They put food on our tables but live in the shadows. This man is fighting to be seen
Jose Martinez has picked America's food for decades. With all that experience on different farms, he saw workers lacking labor protections. Now he works to give farmworkers more rights.
SUNNYSIDE, Wash. — Jose Martinez has lived and worked in the United States since he was 14 years old. Now 67, he drives around the Yakima Valley in Washington state checking on fellow workers.
"When it's hot, do you have a place to protect yourself from the sun and heat?" he calls out to some workers on the side of an apple orchard on a sunny June morning.
Martinez worked in agriculture across the fields of California and, most recently, Washington state. Irrigation, grapes, apples, mushrooms, dairies and now cherries. He's done a little bit of everything.
"I love the fields because you're in the open air," he told NPR in his native Spanish, sitting on the lawn outside his home in Sunnyside, Wash. "It's beautiful. I am proud to
