Waldo Jaquith - Florida’s slavery crackdown.

Florida’s slavery crackdown.

On 5 June 02005 with 2 comments

A couple of years ago, I wrote about the practice of slavery in Florida — migrant workers are kept captive, killed if they try to escape — and forced to pick oranges. This blog entry generated more F2F comment than anything else I’ve ever written. People still bring it up as a topic of conversation. I think it’s because it seems so unbelievable? Slavery? In the U.S.? Today? Unpossible!

Today, the AP reports that federal agents raided one of these plantations, finding 78 people kept in bondage. Hopefully, this is just the beginning of a much larger, longer operation.

2 Comments

While this isn’t a brand new article ( http://www.frontlinedefenders.org/news/1765 )…it draws attention that this has been an ongoing issue; back in the early 90′s there were hush hush ccomments all along my college campus about Taco Bell and Imokalee Migrant Workers; it took until last spring…over 11 years later, for the college to end its financial arrangement with Taco Bell because of this issue. Thanks again, Waldo, for bringing attention to issues that many would like to see swept under a rug…

Posted by Jill on 5 June 2005 @ 9pm

So, once again, its a Republican administration trying to stop slavery…

Ok, a more serious post here is that none of this would take place if we simply removed all tariffs and quotas against sugar importation. Our ‘local’ sugar agribiz is simply a couple of family owned businesses that mistreat their workers. The cost is all the poor people in the rest of the world who could be selling their sugar here, for less than we pay now.

Posted by JM on 10 June 2005 @ 10pm

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