Farmworker women to Wendy’s CEO: “Sexual violence has been our daily bread for decades”…
On Wednesday Oct. 18, call Wendy's CEO ahead of a major CIW Women's Group mobilization at headquarters!
Next week, the CIW Women's Group hits the road to its first stops in the new "Harvest without Violence" campaign to end sexual violence in Wendy's supply chain: Columbus and Dublin, Ohio. Exhibiting the "Harvest without Violence Mobile Museum" at universities and public places throughout the area, they'll draw attention to the fast-food holdout's unconscionable choice of violence and impunity over justice and human rights in Wendy's home and headquarter towns. On Monday, Oct. 23, they'll head straight to headquarters to attempt to meet with Mr. Todd Penegor, Wendy's CEO, and other Wendy's decision-makers to urge them to make the right choice and join the Fair Food Program once and for all!
Use the script below or offer your personal comments to let Mr. Penegor know the CIW and allies are on their way, and remind him that until Wendy's joins the Fair Food Program, farmworkers and their growing base of consumer allies will #BoycottWendys!
After the call, fill out the form or email us at organize@allianceforfairfood.org to let us know how it went.
Call-in number: (614) 764-3100, then press the number '3' to be connected to an operator
Script:
“Hi, my name is _______ and I’m calling to leave a message for Mr. Todd Penegor in support of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. The CIW is a farmworker human rights organization that's calling on Wendy’s to end exploitation in their supply chain by joining the internationally-recognized Fair Food Program. I am currently participating in the national boycott of Wendy's because of your company's ongoing failure to join. I'm particularly concerned about the sexual violence faced by farmworkers in Mexico and Wendy's ongoing support of unchecked abuse. Farmworker women will be travelling to your Dublin headquarters next Monday to personally ask Mr. Penegor and Wendy's to support their human rights, once and for all. I urge you to join the Program immediately.
Thank you for relaying this message.”
Spread the word to your community and join us next Wednesday, Oct. 18 as we stand with farmworker women, who should not have to surrender their dignity for the right to put food on their families' tables!
United for respect,
-The Immokalee Crew
ACTION ALERT: “Wendy’s, You’re Failing Farmworker Women” National SFA Week of Action, Oct. 21-28!
ANNOUNCING: Farmworker women launch “Harvest without Violence” campaign in the Wendy’s Boycott!
BREAKING: CIW to join Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach on national Together Live Tour!
This morning, the CIW announced a major partnership with New York Times bestselling author Glennon Doyle and U.S. Women’s soccer superstar Abby Wambach: CIW’s Lupe Gonzalo will be joining Glennon, Abby, and a dozen other powerful women leaders – including Olympic Medalists, authors, actors, and activists – for eight stops in major U.S. cities on the second annual Together Live Tour!
The tour's incredible line-up of bold women will inspire and energize audiences around the country to find purpose and effectuate change. Representing the CIW's courageous Women’s Group, Lupe will bring the incredible story of the Fair Food Movement – in which consumers around the country joined together with farmworkers to transform the agricultural industry – to tens of thousands of new allies nationwide and invite them to join the Wendy’s Boycott.
On tour with Glennon and Abby, Lupe will launch the Fair Food Sisters campaign, a brand-new community initiative for women’s rights advocates around the Fair Food network to stand together and take action to eliminate the abuses that plague farmworker women outside the Fair Food Program.
Head over to the CIW’s website to read more, and find out if Together Live is visiting your city!
Hurricane Irma slams the farmworker town of Immokalee, recovery begins and the work for justice continues
After pummelling islands throughout the Caribbean last week and leaving much destruction in its wake, Hurricane Irma began its slow but powerful ascent onto the mainland of Florida on Sunday afternoon and evening. The historic storm arrived in Immokalee as a Category 2 hurricane with winds of up to 130 miles per hour. Yesterday’s report from the CIW describes Irma’s impact on vulnerable farmworker towns in Florida’s interior:
...Immokalee, the already impoverished farmworker community — and several others north of Immokalee, including Florida’s citrus capital, LaBelle — saw some of the worst of the storm, as the northeast quadrant of the massive hurricane’s eye wall slammed directly into small inland towns along the length of the state.
