Atlanta Journal-Constitution Op/Ed shines light on decades-long relationship between President Carter and CIW for farmworker human rights

Professor Susan Marquis, in Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “Envisioned and led by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the Fair Food Program is transforming agriculture, ending the endemic abuse on farms across the U.S. and, increasingly, around the globe. When this groundbreaking program was still a bold but untested idea in the early 2000s, Jimmy Carter and The Carter Center brought expertise in conflict resolution and Carter’s prestige to the farmworkers’ campaign for human rights.”

Decades-long relationship began in 1997 with the former President’s public intervention in the CIW’s month-long hunger strike, continued through birth of Fair Food Program and growth of WSR model, carried over into support for CIW’s anti-slavery efforts

Today’s world of extreme political radicalization, social media-fueled division, and unprecedented norm-bending behavior on the part of our political leaders is unlike anything in our country’s collective living memory.  Today’s is not a political climate kind to traditionalists, nor men and women of high character.  And, indeed, in the waning years of his century of life on this planet, with each passing day it became increasingly clear that President Jimmy Carter was not a man for our current political season.  In that way, his death late last month seemed — as did most everything about his public life — like a graceful exit from a stage that had long ago grown too undignified for a man of his mettle.  

Sadly, from where we stand today, it seems a nearly impossible task to find our way back to the world of honesty, integrity, and respect for fundamental human rights that defined President Carter’s all-too-brief time in the spotlight.  But a recent op/ed by Princeton University’s Professor Susan Marquis about President Carter’s decades-long  support for — and critical involvement in — the CIW’s struggle to claim and enforce human rights in the fields casts a much-needed light on a path marked by consciousness and commitment that led to unparalleled change, and that just might provide a roadmap to a more decent, more humane politics for leaders in this country who are looking for a way out of today’s current nightmare.

Here below is the op/ed in full.  It is an excellent telling of a little-known history and reflection on a man whose life and work stand in stark contrast to our turbulent political universe today:

Carter’s lesser-known but important post-presidency achievement

The Fair Food Program is transforming agriculture across the U.S. and the globe.

By Susan L. Marquis

With President Jimmy Carter’s death, we’ve been reminded of the successes and failures of his presidency and remarkable post-presidency. Less attention has been given to what will be Carter’s continuing legacy through the work of The Carter Center, including the critical supporting role it played in what has become “one of the greatest human rights successes of our day.”

Envisioned and led by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the Fair Food Program is transforming agriculture, ending the endemic abuse on farms across the U.S. and, increasingly, around the globe. When this groundbreaking program was still a bold but untested idea in the early 2000s, Jimmy Carter and The Carter Center brought expertise in conflict resolution and Carter’s prestige to the farmworkers’ campaign for human rights.

In the early 1990s, responding to rampant abuse still found in agricultural labor in the U.S. and international food chains, migrant farmworkers in southeastern Florida formed the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW). Just before Christmas 1997, the CIW launched a hunger strike to shine light on abusive working conditions. The Carter Center staff raised the hunger strike and CIW’s cause to the former president’s attention, and as the hunger strike entered its fourth week, Carter came out in support of the farmworkers’ call for direct talks with the growers.

Carter’s involvement brought national awareness to the CIW’s protest and, by promising continuing engagement, enabled the farmworkers to end their hunger strike with dignity. It was the starting point of decades-long support of the CIW by The Carter Center as an institution and Jimmy Carter personally. The sincerity of his initial interest was demonstrated when, in 2003, the former president and The Carter Center moved from support to active conflict resolution and engagement.

The CIW recognized that corporate buyers including McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Walmart, and international grocery corporations such as Ahold had the buying power to set not only prices for food they purchased but also requirements for their suppliers. Holding these corporations accountable for their supply chains, in 2001 the CIW declared the Campaign for Fair Food, demanding corporations use their market power to boost belowpoverty farmworker wages and ensure safe working conditions on suppliers’ farms.

The campaign’s first target was Taco Bell. Declaring a boycott of the fast-food chain, the farmworkers gradually gained national support across college campuses and from major faith denominations. By late summer 2003, talks with Taco Bell had broken down. Once again, the former president was called to bring his reputation and experience to the fight, in keeping with The Carter Center’s mission to support human rights through conflict resolution. Carter again responded, sending personal letters to Yum Brands, the corporation that owned Taco Bell, while the Center’s staff worked back-channel communications and facilitated negotiations.

After almost two years of on-again/off-again talks, and amid the pressure of the Taco Bell boycott, Yum! announced that it had signed a historic agreement to “work with the CIW to improve working and pay conditions for farmworkers in Florida tomato fields.” The agreement included the first-ever direct, ongoing payment by a food corporation to farmworkers in its supply chain, the first enforceable (and, ultimately, enforced) Code of Conduct for agricultural suppliers in the food industry and transparency in the company’s tomato purchases. The agreement established the template that has continued to build and expand as Walmart, McDonald’s, Whole Foods and other national and global chains have put their corporate buying power behind enforcement of the Fair Food Program code of conduct to ensure the human rights, safety and fair pay of workers in their supply chains. The Fair Food Program is now on farms from Florida to Maine, into Tennessee and Kentucky, the Midwest through to Colorado and California, and internationally in Chile, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. Multiple crops are covered with the list of farms, products, buyers, states and nations continuing to expand.

The initiative is recognized as being the only effective program to eliminate the abuses in corporate food supply chains, as exposed by the CIW and abhorred by Jimmy Carter, for tens of thousands of farmworkers each year on participating farms. The former president committed his and The Carter Center’s time and expertise believing that corporations, growers, consumers and workers must be active participants in establishing a fair wage and good working conditions in service to the human rights and dignity of every human being.

Susan L. Marquis is the Charles and Marie Robertson Visiting Professor and Lecturer in Public and International Affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Marquis’s report “Worker-Driven Social Responsibility: A New, Proven Model for Defining, Claiming, and Protecting Workers’ Human Rights” was published by the Harvard Law Center for Labor and a Just Economy, and she is the author of the book “I Am Not a Tractor! How Florida Farmworkers Took On the Fast Food Giants and Won.”