Tomatoes of Wrath by Chris Hedges

by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
Sept. 26, 2011

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

It is 6 a.m. in the parking lot outside the La Fiesta supermarket in Immokalee, Fla. Rodrigo Ortiz, a 26-year-old farmworker, waits forlornly in the half light for work in the tomato fields. White-painted school buses with logos such as “P. Cardenas Harvesting” are slowly filling with fieldworkers. Knots of men and a few women, speaking softly in Spanish and Creole, are clustered on the asphalt or seated at a few picnic tables waiting for crew leaders to herd them onto the buses, some of which will travel two hours to fields. Roosters are crowing as the first light of dawn rises over the cacophony. Men shovel ice into 10-gallon plastic containers from an ice maker next to the supermarket, which opens at 3:30 a.m. to sell tacos and other food to the workers. The containers—which they lug to pickup trucks—provide water for the pickers in the sweltering, humid fields where temperatures soar to 90 degrees and above.

[…]

via Truthdig

Copyright © 2011 Truthdig

Chris Hedges spent two decades as a foreign reporter covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. His latest books are Death of the Liberal Class, and The World as It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress.

see

Chris Hedges: Occupy Wall Street Interview – We have a moral imperative to fight for life

Mystery: How Wealth Creates Poverty in the World by Michael Parenti (2007)

Whistle While You Work with Michael Parenti and Greg Boozel (2007; must-see)

Corporatism or Survival on Earth? By Siv O’Neall

Obama’s Laborious Labor Day By Ralph Nader

The Economy Sucks and or Collapse 2