Slave Labour That Shames America
Migrant workers chained beaten and forced into debt, exposing the human cost of producing cheap food
Three Florida fruit-pickers, held captive and brutalised by their employer for more than a year, finally broke free of their bonds by punching their way through the ventilator hatch of the van in which they were imprisoned. Once outside, they dashed for freedom.
When they found sanctuary one recent Sunday morning, all bore the marks of heavy beatings to the head and body. One of the pickers had a nasty, untreated knife wound on his arm. Police would learn later that another man had his hands chained behind his back every night to prevent him escaping, leaving his wrists swollen.
The migrants were not only forced to work in sub-human conditions but mistreated and forced into debt. They were locked up at night and had to pay for sub-standard food. If they took a shower with a garden hose or bucket, it cost them $5.
Their story of slavery and abuse in the fruit fields of sub-tropical Florida threatens to lift the lid on some appalling human rights abuses in America today.
Between December and May, Florida produces virtually the entire US crop of field-grown fresh tomatoes. Fruit picked here in the winter months ends up on the shelves of supermarkets and is also served in the country’s top restaurants and in tens of thousands of fast-food outlets.
But conditions in the state’s fruit-picking industry range from straightforward exploitation to forced labour. Tens of thousands of men, women and children - excluded from the protection of America’s employment laws and banned from unionising - work their fingers to the bone for rates of pay which have hardly budged in 30 years.
Until now, even appeals from the former president Jimmy Carter to help raise the wages of fruit-pickers have gone unheeded. However, with Florida looming as a key battleground during the the next presidential election, there is hope that their cause will be raised by the Democratic candidates Barack Obama and John Edwards.
Fruit-pickers, who typically earn about $200 (£100) a week, are part of an unregulated system designed to keep food prices low and the plates of America’s overweight families piled high. The migrants, largely Hispanic and with many of them from Mexico, are the last wretched link in a long chain of exploitation and abuse. They are paid 45 cents (22p) for every 32-pound bucket of tomatoes collected. A worker has to pick nearly two-and-a-half tons of tomatoes - a near impossibility - in order to reach minimum wage. So bad are their working and living conditions that the US Department of Labour, which is not known for its sympathy to the underdog, has called it “a labour force in considerable distress”.
A week after the escapees managed to emerge from the van in which they had been locked up for the night, police discovered that a forced labour operation was supplying fruit-pickers to local growers. Court papers describe how migrant workers were forced into debt and beaten into going to work on farms in Florida, as well as in North and South Carolina. Detectives found another 11 men who were being kept against their will in the grounds of a Florida house shaded by palm trees. The bungalow stood abandoned this week, a Cadillac in the driveway alongside a black and chrome pick-up truck with a cowboy hat on the dashboard. The entire operation was being run by the Navarettes, a family well known in the area.
Also near by was the removals van from which Mariano Lucas, one of the first to escape, punched his way through a ventilation hatch to freedom in the early hours of 18 November. With him were Jose Velasquez, who had bruises on his face and ribs and a cut forearm, and Jose Hari. The men told police they had to relieve themselves inside the van. Other migrant workers were kept in other vehicles and sheds scattered around the garden.
Enslaved by the Navarettes for more than a year, the men had been working in blisteringly hot conditions, sometimes for seven days a week. Despite their hard work, they were mired in debt because of the punitive charges imposed by their employer, who is being held on minor charges while a grand jury investigates his alleged involvement in human trafficking.
The men had to pay to live in the back of vans and for food. Their entire pay cheques went to the Navarettes and they were still in debt. They slept in decrepit sheds and vehicles in a yard littered with rubbish. When one man did not want to go to work because he was sick, he was allegedly pushed and kicked by the Navarettes. “They physically loaded him in the van and made him go to work that day. Cesar, Geovanni and Martin Navarette beat him up and as a result he was bleeding in his mouth,” a grand jury was told.
