Baldemar Velásquez, born on this day in 1947, is an American labor organizer who founded, and is currently President of, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), a union that organizes farm workers. Velásquez led his first strike at age 12.

When he was just four years old, Velásquez began assisting his parents, migrant farm workers, in the fields. They rode with other migrant workers in a pickup truck with a canvas-covered bed, huddling around a can of hot ashes and covering themselves in blankets to stay warm. Velásquez led his first strike at the age of 12, helping pickers at his summer job win better wages.

In September 1967, Baldemar co-founded FLOC with his father to help migrant workers collectively bargain for better conditions. Through FLOC, Velásquez helped organize strikes and a boycott against the Campbell Soup Company, as well as leading migrant workers on a 560 mile protest march from the union headquarters in Toledo, Ohio to Campbell's headquarters in Camden, New Jersey.

After winning a collective bargaining agreement with Campbell's, growers began complaining that they could not compete with inexpensive Mexican produce. Velásquez personally traveled to Mexico and successfully lobbied the Mexican unions to raise their wages and benefits, closing the gap in prices.

In 1994, Velásquez was awarded the Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest honor Mexico can bestow on a non-citizen.

"We can just lay down and let matters overwhelm us and whine and complain about how bad things are, or get up and do something and start speaking to those things that are upon you and those things that are evil...Just do it and don’t stop, and whatever happens happens… As Emiliano Zapata said, it’s better to die on your feet than to live on your knees."

- Baldemar Velásquez