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IMMIGRANT WORKERS FREEDOM
RIDE STOPS IN IMMOKALEE!...
On
Saturday, September 27, over 400 farmworkers, students,
local churches, and peace activists from Immokalee,
Ft. Myers, and Naples and the Immigrant Workers Freedom
Riders from Miami joined together in a spirited march
and rally for immigrants' rights.
Despite the on-again
off again downpour (and a visit from the Southwest Florida
chapter of the KKK!...), the CIW and friends enjoyed
the music of JG and Havikenhayes of Over the Counter
Intelligence and speeches by members of the comunity
and the freedom riders. Saturday's activities wrapped
up with a recording of the inspirational words of Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr, "Keep
this movement rolling, keep this movement going. If
you can't fly, run. If you can't run, walk. If you can't
walk, crawl. But by all means keep moving."
"Everyone has the right to work, to free choice
of employment, to just and favourable conditions of
work and to protection against unemployment... Everyone
who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration
ensuring for himself and his family an existence
worthy of human dignity...  Everyone
has the right to form and to join trade unions for the
protection of his interests..." Article
23, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
"No one shall
be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave
trade shall be prohibited in all their forms."
Article 3, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
On June 12, 2003
the CIW joined Food First, small farmers
and other low-wage workers to tell Congress that free
trade does not protect our human rights.
Clips from the
webcast are posted at www.foodfirst.org.
The CIW's testimony will be posted soon.
Members
of Congress' Progressive Caucus including Dennis Kucunich,
D-OH, John Conyers, D-MI, and Lynne Woolsey were in
attendance to hear testimony about how:
* Free trade has eliminated 3
million U.S. jobs.
* Seventy-one percent of U.S. industrial employers threaten
to close factories and move if workers form a union.
*U.S. family farmers face extinction.
*Displaced family farmers from Mexico and Central America
migrate to the United States only to find themselves
in sweatshop conditions and in the most extreme cases
slavery.
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 WHAT
EXACTLY IS GOING ON IN THIS PHOTO FROM YUM's ANNUAL
SHAREHOLDERS MEETING?... Here's
a hint: Check out the excerpt from the CIW's press release
for the action, below:
Lucas Benitez of the CIW says, “We have investigated
(slavery) cases where people have been pistol-whipped,
held at gunpoint, beaten, and told they would have their
tongues cut out if they talked to the authorities. Of
course, that’s the extreme of exploitation in
the fields, but sweatshop conditions -- sub-poverty
wages, no right to organize, no right to overtime pay,
no health insurance, no benefits at all -- are our everyday
reality. And yet Taco Bell treats us as if we had nothing
whatsoever to do with their industry. We have asked
Taco Bell if they can guarantee to their customers that
the tomatoes in their tacos were not picked by slave
labor, and they have responded with silence.”
“Taco Bell has a policy that it will not buy food
from contractors that mistreat animals,” continued
Benitez. “All we are asking is that they have
the same policy for humans...”
That's
right -- It's the CIW protest at YUM Brands annual shareholder
meeting in Louiville, KY, where workers and allies were
calling on Taco Bell's parent company to recognize its
responsibility for human rights in its supply chain,
as it has in regards to animal rights!
Click
here to see all the CIW photos and a report from the
action
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 IT
WAS LABOR DAY IN MIAMI... which could only
mean it's time for a Taco Bell protest (photo, R)!
In an exciting -- and extremely creative -- Mayday rally
in Miami, dozens of people turned out for a rush-hour
action at a downtown Taco Bell in support of the boycott.
Click
here to see a gallery of shots from the protest.
ALSO... "Worker exposes reality of labor exploitation"
Middle Tennessee State University Online News.
"As part of their ongoing action against
Taco Bell, Solidarity hosted a presentation on slavery
and inhumanity in corporate farming yesterday, featuring
a migrant farm worker from Immokalee, Fla..." Click
here to read more of this great article
ALSO...
Report from Tucson Boycott committee:
"More than
40 protesters joined together for the Tucson action
for Farmworker Awareness Week on April 4, 2003.
