"slavery" news and stories

A labor advocacy group has transformed a cargo truck, similar to the vehicle in which two Florida tomato growers kept their enslaved work crews captive, into a mobile museum.

"We're touring the state to educate people about the persistence of slavery in the agriculture industry here in Florida," explains Marc Rodrigues, a member of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.

The 24-foot truck houses exhibits chronicling the history of slavery, from the government-sanctioned system that thrived after European colonization to 20th-century sharecropping. The chronology offers little respite for abolitionists: The timeline ends with the seven confirmed forced labor cases the Department of Justice has documented over the past decade.

"For a lot of people, it's been a really eye-opening experience," Rodrigues says. "I've seen people come out of the museum with tears in their eyes."

Gourmet's Barry Estabrook investigates the plight of Florida tomato pickers. The following is an excerpt of his findings published on Gourmet.com.

A little slavery is okay, just not too much of it.

At this writing, that appears to be the official government position in the state of Florida, and it could explain why the fields of the Sunshine State provide such fertile ground for modern-day slavery. In the past dozen years, police have broken up and prosecuted seven slave operations there, freeing more than 1,000 men and women who were kept captive and forced to work for little or no money and threatened with death if they tried to escape. (For more on the plight of the Florida tomato pickers, see my article "The Price of Tomatoes" in the March 2009 issue of Gourmet.)

Late last year, two members of the Navarrete family, the operators of what has been recognized as the most brutal slave ring the state has seen, were sentenced to 12 years in prison; two others received lesser sentences. Justice having been done, it was an ideal opportunity for Governor Charlie Crist, who enjoys a very high approval rating, to spend a bit of that political capital to condemn the practice and announce bold steps to prevent it.

The story continues at Gourmet.com: Politics of the Plate: Florida's Slave Trade