The complaint reveals that the men were forced to pay rent of $20 (£10) a week to sleep in a locked furniture van where they had no option but to urinate and defecate in a corner. They had to pay $50 a week for meals - mostly rice and beans with meat perhaps twice a week if they were lucky. The fruit-pickers’ caravans, which they share with up to 15 other men, rent for $2,400 a month - more per square foot than a New York apartment - and are less than 10 minutes’ walk from the hiring fair where the men show up before sunrise. At least half those who come looking for work are not taken on.
Florida has a long history of exploiting migrant workers. Farm labourers have no protection under US law and can be fired at will. Conditions have barely changed since 1960 when the journalist Edward R Murrow shocked Americans with Harvest Of Shame, a television broadcast about the bleak and underpaid lives of the workers who put food on their tables. “We used to own our slaves but now we just rent them,” Murrow said, in a phrase that still resonates in Immokalee today.
For several years, a campaign has been under way to improve the workers’ conditions. After years of talks, a scheme to pay the tomato pickers a penny extra per pound has been signed off by McDonald’s, the world’s biggest restaurant chain, and by Yum!, which owns 35,000 restaurants including KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. But Burger King, which also buys its tomatoes in Immokalee, has so far refused to participate, threatening the entire scheme.
“We see no legal way of paying these workers,” said Steve Grover, the vice-president of Burger King. He complained that a local human rights group, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers “has gone after us because we are a known brand”. But he added: “At the end of the day, we don’t employ the farmworkers so how can we pay them?”
Burger King will not pay the extra penny a pound that the tomato-pickers are demanding he said. “If we agreed to the penny per pound, Burger King would pay about $250,000 annually, or $100 per worker. How does that solve exploitation and poverty?” he asked.
Burger King is not the only buyer digging in its heels. Whole Foods Market, which recently expanded into Britain with a store in London’s upmarket suburb of Kensington, has been discovered stocking tomatoes from one of the most notorious Florida sweatshop producers. Whole Foods ignored an appeal by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to pay an extra penny a pound for its tomatoes.
In a statement Whole Foods said it was “committed to supporting and promoting economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable agriculture” and supports “the right of all workers to be treated fairly and humanely.”
The Democratic candidates for the presidency do not often talk about exploited migrant workers, but there are hints that Barack Obama will visit the Immokalee fruit pickers sometime before Florida’s primary election on 5 February.
Jimmy Carter recently joined the campaign to improve the lot of fruit-pickers, appealing to Burger King and the growers “to restore the dignity of Florida’s tomato industry”. His appeal fell on deaf ears but 100 church groups, including the Catholic bishop of Miami, joined him.
© 2007 The Independent
Don’t expect the UBER-CORRUPT Democratic Leadership to even touch this issue let alone solve it. Besides, they’ve been pouring in support for more NAFTAs which in turn FUCK the working class on all sides to DEATH !
By the way, Jimmy Carter supported NAFTA back in 1993 despite the fact that it allowed this kind of SLAVE labor to go on with no accountability whatsoever.
Who says there’s no such thing as social progress? Back in the 1940’s, any exploited laborer who escaped from a turpentine camp would be returned to bondage by the local or state police. Now, that doesn’t happen. (Or if it does, at least we don’t hear about it!)
See how progressive Florida’s getting?
People, all of us, all over the world, should boycott Burger King, in fact, all fast food resaurants. Demand that these businesses pay fair wages for both their employees and fair prices for their produce. The United States government is currently owned by big business (local governments as well). All you can expect from our government is to arrest the slaves for the crime of being enslaved in America.
“Whole Foods Market,…has been discovered stocking tomatoes from one of the most notorious Florida sweatshop producers. Whole Foods ignored an appeal by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to pay an extra penny a pound for its tomatoes.”
Any Whole Food supporters still out there?
I have always been suspicious of the “new-way” tactics of the Immokalee workers, which, stripped of it’s glitz, is primarily based on hat-in-hand, begging for pennies from the corporations. So, I’m not suprised that this tactic has reached it’s dead-end.
