Expanding healthcare in Clarkston, new state lawmakers, and dosas.
Your 285 South News Roundup.
Auto manufacturer Kia accused of labor exploitation: College graduates from Mexico have filed a lawsuit against Kia - the Korean auto manufacturer that runs an assembly plant in West Point, Georgia. They say they were misled - given the impression that they were coming through a visa program for white-collar work. When they got here, they said they were forced to do assembly line work in sub-par conditions. Read the story in the AJC here.
Expanding health care access in Clarkston: The Clarkston Community Health Center (CCHC), a free clinic that provides preventative healthcare to those without insurance or earning 200 percent below the poverty line, is hoping to double the number of patients it serves in 2023. But first, it needs to raise the money to support plans for expansion. Read the WABE story here.
Heads up: immigration stories this year: Also from WABE - check out reporter Emily Wu’s list of issues to keep on your radar this year - including in-state tuition for DACA recipients, conditions at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, and how Georgia’s new hate crime law will be applied in the spa shooter trial. Read more here.
Georgia’s new legislature begins with the most diverse members ever: It’s impossible to know that will mean for all of us, but newly elected Representative Long Tran says he hopes it “will lead to legislation that will benefit some of the minority communities while at the same time solving some of the labor shortage our industries are facing.” Read this great write-up in State Affairs.
Supporting Latino residents across Georgia: The Latino Community Fund-GA supports community members across metro Atlanta, including farmworkers in rural areas. “Many times people do not know that Georgia, after Florida, is the state that has the most imported agricultural workers, Georgia depends on the labor of immigrants from Mexico and Guatemala, of whom more than 32,000 come each year,” said executive director Gigi Pedraza in an interview with El Nuevo Georgia, a Spanish language publication based in Norcross. Read El Nuevo Georgia’s profile of the organization here.
And finally, have you eaten at Madras Mantra in Decatur? It’s really good - especially the dosas! And the service is amazingly efficient. You order online from your table and your food comes out fresh from the kitchen minutes later (that’s what it felt like when I went anyway…). Check out this profile in Khabar Magazine on owner Narendra Patel, who also owns two other South Indian restaurants - one in Alpharetta and the other in Marietta. He hopes, he said, to one day open a Gujarati thali restaurant - if he can find the right chef. Read “The restaurateur with the Magic Sauce of Success” here.
Before I go - if you’re looking for Lunar New Year events, check out this calendar from the Georgia Asian Times, or the 285 South Calendar here
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