motherjones--2020-12-15--“Everyone Is Tired of Always Staying Silent”: Inside a Worker Rebellion in the Central Valley

It was still dark when Veronica Perez arrived at Primex Farms , a nut-packing facility in California ’ s Kern County .
Crickets murmured in the almond and pistachio groves stretching for acres in all directions .
Once inside the building ’ s mirrored doors , Perez would usually stand next to other sorters alongside a conveyor belt , picking out blemished pistachios .
But on June 25 , at 4:30 a.m. , Perez didn ’ t go in .
Instead , for the next five hours , she and about 40 of her co-workers formed a picket line .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
They held homemade signs with the names of co-workers who had the coronavirus .
One sign in Spanish read , “ The wise see danger and leave , but the foolish go on and suffer the consequences.
” The employees chanted , “ ¡Somos esenciales !
” : We are essential .
Perez , who is 42 , had worked in California packing plants ever since she arrived from Mexico City 25 years ago , but she had never joined a walkout or protest .
There hadn ’ t been many to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ things at Primex had become unbearable .
In April , after employees requested the right to bring in masks to wear on the job , the company allegedly prohibited it .
When it relented and allowed masks , it sold them for $ 8 apiece , according to several workers .
( Primex denies ever selling masks . )
By May , employees at the 400-person plant were falling ill. Sick workers who stayed home went unpaid , so some kept coming to work with hacking coughs .
Primex remained tight-lipped about any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ manager about a colleague who had contracted the virus , she recalled , the manager told her to “ go home and stay there and not tell anyone about it.
” Remigio Ramirez , a 54-year-old maintenance worker , told his boss in mid-June that he wasn ’ t feeling well .
The supervisor still encouraged him to come in since the team was already short-staffed .
A few days later , Ramirez was diagnosed with COVID-19 .
He stayed home , isolating in his bedroom .
“ When I got up the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ see anyone—not my wife , not my daughters , ” he says .
“ And I thought to myself , What ’ s happening ?
Did they leave me alone ?
But no , each one was in their room , sick.
” Over the summer , the coronavirus tore through the Central Valley , the vast , fertile interior of California that produces a quarter of the nation ’ s food , including 40 percent of its fruits and nuts .
( Primex processes an estimated 6 percent of the state ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ exported . )
By late July , the Kern County fairgrounds had been transformed into a federal surge testing site , and more than one in five coronavirus tests in the county were coming back positive .
“ The problem we ’ re seeing is not whether you ’ re going to get infected , ” Armando Elenes , the secretary treasurer of the United Farm Workers ( UFW ) , told me at the time .
“ It ’ s no longer a matter of if—it ’ s a matter of when.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ a local news channel that 31 workers had tested positive for COVID-19 .
Employees who saw the broadcast were shocked : The company hadn ’ t told them about the cases , which it had confirmed about two weeks earlier .
Ramirez seethed at the betrayal .
“ They said that they were going to let us know if anyone came down with it , ” he says , “ but they didn ’ t. ” Primex didn ’ t comment on the alleged lack of communication to employees , but stated in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anti–virus spreading steps long before the CDC guidelines were published .
We are proud to say that we are one of the cleanest and most sanitized plants in the industry.
” Barely 5 feet tall , with an often-furrowed brow and a quiet voice , Perez never imagined herself becoming a labor organizer .
“ I ’ m not the loudest , ” she admits , speaking through a translator .
“ I believe the message can be better communicated with control and poise.
” Yet Perez knew what it looked like when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its employees ’ health .
Years ago , she was injured at an almond packing plant and fired .
A single mom of three kids , she suddenly found herself with no job and no medical help .
“ They use you until you can ’ t give any more of you—and once you have a problem , they ’ ll get rid of you like you ’ re nothing , ” she says .
She got through that crisis with support from Líderes Campesinas , an advocacy group for female agricultural workers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how vulnerable she and her peers on the bottom rungs of the food system were .
“ I figured that if this happened to me , most likely it ’ s happening to many other women , ” she says .
Perez started attending Líderes Campesinas ’ workshops on immigration law and workers ’ rights , eventually volunteering with the group and joining its governing board .
The day the news of the Primex outbreak broke , Perez messaged the UFW ’ s Elenes , who created a WhatsApp group , called Justicia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
( Primex isn ’ t unionized , but the UFW advocates for agricultural workers regardless of union status , Elenes says . )
The next day , 100 people—a quarter of the facility ’ s workforce—had joined .
That evening , they gathered on Zoom , many using the video platform for the first time , to plan a demonstration the following morning .
When dozens of her co-workers showed up for the walkout early on June 25 , Perez was thrilled at the turnout and terrified of the possible consequences .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ : sick pay , job protection , and respect .
Ramirez , who had tested positive the week before , joined the protest from the confines of his car .
“ Most workers prefer to always keep quiet for fear of losing their jobs or for fear of retaliation , ” Perez said in a text message .
“ I was amazed myself at the quick response we got from our co-workers .
It may be that everyone is tired of always staying silent.
” “ ¡Somos esenciales !
” is a double-edged @ @ @ @ @ @ @ economic role immigrants play and a cudgel with which to keep them on the job .
As the country went into lockdown in March , President Donald Trump declared that essential workers , including farmworkers , “ have a special responsibility ” to maintain normal work hours .
Pickers and packers , including Primex employees , started carrying cards or letters from their employers identifying them as essential workers .
“ I am a farm worker helping to protect our food supply during the coronavirus pandemic , ” read the letter a berry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ job is considered essential so that we can produce food.
” In theory , these pieces of paper , tucked away in pockets and wallets , could deter curious cops or ICE agents .
The federal government estimates that half of farmworkers are undocumented .
The rate for food packers , like Primex ’ s employees , is thought to be lower than farmworkers ’ but much higher than the overall workforce ’ s .
These workers are critical to feeding the country , but deportable at the drop of a hat .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ more manifest .
Undocumented workers don ’ t benefit from federal coronavirus relief measures , such as expanded unemployment insurance .
While federal legislation and policy expansions by California Gov .
Gavin Newsom eventually granted essential food workers two weeks of paid sick leave , or “ COVID pay , ” enforcement has been spotty .
“ If an employer is not paying them covid pay , that sends a message to everybody else to not say anything , ” Elenes says .
And if an undocumented worker loses their job , they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stipend that federal or state relief promises to citizens .
“ Most employees accept that they don ’ t have health insurance .
But not having any income ?
That ’ s not something they can resolve.
” So begins a potentially deadly feedback loop : The fear of lost wages and deportation breeds silence , which in turn increases the risk of transmitting COVID .
The mentality is , “ If I feel good , even though I have the virus , I ’ m not going to tell you , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ town of Lost Hills .
“ The farm supervisors aren ’ t interested in if you have it or not .
You might feel sick , but it ’ s fine—as long as you don ’ t die.
” “ People are scared to say anything—or they take it like it ’ s a common cold , and they continue going to work , ” says a 46-year-old I ’ ll call Esperanza , who works at a nursery near Oxnard .
The nursery wouldn ’ t give out masks , and her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wouldn ’ t get paid if they stayed home .
Esperanza spoke to me over the phone in a quiet , cracking voice ; just a couple of weeks before , she had come down with the coronavirus .
Even without this shroud of silence , agricultural workers are especially vulnerable to the pandemic .
Some live in dormitories for temporary workers , where the virus proliferates .
It ’ s common to carpool to job sites , which include greenhouses and packing houses with limited ventilation .
Oil fields and freeways contribute @ @ @ @ @ @ @ air quality ; Bakersfield and Fresno have the worst particle pollution in the country .
Rates of respiratory ailments like asthma and Valley Fever , a fungal lung disease , have soared .
And for much of August and September , a ring of wildfires blanketed the fields in a hot , dense smog .
It ’ s no surprise that farmworker organizing and labor actions are a rarity .
Less than 2 percent of farmworkers are unionized .
“ It just seems like an insane proposition to go out on strike , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ policy director of the advocacy group Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy ( CAUSE ) .
“ Without a union who ’ s really organizing and providing support and assuring you of your legal rights , it can be really daunting .
So it only does happen when people really reach a breaking point.
” As some pickers and packers reached that breaking point , there have been blips of COVID-related organizing up and down the West Coast .
In the month before the Primex walkout , hundreds of fruit packers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ production lines to protest a lack of safety precautions and hazard pay .
In Santa Maria , California , strawberry pickers walked off the job to protest wages falling just as many families were particularly cash-strapped .
Blueberry pickers near Fresno also struck over a wage cut , standing by the fields waving red-and-black UFW flags .
Could the pandemic and the recognition of agricultural workers as essential begin to change the power dynamic between farmworkers and their employers ?
I took the question to Marshall Ganz , who once worked as the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lectures at the Harvard Kennedy School .
“ Where do you find courage to take risk ?
Grievances don ’ t generate courage .
They generate anger or rage .
They generate despair .
So unless there ’ s some hope source , people don ’ t really engage , ” he says .
“ Hope isn ’ t about certainty at all—it ’ s just about possibility.
” “ So then the question is , under these conditions , are there unusual or new sources of possibility ?
” The demonstration at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 24 hours , the company closed its processing facility for cleaning .
Amid a flurry of local news reports about the outbreak , executives announced a plan to set up a mobile testing unit and implement other safety precautions , like installing Plexiglas dividers at the sorting tables , and more outdoor seating areas so employees could spread out during breaks .
When the plant reopened fully after a week , about 60 workers protested outside , alleging that Primex still wasn ’ t cleaning adequately or providing sick pay .
But this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ We went back because we needed the work , ” Perez says .
Meanwhile , suspecting that more people had been infected than the 31 that the company reported , employees started a coronavirus census , counting whoever had gotten sick .
Primex is a 24-hour operation , and the texts started to the group thread coming in day and night ; Elenes recalls waking up and finding message after message from upset employees .
One woman reported that not only was she infected , she had exposed at least 16 family @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Primex cluster was 6 months old .