History teaches that what works is demands tied to efective actions where their bottom-line cost of NOT complying with the workers demands is greater, preferably much greater, than complying with their demands.
This is accomplished through a applications of gradually increasing pressure, fron strikes, to boycotts plus strikes, to secondary strikes and boycotts, up to, if necessary, direct action and sabotage. The fact that the outlawing of secondary actions was job number one in the post-FDR US government attests to the power of such actions.
cjanack, I agree about the fast food boycott, I never eat in those places anyway, but notice, CD readers, the end of the article;
Whole Foods is implicated also and “has been discovered stocking tomatoes from one of the most notorious Florida sweatshop producers. Whole Foods ignored an appeal by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to pay an extra penny a pound for it’s tomatoes.”
I boycott hypocrites also.
PJD, looks like you beat me to the post while I was writing, right on.
If you haven’t seen it, Fast Food Nation, based on the book by Eric Schlosser, is a terrific ‘06 film with an all-star cast. It follows immigrant laborers to an on- location place in which cameras rarely go: inside the killing rooms of a meat factory.
See it with someone who likes triple bacon cheeseburgers - it might change their thinking.
The US is not the only country guilty of such inhumanity.
Chinese immigrants rounded up by gangmasters to pick cockles on the shores of the UK. With grim results.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1788579,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2005/jan/10/immigrationasylumandrefugees.asylum1
‘I boycott hypocrites also.”
In all fairness, the CEO of Whole Foods has stated that he seeks to emulate Wal Mart as a model of success. And, it isn’t like the upper-class clientele that Whole Foods targets has ever given much a damn about the labor struggle.
I’m all for smart food choices, burt the whole health-and-organic food movement tends to be a rather bourgeois phenomenon. Even our food co-op - which is one of the more working-class influenced co-ops out there, engaged in dirty union busting tactics against an organizing drive a couple years ago.
Revolution Yesterday
Mercy ?
As much as they gave
Burger King has Burger Serfs?
Personally, since 2003 I have made a point of never spending a dime on any US products. I only use PetroCanada for gas, stay away from the fast “food” hells-kitchens, and would NEVER travel to the fascist shithole to the south for any reason. Even my car was built in Canada.
to hell with the USA
@CanuckChuck
Canada is nothing more than the US’ hat! A jaunty one at that.
The underlying values in our society today, created largely by America’s brand of capitalism, leads to increasing exploitation of workers. I believe that until we change these values (some would say until we scrap or radically rework our economic system) this exploitation will continue. I believe that we should all make a serious effort to stimulate dialogue and discussion with others that we meet. We must take it upon ourselves to dialogue with others and get ideas out there, to learn from one another. Dialogue increases understanding and the feeling of empowerment. Empowerment towards action. Let’s not discount the role that direct action and dialogue can have when used effectively to create change. Let’s never take it for granted that the only way to precipate change is to write a letter to a representative or utilize other forms of indirect action.
It’s going to be really interesting to see what kind of “punishment” these slave drivers recieve. My guess is not much. How much you want to bet that Michael Vick spends more time in prison for abusing dogs, than these people do for abusing people!
That’s our government sending the message that to them, migrant workers are less than dogs. Just wait, illegal immigrants are the first group to be put in FEMA camps.
Slavery on the land of the US, and by the US around the world is nothing new. This country itself is built on slavery. So it is not surprising that slavery is still continuing on the land of the “champion of the Human Rights”. Slave labour, child labour, and forced labour are actively promoted both by the US government by not signing important labour laws, and the US transnational corporations with the support of the US government.
