After the tragic death of Sheldon McKenzie, the migrant farmworker who was denied adequate healthcare and died of workplace injuries, Radical Action with Migrants in Agriculture (RAMA) and migrant farmworkers across the Okanagan Valley are expressing their deep concern for risks to workers’ health and safety. Sheldon, a Jamaican citizen, had been working in Canada as a temporary agricultural worker […]
It’s spring time… Which means that thousands of agricultural workers from Mexico, Jamaica and Guatemala have started to come to the Okanagan Valley. These workers will toil throughout the season, producing much of the food that ends up on our plates. Despite the contributions of seasonal agricultural workers to the community, there are few supports to help them feel welcome […]
Justicia for Migrant Workers (J4MW) and Radical Action with Migrants in Agriculture (RAMA) are writing to express our outrage concerning the actions of the Vernon RCMP detachment in releasing to the public, personal information of four Mexican migrant workers employed under the auspices of the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). We believe that the RCMP has infringed on the rights […]
During the week of July 20, 2015, several news sources, including Castanet Media, the CBC, HuffingtonPost, Vancouver Sun, and KelownaNow, published stories about four Mexican farmworkers who had not been seen since late June 2015. We, the undersigned, are outraged at the sensational and overtly racist coverage of this ‘story’, which reinforces and perpetuates negative stereotypes of Mexicans as criminals. […]
RAMA is excited to be participating in Okanagan College’s first International Development Night tomorrow afternoon, Wednesday, April 8th, from 4-6pm at the Kelowna campus. Through our work with migrant farmworkers, we challenge the often artificial distinction between global and local, and between “international” and “community” development. There is always work to be done in our neighbourhoods, communities, and countries of […]