In late June , the Occupational Safety and Health Administration opened an investigation .
( It is ongoing , and OSHA did not respond to requests for comment . )
By mid-summer , the employee-led count found that 97 of Primex ’ s 400 employees had tested positive , along with more than 60 family members .
A week later , the mobile testing unit provided by the company would find that a total of 150 employees had been infected .
In mid-July , a 57-year-old @ @ @ @ @ @ @ taken off life support .
Perez had known Lopez as a lively co-worker who often brought in fruit to share and who asked after Perez ’ s kids .
“ I couldn ’ t believe that a person so full of life , such a happy and a good person , suddenly isn ’ t with you anymore , ” she says .
Perez couldn ’ t shake the feeling that all of this could have been prevented .
“ That ’ s what hurts the most.
” The lack of basic workplace @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In 1935 , President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act , securing private sector employees ’ right to collective bargaining and catalyzing an explosion of union membership .
Under the law , workers could bring complaints of unfair labor practices to the newly created National Labor Relations Board ( NLRB ) , which could sanction offending employers .
But Northern Democrats couldn ’ t pass the legislation without the support of Southern Democrats , who wouldn ’ t sign on to anything that threatened the racial hierarchy of Jim Crow @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : Packers , canners , and other “ mechanical ” food workers were covered by the NLRA , but farmworkers and domestic workers were not , effectively excluding two-thirds of the Black workforce from its benefits .
Three years after the passage of the NLRA came the Fair Labor Standards Act , which guaranteed a minimum wage and overtime pay .
Again , to appease Southern Democrats , farmworkers and domestic laborers were excluded .
These compromises , made to enshrine the legacy of slavery , continue to define conditions in the fields @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his 2013 history of the New Deal , Fear Itself , “ The South permitted American liberal democracy the space within which to proceed , but it restricted American policymaking to what I call a ‘ southern cage , ’ from which there was no escape.
” Nearly century-old decisions are still shaping farmworkers ’ lives , says Lori Flores , a historian of Latinx labor and politics at Stony Brook University : “ What we ’ re seeing now is exactly what was happening in public discourse 100 years ago—this idea that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that doesn ’ t need to be considered in federal protection.
” The official indifference toward agricultural workers persisted as their demographics shifted .
During the Second World War , Mexicans were enlisted through the Bracero program to fill the labor void on farms and railroads .
The program encouraged seasonal workers to come to the United States legally and reside in labor camps that were , in theory , supposed to meet health and labor standards , but in practice were unregulated , exploitative , and sometimes lethal .
The program coincided @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deemed “ wetbacks ” because many had forded the Rio Grande to enter the country .
For the food industry , the Bracero program was the root of “ the arrogance that you will always have this bottomless reservoir of migrant labor , ” Flores says .
“ Whether they are legal guest workers , undocumented , or citizens , migrant workers all feel the same kind of vulnerability to being fired , to losing their jobs , to not being able to advance within an industry or make a living wage.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s Commission on Migratory Labor found that undocumented migrant workers suffered appalling work conditions , “ grossly inadequate ” housing , and “ little opportunity to participate in influencing their wage rates.
” “ Since the ‘ wetback ’ has no legal rights he can make no demands , so is often preferred by the employer to the alien laborer brought in under intergovernmental agreement , ” it stated .
The report also noted that health problems disproportionately afflict migrant workers , issuing a warning that reverberates today : “ The conditions contributing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ health of the migrant but that of the community as well.
” Such was the state of things when Cesar Chavez , Dolores Huerta , and Larry Itliong established the United Farm Workers in 1966 .
The farm labor movement is often depicted as taking off thanks to Chavez ’ s singular charisma , but it also succeeded because it focused primarily on the rights of legal migrants and US citizens denied basic protections that other workers had enjoyed since the New Deal .
“ They took advantage of civil rights discourse and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who the average American wouldn ’ t normally think was undergoing their own civil rights struggles , ” Flores says .
Yet Chavez saw undocumented workers as strikebreakers , a threat to the movement he was trying to organize .
He criticized growers who relied on them , and called for enhancing the Border Patrol ; he also directed UFW workers to personally monitor the border .
“ As long as we have a poor country bordering California , it ’ s going to be very difficult to win strikes , ” he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ UFW ’ s defining moment was its grape campaign : a series of boycotts , marches , and strikes demanding higher wages and union representation for California ’ s grape pickers .
Many Americans first learned of the movement in 1966 , when Chavez led hundreds of farmworkers on a 340-mile march through the Central Valley .
The march began in Delano , just 15 miles from Primex .
Because farmworkers didn ’ t enjoy the protections of the National Labor Relations Act , they instead relied on secondary boycotts , encouraging consumers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ network of organizers led protests outside grocery stores , distributing iconic UFW grape boycott pins .
“ It was all about getting the average housewife or the average shopper going into their grocery store to make a choice : not to buy non-union lettuce or grapes , ” Flores says .
“ If they could just make that one choice , then even if they lived in New Jersey , or Minnesota , they could help farmworkers struggling in California.
” Even dockworkers in Europe refused to unload American “ scab grapes.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ marked a brief golden era for the UFW .
At its peak , the union was 50,000 members strong , having lobbied successfully for the 1975 California Agricultural Labor Relations Act , the first state law in the country allowing collective bargaining among farmworkers .
Those days were short-lived .
California ’ s corporate growers found ways around the union contracts , restructuring after they expired so that a new union would have to be formed from scratch .
In one common workaround still used today , growers set up trucks in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by workers who can be categorized as “ farmworkers ” exempt from the New Deal protections .
Free trade agreements , so-called right-to-work laws , and a host of Supreme Court decisions have made it even harder for farmworkers ( and all workers ) to form and join unions .
Yet much of the UFW ’ s fall was internal , fueled by Chavez ’ s increasing paranoia and refusal to decentralize power .
After Chavez befriended the founder of the self-help cult Synanon , he subjected union leadership to “ the Game @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attacks in the name of therapy .
“ It began to cut the heart out of the union : purges , witch hunts , all of that stuff , ” Ganz recalls .
“ The worst thing was that worker leadership who wanted to try to step up…were treated as traitors , and they were fired.
” The union went into a downward spiral as key members left and fewer contracts were renegotiated .
When civil wars in Central America led to mass migration to the United States in the 1980s , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bring the new arrivals into the fold , Flores says .
“ Its intense anti- ‘ wetback ’ rhetoric was really damaging , ” she says .
In the following years , wages dropped , fringe benefits dried up , and living conditions worsened , Flores notes in her history of California farm labor , Grounds for Dreaming .
Today , there are roughly 1 million hired farmworkers across the country ; the UFW represents just 7,500 of them .
In many ways , pickers and packers face the same conditions as the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ rooted in plantation economics , ” as Zucker , of CAUSE , put it .
Only five states entitle farmworkers to overtime pay .
In New York , overtime for farmworkers is defined as more than 60 hours a week .
Lawmakers “ are still pushing the boundaries of trying to make farmworkers seem like they ’ re not like other types of workers—that they can stay treated differently , and their bodies can stand to undergo more harm , ” Flores says .
Even in California , where farmworkers have the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ the laws on the books aren ’ t the laws in the fields , ” Zucker says .
In theory , workers can complain to the state division of occupational safety and health , but in practice , aggrieved workers , who may be undocumented , poor , and not native English speakers , find the process difficult to navigate .
Hazel Davalos , the community organizing director at CAUSE , says her group refers people with complaints to the state agency , but “ if the worker doesn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their name , will Cal/OSHA actually come when their nearest office is like three hours away ?
Probably not .
And if they ’ re strapped for resources ?
Probably not .
And during a pandemic ?
Forget about it.
” Fixing this undeniably broken system would require legislation to improve and expand federal worker protections .
But in the absence of the political will to do that , Flores says , a lot could be gained from taking a page out of the UFW ’ s old playbook for mobilizing consumer choice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ something of a model .
A decade of organizing by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers led to the creation of the Fair Food Program , which ensures workers on participating farms a penny-per-pound premium on top of minimum wage and basic safety standards like shade and water .
Farm owners are guaranteed business from sellers , who can boast about their ethical practices to consumers .
The program has gotten buy-in across the supply chain , including big customers like Taco Bell and Walmart .
“ I want to see Fair Food programs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but to also bring back that idea of visual power , ” Flores says .
“ I ’ d love to see it more in grocery stores.
” Shoppers already know what labels to look for to make sure their produce is pesticide-free and their chickens had space to roam .
What if that same transparency applied to the workers who harvested and packaged their food ?
And what better time than now—as Americans hang signs thanking essential workers of all stripes—to make amends for the decades that farmworkers have been denied @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other parts of the food industry , workers have seized this moment to demand—and secure—change .
The spring brought a series of deadly , highly publicized coronavirus outbreaks in meatpacking plants across the country .
As of mid-December , more than 50,000 meatpacking workers had contracted the virus , 262 of whom have died , according to the Food and Environment Reporting Network .
The spring was “ horrendous at best , ” says Mark Lauritsen , director of the food processing and meatpacking division of the United Food and Commercial Workers , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , 60 percent of pork workers , and a third of poultry workers .
In the calamity—and the outpouring of public sentiment that came with it—Lauritsen and his colleagues saw an opening .
They busied themselves pushing through labor standards and wage increases at unionized JBS , Cargill , and Smithfield facilities .
Union activists were able not only to secure hazard pay , but to make it into a permanent fixture .
Now , the base hourly pay at some union shops has increased by $ 2 ; at several plants , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and $ 20 an hour .
“ If these plants were going to be able to attract and retain workers in a pandemic , quite honestly , they just had to do it , ” Lauritsen says .
“ They couldn ’ t afford a massive wave of disruptions during this time .
So it was just a matter of leverage and time.
” Still , Lauritsen acknowledges that “ those folks on farms have struggled with the same issues that essential workers across this country have—they ’ ve just been left out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them.
