Chuy Renteria, a first-generation Mexican-American, spoke about their experiences growing up in a town in Iowa where meat-packing factories and farming were prevalent. Renteria ties in personal anecdotes with their immigrant parents to the hardships they faced as a result of the meat-packing industry.

“People roughly my age, people I grew up with — Mexicans and Southeast Asians — brown people that were sickly worried about their parents going back to working at the [meat-packing] plant. Children of immigrants and refugees who knew the work ethic of our parents, who knew that if the plant told them to come back, they would would oblige,” Renteria said. “Work was their grounding, it was the tether to the fruits of their labor that would manifest in their children, because work was their dream for us.”

Rentaria continues citing the negative environmental and domestic impacts of the meat-packing industry, and ultimately ends off with a request to take small steps to catalyze environmental change.

The program concluded with a performance led by preschoolers, under the ‘A Promise to the Planet’ campaign, which was started by The LENA Project. The establishment of this campaign was inspired by the preschoolers who had been impacted by the inaugural Prompt for the Planet showcase, repeating the philosophy that it was essential to “help Earth be the best Earth”. 

The preschoolers brainstormed topics for two songs and performed them for the audience, as a culmination of all prior performances.