The United States is one of the two countries refused to sign the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), 1989, an international convention for the abolition of child labour. US has ratified only 14 of the 184 International Labour Organisation (ILO) Conventions and 2 of the 8 Conventions the ILO has identified as fundamental to the rights of human beings at work. Only by ratifying Conventions a country is subject to regular scrutiny of the ILO. www.fpif.org/outside/commentary/2002/021 Oilo.html
Slavery in the US Approved by the US Congress
Two examples:
1. Slavery in Mariana Islands:
These beautiful tropical islands are described by disgraced House Majority Leader Tom Delay as “a perfect petri dish of capitalism.” What’s so perfect about Saipan and the other 13 Northern Mariana Islands? Primarily this: items produced there can carry the label “Made in USA” and be sold in the U.S. without tariffs or quotas, but the scandalously low U.S. minimum wage does not apply, and the pathetically minimal rights of immigrants and workers in the U.S. do not apply. There are no labor unions. Any worker can be terminated and deported at any time for no cause.
“The workers, mostly Chinese women, sew clothing for J. Jill, Elie Tahari, Ann Taylor, Liz Claiborne, The Gap, and Ralph Lauren, among others. The workers pay so much money to obtain work and for shelter and food that they can labor for a decade and still not pay it back. They serve, therefore, as indentured servants, sharing rooms and beds, lacking health care, and working extra unpaid hours for the reward of being permitted to also work paid overtime. Pregnancy is unacceptable, costs of it not covered, and amateur abortion encouraged.
“The island of Saipan does great business in prostitution for businessmen and American soldiers. Approximately 90 percent of the prostitutes are former Chinese garment workers. Others had been recruited for jobs like waitressing but were forced into prostitution instead.
“Over the past decade, 29 bills in Congress have sought to apply a minimum wage standard and/or immigration law to the Mariana Islands or to deny use of “Made in USA” to items produced there. Every one of these bills has failed. Some have won support in the Senate but been blocked by the House Resources Committee. Others have won the support of a majority of House Members but still been killed in that same committee.”
2. Slavery in a Shipyard in Pascagoula Mississippi Owned by Signal International
Hundreds of guest workers from India have begun protesting work conditions at a shipyard in Pascagoula Mississippi owned by the company Signal International. They say they spent their life savings in order get an H2B visa to work in the United States. Risking their jobs by publicly complaining about the work conditions, they issued a statement in a press conference. The statement read in part: “We have been treated like animals here. We have been threatened with termination and salary reduction. We are living in isolation. Visitors are not allowed in the camps. We live 24 men in one container, with two bathrooms for all of us.” They also said that whenever they complained about the working conditions, the camp manager would say: “You are living in slums in India. It is better than those slums.” The passports of the workers are confiscated. There are 288 workers in the Pascagoula camp, and more than 200 workers in Texas living in the same conditions.
US Promoted Slavery around the World
Two examples:
1. In the rubber plantation in Liberia owned by Bridgestone Firestone North American Tire Company since 1926, children work 12 to 14 hours a day. A UN Report “Human Rights in Liberia’s Rubber Plantations: Tapping into Future” notes: “Although management of Firestone…stated that child labour is prohibited within …(its) concession (area), HROs (United Nations Mission in Liberia Human Rights Officers) spoke with a number of children working on …(the) plantation, aged between 10 and 14 years…Reports of child labour on Firestone plantation have also been documented in a report (“Firestone: The Mark of Slavery”) by the NGO, Save My Future Foundation, in March 2005.” In this plantation the workers are given unreasonably high production quota, which takes a rubber tapper at least 21 hours a day to meet the quota. This forces the workers to bring their wives and children to work in order to meet the quota, or else their already low wages will be halved. It is observed that the workers live in shacks, most of which have not been renovated since the 1920s, while managers live in luxurious mansions with all the modern amenities, including golf courses, and receive huge salary.
