TODAY'S NEWS
The first decade of the Fair Food Program has been a steady climb of progress punctuated by spectacular moments of victory, and a growing recognition of the effectiveness of the new worker-driven movement for human rights.
In just ten years, the Fair Food Program has grown to include fourteen major buyers, covering tens of thousands of workers harvesting multiple crops on dozens of farms across eight states. Over that same decade, as the FFP itself expanded, the Program's success inspired workers in many more industries -- and even on two different continents -- to adapt its unique model to their own workplaces, from dairy and construction workers here in the US to apparel workers in Bangladesh and Lesotho. Most recently, the FFP launched the new Fair Food Sponsor Program to engage coops and independent grocers, small restaurants, and chefs as official partners. Along the way, the Program has been recognized with prestigious human rights awards and studies in multiple academic analyses.
Of course, the origin story of the Fair Food Program is one of worker struggle and sacrifice. Two decades of marches, hunger strikes, rallies, vigils, petitions, sermons, and teach-ins led by workers and allies laid the moral foundation for what would be called “one of the most important social impact stories of the past century.” Yet, despite the growing mountain of evidence proving that only Worker-driven Social Responsibility has the essential ingredients necessary to actually enforce fundamental human rights in global supply chains, there are still many large retailers and chains that haven’t come to the table.
Your donation today helps us gather the power and resources we need to continue marching forward into the next decade. With only 2 days left in 2021, can you make a gift before our end-of-year deadline?
In 2012 -- the same year that Chipotle and Trader Joe's signed Fair Food agreements -- 100 workers from Immokalee and their allies fasted for a week in front of Publix headquarters in Lakeland calling on Florida's largest grocery chain to join the FFP. The next year started with a 15-day, 200-mile march and ended with the FFP's receipt of the prestigious Freedom From Want medal by the Roosevelt Institute. A Presidential Medal from the Obama White House, dozens of articles and academic reports documenting the impact of the Fair Food Program, and even an award-winning documentary sharing the FFP's unique story with millions of viewers across the globe were to follow over the coming years, but Publix and Wendy's refusal to join the FFP meant -- and still means to this day -- that workers in their supply chains are denied access to the Program's best-in-class human rights protections.
Even with ten years of unprecedented, documented success behind us, hundreds of thousands of farmworkers in this country continue to face abuses ranging from sexual assault to modern-day slavery in fields that remain beyond the reach of the Fair Food Program. That outrageous reality cannot be allowed to stand.
And so the struggle to expand the FFP continues into the next decade, and we need your help to break down the walls of resistance.
The clock is ticking! With your help, we can give farmworkers and their families a gift that changes everything: a voice and the power to win dignity and safety in the workplace. Can we count on you to make a contribution before the year ends?
TOP STORIES
FEATURED VIDEOS
RECENT NEWS
Longtime CIW ally Travis McConnell has generously offered to match the last $10,000 in donations in our end of year drive… If you make a contribution TODAY, your donation — and impact — will be doubled! The novel coronavirus has taught its hosts many tough lessons in the course of its short, but brutal, time on the planet, but perhaps none more important than this: If we are to be safe and to thrive, during the remainder of this pandemic and into the future, we must not only deem the women and men who keep the global economy running “essential” […]
Because the CIW was launched in Immokalee nearly 30 years ago, we’ve seen the Fair Food family grow as new generations join us and bring their own children into the movement. Young people who first learned about farmworker exploitation through the Student/Farmworker Alliance on their college campus two decades ago are now parents themselves, pushing art-adorned strollers in multi-mile marches. Faith allies who have devoted their energy to calling attention to harm and injustice are shepherding new generations of activists to Immokalee year after year. CIW members and staff are seeing our babies grow up in rally pictures, taking stock […]
