Nearly 2,000 turnout in support of farmworkers’ Freedom Fast;

Best-selling author Glennon Doyle to farmworker women fasters: “There’s nothing more beautiful than using your freedom to fight for those not yet free!”

An unforgettable week of action in the heart of Manhattan, 110,000 petition signatures and counting, and media coverage from Newsweek to The Nation lift Wendy’s Boycott to the next level…

A fast, when done in protest, is a call to arms.  While eminently non-violent, it is a battle cry, issued in a whisper.

For five days last week, nearly 100 farmworkers and their allies fasted outside the offices of Nelson Peltz’s hedge fund investment firm, Trian Partners, at 280 Park Avenue in Manhattan.  They did so because Wendy’s has not only refused to join the Fair Food Program — widely recognized as the only human rights monitoring program to have successfully eliminated forced labor and sexual assault in the agricultural industry — but has shifted its tomato purchases from Florida to Mexico, where slavery and sexual assault remain all too common, and workers are intimidated into silence by a culture of violence, fear and corruption.  

And they did so because Wendy’s is structured in such a way that Mr. Peltz is the single most important decision-maker in the company.  Mr. Peltz’s Trian Partners is not only the company’s largest shareholder, but Mr. Peltz is also the Chairman of Wendy’s Board of Directors, his son and partners at Trian are members of the Board, and Mr. Peltz is the head of the Board’s committee on social responsibility.  For all intents and purposes, Mr. Peltz is Wendy’s and Wendy’s is Mr. Peltz, particularly when it comes to the question of social responsibility and, specifically, ending violence against women.

And so, for five days, nearly 100 farmworkers and their allies fasted outside Mr. Peltz’s offices in the heart of Manhattan, broadcasting their call to action to all who would hear their demand: Wendy’s, stop sexual violence in your supply chain, now, by joining the Fair Food Program!

And on the fifth day, their call was answered.  The fasters’ battle was joined by nearly 2,000 consumers, a crowd as, at once, fierce and joyous as any that has ever taken the streets of midtown Manhattan in protest.  With a wildly successful “Time’s Up Wendy’s March,” the Freedom Fast came to a close, the fasters broke bread in a beautiful nighttime ceremony, and a new chapter was written in the story of the Wendy’s Boycott and the Campaign for Fair Food. 

We have our video and photo reports from the march, immediately below, and will be bringing you a media round-up from the entire five-day Freedom Fast later this week.  So enjoy the reports now, and check back soon for all the news that was fit to print from an unforgettable week in the Big Apple!

2018 Time’s Up Wendy’s March from Coalition of Immokalee Workers on Vimeo.

And now, here’s your “Time’s Up Wendy’s March” photo report:

Day 5 of the Freedom Fast began as did the previous four (albeit with a banner looking a bit worse for the wear after a week spent in New York’s harsh, late winter elements).

The morning agenda opened with presentations by several of the participating ally organizations, including Tennessee’s Workers Dignity/Dignidad Obrera (pictured above), who shared the news that they had recovered over $100,000 in stolen wages for workers in and around Nashville last year alone.  Their animated crew would provide a particularly passionate node of energy and noise later on Day 5 at their appointed station along the march’s length.

Vermont’s Migrant Justice was there in force, as well.  Martha Herrera (above, speaking) of Migrant Justice participated in the entire five-day fast with an impressive, and contagious, equanimity and commitment.  She was joined on Day 5 by a large group of her colleagues, and they shared news of their astounding progress in expanding the principles of the Fair Food Program into Vermont’s iconic dairy industry through the Milk with Dignity Program.

And a new friend and colleague in the growing world of Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) joined the crowd on Day 5: Sara Ziff (above, right) of the Model Alliance, an organization founded in 2012 whose mission is “to promote fair treatment, equal opportunity, and more sustainable practices in the fashion industry, from the runway to the factory floor.”  Today, a good deal of their work is focused on the issue of sexual harassment and assault in the fashion industry, where young women, often relatively new immigrants themselves, are subjected to unconscionable abuses by those who hold the women’s pay, and their hopes for future success, in their hands.  Sara drove home the very real parallels between the sexual abuse that takes place in agriculture and the abuses that occur in the fashion industry, parallels that lie beneath the immediately obvious differences between the two jobs on the surface.  Sara also joined the march later on Day 5 with some of her colleagues from the Model Alliance, and we look forward to a continuing collaboration in the months ahead as they push for to end sexual abuse in the fashion industry through an enforceable, WSR-based code of conduct and monitoring program.

