stlcolibrary | Virtual Author Event with Saket Soni @stlcolibrary | Uploaded March 2023 | Updated October 2024, 3 hours ago.
In 2006, Saket Soni, an Indian-born community organizer received an anonymous phone call from an Indian migrant worker living in squalid conditions inside a Mississippi labor camp. Lured by the promise of good work and green cards, 500 men had desperately scraped together up to $20,000 each to apply for this “opportunity” to rebuild oil rigs after Hurricane Katrina. In “The Great Escape,” Soni traces the workers’ march on foot to Washington DC and their 23-day-hunger strike to bring attention to their cause. Weaving a deeply personal journey with a riveting tale of 21st-century forced labor, Soni takes us into the hidden lives of the foreign workers the US increasingly relies on for cheap skilled labor to rebuild after climate disasters.
In 2006, Saket Soni, an Indian-born community organizer received an anonymous phone call from an Indian migrant worker living in squalid conditions inside a Mississippi labor camp. Lured by the promise of good work and green cards, 500 men had desperately scraped together up to $20,000 each to apply for this “opportunity” to rebuild oil rigs after Hurricane Katrina. In “The Great Escape,” Soni traces the workers’ march on foot to Washington DC and their 23-day-hunger strike to bring attention to their cause. Weaving a deeply personal journey with a riveting tale of 21st-century forced labor, Soni takes us into the hidden lives of the foreign workers the US increasingly relies on for cheap skilled labor to rebuild after climate disasters.
