Connecting the dots between North Carolina’s ongoing community spread and meatpacking plants demonstrates the need for enforceable safety regulations and transparent reporting of data to bring the contagion under control.
Sandy Smith-Nonini
Posted inUncategorized
Covid-19 Is Rampant Near Meatpacking Plants, But N.C. Won’t Disclose All of the Data
As of June 26, at least 2,772 meatpacking workers had tested positive for the virus at 28 plants. But health officials will not report the locations of such clusters.
Posted inNews
How our kids will pay for global warming
“I’m sick and tired of hearing about global warming!” My college-age son was quoting a friend. We’ll call her Jessica. I teach at a university, so while the sentiment was not surprising, what gave me pause was knowing Jessica, who is no eco-slouch. She’s a straight-A student I’ve known and admired for years, a child […]
Posted inGuides
Sheep, goats, electric mowers: Tending a sustainable lawn
See also: “Conserve water, beautify your yard with xeriscaping” Some kids grew up in the South in the ’60s learning legacy skillspottery, canning, farming. The thoroughly modern skill my brother and I perfected over a decade of sweltering summers was less romantic, but remunerative. We mowed lawns. Big grassy lawns, $2 a pop, which wasn’t […]
Posted inNews
Farmworker protection, not just memorials
Each lost farmworker’s name was read aloudsometimes haltingly, as English-speakers tripped over Spanish syllablesthen a bell tolled, and a new candle danced in the brisk breeze behind the flower-strewn altar draped in the purple cloth of Lent. I do research on immigrant labor. Like most North Carolinians, I did not know these men personally, so […]
Posted inNews
Inside the Oaxacan protest at the Mexican consulate in Raleigh
The e-mail message stuck in my throat like bad indigestion. Maybe because I’d been working on my Salvador book that day, and the death squads that live in my head were prowlingthere’s this endless clip of my friend Tita being stuffed into a car trunk; it replays with gruesome variations since we never found out […]