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NEWS & LETTERS, June 2002
Replace Taco Bell!Chicago—Over 100 students and community people attended a meeting at the University of Chicago in support of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers' (CIW) boycott of Taco Bell. They were demanding, as the focus of a national campaign, that Taco Bell be replaced as the fast food provider at the Hutchinson Commons. The meeting began with a video presentation on the Taco Bell Truth Tour and the farmworkers' struggle beginning against brutal labor conditions at Six L's, Taco Bell's supplier of tomatoes. As a result of the tour, the company was forced to talk to the CIW, but no agreement was reached and the boycott remains in effect. Francisca Cortez of the CIW said, "We want to be able to take Taco Bell off this campus. It's high time Taco Bell listened to our demands. We've waited 20 years. We can't afford to wait any longer. We are still suffering from bad wages, terrible living conditions, and we lack any sort of benefits, even overtime pay. Do you think a family can live off $7,500 a year? We can't afford decent housing with that. "I'd like that everyone here have a chance to see what it is like to work in the fields, to get pesticides all over your hands and clothes. Recently we've had two cases of deaths from cancer. The problems with pesticides don't come right away, they come in 20 years. "In the Six L's camps where we live, nobody is allowed to visit the workers, not even our friends. Would anyone want to live like that? People see those ripe, red tomatoes and don't think about where they come from. It is more than just an issue of wages. It is about doing away with a whole exploitative way of living. They've ignored us, as the workers who provide them with tomatoes. Considering all our long, hard struggle, for years at work as well as in this campaign, it would mean a lot to all the workers if you took Taco Bell off this campus." —Gerard Emmett |
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