Latino Environmental Advancement & Policy (LEAP)

Latino Environmental Advancement & Policy (LEAP) is a Latino-Valley based environmental justice community institution in Fresno California. LEAP’s mission is to engage San Joaquin Valley communities to increase social justice awareness, strengthen grassroots leadership and empower Latinos, Immigrants and Youth to achieve environmental sustainable justice while im­proving community health.

For more information contact Rey Leon by email at rleon@valleyLEAP.org

The Anti-Uber

Patricia Leigh Brown / NY Times | June 17, 2017

A family walking past a bakery in Huron, Calif. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times

HURON, CALIF. — Carmen Lopez, a retired farmworker, keeps a Bible on the back seat of her silver 2003 Honda and crochet hooks and a Spanish-language potboiler in her purse. In her line of work, she waits a lot.

In this isolated agricultural community of 7,000 in the Central Valley, one of the state’s poorest cities and a place where nearly a quarter of households don’t have cars, Mrs. Lopez works as a “raitera” — driving people to the doctor’s office, the courthouse and other places found only in Fresno, 52 miles away. She ferries asthmatic children and women who have overdosed on prescription pills to the hospital, and students who have missed the bus to the high school in another town. She once delivered a baby in her car, which has covered 194,000 miles and counting.

(read complete article)