Working people across the United States have stepped up to help out our friends, neighbors and communities during these trying times. In our regular Service + Solidarity Spotlight series, we'll showcase one of these stories every day. Here’s today’s story.
The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) brought easy and welcoming vaccine clinics to Ohio and North Carolina to protect front-line farmworkers against COVID-19. Migrant farmworkers are especially vulnerable to the virus as they work, travel and live closely together. Data from the Environmental Working Group shows that areas with some of the highest rates of infection also have higher numbers of migrant farmworkers.
“We have converted over to reaching the migrant population when they started coming in for the planting and cultivating and then finally, the harvesting,” FLOC President Baldemar Velasquez (not pictured) said. “And that’s when we got the mobile clinic out to a couple of the big farms.”