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Seven mushroom workers murdered in mass shootings are mourned as advocates work to assist survivors [1]
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Date: 2023-01-25
Reports indicate that the gunman who carried out these heinous killings had been employed at both farms in the past. Five were shot at California Terra Garden, including the man who survived the shooting. While the coroner’s office has not yet publicly identified any of the victims, The San Francisco Chronicle named Jose Romero and Marciano Martinez-Jimenez as two of the deceased from the California Terra Garden shooting.
Romero had a wife and children in Mexico that he financially supported, the report said. His younger brother, Pedro, is the worker who survived the shooting.
Like many farmworkers all across the nation, some mushroom workers lived onsite in mobile homes. “In the wake of the mass shooting, they have been forced to relocate to hotels and offered mental health and other support,” CBS News reports. Hopefully these are culturally sensitive services as language barriers can hinder access. Additionally, some workers very possibly lack legal immigration status, leaving them unsure if services are even an option for them.
"There's a lot of fear," Half Moon Bay City Council member Joaquin Jimenez said in the report. "We have to understand, a lot of our farmworker community is also undocumented, so there's also the fear of that, of their legal status. So, for them to come forward to ask for help is going to be very difficult."
As the report noted, farmworkers had already been trying to recover from torrential storms that brought much-needed water to the drought-stricken state but that also shut down their work. Some had already had to leave their onsite housing in order to escape the water. “There's been flooding,” a San Mateo County Sheriff's Office spokesperson said in the report. “There's been people out of work … this just adds to that stress."
“Our hearts are broken,” National Korean American and Education Consortium Co-director Becky Belcore said in a statement received by Daily Kos. “Only a day after the Monterey Park massacre, a gunman took the lives of 7 people and forever altered the lives of their families and countless others. Our thoughts are with the families of those killed and those who were injured. As an Asian American network, we are grieving with our community over the recent devastating violence.”
Jose Juarez, a cousin of the Romero brothers, said his family came here to work for their families. “You look to improve your life and then you end up with this,” The San Francisco Chronicle reports he told Reuters.
“We dream of a nation in which all farm workers—regardless of their ethnicity or national origin – are treated with dignity, in which our streets no longer bear bloodshed after bloodshed, and in which our hearts have a moment to heal in between breaking,” UFW continued. “Our elders, parents, children, friends, students, and loved ones deserve to study, work, travel, worship—and just live —without fear,” Belcore said.
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/25/2149218/-Seven-mushroom-workers-murdered-in-mass-shootings-are-mourned-as-advocates-work-to-assist-survivors
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