Modern Slavery: the greatest shame of Florida

Surely in June 2008, no one lives in slavery in the United $tates of America?

Tell that to thousands of workers freed by work done by Coaliton of Immolakee Workers and federal prosecutors.

[Slavery exists in America. Still. This is the shocking revelation of Nobodies, the tale of author John Bowe's investigation into active slave rings on American soil. It's a discomforting notion, since modern American society has become comfortable with the idea that slavery is an atrocity that exists only in America's past, or in countries where the rule of law hasn't been established...

Bowe exposes modern-day slavery at several U.S. companies in the States and Saipan, and reveals a chilling corporate view--that what is "an embarrassment to modern notions of human rights" is a necessary consequence of free trade. Bowe also posits that more often than not, there is an enslaved worker hunched over a sewing machine or a sun-beaten fruit picker behind every cheap good American consumers enjoy.

Bowe begins his investigation in central Florida, which one former DOJ prosecutor he interviews calls "ground zero for modern slavery." He arrives in 2002, in time for the trial of Juan and Ramiro Ramos, brothers accused of operating a slavery ring in Immokalee, Fla., an agricultural area carved out of the swamps where farm workers pick tomatoes and oranges for such companies as Taco Bell and Tropicana. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District in Florida found the Ramos brothers guilty of conspiracy to hold people in involuntary servitude...]



Irony alert: in 2007. my favorite slave master got 30 years after prosecution by the Department of Justice, a sentence warranted by facts: [the Evans' deducted rent, food, crack cocaine and alcohol from workers' pay, holding them "perpetually indebted" in what the DOJ called "a form of servitude morally and legally reprehensible...

...in 2003. In Florida, Ron Evans worked for grower Frank Johns (query Federal Elections Commission data). Johns was 2004 Chairman of the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association, the powerful lobbying arm of the Florida agricultural industry. As of 2007, he remained the Chairman of the FFVA's Budget and Finance Committee.]]

Booze, crack, food rent, throw in some hookers, and I'll sign up also.

Seriously, however, only a small percentage of Americans have stamina for the back-braking work of picking tomatoes and getting about $200 a week filling 32 lbs buckets. Show me the anti immigrant ignoramuses like Lou Dobbs or Pat Buchanon trying to pick tomatoes for $10,000 to $12,500 per year., and l'll show you heart attacks in waiting. In Florida, businesses have counter attacked with fake emails, misinformation, and intransigence.

Slavery exists in the tomato fields of Florida, a U.S. Senate committee was told Tuesday.

"Today's form of slavery does not bear the overt nature of pre-Civil War society, but it is none the less heinous and reprehensible," Collier County Sheriff's Detective Charlie Frost told Democratic members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee. No Republicans attending [sic] the hearing...

Eric Schlosser, an investigative reporter and author of "Fast Food Nation," testified he found it "incredible" that slavery exists in 2008, but "I find it even more incredible that the tomato growers of Florida and some of their largest customers continue to deny that such abuses exist...



Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said workers would have to pick almost 3,000 tomatoes to earn $14 and would have to fill and empty their buckets every two minutes.]
West Palm Beach Post, 4/16/08]

Of course, by diking Lake Okeechobee and building "flood control" systems, the state of FL and Army Corps of Engineers created land to grow fruits and vegetetables, and sugar and overbuild in coastal flood plains--y'all paying for it, suckahs--but of course Hoover Dike like "swiss cheese."

Or as Michael Greenwald put it in Why the Everglades is Burning: "Enter my friends in the Army Corps of Engineers, the ground troops in America's war against nature. They built the massive Hoover Dike around the lake, forever cutting off the Everglades from its wellspring. Then they built America's most ambitious flood-control system, with more than 2,000 miles of levees and canals, plus pumps so powerful the engines were cannibalized from nuclear submarines. The project gave water managers power to move almost every drop of rain that fell south of Orlando, allowing them to whisk floodwaters into the lake, the Everglades, or its estuaries for the convenience of thirsty farms and communities that only wanted water when they wanted it.

These waterworks made southern Florida safe for 400,000 acres of sugar fields, as well as one of the spectacular development booms in human history. On the southeast coast, suburbs like Coral Springs, Miami Springs, Sunrise, Miramar, Weston, and Wellington began sprouting west of I-95, paving over the eastern Everglades. And on the southwest coast, Naples and Fort Myers started marching east into the western Everglades." Link found at eyeonmiami.com
http://eyeonmiami.blogspot.com/2008/05/scorched-hope-for-east-everglades-by.html

So any wonder Florida--courtesy of JEB! Bush and his development cronies--serves as
epicenter for world creit mortgage crisis. http://eyeonmiami.blogspot.com/search/label/Housing%20crash