The Florida crash that resulted in the deaths of eight farmworkers harkens to the Baltimore bridge collapse, which killed six immigrant workers. These men were among millions of essential workers.
But they shouldn’t have to die to have their work honored. Their labor should be recognized every day. More at America’s Voice:
In 2022, these workers helped make Florida number one in the US in the value of production of bell peppers, sugarcane, tomatoes, and watermelons, just to name a few. Florida is also one of the top producers of all oranges. Their backbreaking and skilled labor sustains the agricultural industry and feeds the nation.
This wk marked two yrs since a gunman motivated by white nationalist and antisemitic “replacement” and “invasion” conspiracy theory murdered ten Black Americans in Buffalo.
• 165 Members of the 118th Congress have employed replacement theory rhetoric and done so 584 times in their official capacity.
• In the first four months of 2024, there have been 46 unique TV and CTV ads from Republican-aligned campaigns, which have spent $10.7M on ads that push the “invasion” rhetoric, according to data assembled from AdImpact.
• We have further identified 202 unique Facebook ads that use the “invasion” language this year.
“At the highest level of leadership in the Republican Party, including the Speaker of the House and the Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, there is an aggressive use of talking points that is actively courting more racist political violence,” said America’s Voice Senior Research Director Zachary Mueller 👇🏽
“Prominent Republicans have seized on campus protests to assail what they say is antisemitism on the left. But for years they have mainstreamed anti-Jewish rhetoric.”
"In a July 2023 email to supporters, the Trump campaign employed an image that bears striking resemblance to a Nazi-era cartoon of a hook-nosed puppet master manipulating world figures: Mr. Soros as puppet master, pulling the strings controlling President Biden."
“The Times also found that House and Senate Republicans increasingly used 'Soros' and 'globalist' in ways that evoked the historical tropes, from just a handful of messages in 2013 to more than 300 messages from 79 members in 2023."
In a meeting w/U.S. attorneys that month, Sessions called for no mercy. “‘We need to take away children,’ Mr. Sessions told the prosecutors, according to participants’ notes,” the NYT reported in 2020. His deputy, Rod Rosenstein, told prosecutors “that it did not matter how young the children were.”
Six years later, 1,400 children remain separated from their families due to the Trump admin’s policy.
Remember that children were ripped from parents without so much as a chance to hug goodbye.
“I had no idea where they were taking us,” one dad said. “I told my son to not be afraid and that everything was going to be OK. I told him to be a good boy.”
In several of the lawsuits filed by families against the Trump administration over the policy, parents described being told by federal immigration officials that they would never see their children again.
“Some were taken under the guise of being given baths,” The Washington Post reported in 2019. Some parents were even told that their children would be put up for adoption. #FamiliesBelongTogether
Stephen Miller planning the Great Purge: Recruit ‘red state’ deportation army of law enforcement and National Guard to round up immigrants, rip them from their homes and community, and forcibly deport them.
A preview of this deportation army is happening right in front of our eyes.
WIRED this month: “Far-right sheriffs want a citizen army to stop ‘illegal immigrant’ voters.” Of course, widespread non-citizen voting isn't a real thing.
On sheriff “told the audience that he already had a ‘posse’ of 150 deputized citizens.”
For Miller, these sheriffs are dream recruits for his deportation army. Harassing people of color has been a lifelong mission for him, as reported by Univision in 2017. Former classmates said Miller “used to make fun of the children of Latino and Asian immigrants who did not speak English well.”
From Time's new interview w/Trump: “For [a deportation] operation of that scale, Trump says he would rely mostly on the National Guard to round up and remove undoc migrants throughout the country.”
Key to Stephen Miller’s cruel effort to purge millions of immigrants from their homes and the US will be collaboration from police and National Guard from red states.
We’re already seen two dozen GOP governors send troops to aid in Texas’ anti-immigrant crackdown under orders from Trump:
Just look at the Trump administration’s record for confirmation. The Washington Post reported in 2021 that the administration “aggressively recruited sheriffs” to participate in 287(g), a controversial and flawed program that allows local police to act as federal immigration agents and has resulted in widespread racial profiling.
While the program shrank to just a few dozen participants under President Obama, it saw a resurgence under the Trump administration.
“Some farmworkers in Florida aren't allowed to take breaks, don't have access to shade and are pushed to work faster, said Jeannie Economos, pesticide safety and environmental health project coordinator at the Farmworker Association of Florida.
Some are afraid to drink water because they don't have access to a bathroom. Meanwhile, supervisors discipline them for trying to take breaks when they feel overheated, she said.” #EarthDay#WeFeedYou
"President Biden has said the U.S. is a 'close and enduring friend' of Haiti," said America’s Voice Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas. "The way to treat our friend during a time of deep crisis and unrest is not to reinstitute deportations." #TPSforHaiti
“‘An upsurge in the already extreme violence in Haiti has left citizens reeling,’ US-based migrant rights group Al Otro Lado wrote on X on Thursday after news of the deportation flight first broke.
‘Gangs control key ports, the largest airport + much of the capital city of Port-au-Prince. People are on the brink of famine. Sending [people] back [to Haiti] could be a death sentence.’” #TPSforHaiti