed for the bill to become law is the governor’s signature.

   

“Gov. Schwarzenegger has the power to forever wipe this shame off the books,” Sen. Florez said. “By doing so, he will send a clear message that it is not okay to treat a labor force of immigrants differently than the others, that he, as an immigrant who worked under the sun and became the embodiment of the California Dream, understands that such a disparity cannot exist side-by-side with our ideals.”

“My profound hope is that he will seize this historic moment and sign the bill into law,” Florez said.

Tuesday’s news conference and march to the Governor’s office will begin at 10:00 a.m. in the offices of Majority Leader Dean Florez, State Capitol Room 313.

 

As I headed toward downtown Los Angeles this morning on a bus packed with people carrying ‘No on H8 signs’ I felt like a true movement toward equality was  solidifying. Los Angeles in not a city to embrace public transportation, but folks of all shapes and sizes left their cars at home and packed together to raise their voices at L.A.’s ‘Join The Impact’ rally and march. Once we streamed off the bus we flooded into the crowd of thousands of others chanting and carrying signs- in the name of equal rights.

I met up with a group of volunteers from the Courage Campaign to help collect signatures to repeal Prop. 8. If you haven’t signed yet, check out the pledge here http://www.couragecampaign.org/page/s/repealprop8. The pledge was such a hit that one of my clipboards was literally carried away by a crowd of people who kept asking there neighbor to sign-on.

A moving line-up of speakers kicked-off the day.  Mayor Antonio  Villaraigosa helicoptered in leaving the worst fires the city has seen in years to speak with the crowd of 12,000. Reverend Lee from the SCLC who marched with Martin Luther King  gave an amazing speech about how far we’ve come and how far we have to travel for true equal rights. The vibe in the streets was a rare one for LA- it truly felt like a city of neighbors coming together to support one another.   To me, the most amazing stories were the ones told on signs like in the photos below- like those held by a couple who before Prop. 8 passed was scheduled to be married today and the ones two fathers were holding showing images of them and their kids with the words ‘un-marry this.’

I left today’s march feeling hopeful about marriage equality and the movement growing. We’ve got a lot of  work to do, but awareness and action are building. Hopefully the pictures and the images in this blog convey that for those who weren’t at today’s march. If you were there and you see that clipboard with the Courage Campaign petition that sailed away in the crowd- please send in the signatures to the address listed!