Visit to Publix’s hometown (including stops at the Church of the Resurrection, and a Black History Month celebration) underscores the value of CIW’s Fair Food Program, injustice of Publix’s refusal to support historic changes in Florida’s fields…

This past weekend, one of Lakeland’s largest houses of worship, Church of the Resurrection, welcomed the CIW to its beautiful campus for a weekend-long program of educational events. The visit opened the eyes of hundreds of Lakelanders to the tragic history of abuse in Florida’s fields, the exciting new partnership among farmworkers, growers and food retailers through the CIW’s Fair Food Program to end that abuse, and the unconscionable refusal by Lakeland’s own grocery giant, Publix, to join the groundbreaking partnership. Coming ahead of next month’s big March for Rights, Respect, and Fair Food, the museum’s visit underscored the urgency of the growing grassroots movement to drag Publix out of the past and into the 21st century of real social responsibility in our nation’s food industry.

The program began on Saturday night with a talk by the CIW’s Gerardo Reyes (right), entitled “Ending the Scourge of Forced Labor in Florida’s Fields.” Hosted by the parish’s Peace and Justice Committee, as well as the Office of Advocacy and Justice of the Diocese of Orlando, the speech attracted dozens of Lakeland residents, including educators from Florida Southern College and Santa Fe High School and many of our longtime allies from the Young American Dreamers. Gerardo spoke on the ways in which the Fair Food Program is doing away with the abuses that once defined farmworkers’ day-to-day lives in Florida and, in so doing, is eliminating the conditions that allowed the most extreme of those abuses — forced labor — to take root.

But the real highlight of the weekend was parked outside the church, where the Modern Slavery Museum provided a thoroughly documented examination of the history of forced labor in Florida and the promise of a new day of respect for human rights:

Parishioners toured the museum after Mass on both Saturday and Sunday. Support from the museum-goers was overwhelming, with hundreds visiting and a great many expressing their hope that Publix will one day join the Fair Food Program. Most heartwarming were those who pledged to join the March for Rights, Respect, and Fair Food when workers return to Lakeland on the weekend of March 16-17 for the culmination of the two-week trek across the state.

The museum team was truly grateful for the warm reception by everyone at Church of the Resurrection, and in particular for the thoughtfulness and generosity of Father Charles Viviano, who personally brought lunch out to the famished team despite his busy Sunday obligations!

But this, of course, was not the first time that parishioners of the Diocese of Orlando have shown their support for the Campaign for Fair Food. The Diocese has long championed the call for retailers to join with the CIW and support the efforts to respect the “dignity and rights of those who work to bring food to our tables.” In a truly moving missive to fasters last spring, Bishop John Noonan wrote:

On Monday, the CIW team parked the museum at the heavily-trafficked downtown Lakeland bus terminal as part of the city’s celebration of Black History Month. After Lakeland mayor Gow Fields addressed the gathered crowd and media, those in attendance were invited to tour the CIW’s exhibit (including Lakeland City Commissioner Phillip Walker, pictured in the photo at the top of today’s post helping a constituent down the museum stairs):

Over the course of the day, many, many hundreds of people passed through the exhibit, leading to dozens of compelling conversations between museum team members and many of the older African American Lakelanders in attendance, who shared their own harrowed memories of the fields, including sub-poverty pay, insults, and a degrading work environment.

Museum-goers that day included a rapid-response team from Publix, the members of which brusquely inspected every inch of the museum. We hope that their visit left them convinced of the need to end, once and for all, the horrors of farmworker exploitation in our state’s tomato fields, a job that Publix — as Florida’s largest grocer — is uniquely equipped to take on.

The highly successful Lakeland visit was not only well attended, but well covered in the local press, too. A photo essay on the museum’s installation filled two-thirds of the front page of the Lakeland Ledger’s local news section. The Ledger also posted a great photo gallery online, which you can view here.