National Farm Worker Ministry endorses Wendy’s Boycott!

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“Our board unanimously endorsed this boycott as a means of using their economic power to support the farm workers who are struggling for justice…”

Late last week, the National Farm Worker Ministry — a 45-year-old cornerstone of the religious labor movement in support of dignity and justice for farmworkers — endorsed the Wendy’s Boycott!  Building on nearly 20 years of work in alliance with the Fair Food Movement, the NFWM announced its support for the boycott this past Friday:

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

National Farm Worker Ministry Boycotts Wendy’s

27 July 2016, Raleigh, NC:  The National Farm Worker Ministry (NFWM) endorsed the Wendy’s Boycott of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW).  Executive Director, Julie Taylor, says, “Our board unanimously endorsed this boycott as a means of using their economic power to support the farm workers who are struggling for justice.”  

NFWM is a 45 year old faith-based organization committed to justice for and empowerment of farm workers.  They work with all the major farm worker organizing groups in the country for their efforts at self-determination.  

The National Farm Worker Ministry long has had a strong relationship with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), dating to the inception of CIW, including an active role in supporting CIW as it advanced the farm worker movement. NFWM has committed to inform their twenty-seven organizational members about the conditions of the farm workers associated with CIW and to urge their constituents to publicize and support the boycott of Wendy’s…  Read more

National Farm Worker Ministry members — hailing from almost thirty religious orders, denominations and organizations nationwide — have stood with Florida farmworkers from the very earliest days of the CIW.

Starting with the 30-day hunger strike back in 1997-98, when longtime NFWM organizer Bert Perry first visited the CIW office in Immokalee and later accompanied the hunger strikers on their trip to Governor Chiles’ office in Tallahassee, and continuing through the 234-mile March for Dignity, Dialogue, and a Fair Wage in 2000, when NFWM helped to organize innumerable potlucks, meals, and housing for farmworkers along the tour route, through the launch of the Wendy’s boycott in March of this year and the national organizing that followed, NFWM has been there step by step, shoulder to shoulder with farmworkers demanding their fundamental human rights. 

Perhaps no one embodies that support as well as Olgha Sandman (pictured below), an NFWM Board Member who has stood with CIW through each and every campaign, through thick and thin.  During one of the seminal actions with Wendy’s in 2014, a reporter from the online magazine The Nation Report caught up with Olgha as she marched past Wendy’s flagship store in Dublin, Ohio:

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… Another woman was also marching while using a cane to help her through the two miles.  Olga Sandman is on the board of the  National Farm Worker Ministry and proudly said that she has been with the movement since 70’s and with the Immokalee workers since the beginning:

“I have marched with them since they began in 1995.  I’m from Chicago so we worked very closely with them with the McDonald’s campaign.  I have been in support of the Coalition since they began.

I am on the board of the National Farm Worker Ministry, that’s Catholic and Protestant all over the country [that] has supported all the organizing of farm workers since 1970.  These are remarkable people.  In 20 years they have gotten 12 corporations to sign with them for justice.  It’s incredible.”

We, in turn, are honored to be accompanied by such committed individuals as the many thousands that constitute the National Farm Worker Ministry leadership and members.  With their support — and with that of dozens of other organizations that have already endorsed the Wendy’s Boycott — we know that the campaign with Wendy’s will end just as every one has before it:  With a Fair Food Agreement.

Stay tuned for more in the days ahead from the Wendy’s Boycott!