“The world has lost a giant, one who happily forsook Goliath for a life well-spent in David’s army.”

General Counsel for the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Steve Hitov, speaks on a panel during a private screening of “Food Chains” in the Capitol Visitors Center on September 30, 2015 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kris Connor/Getty Images for “Food Chains”)

Steve Hitov, Pioneering Human Rights Strategist and General Counsel, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, dies at 72

As many readers of this site already know, Steve Hitov, the CIW’s longtime General Counsel — an essential member of the CIW’s strategic core and co-author of many of the CIW’s most important structural successes — passed away three weeks ago after living, and thriving, with multiple cancers for the final decade of his life. He was 72 years old. Steve was a fierce fighter for universal human rights, a brilliant legal thinker, and an inveterate sucker for a bad pun.

There are not enough pages in the internet for us to express our love and appreciation for Steve, but we have written an obituary of sorts, a very short story of his life, that we share with you today below (a more formal obituary appeared in The Washington Post this past weekend). As painful as it was to write — and as impossible as it still is for us to believe that he is no longer with us — we wanted the world to know what we knew about Steve, to know the remarkable life he led, and the example of tireless commitment and undying love for justice that he left for all of us.

Indeed, in the final week before Steve passed, our Immokalee family sent him messages of love, gratitude, and support, and the words of CIW’s Gerardo Reyes Chavez capture the collective sense of Steve’s legacy and what he meant for our community:

It has been an honor to work with you all of these years. The dream of a world in which we don’t have to give up our dignity as workers in order to have a job or food on the table, is possible thanks to you.

The decades of fighting alongside our community to eliminate abuses, your creativity, knowledge and determination were a crucial part of the creation of the Fair Food Program and making the WSR model a reality today.

Thank you for everything you built with us and for choosing to be our family and our friend.

In life, Steve’s was not a familiar face among the CIW’s better known leaders, but he would have had it no other way. He was far more comfortable in the background, keeping an eye on the proceedings rather than out front leading them. Indeed, he never would have let us publish a piece like this while he was still here. But the one, and only, silver lining to the dark, dark cloud of his passing is that we can celebrate his contributions the way they should be, and we hope you enjoy this glimpse into the life of an invisible — but never quiet – hero:

Steve Hitov (second from top left, hat, blue shirt, holding flag) talks with the CIW’s Lucas Benitez (top left, beige shirt) during the CIW’s two-week, 240-mile March for Dignity, Dialogue, and a Fair Wage, from Ft. Myers to Orlando, Florida, in March, 2000.

Steve Hitov, Pioneering Human Rights Strategist and General Counsel, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, dies at 72

Pioneering and beloved human rights strategist and attorney Steven A. Hitov, General Counsel for the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) for over 25 years, died on September 6, 2020 at his home in Adelphi, MD, after a long and courageous battle with cancer. His unconventional take on the legal system and social change helped set the course for a 21st century human rights revolution on farms throughout the South, and gave rise to a blueprint for the protection of workers’ rights, the Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) model, that the MacArthur Foundation called “a visionary strategy…. with the potential to transform workplace environments across the global supply chain.”

Mr. Hitov was part of a tight-knit team that designed the CIW’s groundbreaking Fair Food Program (FFP), dramatically reconstructing labor conditions on countless farm fields and prompting the Harvard Business Review to call the FFP “one of the top 15 social impact success stories of the past century”, along with the eradication of polio, Sesame Street, and children’s car seats.

During the course of Mr. Hitov’s tenure, the CIW went from a community organization born in the dirt-poor, crossroads town of Immokalee in rural Florida to an internationally-recognized leader in the field of business and human rights. His efforts touched the lives of workers from tomato fields in the South to dairy farms in Vermont, from construction sites in Minnesota to poultry plants in Arkansas, and from fashion runways in New York and Paris to garment factories in Bangladesh and Lesotho.

A lawyer, Mr. Hitov fought for nothing less than to eliminate the need for legal remedy. He sought to keep the milk unspilt: to prevent human rights violations from ever happening in the first place, rather than cleaning them up after the fact. On FFP farms, and in WSR workplaces, he did just that.

