The conditions of migrant workers in Florida

Florida tends to be a hotspot for immigrants as it is on a coast and close to the Central and South American countries. Many people consider migrant workers on farms to be the victims of modern day slavery, working in difficult conditions for substandard pay. According to Florida Legal Services, three-quarters of farm workers in Florida are immigrants. The average age of a farm worker is 35. About a quarter of the farm workers are women. Many of these women deal with sexual harassment on a daily basis. Farm workers also lack pension plans, paid vacations, and sick leave. Some farms do not even provide toilets for their workers if there are less than six (Florida legal online). As horrible as many of these conditions are, some are doing an excellent job working to improve the conditions for Florida migrant workers. For example, a writer for the New York Times pointed out the improvements done by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers who work to improve conditions by investigating slavery and negotiating with fast food restaurants to get more money for the workers (Schlosser online). The Immokalee workers make a definite impact in South Florida for immigrant workers who are mistreated. “The Anti-Slavery Campaign has resulted in freedom for more than a thousand tomato and orange pickers held in debt bondage, historic sentences for various agricultural employers, the development of a successful model of community-government cooperation, and the growth of an expanding base of aware and committed worker activists.” (Coalition of Immokalee Workers online).

Not all immigrant workers are mistreated in Florida. For example, C&B farms, and organic farm in Clewiston, FL, is an example of a farm that has decently paid farm workers with adequate housing. Chuck Obern, the owner of C&B farms, may not allow his workers the weekend off, but they pay a low price for their housing, and on average they work about 5-7 hours a day.

The safety and fair treatment of migrant workers is definitely something to look in to.

           

Community Involvement: What the Guild can do for U

This past Greek Earth Day took the University of Miami to the Montgomery Botanical Center in Coral Gables.  When the buses pulled up to the center, various students commented that Coral Gables does not need the free labor they were providing and that they thought they “would be working with an underprivileged community”.[i]  I shared the same sentiments…until I researched the organization that has been fighting invasive species in the Botanical Center and transplanting rare plants.

The Urban Paradise Guild works with the Montgomery Botanical Center to help fight various invasive species to the palms and cycads grown there from around the world[ii].  This may not seem significant considering the volunteer day was meant to help, well, those who NEED help.  But the Urban Paradise Guild itself provides environmental aid to Botanical Centers and community gardens throughout Florida, regardless of the socioeconomic status (SES) of the region.  Some of these locations include: Liberty City, Hialeah, Oleta, Viscaya, El Portal, Matheson Hammock, and FIU South.  But part of the Urban Paradise Guild’s objective includes creating and maintaining a paradise in otherwise urban areas.  So what does this mean to us?  It means that the Guild is committed to resolving an environmental issue which usually revolves around a lack of vegetation in overdeveloped areas, and it also means they are willing to introduce projects at NEW locations![iii]

How can the Urban Paradise Guild make an impact in a new location?  What if the location does not have enough community property where a garden can be built?  The Urban Paradise Guild operates without funding and is volunteer-based.  Community nurseries and gardens can also be small in size, ranging from being started on a rooftop to being planted under a tree.  But the nurseries that the UPG promote are created native species on South Florida, and volunteers bring these plants to life from the seed to transplanting, and finally, the final step of planting them.[iv]

So what sort of community impact does the UPG have, and how can volunteering help their efforts?  The University of Miami already demonstrated on Greek Earth day that this sort of volunteering is much simpler, and less time consuming that one might think.  We uprooted invasive species by hand and shovel, and transplanted native species from small pots to larger pots.  Lines were formed to pass soil and groups were made to water the plants.  The teamwork and solidarity between different Greek organizations was fantastic to see and made being a student at the University of Miami seem more worthwhile.  But why stop with one day of volunteering?  And why not open locations where we know vegetation is scarce?  It can be simple to volunteer, and the time commitment is minimal.  Make your community or someone else’s greener to help preserve the Paradise everyone hopes to enjoy.  Bring the Guild to Urban areas, and keep the U involved.  Volunteer at: http://www.urban-paradise.org/volunteer

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[i] Anonymous Greek volunteer

[ii] "MBC Living Collections." Montgomery Botanical Center I. (2011): Web. 4 May 2011. <http://www.montgomerybotanical.org/Pages/Research.htm>.

[iii] "Locations & Chapters." Urban Paradise Guild. Web. 3 May 2011. <http://www.urban-paradise.org/Locations>.

[iv] “Native Community Nurseries." Urban Paradise Guild. Web. 3 May 2011.

<http://www.urban-paradise.org/nurseries.>.

