The latest installment of the digital Laura Flanders Show, which also appears on PBS, will take an in-depth look at how COVID-19 has affected agricultural workers in Sullivan County, particularly the Latinx farm workers in Fallsburg and Liberty, which reported a number of COVID-19 cases among those communities in May.

Flanders said, “I came up to Sullivan County like so many people from the city did looking for respite from the Manhattan nightmare. And after having been here for a few weeks realized it's not that Sullivan County is free of coronavirus; it's just got a very different profile here.”

Sabrina Artel, who does the “Trailer Talk” show on Radio WJFF, joined with Flanders to co-produce an upcoming segment of the Laura Flanders shows, called “COVID in the Country.” They met with Sandra Oxford, who represents Latinx agricultural workers, and with State Senator Jen Metzger and Assemblywoman Aileen Gunther.

The picture that emerged had similarities to those framed in other American farm communities. The basics are pretty simple. American farmers employ Latinx workers for most of the manual labor. The workers are low paid and often live and work crowded together.

Artel and Flanders struck gold when they covered the Farmworkers Caravan in Liberty in late May. They spoke to Juanita Sarmiento, Youth Economic Group Coordinator for Rural & Migrant Ministry. Sarmiento was on the sharp end during the pandemic’s worst phase, helping workers with medical issues and even handing out masks.

In the “COVID in the Country” segment, Sarmiento explains that work on farms is much the same as it has been for hundreds of years. She told them, “A lot of the work we're doing is to change the methods of the past.”

Sandra Oxford provided a pithy quote for the segment as well, “They’re called essential workers, but they’re not treated as essential human beings.”

Artel noted that the virus had exposed “the pre-existing conditions that were already here with health, inequality and vulnerabilities.”

Laura Flanders talked with workers at chicken plants and dairy farms, as well as the labor organizers and farmers. Agricultural workers are used to working close together, breathing the same air. They tend to live in trailers and apartments in close proximity to others. A virus like COVID-19 can spread like wildfire in those conditions.

Laura Flanders told the Shawangunk Journal, “This segment showed us that we are in a living web and that things are happening all around us at the same time. It revealed how badly systems we depend on function, and also that perhaps they have been set up to fail.”

She also noted, “We’re seeing an explosion of innovation at local and community levels where people are finding for themselves ways to fill the vacuum. In the best-case scenario, something similar will grow as it did in the 1930s. When the models change the things people come up with to survive, such as cooperatives and mutual aid clubs, can become the laboratories of democracy, the very things that FDR and his people looked to for elements of the New Deal, such as unemployment insurance, Social Security and even rural electric cooperatives.”

Flanders concluded, “This is exactly what our show is all about. On TV and radio, getting to this point, where people who say, ‘It can’t be done,’ take a back seat to people who are doing it.”

The Laura Flanders Show is accessible on digital TV, podcasts, and radio at lauraflanders.org. Her “COVID in the Country” report will be available online starting October 1.

Who Is Laura Flanders?

Flanders is an Anglo-American hybrid, who grew up in London, learned her journalism covering Northern Ireland in the 80s, a time of treachery, violence and oppression, and moved to the US in the late 80s. She has been coming to Sullivan County for 30 years for rural decompression from the high energy urban/media world.

For the past decade Flanders has been working to report on the stories and people that most media have ignored. Beginning this past month, her show has been on PBS TV, nationwide, distributed by American Public Television and airing in 20 of the top 25 media markets. (Sundays at 11:30 a.m.)