The William Spofford Award: Baldemar Velasquez

I'm very honored and I thank you very much for your kind attention to the details of my struggles. But you didn't think I'd get up here without making a pitch for our struggle, did you? So let me call on you and steal a verse from the Promise Keepers movement -- Ezekiel 22:30. They use it as their signature verse. It is about God calling on a man to build up the hedge and stand in the gap on behalf of the land so he wouldn't have to destroy it. Well verse 29 tells you why God was mad. God was mad because of the oppression of the poor and the exploitation of the alien in denying the aliens their rights. And these are the people that God watches over jealously, apart from the orphans and the widows.

These aliens are the ones that we are organizing in North Carolina. So I invited the CEO of the Mt. Olive Pickle Company, Bill Bryan, who is a devout Methodist, to be a man that God would be calling to stand in the gap also. I invited Mr. Bryan personally on a radio program where we were debating that the issue is not about war where one side overwhelms and overcomes another person, but it is truly an initiative of true reconciliation. And if we're going to reconcile, well, then, the exploiter has to be reconciled with the exploited, the oppressor with the oppressed. And Mr. Bryan and I jointly can go a long way in making that a reality.

I think that that is God's will. Because nobody is talking about being against anyone for making money, because we all do that. But how you make your money is the important question and I believe that Mr. Bryan has an obligation -- not to me and not to you, but to our heavenly Father. And the Lord gave me a revelation that these struggles are not so much about us who have come from the oppressed class, but for the oppressors, for their sakes in the spiritual realm.

So help me bring Bill Bryan to true reconciliation. Help me get Bill Bryan to recognize and put aside some of his profits to really engage the people on the bottom of his industry. So I invite you to join us to struggle. Believe me, that would be my greatest reward -- in the spirit of the brother Spofford, who gallantly and valiantly supported these kinds of issues for many years.

So I thank you and my gratefulness goes out to you on behalf of all the members of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee and all the migrant workers who hope to have some expectations in their lives. Thank you.