The Situation in Overtown

With the construction of the new Life Science & Technology Park underway, Overtown residents are growing increasingly skeptical as to whether or not this project was developed to help actual residents or to improve the actual area of Overtown through gentrification. As construction, which began in November of 2009, continues, more and more promises are simply not being upheld. This project was to create jobs for Overtown residents, according to the University of Miami along with Maryland based developer, Wexford Science & Technology. With an unemployment rate nearing 50%, the area has been stricken with crime and danger for years.

Overtown: A short history

Originally created through the Jim Crow segregation laws and named ‘Colored Town’, Overtown was a flourishing beacon for the black community of South Miami. It was one of the strongest examples of black entrepreneurialism in the country. Residents there opened up their own hotels, grocery stores, theaters, and nightclubs. The theaters were year round hosts to some of the top African American acts in the country, such as Aretha Franklin and Ella Fitzgerald. When the Jim Crow Laws were overturned, many of the wealthier residents moved out of the area, looking for communities with less crime. This, paired with the fact that I-95 was constructed right through the middle of Overtown in the 1960’s, displacing many of the residents there, destroyed the community.

What does Overtown want?

Residents from Overtown were told that this project would create jobs, mostly construction, for the community. Officially, no statistics have been released as to how many Overtown residents are actually receiving work. STAND and Power U, two student organizations fighting for Overtown residents throughout this project, state that only 8 workers on the construction are actually from Overtown. Jacqueline Menendez, UM's vice president of communications, says that the number is somewhere between 12 and 20 of the 80 or 90 workers each day. Keith Ivory of the Power U Center says that approximately 10 Overtown residents approach the site everyday looking for work, are told to leave a phone number, but never receive a call back. In an email blast sent to the University of Miami community, Donna Shalala, the school’s President, claimed that 34% of the workforce being used for construction is from Overtown and the surrounding neighborhoods. In an article written by Kyle Munzenrieder for the Miami New Times, that 34% is again mentioned, but Munzenrieder emphasizes that the language used by Shalala is covering up the reality of the situation. He writes, “The school claims that 34 percent of the work force comes from within several zip codes around the project, but critics claim only one of those zip codes actually covers Overtown.” The truth is certainly hard to find in this situation, but the evidence available makes one question University of Miami’s motives.

Gentrification

Overtown is located right in the heart of downtown Miami. Given its deserved reputation as a dangerous, crime-ridden area, Overtown creates a unique situation for the city of Miami. While growing in popularity over the last decade, it cannot be argued that unless Overtown cleans up its act, it will hold back the city in terms of economic development and potential. STAND and Power U have called out the University of Miami to sign an agreement for sustainable community benefits based on the new Life Science & Technology building. These benefits, courtesy of Power U’s website, would include:

• Guarantees that a certain percentage of the short term construction and long term professional jobs will be prioritized for residents of Overtown.
• Job training for those positions.
• A scholarship program for Overtown high school students to the University to study in fields related to the work at the Life Sciences Park.
• Green spaces for use as community gardens and safe recreational areas to address the food desert and obesity epidemic.
• Guarantees that public housing will not be taken over for use by the University.

The University of Miami, though, will not sign any agreement, but why? STAND and Power U argue that it is not in University of Miami’s interests to help the current residents of Overtown. Instead, these new facilities, to be finished in 2012, will increase property values around the area, forcing out the impoverished residents and encouraging wealthier, middle and upper class crowds. This project is not so much about helping Overtown residents as it is altering the image of Overtown itself.

Funding

Returning to President Shalala’s email blast to the UM community, she writes, “I also urge you to read our informational brochure “Life Science & Technology Park and the Community,” which provides an overview of the project and its impact on the community, including the $700,000 in grants awarded by Wexford to not-for-profits in the area.” This $700,000 she mentions is not without controversy. STAND, on their website, claims that $700,000 is the required amount that the school is forced to give based on the guidelines on which their funding was received. The Urban Research Park, the community development organization, is responsible for that $700,000 figure as they are the entity that allocated the money. In all, Wexford and UM received $8.3 million. To make matters worse, while Shalala is correct in that the money went to not-for-profit organizations, many of them went to organizations located in Wynwood, and not Overtown. How much can you make of this? Well, to be fair, if the not-for-profits located in Overtown were not good candidates to receive donations, and there were better suited organizations nearby, than an argument over which organization gets the funding does exist. But, this was a project for Overtown, to benefit Overtown. If that was truly the goal of the project, than how can one justify not giving this money to an Overtown-based organization?

