Following Thursday’s incredible kick-off to the Workers’ Voice Tour and the launch of the second-ever national boycott in the 15-year history of the Campaign for Fair Food, yesterday was Columbus’s turn to feel the heat of the Fair Food Nation!
The Workers’ Voice Tour bus arrived in Wendy’s hometown Saturday night to be welcomed with a night of dancing and convivio with scores of enthusiastic allies, old and new, that had travelled in caravans and buses from across Ohio and across the country—from Rhode Island to Tennessee, Washington, D.C. to Michigan. The excitement and anticipation for the Columbus stop of the tour had been building up for weeks, in the town that has seen many a CIW action throughout the three years of the Wendy’s campaign.
More than 500 farmworkers, students, people of faith, fellow workers, and consumers converged on Sunday to march for three miles across the heart of downtown Columbus, stopping at a prominent Wendy’s location just in front of The Ohio State University—where students had, only a year ago, launched a national student boycott of the fast food chain as part of the Boot the Braids campaign to cut contracts with on-campus Wendy’s and where local Ohio Fair Food allies have been pushing the campaign forward since its start.
With groups like the Real Food Challenge, the Central Ohio Worker Center, the Cincinnati Interfaith Worker Center, and the First Unitarian Universalist Church present, the march ended with a beautiful program of popular theater and speakers in a park nearby OSU’s campus, and an invitation to today’s delegation to the corporate offices of Wendy’s in nearby Dublin, OH.