Three Florida farmworker advocates to receive human rights award

[Judi Lynn]

Wednesday, November 19



Three Florida farmworker advocates to receive human rights award

The Associated Press

MIAMI --
Three Florida farmworker advocates who have fought modern-day slavery and for higher wages will receive the Robert F. Kennedy Humans Rights Award on Thursday.

Lucas Benitez, Julia Gabriel and Romeo Ramirez, leaders of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, are the first recipients of the human rights award to be part of a U.S.-based organization. The $30,000 award was established in 1984 to honor individuals who overcome humans rights violations at great personal risk.

"It's a tremendous support, and a recognition that humans rights are still being violated in the United States," Benitez said while waiting at an airport for a flight to Washington to accept the award.

Benitez, Gabriel and Ramirez have worked to improve the labor conditions of thousands of farmworkers who pick Florida's winter vegetables and citrus. They include farmworkers who have been held against their will in modern-day slavery by labor contractors. Gabriel at one time was a captive worker for an employer who eventually was convicted of running a slave ring.

"For too long, people in the U.S. think human rights violations have occurred somewhere else," said Todd Howland, director of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights in Washington. "We have serious problems here and we shouldn't assume we don't." (snip/...)

http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20031119/APN/311190756

[DUreader]

1. Great News! Thanks for Posting this.

Another bit of good news:


The Immokalee farm workers will soon have a micro radio station