Last week, CSUB held their Grimm Family Center for Agricultural Business Speaker Series: “Children of Farm Workers” with Connie Perez-Andreesen and Raji K. Brar.
Perez-Andreesen, an alumna of CSUB, made history in 2023 for becoming CSUB’s first Latina Bakersfield Foundation’s new chair. She is also the Controller for the United Farm Workers of America (UFW), which actively champions legislative and regulatory reforms for farm workers.
Born in Tular to immigrant parents from Mexico, Perez-Andreesen spent most of her childhood at Woodville Labor Camp.
Raji K. Brar is a first-generation Sikh American whose parents immigrated from Punjab, India, and was born and raised in Fresno County. Where her family started their life in the U.S. by working in the fields as farm workers.
When Brar and her family moved to Bakersfield, she started her education from CSUB. In 2006, Brar became the first Sikh woman to ever be elected to a municipal government seat in California when she joined the Arvin City Council. She is now serves on the boards for the California Chamber of Commerce, Cal State Bakersfield Foundation and is also the co-founder for the Bakersfield Sikh Women’s Foundation.
When asked about how their cultural background influences their work ethics Brar shared that her mother is the reason why she’s sitting here today. Her mother migrated to the U.S. when she was 16 years old by ship and started her journey here in the U.S. as a farm worker. And lived in farm labor camps.
“I remember my mother quit school when she was 15 years old. Because in our culture, in Punjab, India, it wasn’t important for girls to go to school or get an education. It was just seen as something that married off to men. So unfortunately there’s that cultural dynamic that runs through my culture.”
Brar said she has a very strong mother. So the “tenacity and grit” definitely comes from her. So when her mother came here she had to adjust to the whole culture.
“Get your education, it will never leave you. And so that was the common theme throughout my life,” she said.
Perez-Andreesen said she went through a similar situation. Although she grew up in a labor camp for most of her childhood and didn’t have any professional people around her. She knew what she wanted for her education.
“I didn’t really know what it meant to go to college. But all I knew is that I wanted to do better,” Perez-Andreesen said about her higher education.
Perez-Andreesen shared that her parents never let her work in the fields and she believed they sheltered her from what they went through. So she never understood what farm workers go through in the fields until she was part of the UFW march a couple of years ago.
“We had a documentary crew following us the entire way, and they would interview the farm workers. They would share stories about how the farm workers and they shared stories about what the went through in the fields, like sexual abuse of women and harassment. The list went on and on,” she said.
But what actually pushed Perez-Andreesen for a higher education was when her older brother passed away when he was 19 years old.
“I got the news that he had been killed by my dad. And I was devastated, obviously. But at that moment I had to step in to look over my family…” Perze-Andreesen realized about her family, she said. “They left their family behind. They left everything behind so that we would have a better life. My brother, unfortunately, you know, didn’t make it. And I thought I have to make up for what he didn’t do.”
