Together, we fought to make the dream of enforceable human rights for farmworkers a reality.
Now, we need your support to bring these critical human rights to thousands of workers in new crops and regions.
Become a Fair Food Sustainer now.
Are you ready to do the impossible… again?
Fifteen years ago, a small group of farmworkers and consumers stood on the side of State Road 41 in Ft. Myers, Florida, carrying an oversized papier-mâché tomato. They gathered there, squeezed between strip malls and rush-hour traffic, to declare a national boycott of Taco Bell.
Outside of Florida, only a handful of people had ever heard of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. And outside of the CIW members and their few faithful allies gathered that day, no one gave the Taco Bell boycott a ghost of a chance.
Yet here we stand today, having won the Taco Bell boycott, and:
- Thirteen more agreements with major food retailers from McDonald’s to WalMart;
- The partnership of over 90% of the Florida tomato industry, and;
- Verifiable human rights protections for 35,000 farmworkers and their families through the groundbreaking Fair Food Program, which is expanding and now operates in six new states and two new crops since its launch in 2011.
Gone is the daily barrage of sexual harassment, discrimination, and dangerous working conditions. Gone too are three decades of falling wages. Today, thanks to the Fair Food Program, workers can stand up for their rights without fear of being fired, and the Florida tomato industry is a model of social responsibility recognized around the world.
And none of these historic changes would have happened without your unwavering commitment – without the marches and pickets, the phone calls and emails, the hospitality and, most importantly, the steadfast solidarity of every individual in the vast Fair Food Nation. Together, we did the impossible.
Our work, however, is far from done. In fact, in many ways it is just getting started.
Become a Fair Food Sustainer now.
Calls for the expansion of the Fair Food Program to new crops and new states come in weekly; the only real limit on our ability to expand are the resources necessary to sustain growth with the kind of integrity that has become the Program’s hallmark.
Even more so, the Fair Food Program itself is proof of a new concept in human rights, a new paradigm we call Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR), with the potential to bring verifiable human rights protections to millions of workers in even more industries, from textiles to construction, both here in the United States and overseas.
And we are not alone in seeing this remarkable new world of possibilities taking shape before us. Human rights observers from the White House to the United Nations agree that, with the Fair Food Program and the WSR model, we are holding in our hands the key to unlock unprecedented social change for low-wage workers in the 21st century.
But to turn this vast potential into reality, we are going to have to call on our national network of allies, on you and the rest of the network that fought for fifteen years in the streets to make the Fair Food Program a reality, not just for your support in action, but for your financial support, too.
Together, we fought to make the dream of enforceable human rights for farmworkers a reality. Now, we need your support to bring these critical human rights to thousands of workers in new crops and regions.
And so today, we are launching the Fair Food Sustainer Program.
Why is dependable, grassroots funding so essential? With a steady stream of monthly supporters, we can sustain and expand the three core elements of our work:
- The leadership of farmworkers through community organizing, worker-to-worker education, and frontline monitoring of their own rights in the fields,
- The commitment of consumer allies through action holding retail food companies accountable for labor conditions in their supply chains, and
- The essential monitoring work of investigators though complaint investigations and field audits ensuring compliance with the Fair Food Code of Conduct.
And from the base of an ever more successful Fair Food Program, we can promote the development and implementation of the Worker-driven Social Responsibility model in more and more communities of low-wage workers across the country and around the globe.
Whether it is with a sustaining donation of $500 or $5 a month, with your partnership and that of the thousands upon thousands of consumer supporters that make up the Fair Food Nation, there is nothing we cannot do.