We are happy to report that, remarkably, despite hours of fierce lashing by Irma’s winds and stinging rains, no lives were reported lost as of the writing of this report….The physical damage wrought by the storm was great, however, with the worst impact reserved for communities like Immokalee, where the housing stock consists mainly of used trailers and flimsily built wooden shacks…
Even as the region begins recovery from Irma, it is imperative that we remember why Immokalee and communities like it are particularly vulnerable to natural disasters like these. Often fleeing war and devastation in their home countries, thousands arrive to Immokalee only to be met by poverty wages (more than half of Immokalee residents live below the poverty line), abusive conditions, and a system that is historically stacked against them.
Without a strong social safety net or the resources to rebuild after a major storm, Immokalee farmworkers are among the millions on the front lines of climate change. In the years to come, warmer waters will generate more extreme weather — and further escalate the threats faced by vulnerable communities.
Today, we must respond to the immediate needs of Immokalee. At the end of this post, you’ll find instructions for where to direct donations and resources.
But we must go further than the demands of the moment. We must continue to follow farmworkers’ leadership to transform the reality that demands they fight for their survival and human rights on a daily basis — we must expand the Fair Food Program. Beyond that, we must stand with frontline communities around the world to ensure they also reduce their structural vulnerability, and to curb climate change while we still can.
Given this long-term vision, the CIW has called on the AFF network to continue organizing with more vigor as ever before. Next week, we will announce a major new initiative in the Campaign for Fair Food to intensify the call to Wendy’s to join the Fair Food Program. Stay tuned for the details!
In the meantime, Immokalee is calling on our support to get back on her feet. If you are in Florida and are able to support with supplies or volunteering, contact Julia Perkins at julia@ciw-online.org. If you wish to donate to relief efforts to Immokalee farmworkers and other farmworker communities, you can do so securely here.
Visit the CIW's website to read more about Irma's impact on Immokalee (and catch a bonus 'son jarocho' video!)
Harvard Business Review counts Fair Food Program among “most important social-impact success stories of the past century” in new article on “Audacious Philanthropy”…
The Wendy’s Boycott heats up as 120+ farmworkers and allies take to the streets in Orlando for a spirited summer protest!
The sweltering 100-degree heat in Orlando on Sunday afternoon did not dampen the loud, contagious energy of over 120 supporters and farmworkers who packed the sidewalk of a Wendy's restaurant on this city's busy Colonial Drive thoroughfare. Farmworkers and their families from Immokalee, just starting to return to Florida after a summer season in northern states, joyfully joined a massive coalition of local organizations supporting the Wendy's Boycott locally, including: members of the Youth and Young Adult (YAYA) Network of the National Farmworker Ministry, the Iron Workers Union, I.S.L.A.M, Inc., QLatinx, the Florida Student Power Network, the First Unitarian Church of Orlando, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations - Florida.
The summer protest followed the conclusion of a 30-day rolling Interfaith Fast for Farmworker Justice, during which over 40 faith leaders participated from seven religious traditions across Florida, the state with the most Wendy’s restaurants in the country. A season of fasting for human rights, initiated by 19 students at the Ohio State University in March and involving hundreds of supporters around the country, has ended with tremendous success as the tomato season rounds the corner.
Before the protest kicked off, Faiza Begani, representing YAYA, welcomed the boisterous crowd:
"Today we stand outside of Wendy's boycotting their continued lack of responsibility and responsiveness when it comes to the abuses of farmworkers.”
As participants led spirited chants and allies with bright yellow flyers educated passersby about the Wendy’s Boycott, a delegation gathered to deliver a letter to the local Wendy's manager urging the fast food holdout to join the Fair Food Program. And even though they received a no-longer-surprising rejection, the group returned to the picket line determined to speak even more strongly about their support for the campaign.
Cruz Salucio of the CIW led the closing reflection, addressing Wendy’s unconscionable decision to move their tomato purchases to Mexico, where reporting abuses has serious and life-threatening consequences (including the recent disappearance of 80 farmworkers in Chihuahua):
"Human rights cannot be ignored in any way. You cannot run away from a place where an important road for farmworkers' human rights is being created.”
