September 27, 2018 – By Andy O’Brien, The Free Press – When Baldemar Velásquez was growing up, he spent a lot of time feeling angry and powerless. The 71-year-old Mexican-American labor activist began working in the fields with his family at the age of 4, traveling every year from their home in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas up into the Midwest to plant, weed and harvest crops like tomatoes, cucumbers, sugar beets and berries.