Florida remains a slave state

by: Florida Politics

Sat Sep 06, 2008 at 10:03:34 AM EDT

Notwithstanding Florida's newspaper companies' relative silence (with occasional exceptions like this extraordinary work)*, the existence of Florida's "Modern-Day Slavery" is no secret.**

However, and although the law is stacked in favor of the slave-owners, there has been occasional litigation. See e.g., "Ag-Mart to pay for limbless child's needs" (about a court settlement to provide "care for 3-year-old Carlitos Candelario, born without arms and legs to parents who picked tomatoes in fields sprayed with pesticides.")

Bill Maxwell has the latest:

Five Immokalee field bosses, all relatives, pleaded guilty to several charges of enslaving Guatemalan and Mexican farmworkers, forcing them to work and brutalizing them.

[the slaves were] kept more than a dozen men in boxes, shacks and trucks on their property. The workers were chained, beaten and forced to work on farms in North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida. Incredibly, the indictment shows that the men were forced to pay rent of $20 a week to sleep in a locked furniture van. They were forced to urinate and defecate in a corner of the vehicle. ...

A federal plea deal was entered, giving the two ringleaders 12 years and fines from $750,000 to $1-million each. Formal sentencing is at the end of the year.

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers conducted the initial investigation in this case and six other successfully prosecuted cases that have freed more than 1,000 field hands.

not to mention ordinary citizens, have rarely expressed outage over such abuses, and even fewer have raised a finger on behalf of farmworkers. Former Gov. Jeb Bush and his labor emissary openly criticized the coalition for its work, and Gov. Charlie Crist has yet to show real interest.