Lansing Latino legislative advocacy event brings labor issues, maternal health into focus

In the basement of a church in downtown Lansing, members of Michigan’s Latin community grappled with policy and bold ideas that could help them protect their civil rights and attain tangible political power statewide.

On Thursday, MI Poder, a nonprofit organization dedicated to amplifying Latinx grassroots efforts and justice-driven policy change, hosted its fourth-annual Latino Legislative Advocacy Day.

The event is part of MI Poder’s Michigan Latino Voter Project, a statewide initiative seeking to expand Latin civic participation, build a sustained organizing infrastructure and see Latin or Latin-preferred candidates excel at the ballot box.

“This is about more than just participation, it’s about real power,” said Cindy Gamboa, executive director of MI Poder. “Our communities are already engaged. What’s been missing is consistent investment and real accountability. Latino Legislative Advocacy Day is about closing that gap and making sure our voices don’t just show up, but that they also guide decisions.”

The day’s events included meetings with legislators, breaking bread, sharing stories, and various panel discussions focused on ways to enhance political power but also to enhance the well-being of Latin people living in Michigan.

Of high interest were panels dealing with worker protections and Latina maternal health — especially at a time when Latin people are facing affronts to their dignity and other challenges, like increased immigration enforcement from the federal government. Not only have those challenges affected workers, but also the mental health of the community writ large.

Workers deserve a path toward documentation, stronger abuse protections

Discussing labor issues were Amanda Villa with the United Farm Workers Foundation’s Michigan branch, Gonzalo Peralta with the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, and Branden Snyder of the Working Families Party.

Moderator Ernesto Mireles, also with MI Poder, at one point asked the panel about what needed to be done at the state legislative and congressional levels to ensure farmworkers, regardless of immigration status, could report unsafe conditions without fear of retaliation, job loss or deportation.

Villa said that a clear pathway to legal status and documentation would go a long way toward easing those fears of reprisal.

“We continue to be afraid,” Villa said. “If I’m a lawful permanent resident and I don’t want to speak out because my green card will be removed; if my parents are naturalized U.S. citizens, and they don’t want to share their farmworking story because they’re afraid they’re going to be targeted the next time we go to Mexico; we need a legal path for our farmworkers and we need it now.”

Villa also advocated for stronger protections against working in high-heat environments, as Michigan does not currently have a heat standard.

“Our farmworkers work in 90 degree weather with no form of acclimatization whatsoever,” she said. “We’re seeing these young farmworkers from Mexico come into Michigan, and they’re expected to work 10 hours a day under the beating sun, with limited water, with limited shade, with limited rest, and then we expect them to go to work and do it again the next day, for seven days. That’s not humanly possible.”

Peralta said that although the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Act does provide workers with a mechanism to issue complaints, it remains wholly insufficient to address the needs of Latin American or immigrant workers.

“Not even close. Part of the problem is that the agency which enforces that act is massively underfunded,” Peralta said of the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or MIOSHA, which is housed within the state Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity. “Part of the solution would be to actually give the funds necessary so that the agency can do its job to ensure that anyone who makes a complaint is actually appropriately investigated and employers are penalized if there are violations of law.”

Peralta also noted that there were immediate ways, aside from appropriations, for the Michigan Legislature to increase protections already codified in the act. That was also true of MIOSHA, which does have the power to promulgate its own rules.

“I’m not sure why it’s not doing that,” Peralta said. “The intersection with its lack of funding means that they won’t be able to actually do any enforcement, assuming that they were able to go through the rules making process. We need to deal with the fact that there are administrative and political legislative hurdles to being able to actually create and craft some legislative structure that allows for people to actually make complaints and to get some redress.”

Michigan’s laws also interact poorly with federal systems, he added, and that many states have adopted policies where immigrants are penalized for filing complaints that would better their workplaces and ensure their safety.

We need a legal path for our farmworkers and we need it now.

– Amanda Villa with the United Farm Workers Foundation’s Michigan branch.

Snyder said Black and Latin farmworking communities first need to demand more from their lawmakers.

“How are we making sure that we are integrating these type of conversations in the everyday speak, in everyday demands of what we’re asking our elected officials to do?” Snyder posited. “How do we ‘electoralize’ these issues that matter?”

Snyder also pointed to the fact that Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has put an emphasis on consumer protections, but her office could be doing more to enforce work protections. He also called on those units to be placed in local county prosecutors’ offices to ensure other avenues to report companies or vendors for violations like wage theft.

Maternal health in the Latina community should also include mental health for all

Speaking on the topic of maternal health and challenges felt within the Latina community were Alé Roel, a community organizer with Mothering Justice, Celeste Sanchez Lloyd, a community program manager with Spectrum Health, Vilma Escamilla Duran, a doula and community activist.

Moderator Gladys Picó Gleason, a registered nurse and the clinical manager of Corewell Health’s diagnostic lung mass clinic in Grand Rapids, quickly turned to mental health, noting that at least 40% of Latin and Hispanic mothers will experience some sort of mental health disorder, like postpartum depression. She asked the panelists about the factors that fuel disparities that prevent those moms from getting care.

Duran said it starts with a culture of mental health being taboo, which fosters difficulty in asking for help.

“I had a traumatic birth. I have twins and had to have an emergency C-section. So a lot of that really increased my risk of having a perinatal mood and anxiety disorder,” Duran said. “And a lot of the things that folks can do is, at least for Latinx families, just understand that this is a sensitive subject. They’re using these uniform screeners that are everywhere, not even provided in the language that you can read it in. It’s so robotic.”

Duran said that when Latin mothers do ask for translations, it’s a machine talking to them and not a real person. 

“There’s so many layers of impersonal attitudes that folks don’t feel open to talk about how they’re feeling, because it’s just another checkbox, another thing, another diagnosis,” she said.

Sanchez Lloyd advocated for additional funding for culturally competent staff at hospitals and clinics. She said Spectrum has home visiting programs with 24-hour community health workers where half of the employees identify as Black women, and the other half identify as Latina.

“We really are embracing the idea that the community knows what’s best and can work along with our mental health therapist,” Sanchez Lloyd said. “We recognize those cultural needs, asking those questions, breaking the myths that exist within our communities and also taboo.”

That sometimes comes at a cost, however, because that means paying people well for their lived experiences and what’s culturally bringing them to the table. That becomes a question of funding and priorities for health systems, Sanchez Lloyd said.

Roel said that she struggled with numerous mental health issues after her pregnancy, and her story was not unique. She said that women and mothers are often asked to carry the emotional labor for almost every industry and institution, from education down to nursing care, all while being expected to prop themselves up, too.

In that type of society, Roel said it wasn’t hard to wonder why Latin women and birthing people have mental health issues. She also called for fathers to step up and seek help for their own mental health struggles and to reflect on the power they have in society to make things better for the mothers of their children.

“We don’t always have access to paid leave. We don’t have the access to fathers who believe that they should do their part sometimes to help prop us up,” Roel said. “We’re in a culture war right now, and what I want people to understand is that women and mothers, in this capitalist system, are getting more and more and more extracted and exploited from them in value.”