At another place, in Kern County, we were sprayed with pesticides. They would come out there with their sprayers and spray us on the picket lines. - Jessie Lopez De La Cruz

I said, "Well! Do you think we should be putting up with this in this modern age? You know, we're not back in the twenties. We can stand up! We can talk back! It's not like when I was a little kid and my grandmother used to say, 'You have to especially respect the Anglos,' 'Yessir,' 'Yes, Ma'am!' That's over. This country is very rich, and we want a share of the money these growers make of our sweat and our work by exploiting us and our children!"

I became involved in many of the activities in the community-school board meetings, city council meetings, everything that I could get into. For example, I began fighting for bilingual education in Parlier, went to a lot of meetings about it and spoke about it.

These big growers have a lot of money because we earned all that money for them. Because of our sweat and our labor that we put on the land.