Members of Derechos Humanos, various MEChA chapters,
Jobs with Justice, Tucson Veterans for Peace, Women
in Black, and various student, union, and activist participants
showed up for free tacos and horchata..." Read
more about the action in this article from the University
of Arizona's "Daily Wildcat" by clicking here!
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 Over
3,000 people crowded into the street
in front of the 14th & U Taco Bell in Washington
on Sunday, April 13, 2003 (the crowd bends left around
the corner at the upper right of the picture...). The
first stop in the Latin American Soldarity Coalition
"March of Shame" through downtown DC rocked
in protest over the sweatshop conditions in Florida's
fields, aided by another powerful perfomance of the
boycott anthem "Hunger Days" by JG & HavikenHayes
of Over the Counter Intelligence.
A contingent of 34 CIW
members who made the trek from Florida to lead the Taco
Bell stop on the march took up their position in front
of the restaurant, with a mountain of press recording
the action.
Click here for more photos from
an unforgettable weekend!
And click
here to download "Hunger Days"
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Banners
are dropping all over Grand Valley State University
(Michigan)!
A lesson before dining?
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Students at Grand Valley State University in
Michigan organized four separate banner drops
last week, just warming up for the labor solidarity
actions this week (3/31-4/4) that are taking
place on campuses across the country.
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The GVSU students say they'll be tabling and
organizing a Taco Bell action this week...
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... as well as meeting with administration officials
to discuss just how GVSU can justify doing business
with Taco Bell while Taco Bell insists on turning
a blind eye to human rights abuses in its suppliers'
operations. With energy and commitment like
what we see in these photos, there's little
doubt about the answer to the question posed
in this banner!
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"A MODERN UNDERGROUND RAILROAD..."
That's how the
Sunday, Dec. 1, 2002, edition of the St.
Petersburg Times characterized
CIW anti-slavery efforts in a great, front-page story
by Candace Rondeaux. You can find that story (and some
beautiful photos, like the one outside CIW headquarters
on the right) by clicking
here.
Also in Sunday's edition, opinion
columnist Bill Maxwell penned a powerful challenge to
Florida's Governor Bush and consumers in general to
use their influence to finally end peonage in Florida's
fields. He writes: "If
the governor and other state officials did their job,
many citrus and tomato moguls would be jailed and fined
for perpetuating a system that lets subcontrators abuse
workers." See the rest
of the Bill Maxwell column here.
And click
here to read our own CIW rant on the sixth
case of slavery in South Florida in the past five years.
An excerpt: "Only
by making those who profit most from farmworkers'
exploited labor pay the true cost of harvesting this
country's crops will we be able, once and for all, to
close the book on America's 'Harvest of Shame'...."
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 CIW
CHRISTMAS PARTY LIGHTS UP IMMOKALEE!... Over
1,500 people attended the CIW's pre-Christmas party,
enjoying music, games, and some serious business, as
CIW members continued to sign cards to be delivered
to Taco Bell's headquarters by the workers who will
be fasting in Irvine this coming February. Already over
2,000 cards have been signed!
Click
here for more photos and a report from a great party!
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 LANDMARK
VICTORY AGAINST HUGE MODERN-DAY SLAVERY OPERATION
IN LAKE PLACID, FLORIDA!... After a two-year
investigation by the CIW -- in collaboration with
the Civil Rights Division of the US Department of
Justice -- the leaders of a violent and coercive slavery
operation employing up to 600 farmworkers were found
guilty in federal court of
charges including: conspiracy to hold workers
in involuntary servitude, extortion, and use of a
firearm during a violent crime.
The three Central Florida
citrus employers not only held orange pickers in slavery,
but also pistol-whipped and held at gunpoint
drivers for a van service who were attempting
to give farmworkers rides out of town.
The men were sentenced in November,
2002, to a total of 34 years in jail and ordered to
forfeit $3 million in assets obtained illegally through
their operation. News
of the verdict went out on the AP wire. See
one of the articles, "Conviction
may help working conditions," by
clicking here.
The Lake Placid conviction
was the sixth slavery operation in
South Florida to be brought to justice in the past
six years. For more history and analysis of the ongoing
problem of modern day slavery in Florida's fields,
click on the links below:
St. Petersburg Times Op/Ed:
" If the governor and other state officials
did their job, many citrus and tomato moguls would
be jailed and fined for perpetuating a system that
lets subcontractors abuse workers." See
the rest
of the Bill Maxwell column here.