As NYC Human Rights Commissioner Cathy Albisa put it, “Steve’s genius was the insight that our formal legal system was designed mostly to protect the powerful, not to bring meaningful social change to working people. So he and the CIW dreamed up and built a new system. A new democratic system that brought real enforceable rights to workers across the country.”

Alejandra Carrera, a worker on a Fair Food Program farm, described the change to CNN, “You’re not going to be harassed. You’re not going to be insulted. You’re not going to be forced to work. There’s more respect now.”

Grower Jon Esformes, CEO of Sunripe Certified Brands, one of the country’s oldest and largest tomato producers and FFP partner, stated simply, “Steve Hitov didn’t just change the lives of those around him. Steve Hitov changed the world.”

Mr. Hitov cared little for public acclaim. He made an exception when he accepted the Presidential Medal for Excellence in Combatting Modern-Day Slavery at the Obama White House, on behalf of the CIW. He was also proud of being the inaugural recipient of the Gwynne Skinner Human Rights Award. But as a rule he worked his magic in the background. A key author of an unprecedented agreement between Walmart and the CIW, Mr. Hitov nonetheless did not even attend the public signing ceremony because, in his words, “I wasn’t needed. My job was done.”

Cheryl Queen, former Vice-President for Communications of Compass Group, the international food service giant and FFP partner, said, “I always imagined Steve as one of those heroes of the Old Testament, clothed in a flowing tunic and sandals, fighting pharaohs, lions and Goliaths. Steve was a warrior on the outside, and his cause was just and admirable. But beneath that warrior facade was the sweetest man, an unforgettable character, who could absolutely melt your heart.”

Mr. Hitov was a man of deep convictions, principal among them the proposition that all people are indeed created equal, with equal dignity, equal value, and equal rights before the law. He lived his life determined to bend the world toward his faith in that principle. He applied it in everyday relations with his colleagues, too. Mr. Hitov’s ability to contribute his extraordinary training and intellect, not as an attorney with a client, but as one among a team of equals, was as rare as it was valuable to the CIW’s success.

Mr. Hitov’s life’s work of defending and expanding human rights, always with an eagle-eyed focus on upending the structural causes of poverty, spanned nearly 50 years, and played out in a wide range of arenas, from the U.S. Supreme Court to the farm fields of Florida to the United Nations in Geneva. He dedicated his legal career to ensuring that the poor at the bottom rungs of society could speak with the same powerful voice and wield the same effective legal representation as the rich at the top. He strongly believed for that to happen, lawyers for poor people needed to be twice as good and work twice as hard, which he was and he did. He never let his cancer get in the way, but somehow worked through great pain with the same incisive analysis and humor as always.

Mr. Hitov is featured in the book I Am Not A Tractor: How Farmworkers Took On The Fast Food Giants And Won, his work in the movie Food Chains, and he authored many articles, including “Ending Slavery in the Supply Chain” in the Wake Forest Law Review.

He was graduated from the University of Massachusetts in 1970 and from New York University Law School in 1975. He is survived by his loving wife Matilde “Tillie” Lacayo, sisters Eleanor and Naomi, and his brother, David.

Perhaps Greg Asbed, CIW co-founder, said it best: “The world has lost a giant, one who happily forsook Goliath for a life well-spent in David’s army.”

Steve, his wife Tillie, and the Fair Food family in Immokalee

Steve (far right) joins CIW colleagues to receive the Presidential Medal for Extraordinary Efforts to Combat Modern-day Slavery from Secretary of State John Kerry

Steve joins CIW and journalist Eric Schlosser for Senator Bernie Sanders' visit to Immokalee

Steve presenting Senator Bernie Sanders with an award for his work with CIW

Steve speaking with CIW Co-Founder and lifelong friend, Greg Asbed, at the Pardee RAND Graduate School

Steve watching his beloved Red Sox with his godson, Isaiah

Steve and his beloved wife, Tillie

Steve and Tillie on one of their many trips to beautiful corners of the world