Luis Quintana, a former farmworker and representative of the Iron Workers Union, spoke to the heat, humidity, lack of shade, and other conditions that make farm labor some of the most difficult work in the country — and the fact that the CIW’s unique model to uproot those abuses is the only solution to ending violence in Wendy’s produce supply chain!
Orlando’s principal newspaper, The Orlando Sentinel, reported on Sunday’s protest and Wendy’s failed response to the boycott:
“Fair Food Advocates Protest Downtown Wendy’s”
"… For the past five years, [Wendy’s] refused to sign on to the Fair Food [Program],” said Ofelia Sanchez, a protester from the Youth and Young Adult Network of the National Farm Worker Ministry. “Instead of preventing abuses in the fields, they’ve chosen to take their business from Florida tomato farms to Mexican tomato farms.”
In those fields, Sanchez said farm workers face wage theft, sexual abuse and human trafficking threats.
Wendy’s disputed the groups’ claims in a statement and said the Coalition of Immokalee Workers “objects to the fact that we don’t pay fees to their organization.”
“We do not believe that joining the Fair Food Program is the only way to act responsibly, and we pride ourselves on our relationships with industry-leading suppliers who share our commitment to quality, integrity and ethics,” Wendy’s spokeswoman Heidi Schaurer said.
Supporters of the Fair Food Program say it works toward educating farmworkers on their rights and also has created a 24-hour hotline aimed at curbing abuses.
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers said it has educated about 35,000 workers in meetings, and reached thousands more with video and written materials.
“The conditions of farms where we now have the Fair Food Program … have changed tremendously,” said Nely Rodriguez, who works with the Coalition. “Abuses are being eliminated and workers are able to report abuses.”
Of course, Wendy’s hollow Code of Conduct is no match for the Fair Food Program’s gold standard of human rights protection, an internationally-lauded worker-driven solution to farmworker abuse in the fields.
Wendy's may be convinced that ignoring this national boycott, responding only with a weak and ineffective Code of Conduct and false insinuations that the CIW profits from the Fair Food Program, and continually turning a blind eye to the exploitation that remains in their supply chain will undermine our efforts to bring them to the table. But as over 120 farmworkers and their allies made clear in Orlando this weekend, "This action does not end today... Let's use all we can to push this boycott until one day we yell that we beat Wendy's."
Sunday’s protest is but a taste of the tremendous energy and support that is building up for the coming Campaign season as the Student/Farmworker Alliance Encuentro (September 7-10) and fall action plans roll out. Stay tuned for more soon!
REPORT & VIDEO: "Make us hungry and thirsty for justice ..."
July 30 Florida Interfaith Service and Action for Farmworker Justice
This Sunday, nearly twenty years after Bishop John Nevins of the Diocese of Venice beseeched six farmworkers to break their hunger strike – then in its thirtieth day – 150 farmworkers and people of faith from around Southwest Florida gathered to break a thirty-day rolling fast undertaken by nearly 40 Florida religious leaders throughout the month of July.
The Interfaith Service for Farmworker Justice was a living embodiment of the shoulder-to-shoulder, decades-long commitment between people of faith here in Southwest Florida and their farmworker neighbors to transform poverty and abuse in the fields – and it served as a formidable commissioning for the work ahead to bring Wendy’s to the Fair Food Program as the next step towards an agricultural industry in which women work free from violence, and where all are treated with dignity.
The service, held at Naples UCC in partnership with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the Alliance for Fair Food, Temple Shalom, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Greater Naples, and St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, reminded all present again and again that true faith must be put into action. The service began with Julia de la Cruz of the CIW and Rev. Beverly Duncan of Naples UCC grounding the gathering in the reality of farmworkers in nearby Immokalee: Wendy’s, the third-largest hamburger chain in the world, has moved their purchasing from Florida farms implementing the Fair Food Program to farms in Mexico where human rights are trampled upon. In so doing, Wendy’s is profiting from the desecration of the humanity of farmworker families, from Immokalee to Mexico, which has long plagued the industry.
With the remembrance of the reality of farmworker neighbors fixed firmly in the minds of all congregated, evangelical pastor and author Brian McLaren offered a prayer that God would “make us hungry and thirsty for justice,” speaking to the heart of fasting’s spiritual significance and lifting up the vision of all religions for a world in which justice is realized.
