Day 3 of the Farmworker Freedom Festival in Palm Beach: Hope comes home…

Farmworkers are joined by their families and allies under banyan trees in a park near the beachside residence of Wendy’s Board Chair Nelson Peltz on Day 3 of the Farmworker Freedom Festival in Palm Beach. Ahead of the gathering, workers wrote their hopes for a future of partnership with Wendy’s through the Fair Food Program on colorful *panuelos,* or bandanas like those used by women farmworkers for protection from the sun. On Day 3, the bandanas were tied together and carried forward on the broad shoulders of *Esperanza*, the 15 ft tall animated puppet who accompanied the workers throughout the 3-day festival and embodied their hopes for a more modern, more humane agricultural industry.

Check out the must-see video from Day 3!

CIW’s Nely Rodriguez (VIDEO): “The bandana doesn’t only represent protection, but for many women it also represents sexual harassment, abuse, and violence, and those same bandanas hold for many of us our tears and suffering… And with these bandanas, we are creating a circle of hope.”

Sunday, March 10th, saw the culmination of the 3-day Farmworker Freedom Festival in Palm Beach with a powerful ceremony designed to bring the Fair Food Nation’s message of hope home to Wendy’s Board Chair Nelson Peltz. Farmworkers, their families and their allies gathered in a gorgeous park across the street from Peltz’s beachside mansion, where they shared, framed by giant banyan trees, the hopes of the farmworker community for a future of partnership with Wendy’s — a partnership to empower workers themselves to monitor and enforce their own human rights through the expansion of the Fair Food Program to Wendy’s produce suppliers.

We have captured the images and words of that moving ceremony in a short video that we are happy to be able to share with you today:

We have also prepared a photo gallery from Day 3 for another angle on a spectacular finish to the first-ever Farmworker Freedom Fest:

The final day of the festival saw Esperanza complete her mission to convey the humanity and hopes of farmworkers across the country seeking an end to generations of unconscionable exploitation and abuse in the fields. Her grace and kind smile came to life over the course of the three days in Palm Beach, drawing visitors to Bradley Park and passers-by in the streets to her side like a magnet, children and adults alike, to hold her hand or offer a warm embrace.

Farmworkers with the CIW and their families gather around Esperanza following their Pilgrimage of Hope on Day 3 of the Farmworker Freedom Festival.

Her gracious ambassadorship stood in stark contrast to the cold, mechanical denials of responsibility from Wendy’s communications department, whose spokespeople had the thankless task of defending the indefensible — Wendy’s stubborn insistence to stand alone among fast-food industry leaders against the one human rights program universally recognized for its success in fighting violence, wage theft, sexual abuse, and forced labor in the US agricultural industry.

Farmworkers and consumers view an exhibit documenting “A Day in the Life of the Fair Food Program” as part of the CIW’s mobile Modern-day Slavery Museum in Bradley Park.

Day 3 brought an end to an extraordinary celebration of farmworker culture and human rights progress, but not to the campaign to bring the last fast-food holdout out of the past — where empty claims of corporate social responsibility backed by for-profit certification schemes were sufficient to meet consumers’ demands — and into the 21st century, where consumers demand true transparency and social responsibility from the brands they support, a level of accountability only possible when workers themselves are empowered to monitor and enforce their own rights, backed by the purchasing power of the brands at the top of the supply chain.

And as the campaign continues, the coverage of the first-ever Farmworker Freedom Festival continues to come out in outlets both local and national. Check back soon for our big media round-up from the three days of action in the heart of Palm Beach, and for our final reflection on what was truly a unique moment in the CIW’s 30-year struggle for dignity, respect, and a fair wage for the women and men who harvest the food that nourishes us.