” The challenges farmworkers must surmount to eke out even modest gains were evident during a protest last spring at Rancho Laguna , a raspberry and strawberry farm in Santa Maria , California , that supplies the berry giant Driscoll ’ s .
In May , pickers walked off the job to protest changes to quality standards that slowed workers down , effectively lowering their wages .
The action didn ’ t last long after Rancho Laguna called the local sheriff ’ s office .
No one was arrested , but the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was enough to put an end to the walkout .
When workers tried to deliver a petition to a Driscoll ’ s facility , the company also called the cops .
CAUSE helped the workers , who are not unionized , file a complaint with the state and put together an online petition signed by 60,000 people .
The group also warned the farm owner , who happened to be a Santa Barbara County planning commissioner , that they would attend his next public commission meeting if he didn ’ t meet with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ appears to have done the trick : Driscoll ’ s president got on the phone with workers , and the farm owner agreed to increase the rate to $ 2.10 per flat .
Driscoll ’ s noted that it “ had limited involvement regarding the wage discussions as that would have interfered with the operations of the separate and independent business of Rancho Laguna Farms.
” In a public statement , Rancho Laguna ’ s owner promised to ensure that workers feel safe , adding that he should have met with his employees @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that , wages increased by about $ 13 a day .
While the result was ultimately a win , it also underscored how much organizing it takes to “ get even the most bare bits of human dignity in the workplace ” for farmworkers , Zucker concedes .
“ It ’ s unclear to me how long that public sympathy will last after the pandemic—and if that ’ s long enough to really make systemic change.
” Following the summer ’ s wins for workers , the atmosphere at Primex became increasingly oppressive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ month after the first protest , dozens of workers lost their jobs when Primex ended its contract with a temporary staffing agency .
The company attributed the reduction to typical seasonal changes , but according to employees and the UFW , the cuts included many of the employees most critical of Primex ’ s pandemic response .
“ Everyone knows why those employees were fired , ” Perez says .
“ They put their health at risk .
And even after they got sick , and after they got better , they were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the same day , according to the UFW , which filed a complaint about the firings with the NLRB .
( The case is open ; Primex didn ’ t comment on it but said of the UFW , “ all they do is just play the blame game without any accountability.
” ) When the board decides , the fired workers will likely have moved on , says Elenes .
“ They just delay , delay , delay , so by the time you actually win , it ’ s a really @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they were separately called into meetings that included Primex ’ s manager of human resources and were instructed to retract statements they ’ d made to the media .
The company would close because of all the bad press , a manager said , and if it went down , it would be because of employees like them .
“ They said , ‘ This company should mean something to you , ’ ” recalls Ramirez , who has worked at Primex for 13 years .
The HR manager told Perez that “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ talk so much , and she didn ’ t want to hear from me anymore.
” ( A complaint to the NLRB accuses Primex of “ making coercive statements to employees.
” Other complaints allege that Primex retaliated by giving Ramirez a more demanding schedule , and by demoting Perez to on-call status . )
In July , one of Perez ’ s colleagues tried to record a video inside the plant showing that social distancing and mask-wearing weren ’ t happening consistently .
Primex disciplined the employee , according to another nlrb @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to sign a policy prohibiting video recording on-site .
Perez refused to sign .
“ That ’ s when [ the production manager ] pulled me into the office .
He likes to scream a lot , ” she recalls .
“ I ’ m very short , and he ’ s tall , ” Perez said in a virtual panel put together the same day by Líderes Campesinas .
She began to weep .
“ It makes me want to cry because my co-workers…I ’ ve tried to be really strong in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t anymore.
” When they spoke up , things got worse .
“ We ’ re only asking for a safe place to work , ” she exclaimed .
“ What do we have to do ?
” In theory , Primex workers could form a union .
But with so many vocal workers gone , and others exhausted and afraid of retaliation , there ’ s not much appetite for the lengthy unionization process .
Elenes often runs into this roadblock : Workers put in so much energy to get the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cents per flat of strawberries , that the organizing peters out after the first win .
“ It ’ s short-term thinking .
And employers know this , ” he says .
“ But the issues usually are much bigger and deeper than that .
And that requires a much bigger commitment , which sometimes they ’ re not ready for.
” Fifty years ago , with the farmworkers ’ movement ascendant , the conditions at Primex “ would have been an invitation to organize , ” says Ganz , the former UFW @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a grievance , and people would call out the union to come and help.
” Today , it ’ s much harder to see how conditions will get better anytime soon .
There ’ s no shortage of reasons for anger or despair .
Are there any sources of hope ?
When I put the question to Perez , I feel silly even asking it .
To my surprise , she responds with a resounding yes .
“ Hope never dies , ” she says , as if stating the obvious .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ get fired .
It doesn ’ t matter if I get yelled at .
Nothing will make me quiet my voice.
” At the same time , she is clear-eyed about the pace of progress .
“ I understand that this probably isn ’ t going to be beneficial for me or my co-workers—probably not even in our generation.
” If history is any guide , it could take decades for her labor to bear fruit .
This article was featured in Mother Jones ’ s January/February 2021 print issue , and has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ changes .

It was still dark when Veronica Perez arrived at Primex Farms, a nut-packing facility in California’s Kern County. Crickets murmured in the almond and pistachio groves stretching for acres in all directions. Once inside the building’s mirrored doors, Perez would usually stand next to other sorters alongside a conveyor belt, picking out blemished pistachios. But on June 25, at 4:30 a.m., Perez didn’t go in. Instead, for the next five hours, she and about 40 of her co-workers formed a picket line. More circled and honked in their cars. They held homemade signs with the names of co-workers who had the coronavirus. One sign in Spanish read, “The wise see danger and leave, but the foolish go on and suffer the consequences.” The employees chanted, “¡Somos esenciales!”: We are essential.
Perez, who is 42, had worked in California packing plants ever since she arrived from Mexico City 25 years ago, but she had never joined a walkout or protest. There hadn’t been many to join. But in recent months, things at Primex had become unbearable. In April, after employees requested the right to bring in masks to wear on the job, the company allegedly prohibited it. When it relented and allowed masks, it sold them for $8 apiece, according to several workers. (Primex denies ever selling masks.)
By May, employees at the 400-person plant were falling ill. Sick workers who stayed home went unpaid, so some kept coming to work with hacking coughs. Primex remained tight-lipped about any illnesses. When Perez asked the HR manager about a colleague who had contracted the virus, she recalled, the manager told her to “go home and stay there and not tell anyone about it.”
You can also listen to Julia Lurie's story read aloud:
Remigio Ramirez, a 54-year-old maintenance worker, told his boss in mid-June that he wasn’t feeling well. The supervisor still encouraged him to come in since the team was already short-staffed. A few days later, Ramirez was diagnosed with COVID-19. He stayed home, isolating in his bedroom. “When I got up the next day, I didn’t see anyone—not my wife, not my daughters,” he says. “And I thought to myself, What’s happening? Did they leave me alone? But no, each one was in their room, sick.”
Over the summer, the coronavirus tore through the Central Valley, the vast, fertile interior of California that produces a quarter of the nation’s food, including 40 percent of its fruits and nuts. (Primex processes an estimated 6 percent of the state’s pistachios, most of which are exported.) By late July, the Kern County fairgrounds had been transformed into a federal surge testing site, and more than one in five coronavirus tests in the county were coming back positive. “The problem we’re seeing is not whether you’re going to get infected,” Armando Elenes, the secretary treasurer of the United Farm Workers (UFW), told me at the time. “It’s no longer a matter of if—it’s a matter of when.”
On June 23, Primex told a local news channel that 31 workers had tested positive for COVID-19. Employees who saw the broadcast were shocked: The company hadn’t told them about the cases, which it had confirmed about two weeks earlier. Ramirez seethed at the betrayal. “They said that they were going to let us know if anyone came down with it,” he says, “but they didn’t.” Primex didn’t comment on the alleged lack of communication to employees, but stated in an email: “We began implementing anti–virus spreading steps long before the CDC guidelines were published. We are proud to say that we are one of the cleanest and most sanitized plants in the industry.”
Barely 5 feet tall, with an often-furrowed brow and a quiet voice, Perez never imagined herself becoming a labor organizer. “I’m not the loudest,” she admits, speaking through a translator. “I believe the message can be better communicated with control and poise.” Yet Perez knew what it looked like when a company turned a blind eye to its employees’ health. Years ago, she was injured at an almond packing plant and fired. A single mom of three kids, she suddenly found herself with no job and no medical help. “They use you until you can’t give any more of you—and once you have a problem, they’ll get rid of you like you’re nothing,” she says. She got through that crisis with support from Líderes Campesinas, an advocacy group for female agricultural workers. But it made her realize just how vulnerable she and her peers on the bottom rungs of the food system were. “I figured that if this happened to me, most likely it’s happening to many other women,” she says. Perez started attending Líderes Campesinas’ workshops on immigration law and workers’ rights, eventually volunteering with the group and joining its governing board.
The day the news of the Primex outbreak broke, Perez messaged the UFW’s Elenes, who created a WhatsApp group, called Justicia en Primex Farms, for concerned workers. (Primex isn’t unionized, but the UFW advocates for agricultural workers regardless of union status, Elenes says.) The next day, 100 people—a quarter of the facility’s workforce—had joined. That evening, they gathered on Zoom, many using the video platform for the first time, to plan a demonstration the following morning.
When dozens of her co-workers showed up for the walkout early on June 25, Perez was thrilled at the turnout and terrified of the possible consequences. She carried a sign listing three demands: sick pay, job protection, and respect. Ramirez, who had tested positive the week before, joined the protest from the confines of his car.
“Most workers prefer to always keep quiet for fear of losing their jobs or for fear of retaliation,” Perez said in a text message. “I was amazed myself at the quick response we got from our co-workers. It may be that everyone is tired of always staying silent.”