And speaking of Worker-driven Social Responsibility, around noon on Day 5, Gerardo Reyes of the CIW and Sean Sellers of the WSR-Network gave an extended workshop on the key elements, and the broader theory of change, behind the new paradigm for protecting workers’ fundamental human rights in corporate supply chains.  The sidewalk outside Trian Partners — now a standard bearer for the failed Corporate Social Responsibility model of standards-without-enforcement championed by Wendy’s in Mexico — seemed like an oddly appropriate location for such a workshop to take place; and the timing, only hours before the big march, helped focus the attention of those gathered in the middle of New York’s famously busy streets on the complex topic of human rights monitoring and enforcement.  It was a fascinating exercise, truth be told, to be able to carve out that kind of thoughtful, subtle dialogue in such a chaotic space…

The rest of Day 5 followed a familiar script, including visits by allies stopping by the site to share an encouraging word with the fasters.  Here above, the award-winning writer Rebecca Solnit (right) thanks the fasters for the power of their sacrifice and wishes them well for the evening’s march (it hardly needs to be said, but Rebecca is sister to the Michelangelo of the Campaign for Fair Food, artist/carpenter/puppet-maker extraordinaire, David Solnit).

And, of course, a day at the fast site wouldn’t be complete without a collective turn toward 280 Park Avenue with signs in hand and chants sent skyward with one voice to the top of the towering office building…

… for one last, small-scale, protest from the sidewalk outside the offices of Nelson Peltz’s hedge fund, Trian Partners.

And then, finally, it was time to bring out the big guns…

After five long days of fasting on the same city block in front of the same building on Park Avenue, the fasters were ready for a change, and the “Time’s Up Wendy’s March” was the perfect remedy!  The fasters traveled the five blocks from the fast site down the hill toward the river to gather with allies from around the country and across the city of New York at Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, just one block away from the famous United Nations headquarters.  Once there, speakers roused the crowd into a marching fervor (none better than the fasters’ own children, above, who spent the week in an unforgettable leadership development experience that would soon be capped off with a march for the ages), …

… delegations of marchers arrived from the four corners of the vast Fair Food Nation, …

… and human rights activist and writer Kerry Kennedy, president of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, joined the fasters, sharing her own unwavering commitment to justice and love for the Fair Food movement with the swelling crowd. 

And swell the crowd did, as more…

… and more marchers arrived at the rally site…

… until finally it was time for the fasters, their families, and their supporters to hit the streets and march back up the hill to 280 Park Avenue…

… only this time with nearly 2,000 friends in tow!  The massive crowd grew thanks, in part, to Make the Road, T’ruah, Canadian Labour Congress, SEIU NYC Local 32BJ, Fuerza del Valle from the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, Jewish Voice for Peace, Workmen’s Circle NYC, United Steel Workers, Workers’ Dignity, Democratic Socialists of America, the Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council (MACC), BAYAN USA, and NOW NYC, among many, many others.

With glorious puppets…

… beautifully painted signs…

… and even a brass band…

… the veteran marchers told the world exactly who it was they were addressing…

… and made their message loud and clear.

Finally, after one last turn onto Park Avenue, the march went head to head for attention with one of New York’s most storied streets…

… and won.  Cynical, seen-it-all-before New Yorkers — whether standing in the streets with their cellphones out filming the protest as the marchers filed by, or filling the windows of the skyscrapers and watching the march pass under their stunned gaze dozens of floors below — suddenly turned into tourists in their own town, blown away by the spectacle of a march equal parts deadly serious, wildly colorful, and infectiously cheerful.