BBC World News radio
report on Slavery (8
minutes on CIW anti-slavery campaign, starting at
the 15:12 mark): "Trafficking
for Labour" (programme
three)
,
"the world's oldest human rights organization,"
is a partner with the CIW in an international effort
to bring modern-day slavery operations to justice
and to bring public attention to the continued existence
of debt-bondage. They have launched an impressive
"e-card"
campaign focusing
on four recent cases of modern-day slavery from Holland,
Kuwait, Italy, and... one from right here in Immokalee,
Florida. 
Visit their website at stophumantraffic.org,
or click
here to see "Ricardo's" story of forced
labor in the tomato fields of Southwest Florida.
While you're there, please feel free to send one of
their e-cards to a friend or family member to help
spread word of this important campaign. All you have
to do is click on "send an e-card" in the
box in the upper right corner of Ricardo's story,
and the rest is easy!
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 Check
out all the action -- with daily reports, including
photos, news, media links, and some GREAT videos --
from this wildly successful tour. Travel with CIW members
as they lead protests and teach-ins from Washington,
DC, to Amherst, MA. Highlights include the "Breaking
the Media Blackout" conference in Philly, a joint
presentation with Eric Schlosser (author, "Fast
Food Nation") at U Penn, exciting actions in Washington,
Philly, Boston and New York, and visits to some of this
country's most important historical landmarks. Don't
miss this great report!
Click here
to go to the Northeast Mini-Tour Daily Updates page!
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 "FAIR
FOOD SUMMIT" A SUCCESS!... Students and
young people from across the country - and even two
from Canada - joined CIW members for a Thanksgiving,
2002, weekend of "Harvesting Justice in Immokalee".
The agenda included: working in the fields, meeting
on campaign strategy, learning about CIW history, and,
of  course,
squeezing in a lively local Taco Bell protest!
The summit was a great experience
for workers and student
allies,
who have been taking the boycott to Taco
Bell in their communities, especially
through the recent
victories in the "Boot the Bell"
campaign,
removing Taco Bells from college campuses. victories).
Click
here for more photos from the summit.
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  CIW
LAUNCHES SIGNATURE CAMPAIGN IN IMMOKALE!...
At a meeting before taking a new signature card campaign
to the streets (left), CIW members see that nothing
is impossible when we all work together.
Later, members went
into the labor camps, churches, and streets of Immokalee
to collect signatures on a card telling Taco Bell CEO
Emil Brolick that, "Our poverty is the basis of
your company's wealth, and we are saying 'Enough is
enough'!" The card calls on Taco Bell to bring
about three-part talks between growers, the CIW, and
Taco Bell, as well as to help bring about an immediate
raise by paying more for Florida tomatoes. Already,
over 1,400 cards have been signed!
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 BOYCOTTERS
TAKE GAME 5 OF WORLD SERIES!... Protesters
1, Taco Bell 0 -- If
you watch baseball, you probably saw the Taco Bell target
floating in the cove where homerun balls splash down
outside the San Fancisco Giants' stadium. Seems our
favorite fast-food giant was trying to snag some free
national TV airtime off the World Series (as if they
didn't have $220 million to spend on airtime already...).
Well, you probably ALSO saw a little surprise visit
by San Francisco boycotters during the Fox broadcast
of Game Five, getting our own message out to 11 million
viewers about how Taco Bell makes its money (the banner
in the left upper corner reads: "Taco Bell Exploits
Farmworkers - www.ciw-online.org")! Kudos to the
SF boycott committee for taking on Taco Bell's little
floaty free-advertising ploy.
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 REPORTS
CONTINUE TO COME IN FROM FOUR DAYS OF ACTION, HALLOWEEN,
2002...
Reports have made their way in from
Gainesville (FL), Portland, Tampa, Chicago, Norman (OK),
Madison (WI), Austin, College Park
(MD), Ft. Myers (FL),
and more. Keep sending in photos and reports, and we'll
post 'em!
