Museum on Wheels: Farmworkers Travel to Tell their Story
The abuses of the corporate food service industry are heinous. Farmworkers know this all too well. On farms in Florida they have been held captive in involuntary servitude. Physically intimidated. And denied fresh air and access to bathrooms.
Our friends at the Student Farmworker Alliance (a partner of the CIW or Coalition of Imokalee Workers) have been working hard to broadcast this message.
A horrifying article in Labor Notes slams these circumstances. The article narrates a visit to the “Modern Slavery Museum” a traveling project of the CIW:
“The trailer, which already feels uncomfortably small, is a replica of one in southwest Florida where 12 farmworkers were forcibly kept between 2005 and 2007. Locked in at night, they had no place to relieve themselves and were forced to foul a corner of their cramped quarters. When someone fought back, he was beaten and chained to a pole. The chain and padlock, still twisted from when workers finally forced it off, rest on the trailer’s wall.”
Though the struggle for justice continues, the CIW won a great victory last spring; in no small part due to the Student Farmworker Alliance. Last school year, student activism on campuses across the country pressured Aramark and Compass Group—two of the three largest food service management companies in the world—to reach an agreement with the CIW; an agreement that will result in better working conditions for Florida farm workers.
This is a great testament to the power of students to take control of food service on their campuses. And a reminder that, in a world of multi-national food corporations, student action on one end of the country can have an effect thousands of miles away.
