At the vigil, a fake coffin for Gustavo Ramirez was briefly placed near the construction site where he died
On Wednesday night, about 50 people attended a vigil and march for Gustavo Enrique Ramirez, a 16-year-old who died in a construction site accident earlier this week. The event was held across the street from 315 Interstate Drive, the location of the worksite where the accident occurred.
Labor-rights group Workers’ Dignity organized the vigil, where they demanded accountability from the site’s general contractor, D.F. Chase, and called for more rights and protections for construction workers in Nashville.
“Gustavo was 16, he was a child of our community,” said Cecilia Prado, an organizer with Workers’ Dignity. “He loved soccer. He has, he was the youngest child in a large and loving family.”
Ramirez was working in the scaffolding of the site alongside his older brother when he fell, plummeting 120 feet. He wasn’t wearing a safety harness.
Armando Arzate speaks to the crowd at the vigil for Gustavo Ramirez
Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health Administration previously told the Scene that in secure scaffolding, such harnesses may not be required.
Prado said she met Ramirez’s family earlier that day, and that his older brother is in shock and barely speaking.
Ramirez’s parents and siblings, said Prado, “are so heartbroken, so angry ... and they want justice. And they want information, because they actually had to find out all the details of what had happened through the news and through the police.”
Other speakers, including organizer Neptali Perez and cement worker Armando Arzate, connected the accident to Nashville’s development boom, which they say is built off the exploitation of immigrant workers. Arzate also called out the practice of hiring subcontractors who often engage in worker misclassification and wage theft.
The vigil attendees then marched to the John Seigenthaler Pedestrian Bridge.
A vigil for Gustavo Ramirez was followed by a short march
At the bridge, R.J. Robles, a minister and Workers’ Dignity volunteer, spoke and said that they were personally “raging” and “pissed off” about Ramirez’s death.
“This didn’t need to happen,” they said. “This ain’t the first time it’s happened.”
Councilmember Sandra Sepulveda, who has family members that work in construction, attended the event. She told the Scene she felt “sadness and frustration” when she heard about Ramirez’s death.
“Sadly cases like this aren't isolated, and this happens more often than it should,” Sepulveda said. “He was a young boy who belonged to a loving family, an immigrant family, and he's not going to be around anymore. And that's because there has been negligence when it comes to construction sites and contractors and their subcontractors.”
Sepulveda added that both Metro and state officials need to rethink how construction contracts are awarded, especially when it comes to “bad actors” who have been accused of wage theft and other violations.
“We keep awarding contracts to them and we keep incentivizing bad behavior, and we gotta stop that.”
TOSHA has launched an investigation into the accident, a process that can take between four and six months to complete.
