"Slave Farms" in Northern Florida

[Jersey Devil]

So apparently these people picked up homeless men in vans to work on farm camps. Initially they promised good stable jobs but would later pay them in illicit drugs and kept them in fenced farm camps. They also forced them into heavy debt by charging for van rides and room and board with interest sometmes up to 100%. A U.S attorney has called this "modern day slavery". As the audio points out, one large problem is that many of these homeless men do not come forward to authorities, and thus it makes it more difficult to prosecute people like Ephraim Campbell (one of the men that owns one of these camps) who are responsible for this. Also, as the audio points out, hundreds of rocks of freebase (crack) cocaine have been found after authorites raided one of Campbell's camps. I would suggest that you hear the NPR audio which can be found in the following link, it is quite interesting.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4753236

Nation
Modern-Day 'Slave Farms' in Florida
by Carrie Kahn

“It's shocking -- it broke my heart, you know? Their conditions are like the ones you would see on a documentary from 300 years ago.”
Outreach worker Julia Castro, making care packages for laborers from a nearby farm

Morning Edition, July 14, 2005 · Florida lawmakers are looking into allegations that several of the state's farm labor camps are running what one U.S. attorney calls modern-day slave operations.

For the most part, the workers are U.S. citizens, and many are homeless African-American men recruited from shelters and soup kitchens. Lured by promises of work, they hop into vans, only to find themselves in fenced farm camps, forced into debt by their bosses and sometimes paid with drugs instead of money.

Law enforcement officials insist tracking down and punishing the camp owners is a priority -- but follow-up raids are rare, and many of the camps are extremely remote. Charities try to help those that want to flee the farms, taking food and clothes to workers in the field.

http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2005/july/farm_workers/gallery1.jpg
Tony Cobb
Tony Cobb runs the Clara White Mission soup kitchen in Jacksonville, Fla., and worked at farm camps in the 1980s. He learned to cook at the mission and escaped the life -- and a sign warns others at the mission not to be taken in by false promises from recruiters.

http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2005/july/farm_workers/gallery2.jpg
Rural Farm in Florida
The farm camps of Florida are just one of many that dot America's Eastern Seaboard. Workers often spend months with the same "crew" of workers, getting shuttled from one crop to another depending on the season.

http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2005/july/farm_workers/gallery3.jpg
Hastings, Florida
The farm town of Hastings bills itself as the "potato capital of the world." One worker who fled a farm there says he racked up debt to buy food and was often housed with addicts paid for their labor with crack cocaine.

http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2005/july/farm_workers/gallery4.jpg
Ephraim Campbell's Farm
Mike Sapp, left, and Kenneth Singleton get food from a Catholic charity outside a farm run by Ephraim Campbell near Crescent City, Fla. According to local press reports, county officials have fined Campbell for past health violations.

[Urban Rubble]

Reading this thread really sparked the irrationality of the pissed off 14 year old Anarchist that I used to be. The first thing that popped into my head was "Man, I should get down there with some people and go raid those fucking camps myself", followed by visions of me and my friends in black masks trudging through the swamps and burning down a farm.

Anyway......

I'd like to hear more on these, got any more sources? A few things I was thinking about were:

1. How remote can they be? It's Florida.

2. How bad are the conditions there? What's the work day like?

3. How prominent/obvious are these things? I can understand law enforcement not caring about the right of a bunch of homeless men, it happens every day, but you'd think the feds would be concerned with things like taxes and documentation.

[werewolf]

4. I watch the news a lot and never heard of this before. I've had hunches things like this happen, but never heard about it.

Yeah, let's hear some more.

[codyvo]

Originally posted by Urban [email protected] 16 2005, 08:05 PM

1. How remote can they be? It's Florida.

Actually, I live in Florida, and though the coastlines are very densely populated, central Florida, and anything non-coastline is very rural. This doesn't surprise me, their have been lots of counts of slavery in Florida over the past few years, the tomato pickers and many other groups like homeless people have been treated terribly. Some of the migrant workers are in debt that will last generation, so in some senses they have it worse than slaves.

[Elect Marx]

Originally posted by Urban Rubble+Jul 16 2005, 02:05 PM--> (Urban Rubble @ Jul 16 2005, 02:05 PM) 3. ...I can understand law enforcement not caring about the right of a bunch of homeless men, it happens every day, but you'd think the feds would be concerned with things like taxes and documentation. [/b]

Jersey Devil
As the audio points out, one large problem is that many of these homeless men do not come forward to authorities, and thus it makes it more difficult to prosecute people like Ephraim Campbell (one of the men that owns one of these camps) who are responsible for this.

You both seem to be overlaping here. I can see why they don't come forward to the authorities that don't really care about the conditions bringing this sort of situation into the realm of possiblity to begin with. Really, the only reason the Feds get involved is because they want piece of the extortion pie.

[Colombia]

This happens everywhere in the US. The only difference is that you replace homeless black men with Hispanics.

[Elect Marx]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18 2005, 10:20 AM
This happens everywhere in the US. The only difference is that you replace homeless black men with Hispanics.
For that matter, look at people (the most desperate of the working class) that have an apartment but are too far in debt to do anything besides sleep there between jobs and travel.

This problem is only getting worse, as capitalism decays and the income gap grows, a large portion of the working class has negative net worth, so they ARE slaves, the system legally owns them.

[which doctor]

this stuff also happens in southwest michigan, which i live near. Except the workers are hispanics and their families. In the winter they get sent back to california ant texas to work on the farms down there. However I dont think there living conditions are that bad, but you never know.

[Colombia]

Trust me comrade, as a Hispanic I can tell you that the working conditions are horrible and many living in the US live in nothing more than shacks.