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Advocates say farmworkers, indigenous and undocumented communities face outsized harm from wildfires and need language access and permanent relief funds
Summary
Speakers representing Mixteco and indigenous farmworker communities told the Assembly committee that structural inequities left monolingual indigenous workers and undocumented people exposed to hazardous conditions, excluded from federal aid and without culturally competent emergency communications.
Committee testimony from Genevieve Flores Haro and others described a pattern of disproportionate harm to farmworkers, indigenous-language speakers and undocumented residents during California wildfires.
Genevieve Flores Haro, associate director of the Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project (MICOP), told the Assembly that many indigenous farmworkers speak only Mixteco or Zapoteco, lacked access to early emergency alerts during previous large fires (she cited the 2017 Thomas Fire example in Ventura County), and often continued…
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