2. Slavery and forced labour have been used in the construction of the sprawling 592-million-dollar U.S. embassy (a symbol of imperial occupation) in Baghdad. Forced labour and slave labour in Iraq have plagued First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting, which is given the contract of this project. This company has been involved in slave labour and forced labour for several years. In the past, allegations by workers from Nepal and the Philippines were discounted by the U.S. government officials. The company continued to rack up contracts now totaling several billion dollars from the Pentagon and U.S. State Department. It has been reported by the eye-witnesses that chartered jets in Kuwait loaded with workers from the Philippines, India, Pakistan and Africa holding boarding passes to Dubai, flew directly to Baghdad. Among the complaints by the workers: confiscation of passports of workers, several “missing” workers, crowded quarters, sub-standard food, little or no medical care, and little or no sanitation. When drinking water was scarce in the blistering heat, coolers were filled at the banks of the Tigris, a river rife with waterborne disease, sewage and sometimes floating bodies.
The sadness of what has happened to our country is mired in the concept of Capitalism. As the Christian Conservatives Pray to Jesus and God at this time of year ,especially, we have a contingent of leaders who follow manna as their god. It does not matter which party they are affiliated with , their obience comes from Money and THEIR bottom line. Their deire to control , and their sense of superiority to the majority is undelined by their poor performance. The only thing that they have is the CAPITAL to ride shotgun on the rest of us.
societies were established based on common needs, based on communal growth. What that has created is ( as in America ) A caste system. We do not recognize it as such but a look around will tell you that is what we started as and what we will be until the majority of people stop watching the Jets ,Giants knicks, survivor. In other words, we have been slipped the mickey and the majority of people like being drugged.
As long as i have my SUV…
I have known some migrant farm workers: two apple pickers in Maine and a tobacco picker in Connecticut. Migrant workers are notoriously underpaid just about everywhere. But from the content of this essay it seems to me that the commentators are missing the point. Before we start talking about an extra penny in wages or any other aspect of money, we need to address the conditions under which these men were forced to live and the way they were treated. Whatever the laws may be concerning migrant worker’s rights, beating people, chaining them and making them dwell in the back of trucks with no sanitation is illegal. And then forcing them to pay rent to live in those conditions is inhuman. If there are no specific laws to protect these men (and women) from this sort of treatment, then Congress had better get busy and pass them.
If this type of exploitation is not rendered obsolete before long, then one can expect to see legal Americans forced into slave labor eventually. As long as the rich keep getting richer, and labor unions have no clout, and our jobs continue to be outsourced or given to illegal immigrants, then the middle class America will be but a brief mention in the history books. Slave labor is what these neo-cons want. It’s the neo-cons like Greenspan who want to keep Americans ignorant and poor. Where’s the candidate’s voice for labor today? I don’t hear a thing from any of these so-called Presidential candidates who say they are ready for a change. Let’s hear the details!. Give us details, not rhetoric.
Whole Foods Market has been discovered stocking tomatoes from one of the most notorious Florida sweatshop producers.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. The idea of “whole foods” is now under exploitation as are the migrant workers, by that profit corporation and its shareholders. It reflects the general concensus: Capitalism is a near-complete disaster.
People, ideas, institutions, land, legacies, works of art, emotions including love and fear, good will, intelligence, thirst, scientific discoveries, languages, religions, birth, growth, sickness, injury, death, disasters, the quest for knowledge and discovery, instinct including procreation and domination, other primitive needs including sleep and food, are all viciously exploited for profit by western-style capitalism.
The answer starts with land and water rights for all. A system in which each citizen holds title to a chunk of land suitable for food security. The program requires the citizen to demonstrate the capability of growing one’s own food on that plot of land, but isn’t required to grow food year after year. It may be rented out, and traded for other plots of land. Buying/selling plots is permitted but sellers retain the right to take back the plot without payment. Of course this strongly deters acquisition. It’s simply a matter of changing the laws.
The way to change the laws is for individuals to shift their exchange/association away from the power centers and toward their local economies. This breaks up the power concentrations and enables the people to exert their will upon the legislatures.
Individuals will seize upon their civic power and responsibility after the brainwashing ends. Parents and teachers have to convey productive messages to the kids to displace the brainwashing. TV, radio, newspaper, magazine and books have to be smashed to instill the proper fear into the content authors to stop the brainwashing.