Invoking this deep and wide history of people of faith acting for justice, Cantor Donna Azu of Temple Shalom read from Isaiah 58:6-11: “Is this not the fast I have chosen, to undo the bonds of wickedness?” Wesley Snedeker, student pastor at Naples UCC and seminarian at Chicago Theological Seminary, followed with a reading from Matthew 25:31-40, in which Jesus tells his disciples, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Rev. Roger Grugel of the UU Congregation of Greater Naples then illustrated the profound connections between the work of abolitionist Frederick Douglass – enslaved ‘til he was twenty years old, he went on to lead struggles for abolition, women’s rights, and economic justice throughout his entire life – and that of farmworkers fighting for their own dignity today.
The hundreds-year-long struggle for justice, the call of faith to act, the realities faced by farmworkers – all was brought home in a potent sermon by Lupe Gonzalo of the CIW, summed up here:
“Together, we are showing Wendy’s that we are not alone, that we are not going to permit Wendy’s to support violence against women … Let your hearts reach out and call upon them, human being to human being, to become part of this new world of justice we are creating together.
Now our voices sing the melody of hope, our tears have risen as strength. Violence against women must stop: Let us keep fighting for justice and let God guide our path.”
With her words lingering, over two dozen members of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and nearly one hundred members of over a dozen United Church of Christ, Lutheran, Catholic, Presbyterian, Jewish, Episcopal, and Quaker congregations from Cape Coral to Marco Island processed forward to leave on the altar flowers tied to messages they’d written to Wendy’s representing farmworkers’ dream of ‘shalom’ – wholeness, restoration, and peace for all people.
To close the service, Wesley Snedeker echoed the broad-reaching vision of Gonzalo’s sermon with these words:
“We recognize and celebrate and bless the progress that has been made [in the agricultural industry due to the FFP], but God knows we don’t stop there. This is about a cultural change, a national change. This is about rearranging and overcoming the structures that keep so much from many so that it can be retained for a few. May we build in our nation a just system of labor that guarantees the rights and fair compensation for all involved. That mission continues here with us … To do the work of God as God intends us to do it, we have to go outside.”
And so, propelled by the energy of the service, the group went en masse to a local Wendy’s to deliver the flowers and messages created and make public the vision for the just future of which Wendy’s could – and someday, will – be a part. As attendees prayed, sang, and marched, nearly 50 additional local supporters joined the crowd. Thunder rumbled overhead, and the ánimo of the action became even more joyful and insistent.
Buoyed and determined to communicate the reason for such action to Wendy’s representatives, Silvia Perez of the CIW led a delegation of Marilé Franco of Florida Gulf Coast University and Josh Baudin of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church to speak with the store manager. Men barred them from entering and refused to accept the letter or even discuss its contents – a representation of Wendy’s executives’ refusal to even speak with farmworkers.
Undeterred, the delegation returned to join the crowd, reminding those gathered that though store managers may have cowered today, Wendy’s would surely hear the group’s message as all the written messages would be sent to Wendy’s headquarters in Dublin, OH – and someday soon, as we continue to put faith in action, Wendy’s will join the Fair Food Program. With commitment by the Southwest Florida faith community to sustain this struggle reaffirmed through the day of prayer and action, those gathered dispersed.
As Lupe Gonzalo of the CIW exhorts us in her sermon:
“The gospel of Matthew reminds us that it is about what we do when we see another of us imprisoned, hungry, suffering. It is about what we are doing to build a new kind of economy, a structural solution to the immoral operations of supply chains that chew up human beings. And your witness as the religious community, your willingness to unite together with us, demonstrates the kind of world God longs for.”
Strengthened by this month of fasting undertaken by the Florida Faith network of the Alliance for Fair Food, let us continue unfailing in the struggle for justice, dignity, and a new economy that is built upon our morals rather than on the backs of our brothers and sisters. “Amen, and may it be so!”
Head to the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ website for a photo report, and stay tuned for more opportunities to take action in Florida and beyond. And if you haven't yet made your donation to the Wendy's Boycott Fund to help the Alliance for Fair Food sustain the action into the coming season, it's not too late -- you can make a contribution here.