Ohio State, UNC – Chapel Hill, University of Michigan, University of Florida students fight to remove Wendy’s from their campuses until the company respects farmworkers’ rights;

Students to UNC Chancellor Carol Folt: “The bottom line is that doing business with Wendy’s — and promoting its brand on campus — associates UNC with a company that has chosen to turn its back on the world’s leading program to end human rights abuses in agriculture.”

Last week, we shared the first roundup of creative actions that took place in over a dozen cities as part of the Student/Farmworker Alliance’s “Pulling Back the Curtain on Wendy’s” National Week of Action – including at Boot the Braids campus, University of Florida – capturing the SFA network’s call for transparency and verifiable protections for farmworkers in the company’s supply chain.  In this second installment, we’re highlighting the creative and determined efforts of SFA leaders at the Ohio State University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Michigan organizing to break their school’s resistance to cut ties with Wendy’s.

At each campus, the students’ rallying cry rang loud and clear: We’re fed up with university leaders sidestepping our concerns over Wendy’s egregious human rights record while cozying up with the fast-food chain behind closed doors!

Here are the first-hand reports from the front lines of the swiftly growing national “Boot the Braids” campaign, straight from the Student/Farmworker Alliance:

Lights, camera, Boycott Wendy’s! Support grows at UNC to remove Wendy’s from campus…

After an energizing weekend at the SFA Encuentro in Immokalee this past September, we’ve been going hard at UNC-Chapel Hill to build our chapter of the Student/Farmworker Alliance and rally support to remove Wendy’s from campus until it commits to the Fair Food Program. After weeks of planning, we had the honor of welcoming Lupe Gonzalo of the CIW to campus on Oct. 15 for a two-week speaking tour in over a dozen classrooms, culminating with a march to Wendy’s.

After a jam-packed week of meetings and presentations to educate the Tar Heels community on the movement for Fair Food – including gathering over 500 petition signatures to kick Wendy’s off campus and handing out over 1,000 flyers for our Oct. 25 protest –  it was time to take action!

Inspired by the National Week of Action’s theme, we decided to “pull back the curtain” on UNC Chancellor Carol Folt’s own complicity in farmworker exploitation — quite literally — by staging a surprise theater performance. The skit, which generated many boos and laughs throughout, exposed UNC’s chummy relationship with Wendy’s and the corporation’s desperate attempts to hide from its responsibility to protect farmworkers’ human rights...

Head over to the Student/Farmworker Alliance website to get the full story!