Following the lunch, the CIW shared the story of the Campaign for Fair Food and the connections between the struggles of farmworkers and small farmers with retreat participants and local community members.

While the Tour crew may have wished they could have stayed in the beautiful Maine countryside all afternoon, shortly after the presentation it was time to travel down to Portland to meet up with local allies there for a Trader Joe’s action!

People came out from several organizations in Portland to support the action, including groups from the Southern Maine Workers’ Center, Southern Maine Labor Council, and Food for Maine’s Future. Many thanks go out to Bob St. Peter (red hat above) of Food for Maine’s Future for organizing such a fantastic day!

Young and old did their part to get the message out…

… and when it was time to choose a delegation to talk to the manager, no one wanted to stay behind!

From Maine, the tour crew began making its way back south with a stop in Northampton, MA, where the supermarket may have changed — it was a Stop & Shop in Northampton, Trader Joe’s in Portland — but the Fair Food allies in Northampton shared the inclination of their Portland brethren to go en masse in the delegation to meet the manager.

But even before the Stop & Shop protest, the Tour crew joined a lively action outside a Verizon office as part of the 45,000-person strike against outsourcing and cutting of jobs and benefits at Verizon.

Then it was onto Stop & Shop where a strong contingent from Western Massachusetts Jobs with Justice joined us and helped fill the corners in front of the store…

… until it was time to meet the managers, two Stop & Shop representatives who listened as CIW members and Northampton residents explained how disappointed they were with Stop & Shop’s refusal to participate in the fair food program and that they will continue to support the CIW’s campaign until Stop & Shop does the right thing.