Governor Crist, we will be watching!
On a sunny and warm early spring day, farm workers, students, journalists, activists and members of the clergy, all friends and supporters of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) got to Tallahassee with a simple request: a meeting with Gov. Charlie Crist. But meeting with a grassroots organization that fights against the abuses perpetrated on a daily basis in the Florida fields would mean to admit that there is a problem with workers’ rights in the Sunshine state.
On March the 9th, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers brought to the capital city of Florida the 36,925 signed petitions taking the governor to task. In an open letter, the CIW requested Crist to publicly renounce the comments made by Florida Department of Agriculture spokesman Terence McElroy who inhumanely downplayed the gravity of the conditions of farm workers.
On the backdrop of the white and shiny State Capitol, Florida farm workers dramatizes the latest of the seven cases of modern-day slavery that the CIW uncovered. Two men pick tomatoes from dawn to sunset, threatened, beaten up, forced in and out of a truck by a mean-looking contractor; then the man gets paid by his boss, puts all the money in his pockets, and chains the workers back into the van.
CIW members thus re-enacted the way the Navarette brothers treated their workers. Last December, Cesar and Geovanni Navarette pleaded guilty to running a slavery operation on their property.
“Of course, I say any instance is too many, and any legitimate grower certainly does not engage in that activity (slavery).” Mr. McElroy had said. “But we are talking of maybe a case a year.”
Posters of recent national and international news articles about the abuses perpetrated in the Florida fields have been positioned on the grassy lawn of the capitol: an open invitation to the passersby to reflect on the existence of slavery in the 21st century.
Before the imposing white Capitol, a series of notable, longtime CIW supporters speak from the podium to the couple of hundred people there gathered to listen.
…
Let’s step back for a second.
Before the Emancipation Proclamation (1863), slaves were imported from Africa and deployed not only to pick tobacco, sugar and cotton in the Southern United States, but also the produce American families put on their tables. Additionally, indentured servants imported from Europe supplied the remaining, necessary agricultural labor force. The readers of i-italy might be interested to know that at the end of the eighteen century, most of the migrant workers who were harvesting the fields of New Jersey were actually Italian, among the most discriminated groups in the United States at that time. The legal abolishment of slavery surely did not bring justice and fair treatment in the fields, especially in the South. Along with poor whites, mostly African Americans kept harvesting the crops around the country, living and working in inhuman conditions as the CBS documentary presented by Ed Murrow, Harvest of Shame, showed in 1960.
Things somewhat changed with World War II. American men (whites and blacks) were drafted and sent to fight in Europe. In order to meet the demand for manual labor, women were quickly expected to get out of their private realms and go work in the factories; brazos were imported from Mexico to harvest the American fields. Under the official aegis of the Bracero Program, strong, young arms were brought to the U.S. to work the fields and feed American families. The agricultural program was eventually closed in 1964 after repeated abuses were reported.
One of the activists and labor organizers who fought the guest worker plan was a soft-spoken, rather short, Mexican American man. In the 1960s, César Chávez organized the Filipino and Mexican workers in California and led them to a successful grapes boycott. It was a nonviolent movement, and Chavez almost starved himself to death to keep it nonviolent.
One of the major supporters of migrant workers’ rights, the one that could have extended Chávez’s efforts to the national level was a young New York Senator: his name was Robert F. Kennedy. Dolores Huerta, Chávez’s wife, strenuously worked in the campaign that led Kennedy to win the California primary.
…
In the 21st century, farm workers are still routinely exploited. According to the National Labor Relations Board (1935) that still regulates the labor relationships between parties in the US, farm workers cannot unionize, at least at the national level. While in California, the United Farm Workers (UFW), the organization founded by Chávez and Huerta in 1962, is today an important pressure group with a large base, in Florida unions are inexistent, and farm workers are still very vulnerable.
