Declaring,”In the tradition of the abolitionist movement here in Great Britain, where consumers and workers joined to demand sugar free of the scourge of slavery and so helped bring an end to the slave trade, we are building an alliance of workers and consumers today in the United States to demand Fair Food and an end to slavery in its modern-day form,” Lucas Benitez (left) accepted the 2007 Anti-Slavery Award in London at a gala ceremony last night. CIW members were awarded the 2007 Anti-Slavery Award by Anti-Slavery International, the world’s oldest international human rights organization. You can see the photos and a report from the ceremony by clicking here.

Meanwhile, as families across the US prepared Thanksgiving tables overflowing with the abundance of our country’s fields, families in several major cities across Florida read the following words in the op/ed section of their morning paper, from a piece entitled, “Show thanks by giving farmworkers a raise,” (Sun-Sentinel) by Emily Eisenhauer from the Research Institute on Social and Economic Policy at Florida International University:

“The pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving with food they raised and food contributed by the Wampanoag Indians. Our founding story is a recognition that our fates are fundamentally interrelated through our food. The food that comes to our table passes through many hands, and while technology is bringing us ever more choices and abundance, the one constant is that those good fruits and vegetables we eat have always been harvested primarily by human hands. Those hands will be at our table this Thanksgiving, their fingerprints on our corn, squash and beans.

But many of those hands are from different lands, and their work is not valued as much as others. The hands of a farm worker in Florida must pick two tons of tomatoes in a day to earn $50. At a rate of about 1.3 cents per pound, farm workers fill 32-pound buckets, run to the truck, hoist the buckets above their shoulders into the truck, and receive a token worth about 45 cents. To make the minimum wage, they must do that 15 times per hour, or one bucket every four minutes.” Read the full op/ed here

At a time when fast-food leaders and Florida growers are joining forces to turn back the clock on human rights advances in Florida’s fields — and do so claiming, incredibly, that conditions in the fields are better than most jobs in the state — these two Thanksgiving stories remind us of the harsh reality faced by the workers who feed us all.