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NEWS & LETTERS, May-June 2005Student-farmworker alliance beats Taco BellHattiesburg, Miss.--We are writing to you about the recent victory of Florida farmworkers and my group, the Student/Farmworker Alliance. Together, through our three-year boycott campaign, we forced Taco Bell to accede to all our demands concerning the pay and treatment of tomato pickers. The Student/Farmworker Alliance is a network of student groups across the country organizing with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) in the fight for fair wages and safe working conditions for Florida tomato pickers. While the status quo in U.S. agriculture is sweatshop conditions and sub-poverty wages, since 1997 the CIW has also uncovered five separate slavery rings operating in the fields. The CIW's work has resulted in the liberation of over 1,100 captive workers. NEWS & LETTERS clearly is an excellent source for documenting modern struggles for social justice. This story is an inspiring example of what workers, together with students, are accomplishing today. Students have been at the forefront of the fight against Taco Bell, a major industry tomato purchaser whose parent company is the largest restaurant corporation on the planet, by severing contracts with Taco Bell at UCLA, Duke, Notre Dame and 19 other campuses nationwide and organizing the boycott in their communities. Taco Bell identified 18-24 year olds as their target market (whom they deem the “New Hedonism Generation” on their website), but we in that age group have instead put the target on Taco Bell. The victory over Taco Bell is only the beginning of our struggle, as the Student/Farmworker Alliance is prepared to tackle the entire agricultural industry. We will not stop fighting until slavery is no more and farmworkers receive the basic rights they deserve, fair wages and work in a safe environment. There are many good stories in all this: SFA member Melody Gonzales, for example, who after organizing to cut Taco Bell’s contract at Notre Dame has since translated for the CIW on national speaking tours. Melody, whose father was a farmworker, plans to move to Immokalee, Fla. after graduating this semester to work with the Student/Farmworker Alliance in transforming the industry. Aside from her fluency in English and Spanish, she is also studying Haitian Creole, the primary language of roughly 10% of Immokalee’s residents. We would like to make news of our victory public so that students and workers can recognize our collective strength as we work together for a better world. --Michael C. Ide, Student/Farmworker Alliance, and Jordan Buckley, Student/Farmworker Alliance Immokalee, Fla. |
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