Every week, Vogue will be spotlighting the medical workers, teachers, and Good Samaritans who are giving back to those in need during the coronavirus crisis.
Mónica Ramírez, founder of Justice For Migrant Women, has been advocating for the rights of Latinx and immigrant communities for years. Now, she has teamed up with long-time activism partner Eva Longoria to support her newest initiative, the Farmworker Covid-19 Relief Fund. “Mónica and I work together on so many things, like Time’s Up, voting rights, and farm worker rights. Anytime Mónica calls, I just say yes,” Longoria says.
Longoria, alongside HeartLatino chairman Enrique Santos, will host Altísimo Live! Festival, which will be streamed in real time this upcoming Tuesday, May 5. Inspired by the historic ’80s LiveAID event, Altísimo Live! features performances from globally renowned artists like JBalvin, Maluma, Gloria and Emilio Estefan, and Marc Anthony. With a $3 million goal set in place, viewers can make donations of $5 dollars or more throughout the event to benefit the Farmworker Covid-19 Relief Fund.
Vogue spoke with Eva and Monica about the vital and timely importance of supporting our farmworkers across the nation.
How did you all decide on organizing this project and livestream?
Mónica Ramírez: Once the crisis began, we immediately became concerned about the welfare of the farm worker community because we understood that farm workers would be in grave risk of contracting the illness. If it were to get into the labor camps, there could be large numbers of farm workers across the country who would not only get sick but potentially die. We started to organize around what we could do to try to meet the immediate needs of the community. Some of the first things that we started hearing from the community was that they needed food, they needed protective gear—gloves and face masks and other things. So we created this pandemic relief fund.
A couple of weeks after we created the fund, we were approached by iHeart Latino, RetroPop Media, and a couple of other organizations, who said that they had decided to do a live event that would be a benefit and they had selected the Farmworkers Pandemic Relief Fund to be the beneficiary. We set the fundraising goal to $3 million, because we were thinking about the 2.5 to 3 million farm workers in the nation.
When we heard that they selected our project to be the beneficiary, we were pleased, and wanted to help build additional support. We also wanted to make sure that whoever was part of the project was someone who wanted to celebrate the contributions of farm workers and honor them. Eva has spent so many years looking at the contributions and power of the farm worker community, so we knew that she was the right person to ask to host the event. To us and the farm worker community, it means so much to know that we have a true champion on our side, both beyond this crisis and particularly in this moment when people are feeling pretty scared about what this virus and pandemic will mean over the long term.