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Florida Farms and Slavery
Fiaryn
Omnicidal MadmanRegistered User regular
Omnicidal MadmanRegistered User regular
This is one of those stories that tends to get buried. A lot of people would be shocked if they knew about this appalling injustice. While some people have been prosecuted, the people actually running these operations get off scot free, to say nothing of McDonald's, Taco Bell, and WalMart
From a food blog http://www.gilttaste.com/stories/572-Barry+Estabrook+Tomatoland
http://labornotes.org/2010/08/florida-slavery-still-haunts-fields
Credit goes by and large to Fire of SomethingAwful for the OP, but I thought this topic interesting enough to bring over. Really puts the bill being pushed by Jim Norman to make photographing farms a felony in a new light!
From a food blog http://www.gilttaste.com/stories/572-Barry+Estabrook+Tomatoland
Gilttaste wrote:And conditions are even worse for some in Florida's tomato industry. In the chilling words of Douglas Molloy, chief assistant United States attorney in Fort Myers, South Florida's tomato fields are "ground zero for modern-day slavery." Molloy is not talking about virtual slavery, or near slavery, or slaverylike conditions, but real slavery. In the last 15 years, Florida law enforcement officials have freed more than 1,000 men and women who had been held and forced to work against their will in the fields of Florida, and that represents only the tip of the iceberg. Most instances of slavery go unreported. Workers were "sold" to crew bosses to pay off bogus debts, beaten if they didn't work, held in chains, pistol whipped, locked at night into shacks in chain-link enclosures patrolled by armed guards. Escapees who got caught were beaten or worse. Even though police have successfully prosecuted seven major slavery cases in the state in the last 15 years, those brought to justice were low-ranking contract field managers, themselves only one or two shaky rungs up the economic ladder from those they enslaved. The wealthy owners of the vast farms walked away scot-free. They expressed no public regrets, let alone outrage, that such conditions existed on operations they controlled. But we all share the blame. When I asked Molloy if it was safe to assume that a consumer who has eaten a fresh tomato from a grocery store, fast food restaurant, or food-service company in the winter has eaten a fruit picked by the hand of a slave, he corrected my choice of words. "It's not an assumption. It is a fact."
After months of crisscrossing Florida, speaking with growers, trade association executives, owners of tomato-packing companies, lawyers, federal prosecutors, county sheriffs, university horticulturalists, plant breeders, farmworker advocates, soup kitchen managers, field workers, field crew leaders, fair housing advocates, one U. S. senator, and one Mexican peasant who came here seeking a better life for his family only to be held for two years as a slave, I began to see that the Florida tomato industry constitutes a parallel world unto itself, a place where many of the assumptions I had taken for granted about living in the United States are turned on their heads.
In this world, slavery is tolerated, or at best ignored. Labor protections for workers predate the Great Depression. Child labor and minimum wage laws are flouted. Basic antitrust measures do not apply. The most minimal housing standards are not enforced. Spanish is the lingua franca. It has its own banking system made up of storefront paycheck-cashing outfits that charge outrageous commissions to migrants who never stay in one place long enough to open bank accounts. Pesticides, so toxic to humans and so bad for the environment that they are banned outright for most crops, are routinely sprayed on virtually every Florida tomato field, and in too many cases, sprayed directly on workers, despite federally mandated periods when fields are supposed to remain empty after chemical application. All of this is happening in plain view, but out of sight, only a half-hour's drive from one of the wealthiest areas in the United States with its estate homes, beachfront condominiums, and gated golf communities. Meanwhile, tomatoes, once one of the most alluring fruits in our culinary repertoire, have become hard green balls that can easily survive a fall onto an interstate highway. Gassed to an appealing red, they inspire gastronomic fantasies despite all evidence to the contrary. It's a world we've all made, and one we can fix. Welcome to Tomatoland.
http://labornotes.org/2010/08/florida-slavery-still-haunts-fields
Labor Notes wrote:In Florida, Slavery Still Haunts the Fields
Mischa Gaus
| August 5, 2010
A museum-trailer traveling the Northeast reveals a look into one of most shameful secrets of the American system of food production—modern-day slavery among farmworkers. Photo: Fritz Myer.
The trailer, 24 feet deep by 8 feet wide, is muggy this early August afternoon in Manhattan. Eight of us—church ladies, iPhone-wielding denizens, curious tourists—mop our brows as we clamber inside for a look at one the most shameful secrets of the American system of food production: modern-day slavery among farmworkers.
Our guide, Romeo Ramirez, tells us straight away that the trailer, which already feels uncomfortably small, is a replica of one in southwest Florida where 12 farmworkers were forcibly kept between 2005 and 2007. Locked in at night, they had no place to relieve themselves and were forced to foul a corner of their cramped quarters. When someone fought back, he was beaten and chained to a pole. The chain and padlock, still twisted from when workers finally forced it off, rest on the trailer’s wall.
