Night Owls, a themed open thread, appears at Daily Kos seven days a week
Jim Goodman at The Nation writes—Without Farmworkers You Wouldn’t Eat. But stimulus packages aren’t providing the necessary support for them to do their jobs safely:
Frontline workers during this pandemic, who put their lives on the line daily, are rightly called heroes, but a better term might be victims. Cheering and clapping every day for health care and other “essential” workers does, I am sure, give them a much-needed and well-deserved morale boost. This pandemic has changed things; pre-Covid-19, working under stressful conditions, for low wages, often unseen and underappreciated was, for many, just the way it was.
Clearly, health care workers and support staff are at the top of everyone’s essential workers’ list, as they put their lives on the line daily to provide care, comfort, and hope while tens of thousands are dying. We all count on them, while hoping that the virus does not bring us under their care.
Food chain workers are also deemed essential, and, just as in the health care industry, many essential workers, especially farmworkers, are immigrants—75 percent, in fact, according to the most recent National Agricultural Workers Survey. Undervalued and underpaid and doing difficult and dangerous work, they have always been essential to our food supply, but the pandemic has made that designation official.
Few Americans have ever been inside a food processing plant and witnessed the pace of the work, the physical stress, and the close physical proximity the workers must labor under. It is impossible to socially distance, so this pandemic has added a new threat to their work, and it could soon severely impact our food supply. When Covid-19 necessitated processing plant closures, Smithfield chose to blame the immigrant workers rather than the poor working conditions, low pay, and Smithfield’s failure to ensure a safe working environment.
I know the work ethic of immigrant workers, I’ve seen it in processing plants, in the fields of Immoakalee Florida, and on my own farm. Always, they were hardworking, competent, and just trying to make a decent home for themselves in this country that often does not welcome them and, in many cases, created conditions that forced them to leave their home countries.
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2010—Immigration law is definitely Arizona's Prop 187:
The California GOP's embrace of the hateful Prop 187, which would've banned undocumented immigrants from all government services, including public education, continues to cost their party 16 years later. Since the initiative passed in 1994, Arnold Schwarzenegger in the only Republican, under bizarre conditions (the recall election), to win a governor, senator, or presidential race in the state. Democrats have dominated the rest of the statewide elected offices, with just a smattering of Republicans occasionally picking up the odd seat.
Now, California Latinos are a solid Democratic bloc, even though on social issues, they oftentimes line up more naturally with Republicans. In the Golden State, Barack Obama won 74 percent of the Latino vote, compared to just 23 percent for McCain.In Arizona, Obama won 56 percent of Latinos, with McCain getting 41 percent. Of course, McCain was a native son, so perhaps that boosted his numbers? Nope. In the 2006 Senate race, wingnut Sen. Jon Kyl got the same 41 percent of the Latino vote.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Greg Dworkin probably never thought he'd have to round up polls on a president advocating drinking bleach, but here we are. WH press finally on the verge of revolt? USS Roosevelt update. East vs. West coast virus response: Communications the key factor?
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