“¡Somos esenciales!” is a double-edged phrase: an overdue acknowledgment of the economic role immigrants play and a cudgel with which to keep them on the job. As the country went into lockdown in March, President Donald Trump declared that essential workers, including farmworkers, “have a special responsibility” to maintain normal work hours. Pickers and packers, including Primex employees, started carrying cards or letters from their employers identifying them as essential workers. “I am a farm worker helping to protect our food supply during the coronavirus pandemic,” read the letter a berry picker shared with me. “My job is considered essential so that we can produce food.” In theory, these pieces of paper, tucked away in pockets and wallets, could deter curious cops or ICE agents.
The federal government estimates that half of farmworkers are undocumented. The rate for food packers, like Primex’s employees, is thought to be lower than farmworkers’ but much higher than the overall workforce’s. These workers are critical to feeding the country, but deportable at the drop of a hat. The pandemic has only made this contradiction more manifest. Undocumented workers don’t benefit from federal coronavirus relief measures, such as expanded unemployment insurance. While federal legislation and policy expansions by California Gov. Gavin Newsom eventually granted essential food workers two weeks of paid sick leave, or “COVID pay,” enforcement has been spotty. “If an employer is not paying them covid pay, that sends a message to everybody else to not say anything,” Elenes says. And if an undocumented worker loses their job, they don’t get the standard unemployment stipend that federal or state relief promises to citizens. “Most employees accept that they don’t have health insurance. But not having any income? That’s not something they can resolve.”
So begins a potentially deadly feedback loop: The fear of lost wages and deportation breeds silence, which in turn increases the risk of transmitting COVID. The mentality is, “If I feel good, even though I have the virus, I’m not going to tell you,” explains one farmworker in the Central Valley town of Lost Hills. “The farm supervisors aren’t interested in if you have it or not. You might feel sick, but it’s fine—as long as you don’t die.”
“People are scared to say anything—or they take it like it’s a common cold, and they continue going to work,” says a 46-year-old I’ll call Esperanza, who works at a nursery near Oxnard. The nursery wouldn’t give out masks, and her co-workers came in sick, knowing they wouldn’t get paid if they stayed home. Esperanza spoke to me over the phone in a quiet, cracking voice; just a couple of weeks before, she had come down with the coronavirus.
Even without this shroud of silence, agricultural workers are especially vulnerable to the pandemic. Some live in dormitories for temporary workers, where the virus proliferates. It’s common to carpool to job sites, which include greenhouses and packing houses with limited ventilation. Oil fields and freeways contribute to the Central Valley’s atrocious air quality; Bakersfield and Fresno have the worst particle pollution in the country. Rates of respiratory ailments like asthma and Valley Fever, a fungal lung disease, have soared. And for much of August and September, a ring of wildfires blanketed the fields in a hot, dense smog.
It’s no surprise that farmworker organizing and labor actions are a rarity. Less than 2 percent of farmworkers are unionized. “It just seems like an insane proposition to go out on strike,” says Lucas Zucker, communications and policy director of the advocacy group Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE). “Without a union who’s really organizing and providing support and assuring you of your legal rights, it can be really daunting. So it only does happen when people really reach a breaking point.”
As some pickers and packers reached that breaking point, there have been blips of COVID-related organizing up and down the West Coast. In the month before the Primex walkout, hundreds of fruit packers in Washington’s Yakima Valley left production lines to protest a lack of safety precautions and hazard pay. In Santa Maria, California, strawberry pickers walked off the job to protest wages falling just as many families were particularly cash-strapped. Blueberry pickers near Fresno also struck over a wage cut, standing by the fields waving red-and-black UFW flags.
Could the pandemic and the recognition of agricultural workers as essential begin to change the power dynamic between farmworkers and their employers? I took the question to Marshall Ganz, who once worked as the UFW’s organizing director and now lectures at the Harvard Kennedy School. “Where do you find courage to take risk? Grievances don’t generate courage. They generate anger or rage. They generate despair. So unless there’s some hope source, people don’t really engage,” he says. “Hope isn’t about certainty at all—it’s just about possibility.”
“So then the question is, under these conditions, are there unusual or new sources of possibility?”
The demonstration at Primex had an immediate impact: Within 24 hours, the company closed its processing facility for cleaning. Amid a flurry of local news reports about the outbreak, executives announced a plan to set up a mobile testing unit and implement other safety precautions, like installing Plexiglas dividers at the sorting tables, and more outdoor seating areas so employees could spread out during breaks.
When the plant reopened fully after a week, about 60 workers protested outside, alleging that Primex still wasn’t cleaning adequately or providing sick pay. But this demonstration lasted only a few hours. “We went back because we needed the work,” Perez says.
Meanwhile, suspecting that more people had been infected than the 31 that the company reported, employees started a coronavirus census, counting whoever had gotten sick. Primex is a 24-hour operation, and the texts to the group thread started coming in day and night; Elenes recalls waking up and finding message after message from upset employees. One woman reported that not only was she infected, she had exposed at least 16 family members. The youngest person in the Primex cluster was 6 months old.
In late June, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration opened an investigation. (It is ongoing, and OSHA did not respond to requests for comment.) By mid-summer, the employee-led count found that 97 of Primex’s 400 employees had tested positive, along with more than 60 family members. A week later, the mobile testing unit provided by the company would find that a total of 150 employees had been infected.
In mid-July, a 57-year-old Primex employee named Maria Hortencia Lopez was taken off life support. Perez had known Lopez as a lively co-worker who often brought in fruit to share and who asked after Perez’s kids. “I couldn’t believe that a person so full of life, such a happy and a good person, suddenly isn’t with you anymore,” she says.
Perez couldn’t shake the feeling that all of this could have been prevented. “That’s what hurts the most.”
The lack of basic workplace protections for farmworkers is by design. In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act, securing private sector employees’ right to collective bargaining and catalyzing an explosion of union membership. Under the law, workers could bring complaints of unfair labor practices to the newly created National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which could sanction offending employers. But Northern Democrats couldn’t pass the legislation without the support of Southern Democrats, who wouldn’t sign on to anything that threatened the racial hierarchy of Jim Crow. So lawmakers made a devastating concession: Packers, canners, and other “mechanical” food workers were covered by the NLRA, but farmworkers and domestic workers were not, effectively excluding two-thirds of the Black workforce from its benefits.
Three years after the passage of the NLRA came the Fair Labor Standards Act, which guaranteed a minimum wage and overtime pay. Again, to appease Southern Democrats, farmworkers and domestic laborers were excluded. These compromises, made to enshrine the legacy of slavery, continue to define conditions in the fields today. As Ira Katznelson wrote in his 2013 history of the New Deal, Fear Itself, “The South permitted American liberal democracy the space within which to proceed, but it restricted American policymaking to what I call a ‘southern cage,’ from which there was no escape.” Nearly century-old decisions are still shaping farmworkers’ lives, says Lori Flores, a historian of Latinx labor and politics at Stony Brook University: “What we’re seeing now is exactly what was happening in public discourse 100 years ago—this idea that farmworkers have always been this separate workforce that doesn’t need to be considered in federal protection.”
The official indifference toward agricultural workers persisted as their demographics shifted. During the Second World War, Mexicans were enlisted through the Bracero program to fill the labor void on farms and railroads. The program encouraged seasonal workers to come to the United States legally and reside in labor camps that were, in theory, supposed to meet health and labor standards, but in practice were unregulated, exploitative, and sometimes lethal. The program coincided with a rise in undocumented migrants, deemed “wetbacks” because many had forded the Rio Grande to enter the country.
For the food industry, the Bracero program was the root of “the arrogance that you will always have this bottomless reservoir of migrant labor,” Flores says. “Whether they are legal guest workers, undocumented, or citizens, migrant workers all feel the same kind of vulnerability to being fired, to losing their jobs, to not being able to advance within an industry or make a living wage.”
A 1951 report by the President’s Commission on Migratory Labor found that undocumented migrant workers suffered appalling work conditions, “grossly inadequate” housing, and “little opportunity to participate in influencing their wage rates.” “Since the ‘wetback’ has no legal rights he can make no demands, so is often preferred by the employer to the alien laborer brought in under intergovernmental agreement,” it stated. The report also noted that health problems disproportionately afflict migrant workers, issuing a warning that reverberates today: “The conditions contributing to this situation endanger not only the health of the migrant but that of the community as well.”
Such was the state of things when Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and Larry Itliong established the United Farm Workers in 1966. The farm labor movement is often depicted as taking off thanks to Chavez’s singular charisma, but it also succeeded because it focused primarily on the rights of legal migrants and US citizens denied basic protections that other workers had enjoyed since the New Deal. “They took advantage of civil rights discourse and applied it and extended it to people who the average American wouldn’t normally think was undergoing their own civil rights struggles,” Flores says. Yet Chavez saw undocumented workers as strikebreakers, a threat to the movement he was trying to organize. He criticized growers who relied on them, and called for enhancing the Border Patrol; he also directed UFW workers to personally monitor the border. “As long as we have a poor country bordering California, it’s going to be very difficult to win strikes,” he said in a 1972 interview.
The UFW’s defining moment was its grape campaign: a series of boycotts, marches, and strikes demanding higher wages and union representation for California’s grape pickers. Many Americans first learned of the movement in 1966, when Chavez led hundreds of farmworkers on a 340-mile march through the Central Valley. The march began in Delano, just 15 miles from Primex.
Because farmworkers didn’t enjoy the protections of the National Labor Relations Act, they instead relied on secondary boycotts, encouraging consumers to avoid non-union produce. A vast network of organizers led protests outside grocery stores, distributing iconic UFW grape boycott pins. “It was all about getting the average housewife or the average shopper going into their grocery store to make a choice: not to buy non-union lettuce or grapes,” Flores says. “If they could just make that one choice, then even if they lived in New Jersey, or Minnesota, they could help farmworkers struggling in California.” Even dockworkers in Europe refused to unload American “scab grapes.”
The late ’60s and ’70s marked a brief golden era for the UFW. At its peak, the union was 50,000 members strong, having lobbied successfully for the 1975 California Agricultural Labor Relations Act, the first state law in the country allowing collective bargaining among farmworkers.
