[Peace-discuss] more slavery in the land of the free

[Ricky Baldwin]

We've talked about this kind of case before, but since the stories are always somehow more credible once they're over, it's good to remember that there are more where they came from ...

This group has called on President-Elect Obama to come to Immokalee.
Ricky 

"Speak your mind even if your voice shakes." - Maggie Kuhn


From the Coalition of Immokalee Workers...

In the midst of a growing uproar over Tallahassee's controversial statements on slavery in Florida, Friday's sentencing in the Navarrete case provided a horrifying reminder of the raw brutality of forced labor and the enduring shame of an agricultural industry seemingly addicted to exploitation. See all the details from the sentencing, including a hard-hitting editorial by the Ft. Myers News-Press calling on Florida Governor Charlie Crist to break his silence on the human rights crisis in Florida's fields and take a stand against modern-day slavery, at the CIW website: http://www.ciw-online.org 
 
The following is an extended excerpt from the News-Press report on the Friday's sentencing: "One of the prosecutors, Susan French, called Cesar Navarrete the family’s 'young patriarch.' Geovanni Navarrete was 'the enforcer, the beater.' 
 
'This defendant is the one who chained the worker’s feet to the pole,' French said of Geovanni, 'the one who beat them, slapped them … multiple victims, multiple acts of violence, multiple injuries to the victims.' 
 
One of the victims, Mariano Lucas Diego, spoke of what he’d endured: beatings and nighttime imprisonment in a truck, where the family’s captives would have to urinate and defecate in the corners. Diego described pounding on the truck until he and another victim made a hole through which they squeezed out, then found a ladder so the others could escape. 
 
Diego spoke of several beatings. 'Bosses should not beat up the people who work with them,' he told Judge John E. Steele. 
 
As Diego spoke, Geovanni Navarrete watched, shaking his head, a slight smile curling his upper lip." 
 
Go to the CIW site, http://www.ciw-online.org now for the full article, the editorial, and more from this fast-developing story - thanks, Coalition of Immokalee Workers



      
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