Release: “UM awards the Wallenberg Medal to those who, through their actions and personal commitment, perpetuate Wallenberg’s extraordinary accomplishments and human values, and demonstrate the capacity of the human spirit to stand up for the helpless, to defend the integrity of the powerless, and to speak out on behalf of the voiceless.”

“Notable medal recipients over the past 30 years include Archbishop Desmond Tutu… John Lewis [and] Elie Wiesel.”

For his lifelong dedication to the human rights of farmworkers, and his historic achievements in helping to liberate thousands of farmworkers from modern-day slavery, CIW co-founder Lucas Benitez will be awarded the University of Michigan’s Wallenberg Medal, an annual award given to human rights leaders from across the globe. 

Benitez, who came to the US as a farmworker at the age of 17, has been on the frontline of the fight for human rights since 1993, when he helped bring his fellow farmworkers together in the impoverished agricultural community of Immokalee, Florida, behind demands for a more modern, more humane agricultural industry.  Rallying to the call for “Dignity, Dialogue, and a Fair Wage,” farmworkers from Mexico, Guatemala, and Haiti overcame generations of fear and silence, as well as deep ethnic and linguistic divisions, to organize work stoppages, hunger strikes, and multi-day marches stretching hundreds of miles to press their demands.

Those early protests laid the groundwork for a new analysis of the roots of longstanding farmworker poverty and abuse, one that drew the connections between the consolidation of market power at the top of the food industry and the leveraging of that unprecedented purchasing power by retail food giants to drive prices — and therefore wages and working conditions — down at the farm level.  With Benitez’s leadership, that new analysis gave rise to the Campaign for Fair Food in 2001, leading farmworkers from Immokalee to break out of their isolation and make common cause with consumers from New York to California for a new kind of food — Fair Food, based on respect for fundamental human rights, not the exploitation of human beings — with a national campaign of consumer education and mobilization.  

After a decade of tireless organizing and a series of historic victories in the form of Fair Food agreements with some of the world’s largest food companies, the CIW launched the groundbreaking Fair Food Program in the Florida tomato industry in 2011, which he has helped expand across the US and internationally to Chile and South Africa in the 12 years since its inception. In the process, Benitez has inspired workers across the globe to take up the model pioneered in the Fair Food Program — the Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) model — and adapt it to their own industries.  Today the WSR model is active of five continents and is widely considered the new paradigm for human rights protection in global supply chains, with recognition and support from human rights experts and law enforcement agencies alike.

And he has done all this from a base built from the ground up in a forgotten crossroads town atop the Everglades, a community of immigrant farmworkers, one of the poorest, least powerful communities in the US.

We hope you join us in congratulating Lucas for this prestigious recognition. We are all truly humbled.

We also hope you consider donating to the CIW in recognition of this wonderful news.  The pioneering achievements of the CIW and its leaders would not have been possible without the financial support of our allies — even $10 can go a long way toward the myriad expenses of expanding the Presidential medal-winning Fair Food Program and running the national Campaign for Fair Food.  Click here to donate! 

And, finally, we hope you can take just a few more minutes to read the University of Michigan’s full release announcing Lucas Benitez as the 2023 recipient of the Wallenberg Medal below!

University of Michigan to Award Wallenberg Medal to Lucas Benitez on October 10, 2023

Benitez has been called “one of the most visible farmworker leaders in the US” by the “Los Angeles Times,” and his work reflects the ongoing need for frontline advocates for vulnerable people in our society.

Lucas Benitez, a co-founder of the Florida-based labor and human rights organization the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and a key organizational leader and member of the CIW’s Fair Food Program worker education team, will receive the 2023 Wallenberg Medal from the University of Michigan on October 10th at 7:30pm in Rackham Auditorium. In addition to being one of the earliest farmworker leaders in the Fair Food movement, Benitez played a critical role in the investigation of several trafficking and slave labor cases, helping to free over 700 farmworkers in one case alone.

For his work with the CIW, Benitez has been called “one of the most visible farmworker leaders in the US” by the Los Angeles Times. On behalf of the Fair Food Program, Lucas Benitez traveled to the White House to accept the 2015 Presidential Award for Extraordinary Efforts to Combat Trafficking in Persons. Also on behalf of the Fair Food Program, he accepted the 2014 Clinton Global Citizen Award and the 2016 James Beard Leadership Award. Benitez has won numerous national and international awards, including the Rolling Stone MagazineBrick Award for “America’s Best Young Community Leader,” the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Cardinal Bernardin New Leadership Award, and, along with two co-workers, the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award.

“Lucas Benitez’s work with the CIW reflects the ongoing need for frontline advocates for vulnerable people in our society. This movement harnesses the economic influence of consumers to improve working conditions, labor practices, and pay for farmworkers through its worker-led, market-enforced approach to the protection of human rights underlying corporate supply chains,” said Sioban Harlow, Professor Emerita of Epidemiology and Global Public Health and chair of the Wallenberg Medal Selection Committee.

The Wallenberg Medal and Lecture honors the legacy of Raoul Wallenberg who graduated from U-M’s College of Architecture in 1935 and saved the lives of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews near the end of World War II. In 1944, at the request of Jewish organizations and the American War Refugee Board, the Swedish Foreign Ministry sent Wallenberg on a rescue mission to Budapest. Over the course of six months, Wallenberg issued thousands of protective passports and placed many thousands of Jews in safe houses throughout the besieged city. He confronted Hungarian and German forces to secure the release of Jews, whom he claimed were under Swedish protection, and saved more than 80,000 lives. 

Administered by the University’s Donia Human Rights Center, U-M awards the Wallenberg Medal to those who, through their actions and personal commitment, perpetuate Wallenberg’s extraordinary accomplishments and human values, and demonstrate the capacity of the human spirit to stand up for the helpless, to defend the integrity of the powerless, and to speak out on behalf of the voiceless. Recent Wallenberg Medal recipients include Safa Al Ahmad, Saudi Arabian journalist and documentary filmmaker (2019); March For Our Lives of Parkland, Florida and The B.R.A.V.E. Youth Leaders of Chicago (2018); and Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative (2017). Notable medal recipients over the past 30 years include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Miep Gies, John Lewis, Masha Gessen, Elie Wiesel, Denis Mukwege, and His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet.

The Wallenberg Medal and Lecture ceremony is free and open to the public. Tickets are not required. Please direct any inquiries about the event and requests for event accessibility accommodations to wallenberglecture@umich.edu or 734-936-3973.