After two workers pounded a hole in the trailer’s ventilator hatch large enough to squeeze out, they found a ladder and extricated the rest. Their escape began the seventh of eight prosecutions for involuntary servitude among U.S. farmworkers since 1997. (The eighth indictments, involving dozens of Haitian nationals victimized by trafficking, were announced last month, two days after Independence Day.)
CENTURIES OF SERVITUDE
Almost all of the cases were uncovered by the tour’s host, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), whose pioneering campaigns against Taco Bell, McDonald’s, and other fast-food giants have led to agreements that pull tomato-pickers’ wages up by one penny for every pound picked, which can boost daily wages from about $50 to $85.
But while the coalition can boast of some success in challenging corporate titans that control the food supply chain and in improving conditions in some of the biggest tomato fields in Florida, a steady drip of federal criminal cases over slaving makes it clear that the industry is plagued by structural problems that result in horrendous abuse.
As the small pamphlet handed to tour-goers spells out, forced labor is nothing new in American agriculture. From the descendants of Africans who transformed Florida into a kingdom of cotton and sugar in the mid-1800s to the managers at US Sugar indicted in 1946 for holding farmworkers against their will deep within the Everglades, a long and painful history precedes the thousand or so farmworkers freed from involuntary servitude in the last decade in Florida.
Even the tactics managers use haven’t changed over the decades, said Ramirez, who’s worked in the Florida fields since 1996. Just like US Sugar, several of the recently convicted slavers had armed guards watching over the workers’ camp, which is typically far from town so that escapees have nowhere to go even if they find a way out.
In the worst cases, the workers’ whole existence depended on supervisors or contractors, who were masters at keeping workers in both physical and economic bondage, deducting money for food and garden-hose showers ($5 each) from paychecks. Others plied the homeless from shelter job programs with promises of steady work, only to feed them alcohol and drugs and trap them in a cycle of debt and addiction. One boss took away workers’ shoes at night so they wouldn’t run.
The first prosecutions in recent years resulted in light sentences, around three years in jail, because district attorneys had to use laws from the post-Civil War era, when human bondage wasn’t a settled issue in the South. Federal lawmakers responded by boosting penalties, so that a 2008 case resulted in 12-year sentences for ringleaders. But whatever the penalty, the pressures—and the profits—of the corporatized food system keep producing farm bosses and contractors who ensure their labor supply with force if they have to.
SEEKING SOLUTIONS
Janice-Marie Johnson winced as she examined the tour’s centerpiece, a worker’s shirt bloodied in a savage beating, which sparked a protest that became the CIW’s foundational moment.
“All I can think is, they did it again,” she said, detailing a family history of relatives exported from Jamaica against their will to dig canals and plant sugar cane and tobacco across the hemisphere.
In town from Boston, Johnson said the tour challenged her to return to her work at the Unitarian Universalist Association not just to share the horrors of the experience with others but to impress on them a new urgency for action.
Ramirez had a few suggestions on that score. “We’re not here to play victim,” he said, “we’re here to find solutions.”
He noted through a translator that the CIW’s agreements have enabled it to make substantial changes at some of the biggest fields, not just by boosting wages at some suppliers but by giving CIW organizers access to workers on the job for the first time. There, they’ve been able to win improvements, including tents that shade workers on their breaks, and an agreement that workers no longer have to overfill the 32-pound bucket to earn each token they redeem for pay at the day’s end. Filling to the brim, now, is OK.
Seeing these small but noticeable improvements every day adds to the coalition’s momentum, he says, and strengthens the campaign as it enters a crucial phase. The next targets—major grocery chains like Kroger and Publix—are dominant players in the tomato market.
Julia Perkins, a staffer with CIW, said the coalition thinks the grocery corporations are vulnerable to pressure because they market themselves as community-minded, attempting to forge a bond with consumers and ensnare them in a lifetime of loyal shopping.
And as Kroger remains mute on the coalition’s demands, and Publix desperately seeks “independent” assessment of field conditions—rather than talking to the people who might know something about that, the farmworkers themselves—Perkins is confident that like the fast-food giants, grocers will see the public mood turn against them.
Both Kroger and Publix, she notes, were still purchasing tomatoes from suppliers implicated in slavery cases in recent months.
Credit goes by and large to Fire of SomethingAwful for the OP, but I thought this topic interesting enough to bring over. Really puts the bill being pushed by Jim Norman to make photographing farms a felony in a new light!
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No, someone gave a tour of either a place where it had happened or a replica of one of the trailers.