Those days were short-lived. California’s corporate growers found ways around the union contracts, restructuring after they expired so that a new union would have to be formed from scratch. In one common workaround still used today, growers set up trucks in the fields where freshly picked produce is packed by workers who can be categorized as “farmworkers” exempt from the New Deal protections. Free trade agreements, so-called right-to-work laws, and a host of Supreme Court decisions have made it even harder for farmworkers (and all workers) to form and join unions.
Yet much of the UFW’s fall was internal, fueled by Chavez’s increasing paranoia and refusal to decentralize power. After Chavez befriended the founder of the self-help cult Synanon, he subjected union leadership to “the Game,” a practice of spewing personal attacks in the name of therapy. “It began to cut the heart out of the union: purges, witch hunts, all of that stuff,” Ganz recalls. “The worst thing was that worker leadership who wanted to try to step up…were treated as traitors, and they were fired.” The union went into a downward spiral as key members left and fewer contracts were renegotiated. When civil wars in Central America led to mass migration to the United States in the 1980s, the UFW didn’t make overtures to bring the new arrivals into the fold, Flores says. “Its intense anti-‘wetback’ rhetoric was really damaging,” she says. In the following years, wages dropped, fringe benefits dried up, and living conditions worsened, Flores notes in her history of California farm labor, Grounds for Dreaming.
Today, there are roughly 1 million hired farmworkers across the country; the UFW represents just 7,500 of them. In many ways, pickers and packers face the same conditions as the grape strikers did in the 1960s—a model “rooted in plantation economics,” as Zucker, of CAUSE, put it. Only five states entitle farmworkers to overtime pay. In New York, overtime for farmworkers is defined as more than 60 hours a week. Lawmakers “are still pushing the boundaries of trying to make farmworkers seem like they’re not like other types of workers—that they can stay treated differently, and their bodies can stand to undergo more harm,” Flores says.
Farmworkers face “the same issues that essential workers across this country have—the law is set up against them.”
Even in California, where farmworkers have the right to collective bargaining and overtime pay, “the laws on the books aren’t the laws in the fields,” Zucker says. In theory, workers can complain to the state division of occupational safety and health, but in practice, aggrieved workers, who may be undocumented, poor, and not native English speakers, find the process difficult to navigate. Hazel Davalos, the community organizing director at CAUSE, says her group refers people with complaints to the state agency, but “if the worker doesn’t chicken out the moment they ask for their name, will Cal/OSHA actually come when their nearest office is like three hours away? Probably not. And if they’re strapped for resources? Probably not. And during a pandemic? Forget about it.”
Fixing this undeniably broken system would require legislation to improve and expand federal worker protections. But in the absence of the political will to do that, Flores says, a lot could be gained from taking a page out of the UFW’s old playbook for mobilizing consumer choice. Florida’s tomato industry provides something of a model. A decade of organizing by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers led to the creation of the Fair Food Program, which ensures workers on participating farms a penny-per-pound premium on top of minimum wage and basic safety standards like shade and water. Farm owners are guaranteed business from sellers, who can boast about their ethical practices to consumers. The program has gotten buy-in across the supply chain, including big customers like Taco Bell and Walmart. “I want to see Fair Food programs expand to not only other food items, but to also bring back that idea of visual power,” Flores says. “I’d love to see it more in grocery stores.”
Shoppers already know what labels to look for to make sure their produce is pesticide-free and their chickens had space to roam. What if that same transparency applied to the workers who harvested and packaged their food? And what better time than now—as Americans hang signs thanking essential workers of all stripes—to make amends for the decades that farmworkers have been denied a seat at the table?
In other parts of the food industry, workers have seized this moment to demand—and secure—change. The spring brought a series of deadly, highly publicized coronavirus outbreaks in meatpacking plants across the country. As of mid-December, more than 50,000 meatpacking workers had contracted the virus, 262 of whom have died, according to the Food and Environment Reporting Network. The spring was “horrendous at best,” says Mark Lauritsen, director of the food processing and meatpacking division of the United Food and Commercial Workers, which represents 70 percent of beef workers, 60 percent of pork workers, and a third of poultry workers.
In the calamity—and the outpouring of public sentiment that came with it—Lauritsen and his colleagues saw an opening. They busied themselves pushing through labor standards and wage increases at unionized JBS, Cargill, and Smithfield facilities. Union activists were able not only to secure hazard pay, but to make it into a permanent fixture. Now, the base hourly pay at some union shops has increased by $2; at several plants, the lowest-paid workers make between $18 and $20 an hour. “If these plants were going to be able to attract and retain workers in a pandemic, quite honestly, they just had to do it,” Lauritsen says. “They couldn’t afford a massive wave of disruptions during this time. So it was just a matter of leverage and time.” Still, Lauritsen acknowledges that “those folks on farms have struggled with the same issues that essential workers across this country have—they’ve just been left out because the law is set up against them.”
The challenges farmworkers must surmount to eke out even modest gains were evident during a protest last spring at Rancho Laguna, a raspberry and strawberry farm in Santa Maria, California, that supplies the berry giant Driscoll’s. In May, pickers walked off the job to protest changes to quality standards that slowed workers down, effectively lowering their wages. The action didn’t last long after Rancho Laguna called the local sheriff’s office. No one was arrested, but the sight of uniformed officers in the fields was enough to put an end to the walkout. When workers tried to deliver a petition to a Driscoll’s facility, the company also called the cops.
CAUSE helped the workers, who are not unionized, file a complaint with the state and put together an online petition signed by 60,000 people. The group also warned the farm owner, who happened to be a Santa Barbara County planning commissioner, that they would attend his next public commission meeting if he didn’t meet with them. The petition’s success appears to have done the trick: Driscoll’s president got on the phone with workers, and the farm owner agreed to increase the rate to $2.10 per flat. Driscoll’s noted that it “had limited involvement regarding the wage discussions as that would have interfered with the operations of the separate and independent business of Rancho Laguna Farms.” In a public statement, Rancho Laguna’s owner promised to ensure that workers feel safe, adding that he should have met with his employees before calling the sheriff.
After all that, wages increased by about $13 a day. While the result was ultimately a win, it also underscored how much organizing it takes to “get even the most bare bits of human dignity in the workplace” for farmworkers, Zucker concedes. “It’s unclear to me how long that public sympathy will last after the pandemic—and if that’s long enough to really make systemic change.”
Following the summer’s wins for workers, the atmosphere at Primex became increasingly oppressive. In late July, about a month after the first protest, dozens of workers lost their jobs when Primex ended its contract with a temporary staffing agency. The company attributed the reduction to typical seasonal changes, but according to employees and the UFW, the cuts included many of the employees most critical of Primex’s pandemic response. “Everyone knows why those employees were fired,” Perez says. “They put their health at risk. And even after they got sick, and after they got better, they were fired.”
Primex brought in new workers the same day, according to the UFW, which filed a complaint about the firings with the NLRB. (The case is open; Primex didn’t comment on it but said of the UFW, “all they do is just play the blame game without any accountability.”) When the board decides, the fired workers will likely have moved on, says Elenes. “They just delay, delay, delay, so by the time you actually win, it’s a really hollow victory.”
Perez and Ramirez say they were separately called into meetings that included Primex’s manager of human resources and were instructed to retract statements they’d made to the media. The company would close because of all the bad press, a manager said, and if it went down, it would be because of employees like them. “They said, ‘This company should mean something to you,’” recalls Ramirez, who has worked at Primex for 13 years. The HR manager told Perez that “her head was hurting from hearing me talk so much, and she didn’t want to hear from me anymore.” (A complaint to the NLRB accuses Primex of “making coercive statements to employees.” Other complaints allege that Primex retaliated by giving Ramirez a more demanding schedule, and by demoting Perez to on-call status.)
In July, one of Perez’s colleagues tried to record a video inside the plant showing that social distancing and mask-wearing weren’t happening consistently. Primex disciplined the employee, according to another NLRB complaint, and the company required workers to sign a policy prohibiting video recording on-site. Perez refused to sign. “That’s when [the production manager] pulled me into the office. He likes to scream a lot,” she recalls.
“I’m very short, and he’s tall,” Perez said in a virtual panel put together the same day by Líderes Campesinas. She began to weep. “It makes me want to cry because my co-workers…I’ve tried to be really strong in front of them, but I can’t anymore.” When they spoke up, things got worse. “We’re only asking for a safe place to work,” she exclaimed. “What do we have to do?”
In theory, Primex workers could form a union. But with so many vocal workers gone, and others exhausted and afraid of retaliation, there’s not much appetite for the lengthy unionization process. Elenes often runs into this roadblock: Workers put in so much energy to get the basics like masks or an extra 20 cents per flat of strawberries, that the organizing peters out after the first win. “It’s short-term thinking. And employers know this,” he says. “But the issues usually are much bigger and deeper than that. And that requires a much bigger commitment, which sometimes they’re not ready for.”
Fifty years ago, with the farmworkers’ movement ascendant, the conditions at Primex “would have been an invitation to organize,” says Ganz, the former UFW organizer. “There’d be a grievance, and people would call out the union to come and help.” Today, it’s much harder to see how conditions will get better anytime soon. There’s no shortage of reasons for anger or despair. Are there any sources of hope?
When I put the question to Perez, I feel silly even asking it. To my surprise, she responds with a resounding yes. “Hope never dies,” she says, as if stating the obvious. “It doesn’t matter if I get fired. It doesn’t matter if I get yelled at. Nothing will make me quiet my voice.” At the same time, she is clear-eyed about the pace of progress. “I understand that this probably isn’t going to be beneficial for me or my co-workers—probably not even in our generation.” If history is any guide, it could take decades for her labor to bear fruit.
This article was featured in Mother Jones’s January/February 2021 print issue, and has been updated to reflect research and editorial changes.


motherjones--2020-12-17--COVID Relief Package Contains a $120 Billion Gift to the Superwealthy

Back in July , I wrote about how lawmakers from both parties were backing a COVID relief provision that , in effect , is a massive , unnecessary bailout for America ’ s richest business owners .
