Read on Twitter
More than 4,600 Arkansas poultry processing workers have contracted COVID-19. At least 22 have died. I spent the last several weeks poring through public records trying to understand why none of the state's plants ever shut down. Here's my investigation /1 https://www.facingsouth.org/2020/08/covid-19-pounded-arkansas-poultry-workers-government-and-industry-looked
The consul general for the Marshall Islands sent a desperate email to poultry execs & government officials in mid-June. "My fellow Marshallese citizens are not well and are dying at an alarming rate. How many more lives will it take for us to do something?"
"I understand that the poultry plants are essential and that we must continue to open to get the economy going but not at the expense of people's lives," he wrote. He asked for plants to shut down so workers could quarantine. They never were. /3 https://www.facingsouth.org/2020/08/covid-19-pounded-arkansas-poultry-workers-government-and-industry-looked
Employees, former employees, and workers' advocates who recognized that working conditions in poultry plants were prime for an outbreak were asking if plants would close or slow line speeds in March. They didn't. https://www.facingsouth.org/2020/08/covid-19-pounded-arkansas-poultry-workers-government-and-industry-looked
A Tyson lobbyist wrote quotes for the Rogers mayor that appeared in a press release announcing more than 400 new cases had been discovered at Tyson plants in the region. "We are experiencing the benefits of their public services," it said.
Briefly over Memorial Day Weekend, the Washington County Detention Center was told not to accept Marshallese and Hispanic detainees. The sheriff's office told me this was a miscommunication between day and night shifts. https://www.facingsouth.org/2020/08/covid-19-pounded-arkansas-poultry-workers-government-and-industry-looked
The Marshallese community in NWA lost 47 people to the virus. At one point, more than 600 were sick. That's a lot for a small community: the Marshallese don't qualify for Medicare or Medicaid and most work in frontline/essential jobs like poultry. https://www.facingsouth.org/2020/08/covid-19-pounded-arkansas-poultry-workers-government-and-industry-looked
Marshallese are allowed to live in the US because we dropped 67 nuclear bombs on/near their home islands in the Pacific in the mid-20th century. Many suffer serious health issues from the radioactive material in the environment on the Marshall Islands. https://www.facingsouth.org/2020/08/covid-19-pounded-arkansas-poultry-workers-government-and-industry-looked
It is unconscionable that basic health coverage is inaccessible to this community during a pandemic when they're working on the front lines, making the food Americans rely on. Absolutely unconscionable. https://www.facingsouth.org/2020/08/covid-19-pounded-arkansas-poultry-workers-government-and-industry-looked
Here’s today’s update on poultry outbreaks in Arkansas from the state Department of Health. We’re closing in on 4800 people infected. Independence County seems to still have plants with active outbreaks, cases still rising
