CIW members Oscar Otzoy (left) and Cruz Salucio present former President Jimmy Carter with an original photo during his visit to the CIW’s Modern Day Slavery Museum in Atlanta yesterday. The caption of the photo reads: “Lucas Benitez of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and Reggie Brown of the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange sign their historic agreement on November 16th, 2010, ending 15 years of conflict between Florida farmworkers and the state’s tomato industry.” A similar photo is part of the museum’s permanent collection.

In an moving and remarkably personal visit, former President Jimmy Carter toured the CIW’s Modern-Day Slavery Museum yesterday in Atlanta. We will have more photos and a report from the visit soon.

President Carter and the Carter Center’s Conflict Resolution Program, based in Atlanta, have a long history of involvement in the CIW’s fifteen-year campaign for fair wages and working conditions in Florida’s tomato industry, beginning with the former president’s intervention in the CIW’s 30-day hunger strike in 1998 and continuing through the Campaign for Fair Food.

The CIW’s landmark agreement with McDonald’s was in fact announced at the Carter Center in April, 2007, following talks mediated by the Conflict Resolution Program there. In the picture on the right, CIW members and representatives of McDonald’s are joined by Tom Crick of the Carter Center (seated, far right) for the announcement.

Yesterday’s visit offered an opportunity to reflect on more than a decade of working together to bring about a more modern, more humane tomato industry in Florida. But it also provided a moment for CIW members to get to know the former president, Nobel prize winner, and widely-respected champion of peace and human rights a little bit better as a person. While it is well known that President Carter was a peanut farmer in Plains, Georgia, before entering politics, for example, we did not know until yesterday that his experience included picking tomatoes and watermelons under the hot Georgia sun, something many CIW members and the former president have in common!

We will have more pictures from the visit shortly (the photo at the top of this post and those to come are by CIW ally and Atlanta organizer extraordinaire, Emiko Soltis!), but in the meantime, take a moment to catch up on the Modern-Day Slavery Museum’s Spring Tour. You can find its schedule here, and check out a great new article from the museum’s stop in Fort Walton Beach, Florida (“Publix pressured to sign farm worker agreement,” 3/15/11). Here’s an excerpt:

“… On Monday, about 70 people toured the museum in the parking lot of the Fort Walton Beach Municipal Library. Tracy Clarke of Fort Walton Beach visited the museum and then joined the farm workers Tuesday to speak to managers at the Publix on Miracle Strip Parkway in Fort Walton Beach. ‘I don’t like the fact that I might buy a tomato that was picked under these conditions,’ she said. ‘It’s ridiculous. Why on earth would Publix not want to come on board?’ Publix representatives said the company believes the agreement with the other buyers, like Taco Bell, Burger King and Whole Foods, already made the necessary changes to the industry. ‘We assume that the resolution addressed farm worker pay in Florida,’ said Publix spokesman Dwaine Stevens in an e-mailed media statement. Ninety percent of the tomato growers in Florida have signed on to participate in the agreement, but the growers only pay farm workers a penny more per pound when the tomatoes they pick are sold to buyers that have already signed the agreement. ‘Publix can’t just take a free ride now,’ Salucio said. ‘Ninety percent of the state’s tomato farms are willing to pass on the penny to the workers if only Publix would pay it.'” read more