Click
here for more photos from the Halloween night action
in Ft. Myers (LEFT)
Click
here for a great DC Indymedia story on the University
of Maryland action
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Nov. 26,
2002: The CIW
joined the Kensington Welfare Rights Union,
the Tampa Bay Action Group, and many
other organizations fom across the  country
on the "New Freedom Bus Tour"
for their St. Petersburg stop, where we combined a classic
Taco Bell protest with a march through downtown St.
Pete.
The bus tour and the march are a
call for respect of our basic social and economic rights
as defined in the United Nations Declaration on Human
Rights, including the right to a living wage,
the right to decent housing, and the
right to organize on the job. You can
learn more about the tour (including daily updates on
their travels) and about the UN Declaration on Human
Rights at the KWRU web site by clicking here.
Click here
for more photos from the St. Petersburg action.
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TACO PROTESTS KEEP
POPPING UP ALL OVER!.. Protests
like this one here (below) from the first week of August
in Portland, Oregon, have continued  non-stop
over the summer. From Florida to California, allies
across the country have kept the heat on Taco Bell all
summer long! Click
here for a quick review of some of the summer's highlights.
P.S... You
don't necessarily have to protest to make your voice
heard. This summer, 842 campers
at Justice and Peace camps across the country
sent postcards to Taco Bell in support of the strike
-- and took more cards home to share with their family
and friends! That is some powerful support. As one 14-year
old camper wrote in a personal note to Taco Bell CEO
Emil Brolick: "I, personally,
won't return to Taco Bell until something has been done
to benefit the Immokalee Workers. Oh big deal, right?
One teenage girl from Ohio stops eating at Taco Bell,
what does that mean to you? It should mean
a lot, because this 'one teenage girl' has many teenage
friends, and a numerable amount of them refuse to eat
at Taco Bell." My goodness... no matter
how cold your little CEO heart, that's got to hurt.
In the battle between corporations and the rest of us,
that's one camper we're happy to have on our side!
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FACE
OFF BETWEEN CIW AND YUM BRANDS AT ANNUAL SHAREHOLDERS
MEETING: Click
here
for photos and report on the battle for fair food between
the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and Tricon Global.
CIW
Message to Shareholders: "Farm
Worker Poverty = Fast Food Profits. You Can Change This
Equation. Fair Food Now!"
Press coverage of the Kentucky action was
good. Click
here to read a great article in the Louisville Courier-Journal.
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  "ENTERTAINMENT
NEWS"... CIW STYLE!...
CIW members have been
making the celebrity circuit this summer, 2002, in the
never-ending effort to spread the word of the Taco Bell
boycott and the struggle for fair labor conditions in
Florida's fields. CIW members met with actor Danny Glover
in Miami (left) at a labor rights forum that brought
union and community groups together from across South
Florida, while the CIW delegation's table (right) at
the OzzFest stop in West Palm Beach drew a steady crowd
of concert-goers looking for some social justice with
their heavy metal.
The CIW was invited to
table the concert by OzzFest headliner System of a Down,
an LA-based band that, like Rage Against the Machine,
isn't afraid to mix politics and music.
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 CIW,
a dozen Florida-based organizations hold press conference
in Miami to announce opposition to Ashcroft initiative
to link police, INS...
On
Wednesday, 4/24/02, the CIW traveled to Miami to join
nearly a dozen other organizations -- including Florida
ACLU, SEIU, the Miami Workers Center, and the Florida
Immigrant Advocacy Center -- to denounce the Attorney
General's proposal to convert state and local police
into immigration agents. The press conference hammered
home the clear message that the state of Florida is
uniting -- immigrants and citizens alike -- in opposition
to this potentially disastrous policy change.
To see the Miami
Herald article from the press conference, click
here.
To see the Nuevo Herald article, (Spanish), click
here.
* Click on this link
to see photos from the press conference and read
the statement signed by the CIW and more than 100 other
organizations across the country opposing the initiative
(with up-to-date list of signatories).
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 CIW''S
LADY LIBERTY HEADS TO SMITHSONIAN IN WASHINGTON, DC...
to be part of the permanent collection at Smithsonian's
National Museum of American History!...
