including some unwanted attention from Publix’s omnipresent surveillance team…

Here’s an interesting story from last weekend…

At the suggestion of a member of the board of the Polk Arts Alliance — who had joined us for the culminating march of the Fast for Fair Food — the CIW submitted an application for Lakeland’s wildly popular Platform Art Party, a festive downtown “showcase of the city’s emerging talent in visual arts, film, fashion, sound and performance art.”

Sounds great, right? A creative way to get the Fair Food message out to the community in Lakeland (Publix’s hometown) and an opportunity to reach a whole new audience. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, not 30 minutes after the CIW’s arrival at the site, and several hours before the festival was even scheduled to begin, the seemingly inevitable happened. A member of the CIW crew spotted Publix’s labor relations manager (a man who follows CIW members and our allies practically everywhere we go for the Fair Food Campaign) maybe 40 feet away, behind another exhibit, taking pictures of the sculpture and the crew. When it became obvious that he had been sighted, the Publix photographer/labor relations chief quickly walked away. The the CIW members and their allies couldn’t help but be reminded of Publix’s unsettling obsession with surveillance of perfectly peaceful activities (after three years, there must a huge hard drive somewhere in Publix’s vast files dedicated solely to pictures of CIW members, their families, and their allies).

Despite the disconcerting interruption, the CIW crew continued installing the sculpture and, once the festival began, the bucket pyramid was a huge success. The sculpture — which graphically demonstrates the number of buckets, each weighing 34 pounds when full, a worker must pick in a day to earn the minimum wage — was a conversation starter from the very first, prompting festival goers, from artists and art lovers to professors and college administrators, to join in animated conversation with the CIW crew staffing the installation. Many former Publix employees (and even a personal friend of a Publix board member), visited the exhibit, and most, if not all, expressed their support for the Campaign for Fair Food.

Later, Father Ramon Bolatete, who is new to St. Joseph’s Catholic Church — where the pyramid sculpture was installed and where the final rally of the Farmworker Freedom March took place two years ago — visited the exhibit, telling the CIW crew that he appreciated their presence, and that they have his support as well as that of the Diocese. As the crew reported following the event, “It was so nice of him to personally come by to express the church’s support. He epitomized the dedicated and hopeful spirit that has characterized the movement for fair food and helped to convert so many corporations as well.”

So, all’s well that ends well, although it seems that, when it comes to Publix, even a simple art festival can prompt them to snap into high alert…