Washington, DC
March 13, 2008
Lucas Benitez:
200 years ago, society began a long process of confronting an idea – a brutal reality – that had existed virtually unchallenged for centuries: Slavery.
Slave revolts and revolutions in the colonies left no doubt that slavery’s days were numbered, and a movement for abolition that took root in England helped hasten its end.
Through petition campaigns and consumer boycotts, British abolitionists refused to participate in the slave-based economy and spearheaded a campaign to open the British people’s eyes to the savage inhumanity of slavery. Their efforts ended England’s role in the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and helped pave the way for the eventual abolition of slavery in this country.
Today, 200 years later, we stand on the threshold of a new leap forward in consumer awareness and justice for those who work in this country’s fields. We’ve reached ground-breaking agreements with the two largest restaurant companies in the world, bringing improvements in wages and working conditions to the workers in the agricultural industry, and the possibility of even greater change. However, Burger King, and its allies in the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, stand in our path and threaten to reverse the important progress we have made.
In the face of that resistance, we are building a new alliance — workers and consumers — that is opening the eyes of consumers across the country to the continuing brutality and unimaginable hardships – including, incredibly, modern-day slavery — suffered by the men and women who harvest this country’s food.
And together, workers and consumers (people of faith, students, politicians organized labor, communities and individuals all wanting to participate in a society free from slavery), we are stronger than Burger King and a handful of backward growers and their lobbyists.
Together, we can bring a close to the shameful era when, amidst a sea of wealth and plenty, farmworkers have lived, decade after decade, on a tiny island of poverty and degradation.
Together, we can ensure a future free of slavery and abuse for the country’s farmworkers, and build a food industry that no longer relies on the endless and inhumane exploitation of its hardest workers.
Mathieu Beaucicot:
My country, Haiti, showed the world 204 years ago that slavery was dead.
At a time when the so-called “civilized world” still questioned the very humanity of millions of human beings, my ancestors proved that we would fight and we would die for our liberty.
And we defeated the greatest army in the world, the army of Napoleon.
Today, we as Haitian farmworkers in Immokalee have joined forces with our brothers and sisters in the fields to fight a new slavery.
And just as no one believed we would win 200 years ago, we will win today against all expectations and against forces infinitely more powerful than we are.
How? In an alliance of conscience with consumers.
Why? Because the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice, and all oppression must one day be uprooted so that liberty can grow and flower in its place.
With this petition we will hasten that day, and we, as workers of Immokalee, thank you all who are here with us today for helping us lead that fight.