It’s shaping up to be another hot Florida summer. Among the most vulnerable are those with the least resources for dealing with the heat: underserved communities and communities of color, who often are excluded from environmental and climate protections. That includes the state’s more than 150,000 farmworkers, who are responsible for raising the food that nourishes us. Jeannie Economos is a…
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Seasonal work. Inconsistent hours. Frequent moves. Cash payments and informal jobs. For farmworkers who rely on Medicaid, these common employment patterns could put their health coverage at risk. It’s a heightened concern for the estimated million-plus farmworkers who are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents, as new work requirements kick in for the federal-state healthcare program that…
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Donald Trump rode to reelection with racist attacks on immigrants and refugees and promising mass deportations. The first year of his second term was filled with heartbreak, trauma, and fear as his administration escalated its assault on immigrant communities: separating families, occupying cities, targeting workers, and expanding deportations. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is using…
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At a time when Democratic voters are demanding new, antiestablishment leaders, the Democratic Party’s power brokers are pushing a 77-year-old candidate for a key 2026 Senate race who’s spent the past six years as governor vetoing collective bargaining rights for workers, tax increases on the wealthy, renter protections, and tribal sovereignty protections, according to a Lever review.
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Hundreds of thousands of times each year in California, farmers and their contractors spray pesticides on fields and orchards in the state’s agricultural heartlands. Farmworkers young and old can be exposed to dangerous concentrations of toxic chemicals if they are not properly trained, left uninformed about when they can safely enter sprayed fields or exposed to pesticide applications…
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The summer sun burned through the clouds in California’s Salinas Valley, where a bounty of berries and leafy green vegetables grows across this rich farmland renowned as the “Salad Bowl of the World.” Jose, a quiet 14-year-old, was squatting and bending over for hours with other workers in a sprawling strawberry field. The pickers, many of them also minors, snapped berries from plants and…
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