JUSTIN AKERS CHACÓN
Chacón is professor of Chicano Studies in San Diego, California, and co-author of No One Is Illegal with Mike Davis. He just wrote the piece “Divided by Fire: Two San Diegos Emerge from the Flames,” which states: “While the Southern California wildfires do not discriminate against peoples and property values, the machinery of preparedness and hands of recovery certainly have. Hundreds of thousands of San Diego’s inhabitants have been excluded, ignored or persecuted during the relief efforts, and will be forced to bear the costs of this systemic failure into the foreseeable future. …

“Around the county, migrant workers have remained or been kept in the fields while surrounding environs have been evacuated. In most cases, the people are simply ignored or factored out of evacuation plans; in others, unscrupulous employers have chosen profits over well-being in the disaster equation.”
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ENRIQUE MORONES
Morones is director of Border Angels and helped lead rescue and relief efforts for immigrants during the fires. He said today: “While people with Mercedes were leaving, migrant workers kept right on picking tomatoes.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020, (202) 421-6858; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167.