“While producing the latest season of “As She Rises,” I dove into the intersection of migrant labor, climate change and sexual harassment with an incredible activist, Lupe Gonzalo, who is a senior member of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. She migrated from Guatemala in 2000 and spent over a decade working in inhumane conditions on tomato farms in Florida. She told me she had experienced sexual harassment in the workplace and witnessed countless similar, and sometimes worse, incidents among her female coworkers.

These stories are devastating and chilling. But it’s these firsthand accounts that shed light on just how destabilizing the climate crisis can be for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.

But women like Gonzalo, those closest to the crisis, are continuing to fight. Gonzalo now works with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to transform the experience of farm laborers in the United States. The coalition’s Fair Food Program has successfully raised wages, implemented enforceable human rights standards on farms, and created plans to improve conditions for farmers in the face of extreme heat exposure. The program is heralded as a model for the rest of the world. Part of Gonzalo’s work includes leading educational seminars so that more people like her can continue the fight.”