Your Food: Brought by Injustice

Long-term activist and spokesperson for the CIW, Gerardo Reyes Chavez, presents a powerful message alongside the announcement to boycott Wendy's until they agree to participate in the Fair Food Program.

Photo Credit: Coalition of Immokalee Workers

In recent weeks, I had the pleasure and opportunity to travel to Immokalee, FL on a mission trip with a campus ministry group from Duquesne University. As a student on this trip, I was exposed to the harsh conditions and challenges faced by migrant farmworkers and their families for the first time. Prior to my preparations for this trip, I had never taken the time to consider what injustices may be occurring in order to produce the food that I eat each day. Blame my youth or naivety, but regardless, this served as an eye-opening experience.

Though older generations may remember a television special titled “Harvest of Shame,” injustices against farmworkers had long occurred in the form of inadequate conditions (including lack of water and shade, exposure to harmful pesticides, sexual harassment) and wages that are impossible for an individual, let alone a family, to survive on. Unfortunately, in the decades following the airing of this special, few corporations and farms have made progressive changes in order to provide farm workers with adequate pay and civilized working conditions.

Those few corporations and farms have only signed on following the dedication and efforts of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and Student Farmworker Alliance (SFA) to create and promote the Fair Food Program, a program designed by workers themselves to provide more livable conditions. Having created an impactful and world-renowned social movement, the organizations are responsible for signing major corporations such as Trader Joe’s, Chipotle, and Walmart to the program in recent years, requiring them to purchase only from farms deemed humane by the program’s Fair Food Standards Council. This council, made up of bilingual professionals, travels to participating farms to investigate and meet with workers to ensure that their humane standards are being met.

Most recently, the focus of this social movement has turned to the popular fast-food chain restaurant, Wendy’s. The CIW and SFA have announced a boycott of the restaurant until they agree to participate in the program. Among the reasonable requests is for Wendy’s and similar retailers to pay one cent more per pound of tomatoes, an item heavily involved in the mistreatment of workers.

This boycott was announced as part of the organizations’ 10-day tour of the East Coast to protest the unfair treatment of migrant farmworkers for the benefit of the rest of the nation’s consumption. Included in this tour is a protest route led by Ethel Kennedy, widow of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, a long-time supporter of this cause, past the vacation home of Nelson Peltz, Wendy’s billionaire chairman.

Very simply, if you are opposed to slavery (yes, slavery) and mistreatment of farmworkers forced to work under deplorable conditions, you must support the CIW and SFA in their efforts. Such social injustices persist because we, as consumers, refuse to recognize the discriminations occurring. So, the first step may depend on what is available to you. Perhaps you will pass on a Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger from Wendy’s or perhaps buy all your produce from Walmart, but regardless, we must find a way to support this boycott and put an end to the conditions that these farmworkers have endured for decades.

If you are as I was several months ago, this is the first you’ve heard about such injustices in our own country. If you’d like more information, watch “Food Chains,” a documentary which provides viewers with a glimpse into this major social issue (it’s bigger than tomatoes – it’s involved in the production of your favorite wine as well). Additionally, companies and farms that participate in the Fair Food Program can be found at fairfoodprogram.org.

Joy Cannon is a Sociology and Social Policy undergraduate student at Duquesne University, as well as a Program Coordinator for the local youth non-profit, Center of Life.

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