Farmworkers, allies march for equal rights
Show of solidarity planned in Brockport

Farmworkers, students, union members, and clergy from all over western New York will join forces in a ten-day march to Albany beginning in Seneca Falls on April 21. They'll be wearing red T-shirts emblazoned with the message: New York's farmworkers deserve equal rights.

In Albany on April 30, they'll be joined at the state capital by Dolores Huerta, a co-founder with the late Cesar Chavez of United Farm Workers (UFW) in Delano, California.

New York's farmworkers are excluded from the same rights and protections that other workers take for granted, including a day of rest, overtime pay, disability insurance, and the right to bargain collectively with their employers.

The marchers will pay a visit to Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno's office in Albany to demand that he call for the passage of the Farmworker Fair Labor Practices Act. The act has been passed in the Assembly in the last two sessions, but has failed in the Senate.

On the steps of the Capitol Building, the demonstrators from western New York will also meet their counterparts from the eastern part of the state, who will begin their pilgrimage in Harlem.

In western New York, the marchers will make stops in Auburn, Syracuse, Oneida, Utica, Little Falls, Canajoharie, Amsterdam, and Schenectady before they arrive at the capital in Albany at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, April 30. A "Vigil of Solidarity" will be held in Brockport on Saturday, April 19 at 4 p.m. at St. Luke's Episcopal Church on Main Street.