Congress never managed to come together on that particular bill , so the effort was tabled for a while , but guess what : It ’ s back , and even better for the big fish .
The bipartisan provision , which is opposed by the IRS and also , oddly enough , by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin , is known as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ businesses that get PPP loans—which the new COVID bill aims to expand—to not only have those loans forgiven , but to be able to deduct the loan amount spent on business expenses from their taxable income .
Getting one benefit or the other seems reasonable , but allowing both , is a major departure from accepted policy and an unprecedented waste of taxpayer money , critics say , that would primarily benefit wealthy law firms , accounting practices , and other well-to-do “ pass through ” businesses who have dominated the process .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Times reported that about one-quarter of all the PPP money went to just 1 percent of the recipients , including highly profitable businesses , including white-shoe law firms run by Donald Trump ’ s personal lawyer , Marc Kasowitz , and celebrity lawyer David Boies .
Steven Rosenthal , a tax attorney and senior fellow at the nonprofit Tax Policy Center had calculated that the earlier version of the double-dip proposal would have amounted to a stealth break of $ 100 billion to $ 150 billion , skewed heavily toward the nation ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , an expert in federal tax law and former staff economist for both the Treasury Department and Congress ’ bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation , estimated the cost , back of the napkin , at roughly $ 100 billion .
The latest package is expected to expand the PPP program and make the loans more flexible—and thus more easily forgiven .
In a blog post , Adam Looney , a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution , points out that “ for the relevant group of pass-through business owners , about 70 percent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ top 1 percent of taxpayers .
Hence , most of those deductions would be used by high income-taxpayers and save them $ 0.37 to $ 0.396 in taxes for each dollar they deduct .
He continues… “ It ’ s hard to imagine a tax cut that is so large in magnitude and still so targeted to those who need it least , ” Looney says in an email .
My earlier piece cites Kimberly Clausing , an economist at Reed College who specializes in trade and taxation , and who had taken @ @ @ @ @ @ @ makes little sense .
( I changed the numbers , but same idea . )
Suppose your small business has $ 1.5 million in sales and $ 1 million in payroll and other allowable costs .
The pandemic hits and sales drop to $ 500,000 .
Damn !
Your $ 500K profit just turned into a $ 500K shortfall .
So you land a $ 1 million PPP loan .
You follow the rules and your loan is forgiven .
Clausing offers three scenarios : Scenario 1 : The IRS treats your loan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ income is now $ 1.5 million , as before .
But the tax agency lets you deduct the payroll and other expenses covered by your $ 1 million loan .
You are left with $ 500,000 .
“ This reflects the true profitability of the firm , ” she writes .
Scenario 2 : The IRS lets you exclude your forgiven loan from taxable income , but it does not allow you to then deduct the covered business expenses .
The outcome is the same .
You still end up with taxable income @ @ @ @ @ @ @ get paid .
This is the scenario the IRS favors .
Scenario 3 : Here ’ s the double-dip scenario .
The IRS lets you exclude the forgiven loan from your taxable income and lets you deduct those business expenses .
Now you have $ 500,000 in income and $ 1 million in deductible expenses .
You report a $ 500,000 loss on your taxes , even though you actually made $ 500,000 .
This is a giveaway to business owners and the wealthiest investors—who own , according to a 2019 Goldman Sachs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ value of all equities , public and private , held by U.S. households—none of whom would be under any obligation to pass that money along to the workers .
“ The wage deduction should not be allowed if loan forgiveness is not included as income , ” Clausing tweeted .
“ Doing otherwise is both very expensive and unnecessary .
It also sets a bad precedent for tax policy in the future.
” Some businesses are in desperate straights , of course , and need our help .
But if Congress wants to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and so forth , there are better ways , Rosenthal says .
They could means-test the double-dip , or cap the size of the companies allowed to apply .
( In the first round , famously , big restaurant chains owned by private equity firms raked in PPP cash . )
But to allow a double-dip across the board is bad financial stewardship , he says , not only from the Party of Trump , but also the Democrats—who are equally on board .
( House Dems passed a double-dip provision in their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democrat who questioned the arrangement is Texas Rep. Lloyd Doggett .
“ Allowing a deduction for an expense never incurred is unjustifiable , ” he told Mother Jones in July , adding , “ This approach provides the most for the insiders who got the biggest and quickest PPP loans.
” But the lobbying has been intense .
“ There are a lot of wealthy business owners who are applying very heavy pressure in every congressional district in the country .
We can ’ t even get the usual champions to stand up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ We ’ re going to lose .
”

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Back in July, I wrote about how lawmakers from both parties were backing a COVID relief provision that, in effect, is a massive, unnecessary bailout for America’s richest business owners. Congress never managed to come together on that particular bill, so the effort was tabled for a while, but guess what: It’s back, and even better for the big fish.
The bipartisan provision, which is opposed by the IRS and also, oddly enough, by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, is known as a “double-dip” benefit. It allows businesses that get PPP loans—which the new COVID bill aims to expand—to not only have those loans forgiven, but to be able to deduct the loan amount spent on business expenses from their taxable income.
Getting one benefit or the other seems reasonable, but allowing both would be a major departure from accepted policy and an unprecedented waste of taxpayer money, critics say, that would primarily benefit wealthy law firms, accounting practices, and other well-to-do “pass through” businesses that have dominated the process.
On December 2, the New York Times reported that about one-quarter of all the PPP money went to just 1 percent of the recipients, including highly profitable businesses, including white-shoe law firms run by Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, and celebrity lawyer David Boies.
Steven Rosenthal, a tax attorney and senior fellow at the nonprofit Tax Policy Center had calculated that the earlier version of the double-dip proposal would have amounted to a stealth break of $100 billion to $150 billion, skewed heavily toward the nation’s wealthiest business owners. Martin Sullivan, an expert in federal tax law and former staff economist for both the Treasury Department and Congress’ bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, estimated the cost, back of the napkin, at roughly $100 billion.
The latest package is expected to expand the PPP program and make the loans more flexible—and thus more easily forgiven. In a blog post, Adam Looney, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, points out that “for the relevant group of pass-through business owners, about 70 percent of business income is earned by the top 1 percent of taxpayers. Hence, most of those deductions would be used by high income-taxpayers and save them $0.37 to $0.396 in taxes for each dollar they deduct. He continues…
The bipartisan proposal—the final bill that comes to the floor may be different—provides about $268 billion more in PPP funds. If we assume the total PPP funding will come to $700 billion and the average tax rate of business owners is 29 percent, that is a tax windfall of $203 billion. Even if only 60 percent of this goes to the top 1 percent, that’s a $120 billion windfall for well-off business owners.
“It’s hard to imagine a tax cut that is so large in magnitude and still so targeted to those who need it least,” Looney says in an email.
My earlier piece cites Kimberly Clausing, an economist at Reed College who specializes in trade and taxation, and who had taken to Twitter to explain why the double-dip makes little sense. (I changed the numbers, but same idea.)
Suppose your small business has $1.5 million in sales and $1 million in payroll and other allowable costs. The pandemic hits and sales drop to $500,000. Damn! Your $500K profit just turned into a $500K shortfall. So you land a $1 million PPP loan. You follow the rules and your loan is forgiven. Clausing offers three scenarios: Scenario 1: The IRS treats your loan as taxable income, so your overall income is now $1.5 million, as before. But the tax agency lets you deduct the payroll and other expenses covered by your $1 million loan. You are left with $500,000. “This reflects the true profitability of the firm,” she writes. Scenario 2: The IRS lets you exclude your forgiven loan from taxable income, but it does not allow you to then deduct the covered business expenses. The outcome is the same. You still end up with taxable income of $500,000, and your employees get paid. This is the scenario the IRS favors. Scenario 3: Here’s the double-dip scenario. The IRS lets you exclude the forgiven loan from your taxable income and lets you deduct those business expenses. Now you have $500,000 in income and $1 million in deductible expenses. You report a $500,000 loss on your taxes, even though you actually made $500,000. This is a giveaway to business owners and the wealthiest investors—who own, according to a 2019 Goldman Sachs analysis, 56 percent of the total value of all equities, public and private, held by U.S. households—none of whom would be under any obligation to pass that money along to the workers. “The wage deduction should not be allowed if loan forgiveness is not included as income,” Clausing tweeted. “Doing otherwise is both very expensive and unnecessary. It also sets a bad precedent for tax policy in the future.”
Some businesses are in desperate straits, of course, and need our help. But if Congress wants to bail out independently owned bars and restaurant and so forth, there are better ways, Rosenthal says. They could means-test the double-dip, or cap the size of the companies allowed to apply. (In the first round, famously, big restaurant chains owned by private equity firms raked in PPP cash.) But to allow a double-dip across the board is bad financial stewardship, he says, not only from the Party of Trump, but also the Democrats—who are equally on board. (House Dems passed a double-dip provision in their doomed HEROES Act.)
One prominent Democrat who questioned the arrangement is Texas Rep. Lloyd Doggett. “Allowing a deduction for an expense never incurred is unjustifiable,” he told Mother Jones in July, adding, “This approach provides the most for the insiders who got the biggest and quickest PPP loans.”
But the lobbying has been intense. “There are a lot of wealthy business owners who are applying very heavy pressure in every congressional district in the country. We can’t even get the usual champions to stand up on this one,” Rosenthal says. “We’re going to lose.”


motherjones--2020-12-16--A Top Trump Fundraiser Asked the FBI for Help. Big Mistake.

In October , Elliott Broidy , once a top fundraiser for Donald Trump and the Republican Party , pleaded guilty to charges that he conspired to illegally lobby the Trump administration for a fugitive financier and the president of Malaysia .
The plea continued the descent of a controversial businessman and political operative who stepped down from a top Republican National Committee job in 2018 after the news broke that he had agreed to pay $ 1.6 million in hush money to a Playboy model whom he had impregnated during an extramarital affair .
Now there ’ s a new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ faces up to five years in prison in part because of what in retrospect seems to have been a dumb mistake .
