Another NOT so grand opening for Publix…


Protests hit Publix grand openings in St. Pete, Ocala!

Plus… Campaign for Fair Food named to “Terrific Ten” in honor of National Food Day; CIW watermelon crew weighs in on anti-immigrant hysteria in Georgia…

Yesterday, October 16th, marked World Food Day, a “worldwide event designed to increase awareness, understanding and informed, year-around action to alleviate hunger,” according to the World Food Day website.

It also marked the start of the Supermarket Week of Action in the Campaign for Fair Food, a week of protests at grocery stores around the country demanding that the supermarket industry join the fast-food and foodservice industries in supporting the Fair Food Program. The week’s big action will take place this Friday at Trader Joe’s corporate headquarters in Monrovia, CA.

But Fair Food Committee members in Gainesville and Tampa couldn’t resist the lure of a Publix grand opening, and so they both got their own Supermarket Week of Action on a few days early!

Fair Food Tampa members (two of whom are pictured here on the right) crossed the Bay to stand vigil outside a new St. Pete Publix store, describing their crew as “a mix of Eckerd and USF students, St. Pete and Tampa community members and even a puppy!”

The protesters braved a rare early morning rain to press their message with Publix customers’ before making their way inside to hand the manager a letter calling on Publix to step up to the Fair Food standards for their tomato suppliers.

Meanwhile, that same day, about two hours north on I-75, members of the Gainesville Fair Food Committee traveled to Ocala to participate in another Publix grand opening. Their protest, pictured at the top of this post, featured several large banners easily visible from the road and to anyone visiting the Publix store that day for the big ribbon-cutting ceremony. Here’s an excerpt from coverage in the Gainesville Independent Florida Alligator (“Demonstrators protest injustice at Publix grand opening,” 10/13/01):

“Welcome to Publix, where shopping is oppression” is one of the five signs protestors are holding today at the grand opening ceremony for a Publix in Ocala.

Members of the Gainesville Interfaith Alliance for Immigrant Justice attended the 7 a.m. ribbon-cutting ceremony and 8 a.m. grand opening of the Publix at 3305 SE Maricamp Road…

… Their demonstration at the grand opening is the first of numerous, similar nationwide events next week, sponsored the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.
“It takes persistence and all the other corporations have come on board,” Hunter said. “Publix seems to be a company with a conscience, and it makes no sense that it wouldn’t sign.” read more

Be sure to send in pictures from your own Supermarket Week of Action protest and we’ll post them here!

And speaking of Food Day (national Food Day, that is, which is Oct. 24th…), the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CPSI) released its list of the “Terrible Ten” things “impairing American’s diets, health, and environment” in time for next Monday’s day of awareness.

CSPI accompanied that list with its “Terrific Ten” list of “things that are worth celebrating” in the world of food today, including “Water,” “First Lady Michelle Obama,” and the CIW, for having “challenged—and improved—the inhumane working conditions endured by many Florida farmworkers, showing that persistent, aggressive action can stop injustices.” Thank you, CSPI!

Finally, don’t miss a fine article by two long-time members of the CIW’s watermelon crew on their experience this past summer in the fields of Georgia in the wake of Georgia’s draconian new anti-immigrant law. The article was published in this week’s Nation magazine. The article (“The High Cost of Anti-Immigrant Laws,” the Nation, 10/31/11) begins :

“This past summer, the Econo Lodge off Interstate 75 in Tifton, Georgia, where we and other watermelon harvesters from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) have stayed on and off since 1997, was eerily quiet. Gone were the sweat-soaked shoes piled outside motel rooms, and gone were the workers hanging out during their evening downtime, chatting casually or talking to their families on pay-as-you-go cellphones. In their place, a phone card salesman at the hotel’s front desk told anyone who would listen that his sales had dropped by at least 50 percent this year.

It was mid-June, and we were in town for the watermelon harvest, but we might as well have walked into a ghost town, thanks to Georgia’s recently signed Illegal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Act, otherwise known as House Bill 87. And thanks to HB 87, a copycat law of Arizona’s infamous SB 1070, millions of pounds of watermelons were left to rot in the fields this summer—along with peaches, blackberries and cucumbers—as many of the most dependable and experienced farmworkers steered clear of Georgia and headed north for friendlier states, prompting an epic farm labor shortage in Georgia and desperate howls from its planters…” read more

Check back soon for more from this week’s Supermarket Week of Action!