“Agriculture industry is sick,” says CIW representative Gerardo Reyes-Chavez from the podium of the Capitol. “It’s a kind of cancer. The cancer can be seen in the form of stagnant wages, or when the humanity of the workers is not recognized. The seven cases of modern-day slavery are just little more than symptoms of these conditions, though the most extreme ones…”
CIW proposes a new model. A model of labor negotiation that has worked and now calls for the acknowledgment of the institutions to obtain implementation and thus allows the struggle for farm workers’ rights to move forward. Indeed, farm workers are still paid by piecework, they have no insurance, no right to sick leave or vacation time. And their work days begin before the sun rises and end when the sun sets.
In the last few years, the CIW has been able to gather around the same table corporations and farm workers representatives in defense of human rights in the fields of Florida. CIW requested and eventually obtained a raise of one cent per bushel of picked tomatoes. The increase would allow doubling the wages of the Florida farm workers. Yes, it would. Indeed, although four major fast food chains (Taco Bell, McDonalds, Burger King and Subway) have conceded, the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (FTGE) has yet to lift the ban that would actually allow the farm workers to get paid. Back in December 2007, the FTGE had indeed threatened its members with $100,000 fines in case they would have complied with the agreements; as a sort of pitiful justification for such minatory practice, the FTGE maintained that mysterious, undefined legal technicalities existed that would prevent the implementation of the agreements, which have been labeled by FTGE executive vice President Reggie Brown as “illegal and un-American.”
“The entire world cannot discover that there is a problem with agriculture only when new cases of ecoli or salmonella appear, while in the meantime modern-day slavery occurs without anyone taking action,” Gerardo Reyes reminds the Tallahassee audience.
...
On Monday, Charlie Crist did not show up. He sent a team instead to meet with the CIW and talk about enforcement.
“But enforcement occurs after people have been enslaved,” points out Laura Germino who helped the workers of Immokalee to get organized back in the early nineties. “Preventive action is needed. Slavery occurs in degraded labor environments,” Germino continues, speaking on behalf of Freedom Network USA, an organization that tracks trafficking survivors.
The silence of Charlie Crist—and the one of the governors that came before him—on the human rights’ situation in the Florida fields speaks volume about the tight relationships between the farmers of Florida and its politicians. Agriculture is the second industry in the Sunshine state (right after tourism) with over 44,000 farms and an annual production of over seven billion dollars.
Several crops are grown in the fields around the town of Immokalee, which is located in southwest Florida and hosts the main labor pool for the state’s farming workforce: cucumbers, peppers, watermelons, squashes, potatoes, but more than anything else, citrus and tomatoes. During the winter months, Florida farm workers hand-pick 90 percent of the tomatoes consumed in the entire country.
“I am sure that there are growers out there that are thinking about making this change happen,” says Rev. Noelle D’Amico, National Coordinator of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A.. “There’s no middle ground, no third way…”
“Where are you Governor Crist?” repeatedly asks Jim Goodman founder and president of Family Farm Defenders. “I have done hard-work labor all my life… and I have always said I would never do something I wouldn’t do myself. That’s why I don’t understand why more farmers would not come forward to support human rights!”
…
I had left Montgomery on Sunday while the city was celebrating the hundreds of courageous and mostly unknown women and men who marched from Selma to the capitol, they were demanding voting rights fro African Americans. One person cannot start a movement, had stressed Georgette Norman, director of the Rosa Parks Museum, few days earlier while lecturing about the Montgomery Bus Boycott at Auburn University Montgomery. A social protest cannot change the law, she rightly pointed out, that’s the job of lawmakers and politicians.
“Freedom does not come easily,” says Florida Senator Arthenia Joyner from the podium, evoking African American history. “CIW rights are human rights,” continues Joyner. “And as America advocates for human rights in Africa, Asia and all over the world, it should look at what’s happening in the Florida fields.”
In the last few years, the CIW has been able to build a broad, diverse and nonviolent movement around farm workers rights; now, a political response is needed.
In 2009, farm workers of Florida are asking Governor Crist and society as a whole to stand up for human rights.
They said they will be back.
They said they will be watching.
As I was about to finish this article, news came that Governor Crist accepted to meet with the CIW on March 25th; the same day, forty-four years ago, 25,000 marchers finally reached the Montgomery Capitol to pressure George Wallace, another governor, who was unwilling to listen to the requests of the civil rights movement.
