CIW takes the Campaign for Fair Food to the 2012 Wild Goose Festival in the Shakori Hills of North Carolina!

Late last month, the CIW ventured to the Shakori Hills of North Carolina for the 2012 Wild Goose Festival, a four-day gathering in the forest of people from around the country exploring the intersections of justice, spirituality, music and art. In this spirit, the CIW and allies from Interfaith Action packed up their tents, sleeping bags and 153 tomato buckets in order to illustrate to Wild Goose attendees the amount of tomatoes a farmworker must pick in order to make minimum wage in a 10-hour day.

The exhibit, at first simply composed of the buckets scattered across the ground, inspired many conversations throughout Wild Goose. The very first visitors were a pair of elementary-school aged girls, who wanted to know what “the red tubs were for.” When we explained that they are used by farmworkers to gather tomatoes, one girl told us that when she was younger she had protested with her family in Philadelphia against Burger King for not treating farmworkers right.

We explained that due to her and others’ efforts across the country, the nation’s largest fast food and food-service companies, Burger King included, are doing their part to ensure that farmworkers are treated more fairly, and that now we are calling on the supermarkets to follow their lead.

Several able organizers from International Justice Mission, whose table was situated adjacent to our tomato buckets, engaged passersby throughout the weekend in their new summer campaign, Recipe for Change. The campaign — which includes, among other things, weekly tomato recipes supplied by prominent figures from the ever-expanding food movement, including writers like Mark Bittman and Michael Pollan — runs from the 4th of July until Labor Day and encourages participants to urge supermarket giants Kroger, Publix, Stop and Shop and Giant to sign on to the Fair Food Program.

But word of the struggle for farmworker justice spread far beyond the installation. One evening, longtime CIW supporter and a founder of The Simple Way community, Shane Claiborne, discussed the Campaign for Fair Food in a conversation entitled “Political Misfits and Holy Troublemakers”. Another morning, prominent Christian author Brian McLaren led a large group prayer using a tomato bucket. He asked participants to reflect on stories of exile in the Bible, sparking a conversation about how people in modern society, such as farmworkers, are exiled – not just geographically, but also economically and socially.

All in all, the Wild Goose Festival was a huge success, inspiring a host of conversations about farmworker justice, and calling more to action in the Campaign for Fair Food.