Slave labor and all the rest go away in the process. You can’t have your cake and social justice too. Give up your luxuries and conveniences, NOW.
Here’s what you get when you go to Burger King’s website and try “contact us.” I think you can tell almost everything about a company by visiting their website and attempting to send them an email comment.
Give us the low down on your latest restaurant visit. Tell us about your experience. What could we do better? Help us help you HAVE IT YOUR WAY®.
Use our Restaurant Locator to contact your local BURGER KING® restaurant or contact our Corporate office:
Burger King Corporation
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Corporate Headquarters - 305-378-3000
Marketing/Advertising Information Requests - 305-378-7200
Consumer Relations - 305-378-3535
HAVE IT YOUR WAY® Cards Consumer Help Desk - 1-800-522-1278
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Click below to review our Corporate policies
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Powerful post deepa.
So the underbelly of Preditory Capitalism is hidden from view but it exists nonetheless. We are in fact now the Roman Empire. Willingly complicit in the crimes of Empire whether we know it or not.
And we wonder where terrorists come from?
They come straight from the felonious activities of the Fortune 500.
Boycott all that crap food. You’ll live longer. Aslo Organic labeling means nothing because the toothless FDA won’t enforce the most minimal standards. Another gutted agency by the chimp-in-charge.
As absurd as it sounds, Americans are now reduced to picking food themselves to assure themselves it is not genetically altered, loaded with pesticides, flown in by jet destroying the atmosphere, or harvested with slave labor. This is the only way to ensure that the chain of custody of that food has not been compromised.
In other words, for most citizens, there is little hope of avoiding this evil system which is far worse than the links of the drug trafficking world.
And as with most ills in the USA today (and there are many) rotating the political puppets will do nothing. The CEO’s who play this sick game and the elite families who wage this class war will simply get someone else in charge who is game to provide the illusion of democracy while all the while destroying one hundred years of hard won labor law and protective citizen agencies.
That really creepy looking king used by Burger King in its ads says it all.
“At the end of the day, we don’t employ the farmworkers so how can we pay them?”
Sounds like a Brazilian sugar cane grower dismissing slave labor charges.
But even Brazilian sugar cane growers are beginning to change, now that the spotlight is on them.
How can the US claim the moral high ground on Brazilian ethanol sutainability issues, when things like that happen in Florida, California and elsewhere?
Deepa,
Thanks for your post. I sent it along to two class action labor lawyers (the folks who take from the rich to give back to the poor - which is why politicians are trying to legislate them out of existence) who have been looking into slave labor conditions in the fields of California. Perhaps they’ll be able to address some of these conditions with litigation.
This should be on the front page of every newspaper, and the lead story on every newscast. I hear people talk about “them Mexicans” sneaking in illegally just so they can sit back and collect welfare and I want to scream. It’s so much easier to be ignorant and blame others for all our problems. This just makes me heartsick.
Slavery is a vice which can not be given up that easily. It is programmed in to human nature. Some people like to pretend that their society is much too civilized for such outdated practice. It has been goin on for ages this slavery business.
Programmed into human nature? I disagree. It has been programmed into many cultures around the world, though. And capitalism is out to turn everything into an industry for profit. The greed motive doesn’t care that humans suffer cruelty. Parasitic capitalism keeps workers alive so they can keep working for slave wages. If they try to organize a union, they are met with capital flight or death. Slavery, in its now illegal and hidden forms, will not end until capitalism becomes a relic.
Hey, someone show this article to Lou Dobbs.
We wouldnt be having this discussion if everyone just started the 100 mile diet.Eat what is in season in your area.We waste far too much energy and resources moving food around the globe to satisfy our tastebuds.As for the fast food chains they should just be boycotted.All of them.I used to eat fast food takeout all the time.Until i realized that i was eating garbage.That tasted really good….but garbage.Bad for the body.Most of it.Even the so-called healthy choices.