Governor Crist, we will be watching.
Visit the http://www.ciw-online.org/index.html for updates.
On March the 9th, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers brought to the capital city of Florida the 36,925 signed petitions taking the governor to task. In an open letter, the CIW requested Crist to publicly renounce the comments made by Florida Department of Agriculture spokesman Terence McElroy who inhumanely downplayed the gravity of the conditions of farm workers.
On the backdrop of the white and shiny State Capitol, Florida farm workers dramatizes the latest of the seven cases of modern-day slavery that the CIW uncovered. Two men pick tomatoes from dawn to sunset, threatened, beaten up, forced in and out of a truck by a mean-looking contractor; then the man gets paid by his boss, puts all the money in his pockets, and chains the workers back into the van.
CIW members thus re-enacted the way the Navarette brothers treated their workers. Last December, Cesar and Geovanni Navarette pleaded guilty to running a slavery operation on their property.
“Of course, I say any instance is too many, and any legitimate grower certainly does not engage in that activity (slavery).” Mr. McElroy had said. “But we are talking of maybe a case a year.”
Posters of recent national and international news articles about the abuses perpetrated in the Florida fields have been positioned on the grassy lawn of the capitol: an open invitation to the passersby to reflect on the existence of slavery in the 21st century.
Before the imposing white Capitol, a series of notable, longtime CIW supporters speak from the podium to the couple of hundred people there gathered to listen.
…
Let’s step back for a second.
Before the Emancipation Proclamation (1863), slaves were imported from Africa and deployed not only to pick tobacco, sugar and cotton in the Southern United States, but also the produce American families put on their tables. Additionally, indentured servants imported from Europe supplied the remaining, necessary agricultural labor force. The readers of i-italy might be interested to know that at the end of the eighteen century, most of the migrant workers who were harvesting the fields of New Jersey were actually Italian, among the most discriminated groups in the United States at that time. The legal abolishment of slavery surely did not bring justice and fair treatment in the fields, especially in the South. Along with poor whites, mostly African Americans kept harvesting the crops around the country, living and working in inhuman conditions as the CBS documentary presented by Ed Murrow, Harvest of Shame, showed in 1960.
Things somewhat changed with World War II. American men (whites and blacks) were drafted and sent to fight in Europe. In order to meet the demand for manual labor, women were quickly expected to get out of their private realms and go work in the factories; brazos were imported from Mexico to harvest the American fields. Under the official aegis of the Bracero Program, strong, young arms were brought to the U.S. to work the fields and feed American families. The agricultural program was eventually closed in 1964 after repeated abuses were reported.
One of the activists and labor organizers who fought the guest worker plan was a soft-spoken, rather short, Mexican American man. In the 1960s, César Chávez organized the Filipino and Mexican workers in California and led them to a successful grapes boycott. It was a nonviolent movement, and Chavez almost starved himself to death to keep it nonviolent.
One of the major supporters of migrant workers’ rights, the one that could have extended Chávez’s efforts to the national level was a young New York Senator: his name was Robert F. Kennedy. Dolores Huerta, Chávez’s wife, strenuously worked in the campaign that led Kennedy to win the California primary.
…
In the 21st century, farm workers are still routinely exploited. According to the National Labor Relations Board (1935) that still regulates the labor relationships between parties in the US, farm workers cannot unionize, at least at the national level. While in California, the United Farm Workers (UFW), the organization founded by Chávez and Huerta in 1962, is today an important pressure group with a large base, in Florida unions are inexistent, and farm workers are still very vulnerable.
“Agriculture industry is sick,” says CIW representative Gerardo Reyes-Chavez from the podium of the Capitol. “It’s a kind of cancer. The cancer can be seen in the form of stagnant wages, or when the humanity of the workers is not recognized. The seven cases of modern-day slavery are just little more than symptoms of these conditions, though the most extreme ones…”
CIW proposes a new model. A model of labor negotiation that has worked and now calls for the acknowledgment of the institutions to obtain implementation and thus allows the struggle for farm workers’ rights to move forward. Indeed, farm workers are still paid by piecework, they have no insurance, no right to sick leave or vacation time. And their work days begin before the sun rises and end when the sun sets.
