Other items in today’s column include:
*Jewish American Heritage Month
*Recommended reading
SAN DIEGO — Fruit and vegetables don’t just magically appear in the bins and on the shelves of our super markets. They have to be grown, picked, processed, shipped, unpacked, shelved, selected by the consumer, and purchased before they ever get to our homes for consumption by our families. All along this “food chain,” there are essential workers, often being paid low wages, who are continuing to work during the coronavirus pandemic. It’s clear that for consumers to be able to continue to feed themselves and their families, and thereby to stay healthy, so too must the workers in the fields, warehouses, trucking services, and grocery stores also remain healthy.
In a Zoom meeting on Wednesday, Charlene Seidle, executive vice president of the Leichtag Foundation, interviewed three panelists who help to make certain that the health and rights of workers in the food industry are recognized as an important priority for our society.
Herminia Ledesma, program manager for the Vista Community Clinic, said her organization is in touch in the northern portions of San Diego County with approximately 200 farm workers =, who are growing food for local consumption. Many of the workers are Latinos, some of whom are undocumented, and close to 10 percent of them are testing positive for the coronavirus, a higher average than for the general population.
Prior to the pandemic, she said, her organization was able to bring health care workers out to work sites to not only do health checks, but also to provide education about the kinds of resources that are needed to prevent the spread of infections.
Today, some nurseries that do not have sufficient resources to comply with necessary health safety precautions are shutting down, Ledesma said. Because many farm workers supplement their incomes by working additional hours in nurseries, this is causing economic hardship for a group of people already under extreme financial pressure.
Ledesma said that among various groupings of agricultural workers, there are outstanding community leaders such as one farm worker who is a single mother who tends to her children and grandchildren. As she has a cellphone, other farm workers come to her when they have problems, and she calls the Vista Community Clinic, or other social services as needed. In addition, this leader who seeks no recognition “goes out with us once a week to help us distribute food.” Even though farm workers grow food to nourish the rest of us, many are themselves food insecure and need assistance.”
Along that line, Seidle commented that at the Leichtag Commons in Encinitas, Coastal Roots Farm operates a pay-as-you-can, drive-by fresh vegetable stand two days a week and “they have seen a tremendous rise in demand–sometimes 100 car long.” Informal surveying indicates that “75 percent of the people are affected in some way” by the coronavirus.”
Norma Chavez-Peterson, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego and Imperial Counties, recently in her off time helped to organize a drive, highlighted by a caravan, to help support farm workers, who, in many cases “work seven days a week under the hot sun with very little pay and protection.” The drive netted $90,000 in cash and $4,000 in food cards.
Commenting on data provided by Sona Desai, associate director of the San Diego Food System Alliance, Chavez said wherever there were pockets of poverty before the pandemic, those are the places where there is the greatest need during the pandemic. “We need to flatten the curve of inequality,” she said, explaining that the persons who are hurting the most during the pandemic are the “low income people who are still going to work serving us in the fields, restaurants” and in the hospitals, who “disproportionately are coming from communities of color.”
She told of a woman who works in a factory at Otay Mesa, who is a single mother, and who has no child care. When she was diagnosed positive with coronavirus, she arranged for her three children to stay across the border with her mother. Chavez said her sister, Sylvia, learned of the situation because one of the three children is her student, whom she had difficulty reaching through the Internet meetings of her class. She learned that the mother, afraid of spreading coronavirus to anyone else, was neither going to the pharmacy nor to the grocery store. Chavez’s sister made some phone calls and connected the woman with the San Ysidro Health Center for medication and Casa Familiar for groceries. The child meanwhile was reintegrated into the class, even from across the border. “There are so many folks who are falling through the cracks,” Chavez said. “it will take all of us to look out for each other.”
Desai said that the San Diego Food System Alliance has made some suggestions about what governments and foundations need to do to help provide for the essential workers in the food supply system. First, she said, there is a need for flexible financial relief funds to replace lost income and to assure basic living expenses. Second, the workers’ health safety and rights to organize need to be safeguarded. Workers need proper health and safety measures, child care, family care, and labor rights “regardless of immigration status.” Third, the government should establish moratoriums on work permit restrictions, repatriations, deportations, evictions and delinquency notices.
Businesses in the food chain need to be assisted in providing benefits to their workers, while making certain that their employees are safe with proper protective equipment and paid sick leave, she said. Farms and fisheries also need financial relief as well as technical support to be able to help their workers.
Overall, organizations and the government should “invest in local food infrastructure” because we “can’t rely on global and national food chains,” Desai said. “We need to make sure that we can provide food locally.”
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Jewish American Heritage Month
Cartoonist, children’s book author, and songwriter Shel Silverstein is today’s honoree profiled by EMET (Endowment for Middle East Truth). Besides writing such popular books as A Light in the Attic, his Grammy winning songs included “A Boy Named Sue,” popularized by Johnny Cash.
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Recommended reading
*Ken Stone of Times of San Diego reports that the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department is investigating Dustin Hart, the man who wore a swastika mask while shopping at Food4Less in Santee.
*Times of Israel reports the Jewish community in Germany has become increasingly concerned by the anti-Semites who try to blame Jews for the spreae of the coronavirus.
*Tim Boxer of New York Jewish Week remembers comedian Jerry Stiller, who died recently.
*Jerry Klinger, president of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation, passes on this story from Medium, which explains the shortage of toilet paper during the coronavirus pandemic. With more people staying at home, they are using their home bathrooms, rather than those at work or other public places. Thus the demand for commercial toilet paper has lessened, while the demand for residential toilet paper has increased.
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Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com