Clergy take to their local papers to tell Publix “its position on the penny-per-pound issue lacks justifiable merit.“

If you agree, join us for the March for Rights, Respect and Fair Food!

Religious leaders and people of faith have been a pillar of the Campaign for Fair Food for over a decade, but recently clergy are losing their patience with Publix and writing letters to the editors of their local papers to make their indignation known.

One such letter comes this week from Rabbi Jonathan Katz. After quoting Publix’s PR response to the Fair Food Program, Rabbi Katz (pictured above with his daughter at a recent protest) writes in the Longboat Key (Florida) Observer:

“… Basically, this is a smokescreen response. Although other major food providers such as Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods Market, Aramark, Sodexo, McDonalds, Subway, Burger King, and Chipotle have all found a way to pay that extra penny, Publix executives, with all their corporate smarts, have been unable to do it. In fact, they refuse to even meet with CIW representatives about the matter.Instead, Publix officials focus on trivial things such as making sure police quickly act to have CIW move a case of water deemed too close to Publix property. This echoed my experience earlier this year at a CIW protest in front of Publix’s corporate headquarters, in Lakeland.

After arriving to find numerous protesters stationed on the grass berm between the sidewalk and the street, I soon asked where people went to go the bathroom, because there were no facilities nearby. I was told that a trailer hauling several porta-potties would come by in a half-an-hour. Because such bathrooms were theoretically not permitted for more than 30 minutes at a time at that location, Publix insisted that police send the trailer away every time the limit was reached. This is indicative Publix’s needlessly spiteful and obdurate attitude.

I have visited Immokalee and seen first-hand the impoverished conditions migrant workers there confront. I, and others, have joined with CIW because we believe strongly in the justice of its cause. CIW protests are always orderly. There is never unruly behavior, threatening words or profanity. Rather, a positive and uplifting spirit of shared struggle characterizes it.

In my view, as long as Publix won’t even deign to sit down with CIW, its position on the penny-per-pound issue lacks justifiable merit.” read more

The march will have two goals. First, we will march to mark the progress we have made since the turn of the new millennium, progress culminating in the historic changes underway today thanks to the Fair Food Program. And second, we will march to underscore the hard work that remains to be done as supermarket industry leaders — chief among them Publix — continue to undermine that progress and deny their responsibility to do their part to end decades of farmworker poverty and degradation. (read more)