In the last few years, the CIW has been able to gather around the same table corporations and farm workers representatives in defense of human rights in the fields of Florida. CIW requested and eventually obtained a raise of one cent per bushel of picked tomatoes. The increase would allow doubling the wages of the Florida farm workers. Yes, it would. Indeed, although four major fast food chains (Taco Bell, McDonalds, Burger King and Subway) have conceded, the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (FTGE) has yet to lift the ban that would actually allow the farm workers to get paid. Back in December 2007, the FTGE had indeed threatened its members with $100,000 fines in case they would have complied with the agreements; as a sort of pitiful justification for such minatory practice, the FTGE maintained that mysterious, undefined legal technicalities existed that would prevent the implementation of the agreements, which have been labeled by FTGE executive vice President Reggie Brown as “illegal and un-American.”
“The entire world cannot discover that there is a problem with agriculture only when new cases of ecoli or salmonella appear, while in the meantime modern-day slavery occurs without anyone taking action,” Gerardo Reyes reminds the Tallahassee audience.
...
On Monday, Charlie Crist did not show up. He sent a team instead to meet with the CIW and talk about enforcement.
“But enforcement occurs after people have been enslaved,” points out Laura Germino who helped the workers of Immokalee to get organized back in the early nineties. “Preventive action is needed. Slavery occurs in degraded labor environments,” Germino continues, speaking on behalf of Freedom Network USA, an organization that tracks trafficking survivors.
The silence of Charlie Crist—and the one of the governors that came before him—on the human rights’ situation in the Florida fields speaks volume about the tight relationships between the farmers of Florida and its politicians. Agriculture is the second industry in the Sunshine state (right after tourism) with over 44,000 farms and an annual production of over seven billion dollars.
Several crops are grown in the fields around the town of Immokalee, which is located in southwest Florida and hosts the main labor pool for the state’s farming workforce: cucumbers, peppers, watermelons, squashes, potatoes, but more than anything else, citrus and tomatoes. During the winter months, Florida farm workers hand-pick 90 percent of the tomatoes consumed in the entire country.
“I am sure that there are growers out there that are thinking about making this change happen,” says Rev. Noelle D’Amico, National Coordinator of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A.. “There’s no middle ground, no third way…”
“Where are you Governor Crist?” repeatedly asks Jim Goodman founder and president of Family Farm Defenders. “I have done hard-work labor all my life… and I have always said I would never do something I wouldn’t do myself. That’s why I don’t understand why more farmers would not come forward to support human rights!”
…
I had left Montgomery on Sunday while the city was celebrating the hundreds of courageous and mostly unknown women and men who marched from Selma to the capitol, they were demanding voting rights fro African Americans. One person cannot start a movement, had stressed Georgette Norman, director of the Rosa Parks Museum, few days earlier while lecturing about the Montgomery Bus Boycott at Auburn University Montgomery. A social protest cannot change the law, she rightly pointed out, that’s the job of lawmakers and politicians.
“Freedom does not come easily,” says Florida Senator Arthenia Joyner from the podium, evoking African American history. “CIW rights are human rights,” continues Joyner. “And as America advocates for human rights in Africa, Asia and all over the world, it should look at what’s happening in the Florida fields.”
In the last few years, the CIW has been able to build a broad, diverse and nonviolent movement around farm workers rights; now, a political response is needed.
In 2009, farm workers of Florida are asking Governor Crist and society as a whole to stand up for human rights.
They said they will be back.
They said they will be watching.
As I was about to finish this article, news came that Governor Crist accepted to meet with the CIW on March 25th; the same day, forty-four years ago, 25,000 marchers finally reached the Montgomery Capitol to pressure George Wallace, another governor, who was unwilling to listen to the requests of the civil rights movement.
Governor Crist, we will be watching.
Visit the http://www.ciw-online.org/index.html for updates.
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