"'It's wonderful and it's
evocative. It's a democratic movement for a political
voice and it's great because it reminds us of some of
the core values we think of as Americans and the freedom
to participate,' said Barbara Clark Smith, museum curator
of social history." - Naples Daily News, 3/28/02
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Click on the following link
for the whole story: "Smithsonian
to collect farmworkers' version of Statue of Liberty"
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THREE DAYS OF ACTION -- A Roaring Success!
"Fire-eaters, and
stilt-walkers, and giant Liberty puppets.. Oh my!"
This was the
scene (above) at 2:00 am Sunday (12/2), outside of the
Taco Bell on University Ave. in Gainesville, FL,
where farmworkers from the CIW joined Univ. of FL students
and local residents at an incredibly spirited, carnival-like
protest wrapping up Gainesville's Three Days of Action.
Click here
to see photos and reports from cities around the country
from the Three Days of Action, including the CIW
members' own "24 Hours of Taco Bell Protests".
All in all, over 40 communities and campuses across
the country -- including
Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta, Boston,
Jacksonville, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Tampa, Knoxville,
Austin, Boulder (CO), Northampton (MA), Milwaukee,
Tallahassee, Norman (OK), and more -- joined
farmworkers from the CIW in protests to hold Taco
Bell accountable for the sweatshop conditions in the
fields where their tomatoes are grown and picked
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 The
Taco Bell "Mini-Tour", a joint venture
of the CIW and the Student/Farmworker Alliance, was
a huge success, as CIW and SFA members crossed the country
in just under three weeks, meeting with boycott committee
leaders and the general public in cities along the route
of the postponed Taco Bell Truth Tour.
The "mini-tourists", shown here visiting
the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, TN (the place of the
fatal shooting of Dr. Martin Luther King and today the
site of the National Civil Rights Museum) kept a photo
diary of their experience, which you should not miss!
Click
here to see their day-by-day dispatches.
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 More
than 1,000 protesters call on Collier County Sheriff
Don Hunter... to explain why he is asking state
and federal officials for the authority to enforce federal
immigration laws.
The CIW strongly protested the Sheriff's initiative,explaining
that combining police and immigration enforcement would
discourage immigrant crime victims from seeking police
assistance and thereby effectively eliminate police
protection in the immigrant community. CIW members also
argued that such a change in police authority would
result in a certain increase in racial profiling.
Click here for the full story.
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If you liked the photos from the CIW New Years party,
wait 'til you see these pictures from the CIW's annual
"Year
of the Worker" block party:
Fernando Arau, sporting
an attractive Boycott t-shirt and CIW cap,
entertains the crowd (Sunday, Jan. 20, 2002)
And
click here for photos from the CIW New Year's party
in Immokalee (12/30/01)!
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 Taco
Bell has been getting some pretty interesting letters
of late... More and more, people of good faith
are weighing in and letting Taco Bell know that they
think it is time for the fast food giant to recognize
the importance of the farmworkers' contribution to their
business success.
We have a few of the latest letters here on the site,
including letters from Cardinal Roger Mahoney of
the Los Angeles, Bishop Jaime Soto of Orange
County, and one from the the CIW itself, delivered
by the Irvine Boycott Committee on September 24th, the
day that the Truth Tour would have culminated with a
large scale protest outside of Taco Bell headquarters.
Stay tuned to the letters section, because there are
many more to come -- including one very important letter
from some concerned investors that will usher in a new
front in the boycott campaign.
Click
here to see recent letters.
 CIW
joins thousands at School of the Americas Protest...
Check out the photos from this year's SOA
protest, where CIW members added their voice to the
call for a US foreign policy based on respect of human
rights. Click
here to go to the photo page.
As CIW member Max Perez said to the crowd following
the annual procession to the Ft. Benning gates, "Our
members are immigrant workers from Mexico, Guatemala,
and Haiti, countries where millions of people have been
forced to escape political oppression at the hands of
graduates of the SOA, only to find economic oppression
in this country. We must fight oppression wherever it
is, from the streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to the
fields of Immokalee, Florida."
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Taco
Bell supplier 6L's is the subject of a court
order requiring the company to respect its workers'
right to receive visitors while living in company-owned
housing. Click
here to see the emergency temporary
injunction
granted on May 16, 2002 by a Florida judge.
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