Hello from Wonder Media Network. I'm Jenny Kaplan and this is Wamanica. This month we're talking about workers, women who fought for labor rights and shaped the wavy to business today. They advocated and innovated to make the office wherever it is, a more equitable place. One day, a filmmaker was in San Rafael, California, doing research for a new project focused on the farm workers movement leader Cesar Chavez. But as she searched through the archive, she came across a set of photographs of a different movement leader who had been lost to history. The woman she saw in the pictures was the first woman farm worker to be hired as a union representative. She helped lay the early groundwork of the movement in the nineteen sixties. Today we're talking about Maria Morano. Maria Moreno was born in nineteen twenty in Texas. Her mother was Mescalero Apache and her father was a preacher and an orphan of the Mexican Revolution. By nineteen forty, Maria had started a family. Her family left Texas during the dust Bowl Migration, one of the largest migrations in American history. Hundreds of thousands of farm workers like Maria were displaced and sought a new home in California. After arriving in the San Joaquin Valley, Maria settled with her husband and twelve children in a fifteen foot shack. They would wake up in the early morning and make their way to the fields to work. Sometimes they would follow the harvest as far as Colorado and Utah. In nineteen fifty eight, Maria and her family were living into Larry County when a devastating flood occurred. It destroyed farms and left hundreds of farm workers without a job or home. To make matters worse, farm workers weren't eligible for food assistants. Maria's family didn't have enough food. Her nineteen year old son sacrificed his poor for his younger siblings. It got so bad that he lost his site for three days and ended up hospitalized. Determined to speak out, Maria turned to her testimony as a tool of protest. The Fresno b published an article about Maria and her family's arduous circumstances. Her story gained momentum and drove the county to change its food assistant policy to include farm workers. It was this story that caught the eye of the director of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee or a WALK. The group was in its early days and hired her to be a union organizer. Maria was one of the first people hired, and she was also the first female farm worker to be a union organizer. When Maria started the job, farm workers didn't have many of the rights workers and other industries did, minimum wage, social security, unemployment benefits, and even child labor regulations. He needed collective organizing. When it was time to lead a strike, Maria would get in the car with her husband and he would drive her all around the state. At the same time, there was another new leader fighting for farm workers' rights in California. His name was Ceesar Chavez. Seesar was one of the founders of a different union, the National farm Workers Association, But Ceesar and Maria had very different stances on immigrant workers. Some farm workers, including Ceesar Chavez in his union, advocated for closing the borders. In certain cases. They would even call border control on migrants. They saw this as an effort to protect their jobs. On the other hand, in nineteen sixty one, Maria represented AYWALK at a labor union conference. In her speech, she called the members of AWOK Transnational at the time a radical position, but one grounded in truth. Awok's members came from diverse backgrounds. It was an organization composed primarily of Filipino migrant farm workers, but also included ok Arqui, Black, and Mexican American members. In her own time, Maria's organizing style wasn't seen as assertive or bold, but rather brash. In nineteen sixty two, Ceesar Chavez wrote a letter in which she dismissed Maria's quote big mouth. Eventually, tension between Maria and awok's parent organization, along with other movement leaders, grew to be too much. By the time the AWALK led the now renowned Delano Grape labor strike of nineteen sixty five, Maria had left the organization. Over the years, Ceesar Chavez became the public face of the farm worker's movement. This, in turn pushed other organizers, specifically women like Maria, to the background of the movement's history. Maria eventually moved to Arizona, where she found a new passion as a Pentecostal minister. In nineteen eighty nine, Maria died from breast cancer. In recent years, Maria's story has resurfaced. The filmmaker took the images and audio recordings she found in the archives and tracked down the details of Maria's story. The result was a documentary called Adios Amor All month, We're Talking about Workers. For more information, find us on Facebook and Instagram at Wamanica Podcast special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co creator. Talk to you tomorrow.

Hello from Wonder Media Network. I'm Jenny Kaplan and this is Wamanica. This month we're talking about workers, women who fought for labor rights and shaped the wavy to business today. They advocated and innovated to make the office wherever it is, a more equitable place. One day, a filmmaker was in San Rafael, California, doing research for a new project focused on the farm workers movement leader Cesar Chavez. But as she searched through the archive, she came across a set of photographs of a different movement leader who had been lost to history. The woman she saw in the pictures was the first woman farm worker to be hired as a union representative. She helped lay the early groundwork of the movement in the nineteen sixties. Today we're talking about Maria Morano. Maria Moreno was born in nineteen twenty in Texas. Her mother was Mescalero Apache and her father was a preacher and an orphan of the Mexican Revolution. By nineteen forty, Maria had started a family. Her family left Texas during the dust Bowl Migration, one of the largest migrations in American history. Hundreds of thousands of farm workers like Maria were displaced and sought a new home in California. After arriving in the San Joaquin Valley, Maria settled with her husband and twelve children in a fifteen foot shack. They would wake up in the early morning and make their way to the fields to work. Sometimes they would follow the harvest as far as Colorado and Utah. In nineteen fifty eight, Maria and her family were living into Larry County when a devastating flood occurred. It destroyed farms and left hundreds of farm workers without a job or home. To make matters worse, farm workers weren't eligible for food assistants. Maria's family didn't have enough food. Her nineteen year old son sacrificed his poor for his younger siblings. It got so bad that he lost his site for three days and ended up hospitalized. Determined to speak out, Maria turned to her testimony as a tool of protest. The Fresno b published an article about Maria and her family's arduous circumstances. Her story gained momentum and drove the county to change its food assistant policy to include farm workers. It was this story that caught the eye of the director of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee or a WALK. The group was in its early days and hired her to be a union organizer. Maria was one of the first people hired, and she was also the first female farm worker to be a union organizer. When Maria started the job, farm workers didn't have many of the rights workers and other industries did, minimum wage, social security, unemployment benefits, and even child labor regulations. He needed collective organizing. When it was time to lead a strike, Maria would get in the car with her husband and he would drive her all around the state. At the same time, there was another new leader fighting for farm workers' rights in California. His name was Ceesar Chavez. Seesar was one of the founders of a different union, the National farm Workers Association, But Ceesar and Maria had very different stances on immigrant workers. Some farm workers, including Ceesar Chavez in his union, advocated for closing the borders. In certain cases. They would even call border control on migrants. They saw this as an effort to protect their jobs. On the other hand, in nineteen sixty one, Maria represented AYWALK at a labor union conference. In her speech, she called the members of AWOK Transnational at the time a radical position, but one grounded in truth. Awok's members came from diverse backgrounds. It was an organization composed primarily of Filipino migrant farm workers, but also included ok Arqui, Black, and Mexican American members. In her own time, Maria's organizing style wasn't seen as assertive or bold, but rather brash. In nineteen sixty two, Ceesar Chavez wrote a letter in which she dismissed Maria's quote big mouth. Eventually, tension between Maria and awok's parent organization, along with other movement leaders, grew to be too much. By the time the AWALK led the now renowned Delano Grape labor strike of nineteen sixty five, Maria had left the organization. Over the years, Ceesar Chavez became the public face of the farm worker's movement. This, in turn pushed other organizers, specifically women like Maria, to the background of the movement's history. Maria eventually moved to Arizona, where she found a new passion as a Pentecostal minister. In nineteen eighty nine, Maria died from breast cancer. In recent years, Maria's story has resurfaced. The filmmaker took the images and audio recordings she found in the archives and tracked down the details of Maria's story. The result was a documentary called Adios Amor All month, We're Talking about Workers. For more information, find us on Facebook and Instagram at Wamanica Podcast special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co creator. Talk to you tomorrow.