Jeannie Economos

Jeannie has worked for over 20 years on issues of the environment, environmental justice, indigenous and immigrants’ rights, labor, peace, and social justice. From 1996-2001, she worked for the Farmworker Association of Florida as the Lake Apopka Project Coordinator, addressing the issues of job loss, displacement, and health problems of the farmworkers who worked on the farm lands on Lake Apopka prior to the closing of the farms in 1998. After the bird mortality in 1998-99, her focus turned to the pesticide-related health problems of the former Lake Apopka farmworkers, who were exposed to the same damaging organochlorine pesticides that were implicated in the bird deaths. 

Since 2007, she has been the Pesticide Safety and Environmental Health Project Coordinator for the Farmworker Association of Florida, coordinating pesticide trainings for farmworkers in Florida, identifying workplace violations of Worker Protection Standards, and conducting health care provider trainings on pesticide exposure of farmworkers. She is also engaged in local, state, national, and international coalitions and collaborations related to farmworker rights and health and safety, pesticide reduction, sustainable agriculture, and food sovereignty. She is currently co-coordinator of the Lake Apopka Farmworkers Memorial Quilt Project whose purpose is to raise awareness about the impacts of pesticides on the former farmworkers on Lake Apopka.

Posts

Bilingual Pesticide Labels: Farmworkers Deserve No Less, August 24, 2011