As the March for Rights, Respect and Fair Food draws near, the Fair Food Nation steps up to the plate!

Posted on by CIW

Since the announcement of the big spring action, sparks of anticipation and promises of commitment — an essential element in the CIW’s “consciousness + commitment = change” formula for social change — have been pouring in.

From coast to coast, Fair Food allies have been contacting the office in Immokalee to offer their feet, their voices, their talents, their time — and their words of support for the march. Just last week, we were honored to receive author, civil rights activist and Southern food laureate, John Egerton, of the Southern Foodways Alliance (the organization that bestowed its 2012 John Egerton Award on the CIW this past October). After spending the day touring Immokalee and probing the history and dynamics of the Campaign in talks with CIW members and organizers, Egerton wrote of the visit:

In addition to luminaries from the Southern Foodways Alliance, the CIW will be joined by countles more allies from across the United States. Bob St. Peter, former Executive Director of Food for Maine’s Future and a Farmer Director with Family Farm Defenders, recently called the CIW office to announce that he would be joining the full two weeks of the march along with his wife and children; WhyHunger, another organization that honored the CIW earlier this year with the Food Sovereignty Prize, will also be sending delegates for the final weekend of the March for Rights, Respect, and Fair Food.

Two months out, the list of allied organizations committed to joining us for the march — not to mention individual allies from Lakeland, Tampa, Orlando, Sarasota, Miami, Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Nashville, Atlanta, Arkansas, Pittsburgh, the Bay Area, Chicago, New York, and many more cities across the south and the country — is long and getting longer every day:

  • D.C. Fair Food

  • Denver Fair Food

  • Providence Fair Food

  • Philadelphia Fair Food

  • Columbus Fair Food

  • Students Working for Equal Rights (New College)

  • Interfaith Alliance for Immigrant Justice (Gainesville, FL)

  • U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance

  • Food Chain Workers Alliance

  • Family Farm Defenders

  • Workers Defense Project

  • YAYAs-NFWM

  • Community Farmworker Alliance

Even for those who are not able to spend two weeks on the roads of Florida with the CIW, the final weekend is a chance to take part in the crescendo of the march in Lakeland, Florida, at Publix’s headquarters — a hallowed site that still surely remembers the presence of 70 fasting men and women during last year’s Fast for Fair Food. As mentioned recently in the Huffington Post by author Beverly Bell, the CIW’s movement for justice for farmworkers was one of many hopeful sparks in 2012, “expanding the realm of the possible“:
“The CIW, a small group of farmworkers from the hardscrabble Florida town of Immokalee, prove true the source-disputed quote, “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.” Publix, CIW’s current target, may as well just give up now.”
With this impending march of over 150 miles, joined along the way by thousands of allies, 2013 is sure to be another promising year for the CIW in defining what is possible.