“Before, if you spoke out, you would be fired. Tomorrow, don’t come, there’s no work for you. But now that we are united, we have strength… We are building a road forward, and we will never go back.” – Farmworker on a Fair Food Program farm, June 2018
One year ago, we dedicated a single summer week to one purpose: Building a stronger foundation for the future of the Fair Food Program by inviting both longtime and brand-new Campaign for Fair Food supporters to become Fair Food Sustainers.
This week, we need you – and your loved ones, and your colleagues, and your friends – to stand with farmworkers once again, and bring in a new generation of Fair Food Sustainers.
In the twelve short months since our last Sustainer Drive, we have brought a new era of human rights to tens of thousands of workers, thanks to the hundreds of allies who made the decision to become monthly donors. Through the ever-expanding Fair Food Program, we have:
- Educated hundreds of thousands of farmworkers on the protections against sexual abuse, slavery, discrimination, and dangerous conditions they now have on Fair Food farms;
- Answered the phone when farmworkers called, day or night, and surpassed 2,200 resolved cases of unfair working conditions since the Fair Food Program’s inception in 2011;
- Traversed over 3,000 miles by bus this year alone for the Campaign for Fair Food, mobilizing thousands of consumers to take action in the national Wendy’s Boycott, and reached tens of millions of consumers with the Fair Food message;
- And visited, welcomed to Immokalee, and spent countless hours on the phone with workers hailing from the dairy industry, the construction industry, the poultry industry, the fashion industry, and the garment industry to strategize about bringing Worker-driven Social Responsibility to millions of more workers around the world.
One year later, we have reached new heights – but it is still not high enough. We need your help to grow the Fair Food Sustainer Program, to brighten the beacon that the Fair Food Program has become for workers everywhere.
This week is our second annual Sustainer Drive, and each day, we will be bringing you stories from the front lines of Fair Food: what our movement for justice and human rights has won so far, and – with your help – what the future holds.
We will hear from the Fair Food Program Education Team, with stories from the road as they travel north to educate farmworkers up and down the East Coast on Fair Food Program farms. We will hear from worker organizations from other industries, laboring tirelessly to build their own worker-driven programs to combat slavery, dangerous working conditions, and sexual harassment. And we will hear directly from you: the Fair Food Sustainers and allies who have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with farmworkers in building a new era of human rights, one step at a time, for over 25 years.
And of course, we will hear from farmworkers themselves, leading the way into the uncharted territory of a sustainable, permanent, unprecedented era of human rights for the women and men laboring in U.S. fields – and for workers struggling to bring much-needed change to abusive industries everywhere.