From New York, this is Democracy Now. Today, a Labor Day special.

The person who called me was unlike most of the workers who called. He wasn't from Mississippi

or Louisiana. He wasn't either white, black, or Latino. He was an Indian man flown in from

India, calling from the Mississippi Gulf Coast. And I thought, what was an Indian man doing

coming here to clean up after Hurricane Katrina?

We'll speak to longtime immigrant labor organizer Saket Sony about how immigrant workers have

been lured to the United States and trapped and forced labor to rebuild communities after

climate disasters. Then we'll go to Salvadoran poet and writer Javier Zamora, author of the best

selling memoir, Salito. As a nine-year-old boy, he traveled alone 4,000 miles to reach the United

States.

From 7, 8, and 9, I knew that I wanted to be reunited with my parents. What kid does it want?

To be and wake up next to his parents. And so I didn't really understand how I was going

to get here or how dangerous it was for me to travel the 4,000 miles that I did. But what

I did know is that I loved my parents and that really, really, really wanted to be with them.

All that and more coming up.

Welcome to democracy now, democracynow.org, the Warren Peace Report. I am Amy Goodman.

Today, a labor day special. As the rate of climate-fuel disasters intensifies, we begin today

show looking at how immigrant workers have been lured into forced labor by corporations

that hire them to clean up after hurricanes, floods, blizzards, and wildfires. This is

what longtime labor organizer, Socket Sony writes about in his new book, The Great Escape,

a true story of forced labor and immigrant dreams in America. I talked to Socket Sony

earlier this year and asked him to take us back to 2006 when he received a mysterious call

...