Zeke Guzman is a farmworker advocate and President of Latinos Unidos del Condado de Sonoma, an organization formed in 1966 to advocate for farmworkers and community members across Sonoma County. Zeke grew up as a migrant farmworker and he and his family settled in Healdsburg in 1959. He worked for California Human Development for over 30 years and initiated their workforce development program for farmworkers. Since “retiring” in 2017, Zeke has dedicated his life to fighting injustices for farmworkers across Sonoma and the state. Zeke has started a network of community farms, starting with two acres at his home and expanding to eight farms over the County, to fight food insecurity in his community. Last year, they donated over 100,000 pounds of organically grown produce directly to farmworkers and to local food banks. You can see more about this work here.

Zeke started working with Carly in October 2023 to examine farmworkers’ experiences working in agriculture during wildfires in Sonoma County. He developed a Community Engagement Team of local community health workers that surveyed over 1,000 farmworkers in collaboration with UC Berkeley undergraduate students.

Zeke has continued to work with Carly and other graduate and undergraduate students at UC Berkeley on various research and outreach projects aimed at improving the health and wellbeing of farmworkers. We recently presented in a webinar with the Berkeley Food Institute and co-authored an op-ed advocating for the expansion of unemployment insurance to undocumented workers.