When I began writing about the meatpacking industry in 2020, I was living in the Ozark Mountains. There is no cell phone reception in the area, and the internet is pretty questionable, so I conducted interviews via a landline using a rotary phone. A few months into interviewing workers, I got COVID-19 and was in bed for a month with extreme fatigue. I couldn’t work and then couldn’t pay my rent, so I moved in with my parents. At the time, trying to get media outlets interested in a project about labor conditions in the meatpacking industry in Arkansas was like scratching a hole in the parched earth. I remember the first year of my project vividly. One day, while I was driving, I pulled over to cry on the side of the road, thinking of all the meatpacking workers who had become infected with COVID-19, become disabled, or died.
But the workers, their humor, faith, and belief in justice kept me writing. Yesterday, Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard announced that my forthcoming book won the $25,000 Lukas Work-in-Progress Award. Thank you to everyone who has supported my work over the past four years. You can pre-order The Life and Death of the American Worker: The Immigrant’s Taking on America’s Largest Meatpacking Company here.
In faith, commitment & love,
Alice
Congrats!!
Congrats! Rock-on my friend, you are awesome!