CIW’s Lucas Benitez: “My colleagues and I are here today from Florida… in the company of so many distinguished champions of this great democracy, because Mrs. Kennedy knew it takes all of us, from farmworkers to presidents, to defend the human rights she held so dear.”

CIW’s Greg Asbed: “Her embrace of our work in Immokalee connected us to history, to the history of the civil rights movement, to the history of the farmworker movement, to the history of all who have fought to hold this country accountable to its great promise of equal justice and equal rights.”

On October 10th, Ethel Skakel Kennedy passed away peacefully, surrounded by the love of her famously large family, at the age of 96.

One week later, on October 16th, over 1,000 friends, family, and admirers — including President Biden, former Presidents Obama and Clinton, artists Stevie Wonder and Sting, and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers — gathered in Washington, DC’s spectacular Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle to celebrate Mrs. Kennedy’s extraordinary life.

Mrs. Kennedy lived a life true to the tenets of her faith, defined by an unwavering commitment to social justice that stretched across two centuries.  From the movement to expand fundamental civil and human rights to all Americans in the 1960s — a turbulent decade that claimed the life of her husband, former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy — to the struggle to protect and preserve our country’s fragile democracy today, Mrs. Kennedy never shied from joining in the fight to make the country, and the world, a kinder, more equal, more humane place.  

Indeed, over two decades ago, Mrs. Kennedy joined the CIW in our fight against exploitation and abuse in the fields, when she awarded three CIW leaders — Lucas Benitez, Julia Gabriel, and Romeo Ramirez — the 2003 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award for their groundbreaking efforts to end modern-day slavery and bring abusive farm bosses to justice.  Mrs. Kennedy presented the award to the trio of CIW leaders at a gala ceremony in the US Senate, and then promptly joined us in the streets of DC at a protest outside a Taco Bell restaurant (right).  

It would be the first of many, many times that Mrs. Kennedy joined us in the streets, from her 2006 visit to Immokalee to kick off the “RFK Memorial Poverty Tour: A Tour for Social and Economic Justice”, to her annual appearances with hundreds of farmworkers and their allies on marches along glamorous Worth Avenue in the heart of her winter home of Palm Beach, Florida, calling on Wendy’s — and her fellow Palm Beach resident, billionaire investor Nelson Peltz — to join the Fair Food Program.  

But perhaps the greatest highlight of the past two decades of Mrs. Kennedy’s tireless solidarity came in 2012, outside Publix headquarters in Lakeland, Florida.  In a heartfelt callback to her role in supporting Cesar Chavez’s historic hunger strike for farmworker rights in 1968, in which Mrs. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy joined Chavez for the breaking of his 25-day fast, Mrs. Kennedy joined dozens of farmworkers and their allies in ending their own fast calling on Publix to join the Fair Food Program (below) in an emotional and unforgettable ceremony:

And so it was with all those countless moments of solidarity in mind that we sat down in the days before her memorial to put our love for Mrs. Kennedy — and our loss in her passing — into words.  The very decision by the Kennedy family to include the CIW in a line-up of speakers made up of some of the country’s most important political leaders and beloved artists itself speaks to the depth of Mrs. Kennedy’s commitment to social justice.  Our role on the star-studded agenda was to represent all the human rights defenders who have known her support, to be the voice of all the many communities over the decades to whom she has lent her power and position in their fights against exploitation and abuse.  Our job was to share the Ethel Kennedy that we knew with the world one last time, the Ethel Kennedy who never wavered in her love for those people and communities who do the hard work in our world with little or no reward, who live on the margins of society and must struggle for every inch of progress, who have no voice in the halls of power that Mrs. Kennedy knew so well, and into which she welcomed them with such uncommon grace.

It was a daunting job, but one we were infinitely honored to be given.  Here below is the text of our eulogy in full, the bulk of which was presented by the CIW’s Lucas Benitez and Laura Germino, the closing by the CIW’s Greg Asbed (you can find the C-SPAN video of the entire service here, with the CIW’s participation starting at the 1:59:46 mark):

Lucas Benitez and Laura Germino:

She picketed with us is in the streets as we boycotted Taco Bell.  She visited us in the fields and in our homes, and brought her friends with her to Immokalee to join the fight, leaders like John Sweeney of the AFL-CIO, and Senator Bernie Sanders.  She used her powers of persuasion to convince McDonald’s executives to join our growing program for human rights.  And she led marches with us in her beloved Palm Beach not once, but many times. I would push her in her wheelchair along Worth Avenue, her straw hat shielding her from the sun, past jewelry stores and shops selling furs.  Her friends and neighbors would stop her and say “Ethel, what in the world are you doing?” And she would say, “Come along and march with us, for justice and freedom!” And many of them dropped whatever they were doing and did!  Who could say no to Ethel?

Thanks in large part to her decades of untiring support – it’s never about just showing up, it’s about sticking around – today, we can say that we have built the most effective human rights enforcement program in the US agricultural industry, the Fair Food Program, which has eliminated modern-day slavery and sexual violence in the fields, and has forged America’s strongest workplace heat protections against the ever-worsening climate crisis.  We are in 23 states and counting, and our partners include 14 of the world’s largest corporations.