Future of Overtown

This project is one of many new developments scheduled to begin construction in Overtown. Wexford and UM’s reluctance to sign the benefits agreement seems like an omen of greater injustices and controversies that will most assuredly follow. While it does not seem as though this was project was ever meant to actually benefit residents of Overtown, it is important to step back and view the facts without bias. Unfortunately, at this point, with the information available, the future of Overtown looks like one of major disappointment and resentment. Overtown will become home to wealthier residents as new infrastructure continues to be built with little consideration given to the current population.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Power U official site: http://www.poweru.org/SCBA.htm

President Shalala’s Email Blast: http://www6.miami.edu/communications/dialogue/2010-2011/dialogue_03_24_11.html

Miami New Times Article: http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2011/04/university_of_miami_discipline.php

Miami Herald Article: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/21/1642196/overtown-activists-fear-university.html

STAND official site: http://www.standuniversityofmiami.org/index.php

History of Overtown: http://www.floridacdc.org/members/overtown/hist-his.htm

This is Florida?!? Phosphate Mining

Florida’s largest industry is tourism. As one of the top travel destinations in the world, a major attraction of Florida is its abundance in nature-based tours and eco-tourism spots. The shrinking Everglades, receding beaches, and disappearing coral reefs make up a large part of the $57 billion tourism input into Florida’s economy [1]. What happens to the number one industry in Florida when ironically, the second and third largest industries in Florida, agriculture and phosphate respectively, are helping to make it disappear?[2]

Maybe the fear of losing all this beauty is what makes these places more attractive to visitors, but who would want to go to a place that looks like this? 

The picture above is from phosphate mining in west central Florida, the world’s richest source of it. Phosphate has been mined in Florida for the last 120 years [2], and the process destroys the environment into an irreversible condition. (There is controversy on the success of restoration of former mining areas). The operation is very crude:

“Miners pull phosphate ore out of the ground, crush it, and throw it into an acid lake, where it separates into white gypsum stacks and a liquid acid that is then processed further to feed crops.”[3]

The step by step explanation is no better [4]:

• First, the area to be mined is stripped of vegetation and the water table is lowered. Even in the first step, the environment is already destroyed. Removing vegetation removes animal life as well as increases soil erosion. A deep trench is dug around the area to lower the water table. Lowering the water table levels increases saltwater intrusion into the aquifers and accelerates sinkhole formation. These are usually problems found from over extension of water demanded and pumped over time, but phosphate companies do this on purpose, increasing the pollution of the water in the communities around the mines. Floridian aquifers are contained under pressure by impermeable sediment to keep water temperature and flow relatively constant. One can only imagine the damage by lowering the water table.[1]
• In the second step, dragline bucket systems, where enormous crane machines drag their buckets, strip away the 20-50 feet of soil and stacks in nearby mined areas. Then the dragline scoops the exposed phosphate ore, mixed with sand and clay, into a pit. This is surface mining, or dragline excavation. This is the process that creates the landscape seen from Google Earth maps of large stadium sized man made gypstacks.
• The ore in the pit is then blasted by high-pressure water jets into a slurry. These create the acid lakes of water polluted beyond repair and huge lakes of death.
• The slurry is pumped by pipeline to a processing plant which separates the sand, clay, and phosphate ore. The phosphate ore is shipped to another plant to process it into fertilizer. The same fertilizer that creates runoff into the waterways after being used on Floridian farms.


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[1] (Cervone)

On Google maps, instead of the squares of green suburb lawns or small patches of gray and green of the cities, huge acres of dead gray are seen even from outer space. There are no deserts in Florida. These are the stadium sized gypstacks, clay remains from phosphate mining.

“On the south side, the Hardee landscape is typical Florida heartland: Drought-browned pasture stretches mile after mile, dotted by grazing cows, lonely palms and scrub-oak trees. To the north, the view into Polk County is a jarring contrast: Mile after mile of strip-mined earth in shades of gray, with not a tree or other living thing on the horizon.'" [5]

Video credit to AnonTruthandLies, please view in 720 for best quality.

So, What is Phosphate?

Phosphate is used to make the fertilizer that helps farmers maximize yield in crops [3]. Thus, with the demand of agriculture in Florida increases the demand of phosphate as well.

The runoff and the waste produced by phosphate mining is intense on the environment. What does one do with 1 billion tons of phosphogypsum waste [6]?

The Future of Phosphate Mining in Florida:

Phosphate mining is a non-renewable resource and Florida is running out [6]. Thus, the companies are doing a last ditch effort to mine as much as they can out of the area while eyeing the area nearby, expanding their operations. (See the New York Times article about Florida counties trying to contain phosphate mining http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/04/us/04phosphates.html [7].)

