2012 Northeast Tour holds first major action outside Stop & Shop headquarters

2012 Northeast Tour holds first major action outside Stop & Shop headquarters in Quincy, Massachusetts!

Leonel Perez of the CIW (left) meets a representative of Ahold (Stop & Shop and Giant’s Dutch parent company) outside Ahold’s headquarters in Quincy, Massachusetts, during yesterday’s action, which took place despite a particularly heavy April shower.

CIW, allies get Ahold’s attention with spirited protest, theater, and face to face message…

The CIW’s 2012 Northeast Tour kicked off yesterday with a rally under the rain outside Stop & Shop and Giant’s corporate offices in Quincy, MA. CIW members were joined by a broad swath of allies, including community members and students, and faith and labor representatives from over a dozen groups across New England, including City Life/Vida Urbana, Centro Presente, Interfaith Worker Justice, Emerson College, Brown University, Northeastern University, SEIU, United Church of Christ, Dorshei Tzedek, Occupy Boston, Occupy Quincy, and the Arlington Street Church.

The protest received strong media coverage, some of which you can find here and here. And here’s an excerpt:

“… The group now wants Stop & Shop to consent to the same agreement. ‘The goal,’ said Elena Stein, who works at Interfaith Action, an organization which partners with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, ‘is to bring Stop & Shop executives to a place where they see farmworkers not as tools in a supply chain, but as men and women whose work of supplying produce for their stores is deserving of nothing less than dignity and respect.’

Many of the Emerson students who attended the protest are in Tamera Marko’s research writing classes, where representatives from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers talked on Monday.

Enrique Rivera, a freshman visual and media arts major, learned about the protest through Marko’s class. ‘It’s something really cool that people are working together despite the rain,’ he said.” read more

To check out an exclusive photo gallery and first-hand report from yesterday’s action, click here.

For now, we leave you with this from the Boston visit, a poem written by a second grader (!) following the CIW’s classroom visit:

tomatoes
taste better
when they are ripe
and the people
who pick ‘em
are treated right

And check back soon for more from the 2012 Northeast Tour and the next installment in Top Ten List of Falsehoods, Fibs, and Fabrications in Chipotle’s Answer to a Customer’s Email about the Campaign for Fair Food!