In “The farmworkers in California’s fire zones,” published with Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, Teresa Cotsirilos explains that when wildfires forced thousands of Californians to evacuate, a little-known ‘ag pass’ program let employers keep farmworkers on the job.

After the story appeared, Sonoma County launched a process to revise its Ag Pass program, a process that was still underway in 2022 ahead of the first season. Also, Teresa’s dataset on the California counties with ag pass programs was shared with the state of California, which previously had no equivalent data.

Twitter engagements for the story included Talk Poverty (25,000+ followers), Fight for 15 (72,000+ followers), Americans of Conscience Checklist (3,000+ followers), and Andrea Delgado (United Farm Workers Foundation), Kelly Ann Sebastian (Union of Concerned Scientists), Elizabeth Koh (Boston Globe), and Matthew Sedacca (The Counter).

Our media partner for this story, Reveal, is carried on 571 radio stations in addition to its podcast audience, reaching more than 2 million listeners. Reveal also reaches a social media audience of 266K.