Phosphate mining needs to be stopped before it runs out first. (It has been estimated Florida still has another 25 years of phosphate mining left [8]) The phosphate mining companies need to be held responsible for the damage they have caused to the environment.
 "The groups sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on June 30, challenging a permit it gave Mosaic to destroy 500 acres of wetlands in an extension of the mine into Hardee County. " [9]
There are still debates whether reclamation of former mines is working.

[1] http://www.stateofflorida.com/Portal/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=95

[2] http://www.floridahistory.com/phosphate.html

[3]http://discovermagazine.com/photos/23-the-dark-side-of-the-green-revolution

[4] http://earthshots.usgs.gov/Orlando/Orlando
[5] http://www.ourphosphaterisk.com/news/story/58/

[6] http://www.baysoundings.com/sum05/phosphate1.html
[7] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/04/us/04phosphates.html
[8] http://www1.fipr.state.fl.us/PhosphatePrimer/0/D180A63B2294832985256F770069E962
[9] http://protectpeaceriver.org/resources/?p=312




In addition, and ongoing 

The dangers of chemical spraying

Any one living here in South Florida has most likely seen people spraying their lawns and plants with chemicals and fertilizers. They intend to keep their lawns perfect and green. Afterwards, their kids and pets will probably roll around in these lawns and pick the sprayed flowers completely oblivious to the dangers that come with their actions. People are using chemicals like vermicides, pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers either without knowledge or worry of its dangers.

Vermicides are chemicals used to get rid of organisms like worms. Worms cause problems because they leave “worm casts” or digested pieces of earth all over lawns that they live under. They also attract birds who defecate on lawns and peck threw them to get the worms for food. Herbicides are used to get rid of weeds, and pesticides are used to kill bugs so that they don’t eat the plants or lay eggs on them.

Many people do not realize that using chemicals like these to improve the look of your lawn and other plants have down sides that are not as well advertised. For example, vermicides often work by raising the acidity of the soil in a lawn because highly acidic soil is not appealing to worms. According to a study done by Oklahoma State University, high levels of acidity in soil cause crop failure because the acidic chemicals in the soil stop roots from being able to collect water and/or nutrients.

Pesticides work by damaging the nervous system of pests, but they also have bad effects on humans. According to health articles, “Pesticides effects on humans are damage to the nervous system, reproductive system and other organs, developmental and behavioral abnormalities, disruption of hormone function as well as immune dysfunction.” (PureZing online). Similarly, herbicides used on lawns can contaminate soil and water sources in the area. Pets have been known to die due to damage from herbicides from lawns or gardens.

Although not all of the bad effects of chemicals are shown quickly, over time these chemicals add more and more damage to human and animal bodies and resources. The bad effects of these chemicals definitely seem to outweigh the good ones over time. Chemicals are used to make lawns look cleaner and greener, and to keep bugs and worms away from them. However, worms help by turning the soil and making it better for plant growth. Also, according to an article published in the “Sustainable Rose Garden” in 2008, much of the chemical use only makes plants more vulnerable in the long run. The writer of the article, Paul Zimmerman, treated some roses with natural mixtures, like manure, fish emulsion, and other homemade combinations, to keep them healthy and bug free. He discovered that compared to his chemically treated roses the naturally treated ones were better able to fight disease. The chemically treated roses were stripped of their natural defenses to things like mildew.

With all of the problems that chemical spraying causes for humans, animals, and plants, it does not seem worth it to add negative things to our beautiful environment when there are natural, less harmful alternatives. We can still have clean, nice lawns and flowers without all of those different chemical sprays, and anyway, what's so bad about some worms and some dandelions??




Definitely check out http://paulzimmermanroses.com/?page_id=110 for more information on the dangers of chemicals on plant life.

Environmental Songs

When you listen to these songs, can you understand the purpose behind the lyrics?


source: Top 10 Earth Day Songs - The Y! Music Playlist Blog

Top 10 Earth Day Songs

1  Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) - Marvin Gaye
2. Big Yellow Taxi - Joni Mitchell
3. Paradise - John Prine
4. Shapes Of Things - The Yardbirds
5. Nature's Way - Spirit
6. Don't Go Near The Water - The Beach Boys
7. If A Tree Falls - Bruce Cockburn
8. Don't Go Near The Water - Johnny Cash
9.Mother Earth (Natural Anthem) - Neil Young
10. I Remember California - R.E.M