Miami Herald on the CIW’s Radio Conciencia: “Many residents appreciate getting their news directly from neighbors and community members they trust; the medium is familiar to them since it is regularly used in Latin America and the Caribbean; and it’s a disaster-resilient form of communication…”
Lucas Benitez, co-founder of the CIW: “Organized communities are always more resilient than those where people are left to face these challenges on their own, and the farmworker community here in Immokalee has demonstrated its resilience time and time again in the face of disaster.”
Late in the evening of October 9th, Hurricane Milton made landfall at Siesta Key in Sarasota, Florida. It was the second major hurricane to slam into the state in just over two weeks, following Hurricane Helene on September 23rd. A behemoth storm, Milton’s sustained winds topped out a terrifying 185 mph as the Category 5 hurricane made its way across the Gulf before wind shear reduced the storm’s rating to a Category 3 just ahead of landfall. But even before reaching Florida’s shores, Milton’s force was felt in the Immokalee area — and around the entire southern half of Florida — in the form of dozens of deadly tornadoes that shocked a hurricane-weary state that thought it had seen everything, but was not expecting this new hellish look into a future of increasingly violent storms thanks to accelerating climate change.
Throughout the day of October 9, massive tornadoes touched down across the region, ripping roofs off of homes, flipping cars like small toys, and preventing people from safely evacuating or making last-minute preparations to weatherize the outside of their homes. Indeed, just as Hurricane Ian introduced Floridians to the new reality of monster storm surge sweeping homes and lives away in unprecedented floods, Hurricane Milton announced the future of fierce hurricane-spawned twisters that make hurricane force winds look mild in comparison.
As climate change takes off at a pace even greater than that predicted by the most pessimistic climate scientists, and rising seas and soaring ocean temperatures drive ever stronger storms, it becomes all the more urgent that our communities — and especially marginalized communities like that in Immokalee, who often face the harshest consequences of the evolving climate — are well-organized, informed, and protected from deadly climate extremes.
In Immokalee, thanks to the CIW, the farmworker community was well-prepared for Milton. As it has in previous storms over the last two decades, the CIW’s radio station, 107.7 Radio Conciencia, provided regular updates on the storm’s trajectory and its anticipated impact, as well as local resources for shelter, food, water, and other necessities. The same farmworker leaders who forged the groundbreaking Fair Food Program — including protections from deadly heat at work that the Washington Post called the “nation’s strongest workplace heat rules,” — were on the airwaves day and night, ensuring their local community was informed and ready for Hurricane Milton, including for the late-breaking news of tornadoes forming in communities from Fort Myers to Clewiston around the Southwest Florida region.
Casting light the crucial role the CIW plays in protecting the farmworker community in this era of accelerating climate change, the Miami Herald and the news program Democracy Now spoke with CIW farmworker leaders last week before and after the storm.
In the days leading up to the storm, the Miami Herald spoke with Lupe Gonzalo, a senior staff member of the CIW, as well as Lucas Benitez, co-founder of the CIW, on the critical role Radio Conciencia plays in Immokalee. We have included key excerpts of the article below:
‘A true lifeline’: Community radio helps Florida immigrant workers prepare for Milton
Amid a steady stream of rancheras and marimbas, Radio Conciencia is broadcasting messages about storm preparation and available shelters across Immokalee ahead of the arrival of ferocious Hurricane Milton to the Florida peninsula. “We must not let our guard down, we must continue making preparations,” one host said Tuesday afternoon as he shared the latest reports about the monster storm’s development with the audience in this southwest Florida town.
The low-power, community-run radio station has served the immigrant and worker communities in the majority-Hispanic town of about 24,500 residents for over two decades. It’s run by the staff, members and volunteers of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a human-rights group that advocates for farm workers. During normal times, Radio Conciencia’s public-service programming features Spanish, English and Haitian-Creole bulletins.
Topics range from workers’ rights and immigration policy to news headlines and community events. Listeners call in to request Latin American and Caribbean songs from back home. They have nicknamed it “La Tuya” — Yours — because everyone is figuring out the programming together.
But during disasters like hurricanes — whose climate-change-fueled intensity has become a bigger threat to the inland community in recent years — the airwaves turn into a medium for the community to organize and prepare.
Lucas Benitez, a Coalition of Immokalee Workers co-founder and morning show host on Radio Conciencia, told the Miami Herald over email that during times of emergency, called Radio Conciencia as “is a true lifeline for our community.”
“We know that climate change is not a thing of the future, it is happening now – and vulnerable communities getting reliable information, in their language, from accessible sources can mean the difference between life and death. Farmworkers listening to Radio Conciencia in years past later called us to say they only left for the shelter because of what they heard on the radio, and when they returned the following day, the trailer was completely destroyed,” he said…
“It’s a medium that has helped us so that people know where to go, know what to do. People are always calling us to ask what the new announcements are,” said Lupe Gonzalo, a Guatemalan-born community organizer for the Coalition. Gonzalo and other radio station members were also planning to find volunteers who could record messages about the hurricane in indigenous languages such as Mam, a Mayan language spoken in Guatemala, and Zapotec and Mixtec, both tongues widely spoken in Mexico. That sort of programming is vital for indigenous residents of Immokalee, for whom the county’s emergency communications might not be accessible.
“During other hurricanes that have hit, rural and farm worker communities often don’t get the necessary resources first. The resources arrive in the big cities first,” Gonzalo. “What’s most important to us is that the community prepares.”
Radio Conciencia started in 2003 because the Coalition of Immokalee Workers needed a way to get information out into the community. Staff members told the Herald that radio was an effective medium for several reasons. Many residents appreciate getting their news directly from neighbors and community members they trust; the medium is familiar to them since it is regularly used in Latin America and the Caribbean; and it’s a disaster-resilient form of communication…
The expectation was not that it would be an emergency resource hub when it first began. But it’s a two-way information highway that naturally lends itself to that purpose. When Hurricane Wilma struck Collier County in 2005, listeners called in with questions about where they could go and how to get county assistance, staff members said. During COVID-19, when people could not leave their homes and the Coalition could not go door to door to get public-health information out, the airwaves became especially important.
“Organized communities are always more resilient than those where people are left to face these challenges on their own,” said Benitez, the Coalition co-founder, “and the farmworker community here in Immokalee has demonstrated its resilience time and time again in the face of disaster.”
CIW senior staff member Gerardo Reyes Chavez spoke with Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman on how the CIW’s radio station has helped keep the Immokalee community safe, as well as how the housing provisions of the Fair Food Program can offer a solution to the often sub-standard housing farmworkers are made to endure, which renders farmworkers particularly vulnerable during major storms. Here is his interview below:
Check back again soon for more news from Immokalee and the Fair Food Program!