Hello people in the south! You have won the Civil War after all! CELEBRATE! Somewhere in Florida there is a town outside of the posh estate-shit-homes that white people from Chicago and New York buy up like they buy up cocaine and other services, where people have no money, at all. This is where all the tomatoes come from! In the winter!

Immokalee is the tomato capital of the United States. Between December and May, as much as 90 percent of the fresh domestic tomatoes we eat come from south Florida, and Immokalee is home to one of the area’s largest communities of farmworkers. According to Douglas Molloy, the chief assistant U.S. attorney based in Fort Myers, Immokalee has another claim to fame: It is “ground zero for modern slavery.”

There is nothing better than going to Florida to spend a little time at Disneyland, sweeping through the everglades and then coming out in A HODGEPODGE OF POVERTY AND HORRIBLENESS:

Leaning against the railing of an unpainted wooden stoop in front of a putty-colored trailer, a tired Juan Dominguez told an all-too-familiar story. He had left for the fields that morning at six o’clock and returned at three. But he worked for only two of those nine hours because the seedlings he was to plant had been delivered late. His total earnings: $13.76.

Now we all make jokes about how shitty the economy is (because that is the “funny” thing to do) but what’s even more funny is that there are still people worse off than you (hahahaha????!!!???). As terrible as it is that such a place still exists in the United States (because just a few days ago Bobby Jindal was talking about how awesome America is in the most childish way possible, see post below), it does, in fact, exist. Floridians can be assured however that Charlie Crist is hard at work alleviating the issue so that it is no longer visible to the public FIXED! So there really is nothing to see here. Look away.

Politics of the Plate— the Price of Tomatoes (Gourmet)

Thanks to Rochester’s “Grendel” for the tip!

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