Letter to the Editor/ Op-Ed: Courier-Journal
By Stephen Bartlett
February 12, 2003
Crescent Hill, Louisville (896-9171)
On February 24, I will begin a long “fast for justice”
with a group of farm workers from Immokalee, Florida and elsewhere,
along with students, small farmers and people of faith from across
this hemisphere. We will camp out in front of the headquarters
of Taco Bell corporation in Irvine, California, seeking justice
and not eating. This action is a part of the growing and increasingly
effective boycott aimed at pressuring Taco Bell to take responsibility
for the poverty conditions of the workers who plant and harvest
their food (starting with the tomatoes).
As a person who eats and as one who produces food on lots of donated
land here in Louisville, I feel compelled to act in solidarity
with exploited farm workers. I believe that until farm workers
and their allies succeed in organizing and achieving a living
wage, that our agricultural system itself is in jeopardy. I count
as natural allies of farm workers all small farmers in the U.S.,
the value of whose labor has gradually been lowered to that of
the farm worker, because small farmers now compete with the exploited
laborers of agribusiness in a race to the bottom. Farm worker
allies include workers in fast food restaurants, and in the E-coli-ridden
slaughter houses and salmonella-ridden chicken processing plants,
these line workers themselves exploited for exorbitant profits
by the industrialized food industry. In the final analysis, consumers
themselves will have to see themselves as allies of farm workers,
if we care about food quality and health.
The increasing domination of fast food chains and control of the
food system by a few mega-corporations involved in food processing,
distribution and commodity trading rings the death knell for a
healthy, sustainable and socially-just agricultural system, and
I and many others aware of this intend to fight against it. Even
a cursory reading Eric Schlosser’s muckraking book ‘Fast
Food Nation’ should be convincing enough.
I view as natural allies of farm workers all those who wish for
a lasting peace as well, which requires the evidently undervalued
virtues of truth and justice. On February 28 there will be a massive
rally at Taco Bell headquarters and also a protest action at the
parent company here in Louisville, ludicrously renamed Yum Brands,
Inc. (Yum or Yuck?) As a Presbyterian, whose church has formally
endorsed the boycott of Taco Bell corporation until they agree
to negotiate with the farm workers of Immokalee, Florida, I desire
a just peace where food will actually nourish us and where producing
food will be valued.
End
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