It’s no secret that rooting out systemic abuse and safeguarding human rights in agriculture will take enormous effort. From makeshift tents outside of fast food chain headquarters to the hallowed halls of the White House, we’ve shared not only our struggles but also our vision for the future. The farmworkers at the frontlines of the fight for Fair Food have invested days, months, and years of their lives fighting for recognition of their humanity, and have never lost sight of that end goal. Fortunately, farmworkers are not alone. Through fasting and teach-ins, through art and articles, through sermons and petitions, […]
Lupe Gonzalo: “For years, those with greater economic and political power have taken on a great debt from Nature. The moment has arrived to pay the price, but the least powerful and poorest in society are those that are having to pay… For vulnerable communities like ours, we have to find solutions together to protect ourselves against the effects of climate change. Poverty and powerlessness have put us at risk for too many decades and, here in Immokalee, we are changing that story.” Cruz Salucio: “The harsh reality is temperatures are rising and workers feel that and know it is […]
Video of recent police shooting in Phoenix, AZ, provides timely, real-world demonstration of the actions and decisions Collier County Sheriff’s Office deputies could have made to avoid unnecessarily taking the life of the devoted, single father of a 12-yr old boy in Immokalee’s farmworker village last year… Video comes in wake of dismal Citizens Review Panel (CRP) meeting in Naples where panel abdicated oversight role, rubber stamped exoneration of officers involved in last year’s brutal killing of Nicolas Morales (more to come on that front soon…) Earlier this year, we shared the news of a California District Attorney who charged a police […]
From disasters like hurricanes and police violence, to the generations-old injustices of poverty and discrimination, the Immokalee farmworker community has faced countless challenges over the past thirty years. So when the COVID-19 pandemic came out of nowhere two years ago to pose an existential threat to farmworkers — and the state of Florida made it painfully clear that we would be facing the pandemic largely on our own — we did what we have always done: come together and leverage whatever we could to survive. We drew on years of organizing logistics experience and went to work procuring and distributing […]
Some of the most challenging calls we get on the Fair Food Program hotline come from farmworkers on non-FFP farms. While Program staff always do their best to assist in those cases, the frustrating truth is that we only have the power to fix human rights violations on farms covered by the FFP’s binding legal agreements with Participating Buyers. It’s the brands’ buying power harnessed in those agreements that provides the teeth behind the FFP’s standards — and protects workers who register complaints from retaliation in the process. Without that power, the road to change is far longer, and a lot […]
CIW 0p-ed in the Naples Daily News: “We as a community can— and must — recognize the injustice of Nicolas Morales’s death and honor his life by implementing the long-overdue reforms necessary to ensure that no son or daughter of Collier County suffers that same incalculable loss [as Nicolas Jr.] ever again.” CIW, allies call on Citizens Review Panel to step up as “the voice — and the conscience — of the community” at upcoming December 1st meeting On Sunday, the CIW published an 0p-ed in the Naples Daily News in our continuing efforts to secure justice for Nicolas Morales, an […]
You can support the human rights of the farmworkers who harvested your Thanksgiving meal. Make a one-time donation for Giving Tuesday here. Every year, we mark the holiday season by celebrating “Giving Tuesday,” a day to put our gratitude to work by supporting the causes and communities we most care about. The food at our tables this season comes with a story. For many farmworkers around the country, that story is fraught with perilous working conditions – forced labor, sexual assault, wage theft, and exposure to dangerous health and safety risks are disturbingly common in the industry. But for […]
U.S. Department of Justice indicts the “Patricio Transnational Criminal Organization (TCO)” on felony charges of “international forced labor trafficking,” money laundering; 54-count indictment paints picture of operation’s staggering scale: 24 arrests, 71,000 farmworkers over multiple years, more than $200 million in profits; Quotes from indictment: Patricio TCO “unlawfully charged Victims 52 and 53 fees that they could not afford, confiscated their identification documents to prevent them from leaving, forced them to work in fields digging up onions with their bare hands, only paid them twenty cents for every bucket they filled with onions, and threatened them with a gun to […]