Every time a Christian family says grace by habit before starting to dine, they should not thank god, but thank the servitude of the forgotten. Food prices are being held low, and corporate profits high, by such hideous exploitation. This is how man treats man, in the land of punitive democracy. This is the standard that you really wish to impose on the rest of the world, with your masters in charge.
There’s a simple cure for this idiocy. The farms are too big for one family to farm. They need to be split up. Split the agribusinesses up, and let some of these poor folks have some property to farm. I’m sure they could maintain their own farms if they were small enough. Of course, this idea interferes with the idea of private property which is more like “We own everything and you own nothing.” It needs to stop. Equality should imply economic equality as well. If we had economic equality, many many things would change in this society.
I am discouraged knowing whole foods is part of this not to mention how vile these pigs are for abusing these poor people, justice must be served that the people who did this pay the workers at least 20million for the abuse, as for whole foods I want some answers now, as I am an occasional shopper there, who can I complain to and will whole foods continue to support slave labor , I will not buy from them again
One whole penny more per pound! Wowee! Maybe the workers can now afford to buy a McDonaldburger. This is what makes the B/C’s of the world smirk.
“I will not buy from them again”
That statement , my friends is the simple , seven-word , sine-non-quo expression of sure-fire action in this whole discussion.
To paraphrase Eliza Doolittle in ” My Fair Lady ” , Words,Words,Words…If I’m not part of the solution , then I’m part of the problem.
Until a signifigant number of American consumers understand and express their passionate disgust with slave labour with the painless act of reaching/not reaching for their wallets , slavery will continue.
Read Gandhi , King , Mandela , Nightingale , Wilberforce , Luther , Tyndale , Wyecliffe , Susan B. Anthony , Tubman …and imitate
This is an unrepentant, genocidal, Aryan slave Empire. Its how we started. It is how we live today. It is how we will be in the US until this monster burns to the ground. Hopefully sooner rather than later. It will be accompanied by the deafening screams of our victims both here and around the globe. All of our fine documents of state are like our POTUS, a merciless, psychotic, empty shirt.
Before our cities are turned into smoking rubble by economic collapse, civil war, and social breakdown, the suffering here will be worse than anything we can imagine unless we had lived Gaza for the last 40 years.
But let’s all grow some wood, vote for some fucking democrat animal (who will betray us again), join hands and sing, “Happy days are here again (for a little while).”
Piece.
Where would one buy food that you can be assured is not picked by slave labor? I’ve been buying at Whole Foods for years and would like to find an alternative. This is not the first time that their greed has been exposed. A few years back a study was conducted that found that Whole Foods employees couldn’t afford to shop in the store where they worked. I wish I could grow my own.
Send a penny to Burger King. If enough people do, maybe they’ll get the message we’re willing to pay the extra cent for food.
The ghastly Navarette family should be keel-hauled. It is they who are responsible (at source) for the appalling conditions that they have kept their workers in. I hope fervently that they are sentenced, and adequately punished, and now, a serious suggestion: Why not arrange for them to serve their sentence in the meanest, toughest jail “across the border”, so that they may taste plenty of the treatment they have doled out to other unfortunates.
The Navarette family are simply cowards.
They can come here to England, and receive a good hiding.
Stuff Christian charity, just slap these bastards hard!
wwf3,
Buy at your local food coop.
The plutocracy will not be happy until the entire planet looks and smells like Wal-Mart, they’ll never stop.
“How much you want to bet that Michael Vick spends more time in prison for abusing dogs, than these people do for abusing people!”
—-
Very true Sir!
The USA…always admonishing other nations how to this and how to that, and all the while setting the worst example. Charity starts at home.
“We see no legal way of paying these workers,” said Steve Grover, the vice-president of Burger King. He complained that a local human rights group, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers “has gone after us because we are a known brand”. But he added: “At the end of the day, we don’t employ the farmworkers so how can we pay them?”
Exactly. And Burger King doen’t understand how to pay cows, either. What’s the problem?
… gut and run ?