A 3-day celebration of farmworker culture and fundamental human rights featuring the CIW’s mobile Modern-day Slavery Museum, a benefit concert, and original theater and art, including a two-story tall farmworker puppet named Esperanza giving voice to the country’s 1.5 million farmworkers in their ongoing fight for fundamental human rights
Press and Media opportunities:
March 8, 1 PM – 340 S County Rd, Palm Beach — Farmworker rally through Palm Beach with two-story tall puppet, Esperanza;
March 9, Primary Festival Day, 10 AM – 7 PM – Bradley Park, Palm Beach – Benefit concert featuring Malacates Trebol Shop, Olmeca, Rara Lakay, Bomba, and Illusion 711; CIW’s Modern Slavery Museum; Farmworker theater and art;
Media contact: Ty Joplin, ty@fairfoodprogram.org, 832-549-7337
IMMOKALEE, FL – From March 8-10, the first-ever Farmworker Freedom Festival will take place in the manicured parks and mansion-lined streets of Palm Beach, Florida. It will encompass three days of celebration and creative arts highlighting the historic human rights progress achieved through the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Presidential Medal-winning Fair Food Program (FFP). The Festival will also serve to remind consumers and food industry leaders alike of the long road ahead in the fight to expand those gains to hundreds of thousands of US farmworkers who toil in poverty and abuse beyond the reach of the FFP’s best-in-class protections, including those who have harvested produce for fast-food holdout Wendy’s.
The festival will include the CIW’s Modern-day Slavery Museum, a unique collection documenting the unbroken, centuries-long history of forced labor in Florida’s fields, from the chattel slavery of antebellum Florida and the debt peonage and convict-lease system of the Jim Crow era, to the modern-day slavery that continues in the state to this day, including photos, reporting, and artifacts from a dozen forced labor prosecutions in which the CIW has played a key role since the early 1990s. The festival also includes street theater created and performed by farmworkers from Immokalee, interactive visual arts, and a striking, two-story tall puppet of a woman farmworker named Esperanza, who will join workers and their allies on walks through the streets of Palm Beach throughout the 3-days of events. The centerpiece of the Festival is Saturday’s benefit concert, featuring an exciting lineup of musical acts scheduled to perform from 2-7 PM on March 9, including popular artists Malacates Trebol Shop, Olmeca, Rara Lakay, Bomba, and Illusion 711.
Farmworkers are holding the festival in Palm Beach in order to bring their message home to the city’s many business and financial leaders with the power – and, thus, the responsibility – to help expand the Fair Food Program to new farms, including Wendy’s Board Chair Nelson Peltz.
“As farmworkers, it is important to celebrate how far we have come thanks to the Fair Food Program, with its unique protections against wage theft, sexual harassment, and even climate change, including mandatory rest, shade, and water. But we know that for every farmworker empowered by the FFP, there are many more still toiling in extreme exploitation outside the Program’s bounds,” said Lupe Gonzalo, a farmworker and senior staff member of the CIW. “That’s why we are holding the festival in Palm Beach, which is home to Wendy’s Chairman Nelson Peltz, who has the power to expand the Fair Food Program’s protections to countless more farmworkers in Wendy’s supply chain and help lead the FFP into the growing greenhouse sector in the process.”
“These are exciting times for farmworkers,” CIW’s co-founder Lucas Benitez added. “As the Fair Food Program goes global, we are laser-focused on telling Nelson Peltz: Now is the time to do right by those whose hard work makes your profits possible. Now is the time to join the FFP.”
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Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW): The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is a worker-based human rights organization founded in Immokalee, FL, and committed to improving working conditions through enforceable human rights protections within supply chains. Internationally recognized for its achievements in the field of corporate accountability — with a particular focus on the fight against forced labor and gender-based violence at work — the CIW is built on a foundation of farmworker community organizing reinforced by a national consumer network. The CIW’s work encompasses three broad and overlapping spheres: (1) the Fair Food Program; (2) the Anti-Slavery Program; and (3) the Campaign for Fair Food. www.ciw-online.org
Fair Food Program (FFP): Retailers in the CIW’s Fair Food Program agree to purchase from suppliers who comply with a worker-driven code of conduct, which includes a zero-tolerance policy for forced labor and sexual assault. Retailers also pay a premium, which is passed down through the supply chain and paid out directly to workers by their employers. Since the program’s inception in 2011, buyers have paid over $45 million in premiums. Harvard Business Review called the FFP “one of the most important social-impact stories of the past century,” while the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Trafficking called it “an international benchmark in the fight against modern-day slavery.” The FFP received a Presidential Medal in 2015, a MacArthur “Genius” Award in 2017, and was recognized by the US Department of Agriculture as the highest form of human rights protection for farmworkers in 2023. www.fairfoodprogram.org