Booker Texas, Disaster, Immigration & Speaking Out
Preferred Beef, a major employer in Booker Texas (a town of 1,500), had a major fire. They employ about 300 people in the town, many of which are immigrants.
Immigration in our small communities is different from what is portrayed in the national news.
Business in our small communities are different.
Preferred Beef is employee-owned. A small organization with direct ties to their community.
Amazon, Seaboard Foods, JBS Foods... and every other big monster corp who gobbles up small businesses. I wouldn't be surprised if they offered to buy Preferred Beef while they are down. Just to add another notch in their belt, and take over another community.
Even if they did do that, I don't think Preferred Beef would go for it.
This destruction was a hard reminder just how fragile small town economies are.
We expected ICE, not fire.
Legal or Illegal, doesn't matter. Immigrants are scared.
Hell, even if you removed every immigrant from the packing plant, there would be no way they could fill the seats (we don't have spare people to work the jobs these immigrants fill).
Just look at what happened in Cactus in 2018. Cactus Packing Plant | ICE
Friend of mine, an artist, spoke on this topic. Expand the Facebook post, give it a read, give it like.... hell give it an angry face (any engagement is good engagement).
He went viral, and landed a column in our local online news.
He spoke my thoughts, and at the time of this posting, the thoughts of 914 other community members.
I'm sick of the propaganda feed
I'm disgusted by the national news. Sick of the propaganda. Because what I see with my own eyes differs from the view the propaganda feed wants to push.
Local news, people who have connection to the community, don't participate in the propaganda feed. They speak the words of the people in the community.