Broidy voluntarily gave the FBI emails from his and his wife ’ s accounts while seeking the bureau ’ s assistance in pursuing hackers who he claimed had stolen this material and leaked damaging details about his business dealings to the press .
According to a just-unsealed ruling issued in June 2018 by Beryl Howell , the chief US District Judge in Washington , DC , nearly 1,400 pages of emails @ @ @ @ @ @ @ subsequently used by the bureau in the investigation that led to Broidy ’ s guilty plea .
Following a secretive legal process , Howell ruled that Broidy had surrendered the material to the FBI and after doing that—when the bureau wanted to exploit the documents for an investigation of Broidy himself—could no longer claim the information was covered by attorney-client privilege or spousal privilege .
A Broidy spokesman did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday .
Here ’ s what happened .
Broidy owns a company , Circinus , that sells @ @ @ @ @ @ @ services to foreign governments .
In 2017 , while the firm pursued a contract with the United Arab Emirates , which it later landed , Broidy emerged as an outspoken critic of Qatar , a regional rival of the UAE .
Broidy helped to finance conferences and opinion pieces attacking Qatar as a sponsor of terrorism .
That criticism dovetailed with attacks on Qatar by the UAE and its close ally , Saudi Arabia , which resulted in those and other Gulf nations imposing a blockade on Qatar in June 2017 .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wife , Robin Rosenzweig , who is an attorney , was targeted by a phishing attack .
The hackers gained access to her emails and to Broidy ’ s .
A few months later , media reports based on Broidy ’ s emails began to appear in major publications .
The emails seemed to implicate Broidy in efforts to leverage his access to the Trump administration on behalf of various foreign interests , including officials in the UAE , Romania , Angola , Malaysia , and China .
The leaked material raised the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ law by failing to register as a foreign agent .
Broidy responded in late March 2018 by suing Qatar , several lobbyists employed by the country , and others , alleging they had planned and executed the hack and the dissemination of his emails to discredit and silence him .
“ I knew that Qatar and its agents viewed me as an enemy , ” he said in one court filing .
( The lawsuits have since been thrown out due to Qatar ’ s diplomatic immunity , but Broidy has filed new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) At the same time , Broidy also asked the US Attorney ’ s office in Los Angeles , where he lives , and the FBI to investigate the hack .
And he handed over samples of the hacked emails to the bureau .
That may not have been a smart move .
Howell ’ s ruling reveals that the Justice Department had begun investigating Broidy for potentially illegal lobbying by the time he contacted the FBI about the hacking .
Through a February 8 , 2018 search warrant , the feds , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ emails between Broidy , Rosenzweig , Malaysian businessman Jho Low , a GOP fundraiser named Nickie Lum Davis , and Pras Michel , the rapper and former member of the Fugees .
Broidy was apparently unaware of the search warrant .
This year , prosecutors publicly revealed that the Justice Department ’ s Public Integrity Section had been investigating a scheme in which Low , the alleged architect of a massive embezzlement of funds from a Malaysian state investment fund known as 1MDB , hired Broidy to use his Trump administration connections to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ drop an investigation of that matter .
The 1MDB investigation threatened Malaysia ’ s then-Prime Minister Najib Razak , who has since been imprisoned there due to the scandal .
Low also had a personal interest for which he needed Broidy ’ s help .
US prosecutors had launched proceedings to seize hundreds of millions of dollars worth of assets that Low had allegedly obtained with stolen funds .
Michel and Davis had helped connect Low to Broidy , and Broidy , after insisting on a $ 1 million payment just to meet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for an $ 8 million retainer , with the chance to receive far more if the Justice Department dropped the case .
Broidy ’ s ensuing work for Low included pushing for Trump to golf with Najib , who could use the time to request Trump ’ s help killing the 1MDB investigation , and an effort to convince the State Department that the 1MDB probe was harming US relations with Malaysia .
Najib did not get a golf date , but he met with Trump in the White House in September 2017 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Broidy , Low funneled money through a Hong Kong shell company , then sent the funds to accounts controlled by Michel , who moved the money to Rosenzweig ’ s law firm .
Broidy ’ s endeavors did not succeed .
The US government did not drop the investigation and charged Low in 2018 with conspiring to launder money stolen from 1MDB .
He remains a fugitive , but agreed last year to surrender $ 900 million in assets seized by the federal government as part of the probe .
Davis pleaded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a violation of foreign lobbying laws .
Michel , who faces charges in an unrelated campaign finance case , remains under investigation .
Rosenzweig has not been accused of wrongdoing .
After years of denying that he had illegally lobbied for overseas interests and disputing that he was under investigation , Broidy took that plea deal in October .
Back to the hacking case and Broidy ’ s emails : In April 2018—months after the FBI had launched its probe of Broidy—a lawyer representing Broidy and Rosenzweig gave the FBI 41 PDF files @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
These were files that Broidy and his lawyers had received from members of the media who had received them from anonymous sources .
Broidy and his lawyers apparently hoped the FBI could use the files as evidence to track down whoever had hacked him .
But Howell ’ s ruling states that the bureau asserted that its agents “ made no representations or promises to [ the attorney ] or others , including Broidy , about how the emails would be used by the FBI.
” That ruling notes that FBI agents @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Rosenszweig through the February 2018 search warrant and as a result , the FBI already had some unspecified portion of the material that Broidy ’ s legal team supplied .
But the feds seemed to have viewed Broidy ’ s disclosure as an additional gift .
The agents who received these PDFs turned them over to the team investigating Broidy .
In her June 26 , 2018 ruling , Howell found that Broidy and Rosenszweig ’ s voluntary disclosure of those communications meant that “ any claims of attorney-client privilege or marital @ @ @ @ @ @ @ waived.
” So the FBI could go ahead and use the emails to investigate Broidy .
But on April 18 , 2019 , Howell issued a new ruling , also unsealed this week , in which she partially reversed her earlier decision .
In response to arguments from Broidy ’ s lawyers , the judge said that prosecutors had failed to sufficiently explain the year before that the emails Broidy had given to the FBI came from outside parties and that Broidy ’ s lawyer had removed material from this batch to avoid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that Broidy and Rosenszweig had waived their privileges .
But she also said the fraud crime exception—communication with a lawyer to advance a crime or fraud isn ’ t covered by the attorney-client privilege—gave the FBI a reason to use many of the emails .
And by then , the investigation into Broidy had advanced significantly .
In July 2018 , the FBI obtained two search warrants aimed at Broidy , according to Howell ’ s second ruling .
Agents raided Broidy ’ s Beverly Hills office around that time , ProPublica reported @ @ @ @ @ @ @ began negotiations that culminated with his recent plea deal , people familiar with the matter say .
He is expected to be sentenced next year and can earn a reduced sentence , if prosecutors are satisfied with the cooperation he provides .
Broidy has already agreed to forfeit to the government about $ 9 million he received from Low .
No one has ever been charged in connection with the hack of Broidy ’ s email .

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In October, Elliott Broidy, once a top fundraiser for Donald Trump and the Republican Party, pleaded guilty to charges that he conspired to illegally lobby the Trump administration for a fugitive financier and the prime minister of Malaysia. The plea continued the descent of a controversial businessman and political operative who stepped down from a top Republican National Committee job in 2018 after the news broke that he had agreed to pay $1.6 million in hush money to a Playboy model whom he had impregnated during an extramarital affair.
Now there’s a new wrinkle to the Broidy case. He faces up to five years in prison in part because of what in retrospect seems to have been a dumb mistake. Broidy voluntarily gave the FBI emails from his and his wife’s accounts while seeking the bureau’s assistance in pursuing hackers who he claimed had stolen this material and leaked damaging details about his business dealings to the press. According to a just-unsealed ruling issued in June 2018 by Beryl Howell, the chief US District Judge in Washington, DC, nearly 1,400 pages of emails that Broidy provided to the FBI were subsequently used by the bureau in the investigation that led to Broidy’s guilty plea. Following a secretive legal process, Howell ruled that Broidy had surrendered the material to the FBI and after doing that—when the bureau wanted to exploit the documents for an investigation of Broidy himself—could no longer claim the information was covered by attorney-client privilege or spousal privilege.
A Broidy spokesman did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Here’s what happened. Broidy owns a company, Circinus, that sells what it calls “open-source” intelligence services to foreign governments. In 2017, while the firm pursued a contract with the United Arab Emirates, which it later landed, Broidy emerged as an outspoken critic of Qatar, a regional rival of the UAE. Broidy helped to finance conferences and opinion pieces attacking Qatar as a sponsor of terrorism. That criticism dovetailed with attacks on Qatar by the UAE and its close ally, Saudi Arabia, which resulted in those and other Gulf nations imposing a blockade on Qatar in June 2017.
In late December 2017, Broidy’s wife, Robin Rosenzweig, who is an attorney, was targeted by a phishing attack. The hackers gained access to her emails and to Broidy’s. A few months later, media reports based on Broidy’s emails began to appear in major publications. The emails seemed to implicate Broidy in efforts to leverage his access to the Trump administration on behalf of various foreign interests, including officials in the UAE, Romania, Angola, Malaysia, and China. The leaked material raised the question of whether Broidy had broken the law by failing to register as a foreign agent.
Broidy responded in late March 2018 by suing Qatar, several lobbyists employed by the country, and others, alleging they had planned and executed the hack and the dissemination of his emails to discredit and silence him. “I knew that Qatar and its agents viewed me as an enemy,” he said in one court filing. (The lawsuits have since been thrown out due to Qatar’s diplomatic immunity, but Broidy has filed new cases against some of the defendants.)
At the same time, Broidy also asked the US Attorney’s office in Los Angeles, where he lives, and the FBI to investigate the hack. And he handed over samples of the hacked emails to the bureau.
