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  2021-01-07

  How the Pandemic Has Affected Refugees

  In this episode, we at the Podcast of the Plague Year were granted the opportunity to record interviews with two organizations assisting refugees that have been relocated to Arizona- RICE and Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest. Refugees are those who have been forced to flee their country because of a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, or political opinion. Almost 3 quarters of a million refugees have been resettled in the United States since 2008; they often come with very little resources to begin life anew once resettled. Life for refugees during resettlement comes with hope, but also with struggles to learn a new language, navigate new employment and educational systems and integrate into a new society. It is easy to imagine how a pandemic could intensify already existing struggles.
• 2021-01-26

  Statistics of Covid-19

  Worldwide there is 100M cases and about 25% of those cases are from the US. Of the 25.4M cases in the US 3.2M are from California and about 66,000 of those cases comes from Ventura County. In the world right now there are about 2.15M deaths. In the US there are 423K deaths. In California there are 37,500 deaths, and in Ventura County there are about 500. I have been affected by these statistics because my cousin got the virus a couple of months ago and he was pretty sick. He and his entire school had to quarantine for two weeks and someone had to go to the hospital because the school forgot to feed them for two weeks. My final thoughts on Covid-19 are that the virus has changed are daily live for probably forever. It is a terrible virus and I cannot wait for it to finally be gone.
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  2020-12-11

  Heightened grocery store sales in Nunavut highlight food insecurity.

  Relief funding for the COVID-19 pandemic has been effective in increasing access to food in remote northern communities — but it's also revealed the true extent of food insecurity that Nunavut households face.
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  2020-07-15

  As pandemic rages, farmworkers say employers are ‘prioritizing production over … lives’

  As of early July, 87 workers and 58 family members, 23 of them children, had tested positive for the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, according to data compiled by United Farm Workers, a labor union. Many more are awaiting results. “I don’t want to go back,” Bertha said. She feels she has only two options: Accept the working conditions, or quit. The pandemic has forced agricultural workers throughout the Southwest to make a similar choice between their health and their incomes. Though industry representatives say farms are doing everything they can do to protect their employees, worker advocates argue a lack of industry protections – and the “invisibility” of much of the work done by day laborers – have made farmworkers especially vulnerable to exploitation. “It just shows the contradiction in calling somebody an ‘essential worker’ but only for what you need them for, not to care for them as human beings that also are afraid of getting sick,” said Juanita Valdez-Cox, a migrant-rights advocate in Texas.
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  2020-07-09

  As pandemic rages, farmworkers say employers are 'prioritizing production over...lives’

  by Jessica Myers| Luce Foundation: Southwest Stories Fellowship
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  2020-06-22

  Alberta farmers donate potato seeds to Northwest Territories in effort to promote food security

  Article discussing the donation of 50,000 pounds of potato seeds from Sunnycrest Farms near Red Deer., Alta., to the Northern Farm Training Institute to attempt to increase food security among northern residents, a long term issue exacerbated by the food shortages and supply chain problems brought on by the pandemic "Ms. Milne said the pandemic has underscored the need for everyone to take food shortages seriously. "'We need to make sure that the place where we live has the ability to meet our core needs so that we’re not completely dependent on imports,' she said. 'Imports should be a supplement, not a dependency.' "Ms. Milne adds that potatoes in particular are great for first-time gardeners and are easy to protect, as well as being one of the highest food-producing vegetables a square foot."
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  2020-04-20

  Remote Australian Indigenous Communities Going Without Essentials Amid Lockdown

  “Aboriginal people from remote communities in lockdown are risking prosecution under biosecurity laws to go into regional centres to buy food and essentials, because their community stores can’t source enough supplies. A group of 13 Aboriginal organisations from across the Northern Territory is calling on the national cabinet to do more to guarantee food security for remote communities.”