While the majority of the subjects discussed in these particular cases are foreign nationals, I would not be so quick to assume this is a topic that only applies to foreign nationals. This is human trafficking we're talking about here, it's not like they're going to say "Oh gee we can't kidnap that guy, he's American"
Sure they can, if he's poor enough.
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http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/cracking-down-on-croparazzi/
http://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2011/1246/BillText/Filed/HTML
http://www.petapixel.com/2011/03/22/florida-farm-photography-bill-passes-but-changed-to-be-a-little-more-sane/
Oh those whacky animal rights activists
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Would it not make more sense for that kind of thing to be settled in civil court involving the agricultural companies getting compensation for the damage done to them?
Oh wait, when your abusing animals and enslaving people juries tend to not be too sympathetic to you asking for money.
We all just need horse blinders, or maybe in real life censor bars over things we should not be looking at. Augmented reality could get real ugly real fast with strict government/corporate control over cybernetic eyes.
This is the part that makes me go ugh. I've been implicated in things. It doesn't mean anything. And the call to action to buy organic only? Ugh. Hello agenda.
I'm not afraid of a lil science in my food. I'm no luddite.
Anyway, human trafficking, am i rite?
Maybe Im misinterpreting what you said, but you are aware that you dont have to be on someones property to take pictures of their property right? If I stand on the sidewalk and take pictures of your farm, it would be a felony in Florida if you didnt give me permission. However, if I stand on the sidewalk and take pictures of you in your house (through your open windows), this would not be a felony.
Oh Florida
Despite any face palming issues I have with how this article is presenting, I can get behind this sentiment. Shit truly does roll down hill. And that Governor (Rick Scott) everyone rallied behind back in January? His approval rating is down to something like, 30%, and he hasn't done a single thing that should surprise anyone.
Even on a per capita basis it's worse then it was say a hundred years ago.
But this isn't the thread for the eastern europe sex slave trade.
The term implicated is used because the farm owners themselves were unable to be prosecuted. Low level crew bosses are the only ones anything could be made to stick to.
So in this sense the term implicated means "suppliers that definitely use slave labor but the owner ASSUREDLY had NO IDEA"
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Especially when we can talk about the domestically "staffed" portion of the American sex slave trade. Ferrying people from thousands of kilometers away is expensive, when you can get ahold of plenty of people born right here in the United States through the same methods.
Meh, the version of the bill that actually passed by the agriculture subcommittee requires that the person be trespassing and it is only a misdemeanor. So, it's an extra misdemeanor for trespassing and taking pictures of a farm, not really the hugest of deals.
To be fair, only idiots rallied around him in January. His poll numbers are now, always have been, and always will be miserable. Of course, the same idiots who voted for him still like him...even though he's basically a super-villain.
The rest is true though.
There are days where I almost wish I had access to weapons of mass destruction.
Yeah, I only read the first link assuming theyd all be the same thing. That change makes it more sane.
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I personally think random unannounced inspections that farms are required by law to cooperate with are the best solutions, but I doubt something like that would ever pass a legislative body, and if agencies that have the power already started it would quickly be removed.
Probably they will need to find or create some way of prosecuting the executives of the companies involved, rather than just those directly overseeing the farms and the illegal practices that go on there. Sort of like how Sarbanes–Oxley requires the folks in the Chef Officer category to be aware of their firms practices and creates provisions for them to be held personally responsible. I assume the folks who own the farms have pretty good lawyers and they are structured to protect the owners from liability. If there was some way to get past that, and serious pressure was brought on folks with a lot to loose, then there might be some substantial changes.
The federal government fights over the cups in the congressional lounge, it has no interest in poppycock like slavery
Edit: I agree with the above, we need more evidence before we freak out.
http://www.ciw-online.org/slavery.html
Said cases are readily googleable.
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I like to think its only Congress thats fucked in the head, but the executive agencies are doing a pretty good job doing their thing. And then I think about the FCC and get sad again.
Thank you Fiaryn, I needed a reason to get unreasonably angry today!
Anyone else think those sentences seem light comparatively to other violent crimes?
And I guess the government is just too busy snorting lines of lobbyist cash. It's interesting to note that in the Evans case on CIW, Ronald Evans worked for Frank Johns. A grower and then president of the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association.
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You mean it's not the FCC's job to do their best to make monopolies that fuck the consumer and then quit and take lucrative positions with those corporations?
I coulda sworn that was their mandate
Ah, that explains so much. But then again, I guess that means theyre doing a great job! Hooray!
As for the investigations taking a long time, even if evidence abounds it probably only applies to low level members of the organization. Now, they could try and flip some of these people to rat on their higher ups, but that is probably a last resort since its preferable to 1) arrest every asshole involved, because fuck those guys, and 2) its possible that the lower level people are themselves slaves.