Category Archives: News

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Latino students are rapidly increasing in this Tennessee county and it’s fueling a racist rhetoric

While the county’s more than 366,000 residents largely identify as White and about 7.4% identified as Hispanic or Latino in the 2020 Census, their presence has pushed a community with a dark racial history to face the inequalities that persist and adapt to a new normal that goes beyond the fractured Black-White paradigm that has characterized the South for a long time.

Although there are ongoing efforts by the city and school officials to better serve Latino families, the demographic shift has also come with reminders of how heavily divided this region is and the fact that many Latinos live afraid of authorities because of their current or past immigration status.

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A North Carolina Farmer Was Accused of Abusing His Workers. Then Big Tobacco Backed His Election.

Cornell Watson for Mother Jones and TBIJ

Tobacco-picking is is often done by migrant Latino workers, both H-2A and undocumented. They can face abuse and exploitation from when they are recruited in Mexico, before they even set foot on US soil. But they are essential to the economic stability of North Carolina, providing a steady supply of labour for agricultural jobs that can’t be filled by Americans.

Tobacco is a labor-intensive crop. It begins life in a greenhouse before being transplanted into the soil. It grows to a few feet tall and you often start by only picking the leaves at the base of the stem, which has to be done by hand. The early-morning dew makes it give off a greasy chemical smell and the tar slowly turns your gloves black. The nicotine in tobacco keeps smokers hooked, but for workers in the fields who are exposed to nicotine day in, day out, it can cause “green tobacco sickness”—a condition that leads to headaches, abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting. A day off is a welcome respite.

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Why Latino people are on the front lines of climate change

“Latino communities from Texas to California to Puerto Rico are the hardest hit when these climate-induced disasters occur,” says Michael Méndez, who studies climate policy and environmental justice at the University of California Irvine. “They absolutely have a real world connection to our changing climate.”

Latinos in the U.S. are more likely than non-Hispanic Whites to experience heat waves, powerful hurricanes, sea level rise and floods, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

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