That may not have been a smart move. Howell’s ruling reveals that the Justice Department had begun investigating Broidy for potentially illegal lobbying by the time he contacted the FBI about the hacking. Through a February 8, 2018 search warrant, the feds, according to the ruling, had obtained emails between Broidy, Rosenzweig, Malaysian businessman Jho Low, a GOP fundraiser named Nickie Lum Davis, and Pras Michel, the rapper and former member of the Fugees. Broidy was apparently unaware of the search warrant.
This year, prosecutors publicly revealed that the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section had been investigating a scheme in which Low, the alleged architect of a massive embezzlement of funds from a Malaysian state investment fund known as 1MDB, hired Broidy to use his Trump administration connections to try to convince the Justice Department to drop an investigation of that matter. The 1MDB investigation threatened Malaysia’s then-Prime Minister Najib Razak, who has since been imprisoned there due to the scandal. Low also had a personal interest for which he needed Broidy’s help. US prosecutors had launched proceedings to seize hundreds of millions of dollars worth of assets that Low had allegedly obtained with stolen funds.
Michel and Davis had helped connect Low to Broidy, and Broidy, after insisting on a $1 million payment just to meet with Low, agreed to assist him for an $8 million retainer, with the chance to receive far more if the Justice Department dropped the case. Broidy’s ensuing work for Low included pushing for Trump to golf with Najib, who could use the time to request Trump’s help killing the 1MDB investigation, and an effort to convince the State Department that the 1MDB probe was harming US relations with Malaysia. Najib did not get a golf date, but he met with Trump in the White House in September 2017. To hide the payments from Low to Broidy, Low funneled money through a Hong Kong shell company, then sent the funds to accounts controlled by Michel, who moved the money to Rosenzweig’s law firm.
Broidy’s endeavors did not succeed. The US government did not drop the investigation and charged Low in 2018 with conspiring to launder money stolen from 1MDB. He remains a fugitive, but agreed last year to surrender $900 million in assets seized by the federal government as part of the probe. Davis pleaded guilty in August to aiding and abetting a violation of foreign lobbying laws. Michel, who faces charges in an unrelated campaign finance case, remains under investigation. Rosenzweig has not been accused of wrongdoing. After years of denying that he had illegally lobbied for overseas interests and disputing that he was under investigation, Broidy took that plea deal in October.
Back to the hacking case and Broidy’s emails: In April 2018—months after the FBI had launched its probe of Broidy—a lawyer representing Broidy and Rosenzweig gave the FBI 41 PDF files totaling 1,393 pages of the couples emails. These were files that Broidy and his lawyers had received from members of the media who had received them from anonymous sources. Broidy and his lawyers apparently hoped the FBI could use the files as evidence to track down whoever had hacked him. But Howell’s ruling states that the bureau asserted that its agents “made no representations or promises to [the attorney] or others, including Broidy, about how the emails would be used by the FBI.”
That ruling notes that FBI agents had already obtained some emails involving Broidy and Rosenszweig through the February 2018 search warrant and as a result, the FBI already had some unspecified portion of the material that Broidy’s legal team supplied. But the feds seemed to have viewed Broidy’s disclosure as an additional gift. The agents who received these PDFs turned them over to the team investigating Broidy.
In her June 26, 2018 ruling, Howell found that Broidy and Rosenszweig’s voluntary disclosure of those communications meant that “any claims of attorney-client privilege or marital communications privilege in those documents has been waived.” So the FBI could go ahead and use the emails to investigate Broidy.
But on April 18, 2019, Howell issued a new ruling, also unsealed this week, in which she partially reversed her earlier decision. In response to arguments from Broidy’s lawyers, the judge said that prosecutors had failed to sufficiently explain the year before that the emails Broidy had given to the FBI came from outside parties and that Broidy’s lawyer had removed material from this batch to avoid surrendering privilege. Howell vacated her decision that Broidy and Rosenszweig had waived their privileges. But she also said the crime-fraud exception—communication with a lawyer to advance a crime or fraud isn’t covered by the attorney-client privilege—gave the FBI a reason to use many of the emails.
And by then, the investigation into Broidy had advanced significantly. In July 2018, the FBI obtained two search warrants aimed at Broidy, according to Howell’s second ruling. Agents raided Broidy’s Beverly Hills office around that time, ProPublica reported last year.
In 2019, Broidy began negotiations that culminated with his recent plea deal, people familiar with the matter say. He is expected to be sentenced next year and can earn a reduced sentence, if prosecutors are satisfied with the cooperation he provides. Broidy has already agreed to forfeit to the government about $9 million he received from Low.
No one has ever been charged in connection with the hack of Broidy’s email.
Read Judge Howell’s rulings:


motherjones--2020-12-16--Raphael Warnock Is Tapping Into a Long Legacy of Faith-Based Civil Rights Activism in his Quest for

Raphael Warnock Is Tapping Into a Long Legacy of Faith-Based Civil Rights Activism in his Quest for the Senate

The Reverend Raphael Warnock is at the center of a political vortex .
If the Democrat wins the neck-and-neck runoff against Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler on January 5 , he ’ ll make history as Georgia ’ s first Black senator—and potentially flip the Senate to Democratic control .
And while runoff elections in Georgia are traditionally disasters for Democrats , as our colleague Ari Berman recently wrote , this time may be different .
Warnock , who preaches at the former church of Martin Luther King Jr. , carries the legacy of Black religious leaders who fought for civil @ @ @ @ @ @ @ progressive organizers .
And there ’ s record cash hauls and enthusiasm backing him , as well as his fellow Democrat and runoff candidate Jon Ossoff .
Still , Warnock faces brutal and racist attacks from Republicans , who have unleashed old stereotypes and prejudices about the Black church to smear the candidate as a dangerous radical socialist .
Listen to the latest episode of the Mother Jones Podcast : Subscribe using Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Stitcher , or your favorite podcast app .
In these last weeks before the big vote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who wrote a profile of Warnock in October , went to the state to cover the final push .
“ His potential victory for the US Senate runoffs depends on the vote outside Atlanta , ” Andrews told Mother Jones Podcast host Jamilah King .
“ I wanted to a get a sense for how people feel about him in more rural Georgia.
” Andrews recently followed the campaign , from Augusta to Albany to Athens , and found out just what is making it tick .
Warnock ’ s faith has been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and his events are filled with sermons and hymns .
In a normal year , many of his campaign stops would have been in churches .
And while he is still reaching voters at church services , they are outdoor drive-in affairs .
“ Warnock has come out of a tradition of believing we ’ re first of all , servants of all , ” said the Reverend Christopher Johnson , a Methodist pastor in Augusta , Georgia , who Andrews spoke to on the road .
“ And we also believe in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be.
” While the fight for civil rights in the American South has long had close ties to religious groups , this year in Georgia there ’ s a new element : Young progressive organizers have flocked to the state to get out the vote for a candidate who they believe shares their values .
This is a particularly powerful dynamic in Albany , a town in southeast Georgia that was hit with a devastating coronavirus outbreak after a funeral in February turned into a super-spreader event .
“ [ Warnock ] @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in their humanity and pre-existing conditions , ” Amna Farooqi , a 26-year-old community organizer there , told Andrews .
“ I feel like that messaging really resonates for a lot of people , especially considering that we were a hotspot in COVID.
” Kiana Jackson , 23 , is a lifelong resident of Albany and explained to Andrews why she is so excited about Warnock ’ s candidacy : “ When we have a Black man that is a progressive that ’ s running to be a United States senator from a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ make sure that we ’ re coming out and we ’ re supporting them with everything we can .
”

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The Reverend Raphael Warnock is at the center of a political vortex. If the Democrat wins the neck-and-neck runoff against Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler on January 5, he’ll make history as Georgia’s first Black senator—and potentially flip the Senate to Democratic control.
And while runoff elections in Georgia are traditionally disasters for Democrats, as our colleague Ari Berman recently wrote, this time may be different. Warnock, who preaches at the former church of Martin Luther King Jr., carries the legacy of Black religious leaders who fought for civil rights. He is beloved by young progressive organizers. And there’s record cash hauls and enthusiasm backing him, as well as his fellow Democrat and runoff candidate Jon Ossoff. Still, Warnock faces brutal and racist attacks from Republicans, who have unleashed old stereotypes and prejudices about the Black church to smear the candidate as a dangerous radical socialist.
Listen to the latest episode of the Mother Jones Podcast: Subscribe using Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast app.
In these last weeks before the big vote, Mother Jones reporter Becca Andrews, who wrote a profile of Warnock in October, went to the state to cover the final push. “His potential victory for the US Senate runoffs depends on the vote outside Atlanta,” Andrews told Mother Jones Podcast host Jamilah King. “I wanted to a get a sense for how people feel about him in more rural Georgia.”
Andrews recently followed the campaign, from Augusta to Albany to Athens, and found out just what is making it tick.
Warnock’s faith has been a huge part of his run, and his events are filled with sermons and hymns. In a normal year, many of his campaign stops would have been in churches. And while he is still reaching voters at church services, they are outdoor drive-in affairs. “Warnock has come out of a tradition of believing we’re first of all, servants of all,” said the Reverend Christopher Johnson, a Methodist pastor in Augusta, Georgia, who Andrews spoke to on the road. “And we also believe in transcending—changing what is to what it ought to be.”
While the fight for civil rights in the American South has long had close ties to religious groups, this year in Georgia there’s a new element: Young progressive organizers have flocked to the state to get out the vote for a candidate who they believe shares their values. This is a particularly powerful dynamic in Albany, a town in southeast Georgia that was hit with a devastating coronavirus outbreak after a funeral in February turned into a super-spreader event. “[Warnock] talks about the importance of seeing people in their humanity and pre-existing conditions,” Amna Farooqi, a 26-year-old community organizer there, told Andrews. “I feel like that messaging really resonates for a lot of people, especially considering that we were a hotspot in COVID.”
Kiana Jackson, 23, is a lifelong resident of Albany and explained to Andrews why she is so excited about Warnock’s candidacy: “When we have a Black man that is a progressive that’s running to be a United States senator from a southern state, then we have to make sure that we’re coming out and we’re supporting them with everything we can.”