As millions more join the ranks of the unemployed due to the economic paralysis of the coronavirus, the country’s agricultural fields have not stopped operating and farmworkers continue to work to satisfy the growing demand for food from those who stay home. However, working with poor protection measures, many risk their lives by going to the fields. State assemblyman Eduardo Garcia, a Democrat from Coachella, talks about emergency legislation for these workers. Meanwhile, in Florida, field laborers in the rich agricultural region of Immokalee continue to work in conditions that expose them to a devastating outbreak of coronavirus: they ride crowded buses and work the fields face-to-face without masks and without sanitation stations. Anticipating an epidemic, Lucas Benítez, coordinator of the Immokalee Workers Coalition, has urgently requested a temporary hospital for the small town of Immokalee.
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