As the lead truck pulled into the space before the 280 Park…

… and the crowd followed behind…

… it soon became clear that the barriers set out by the police to keep the crowd in would need to be moved, and just like that, the precinct captain judged the situation and quickly gave the order, the barriers were pulled back, and the crowd filled the space so that the full length of the march could fit in the block.

The roster of speakers included Ximena Pedroza, one of the lead fasters at New College in Sarasota, Florida, last year, who spoke of expanding the red-dot campaign on college campuses — where students are marking campus maps with red dots, each dot “representing an act of power-based personal violence” — to include the Wendy’s restaurants on and near college campuses and sharing the campaign online.

Students from across the Student/Farmworker Alliance — here representing U Mass, Florida Gulf Coast University, Brown University, and Yale — stood with Ximena as she delivered her powerful words…

… and their message to the fast-food giant couldn’t have been more plain: We… Won’t… Yield.

Lupe Gonzalo of the CIW, who spent the better part of a month in New York ahead of the fast organizing to ensure the massive turnout that indeed greeted the fasters on Day 5, spoke next, declaring, “Never again will we allow ourselves to be silenced as women… We will not permit our children’s lives to be limited by the greed of others, because our children deserve a better future!”

And finally, two of the CIW’s newest friends — New York Times bestselling-author Glennon Doyle (left) and her wife, US gold medal-winning soccer superstar Abby Wambach — stepped up on the truck to speak.  Glennon and Abby traveled to New York from Naples with their son for the march, and even though Abby was under the weather (for which she apologized after saluting the crowd and handing the mic off to Glennon, above), she powered through and finished the whole march in order to participate in the rally.

Glennon had some kind words for the marchers, and some not so kind for Wendy’s…

For the marchers she declared: “You are SO beautiful.  All of you!  Because it does not get any more beautiful than using your freedom to fight for those who are not yet free!

To Wendy’s she warned: “America is done, America is done with the abuse of women for profit, Mr. Peltz, which means that until you join the Fair Food Program, America is done with you!” 

And when Glennon was finished, this one smile spoke for all 2,000 faces. 

With the rally at 280 Park Avenue a wrap, the fasters had one more stop before they could break their fast.  The march wound its way back down the hill to the launch point at Dag Hammarskjöld Park, where they were greeted by a heart-melting performance by the singers of Harlem’s Impact Repertory Theater.  

Backstory: A delegation of the fasters had met the IRT performers on Day 2 of the fast at the gathering with the Parkland Students at the Park Ave Christian Church.  Blown away by their soulful renditions of civil rights freedom songs and the poise and power of the young people under the tutelage of Carlton Taylor, the fasters seized on the opportunity to invite them to perform for the rally… and were blown away again when they accepted!  This time, however, they didn’t perform the slower tempo songs from the church, but rather two rousing compositions of their own that lifted the marchers’ spirits to new heights once again and perfectly set the stage for a moving final bread-breaking ceremony.

The bread was brought to the stage…

The fasters stepped up to the stage, one by one, and took their piece, workers…

… and allies alike…

… then when each of the nearly 100 fasters had his or her piece… 

… they raised their bread in unison…

… and took their first bite of solid food in five long days, ending the Freedom Fast and launching the next chapter of the Wendy’s Boycott. 

The evening ended with the fasters’ first real meal in nearly a week, beautifully and lovingly laid out by the good people at New York’s historic Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Amsterdam Avenue. 

After a warm welcome by the Archbishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, the Rt. Rev. Andrew M. L. Dietsche, followed by that of the Dean of the Cathedral, the Rt. Rev. Clifton Daniel III, the fasters sat down and ate their first meal in community, their bodies weak from the days without food, but their hearts stronger than ever, fortified by their struggle together, by the presence of 2,000 allies who joined them in the march, by the support of hundreds of thousands of consumers from around the country who made their voices heard during the fast…

… and, for so many of the fasters, by the love and encouragement of their children, who stood by their parents throughout the week, picked them up when their spirits were low, and gave them the love and comfort they needed to take their historic stand and make the Freedom Fast a resounding success.