Student Farmworker Alliance

A Celebration of Struggle with the CIW

Submitted by Kyle Schafer on Mon, 03/07/2011 - 12:37

One mile into this weekend’s Coalition of Immokalee Workers march in Tampa, I met George. He’s a longtime Presbyterian minister and was older than most of the crowd – he’s a grandfather, a sincere man who thought that 6 miles may have been a bit of an exaggeration. We started walking together after a lunch of tamales (even vegan ones) and lemonade. We indeed had a full five miles to go in the hot Florida sun.

George was happy to hear I was a union organizer. His grandfather had been involved in the historic Homestead Strike in Pittsburgh back in 1892. Carnegie’s men shot at George’s grandfather, who was lucky to have not been killed. Still George believed it was because of the unions that his father was able to go to college. I told him that I was able to go to college because of my own father’s labor struggle so many decades later.

As George and I kept talking, he said it must be a hard time to be a union organizer. I said it was a hard time, but a time of tremendous opportunity and excitement. He mentioned Wisconsin and as I sweated on the streets of Tampa, I thought of my fellow members of UNITE HERE Local 1. At that very moment, two busloads of them were up in Madison, surely shivering but proudly representing Chicago’s labor movement at the Wisconsin capitol. The fight is everywhere.

George and I ended up separated somehow, after many rushed street crossings and turns along our route. I spent the rest of my time marching with students and other young people from around the country – from Florida, Kansas, Texas, Pennsylvania, Chicago. Many of them I had before as we collectively have tried to build a labor movement in our country.

As the protest march culminated with a celebration of struggle, of hope and change, I was with the Food Chain Workers Alliance. On stage during the pageant, I joined representatives from farms, food processing plants, restaurants and supermarkets in pledging support for a food chain that sustains all people in its path. We followed faith leaders, and were followed by children who knew quite well how to chant “Si Se Puede.” Everyone was smiling. But everyone was mad, dedicated to change, no matter how hot the day or long the struggle.

The story of my day is surely not unique. The movement we are building for justice, the movement that the Coalition of Immokalee Workers so successfully helps lead, is about a lot more than tomatoes or any one of us. It is about building a future for each other. It is about carrying on the struggle that George’s grandfather was a part of 120 years ago. It is a struggle for dignity of which I am honored to take part.

To those of you who I’ve met along the way, let’s make sure the spirit of today lasts longer than our sunburn. We’ve got a lot of work to do together.

(These photos and many more are from the official CIW photo recap of the event -- make sure to check it out! Keep up with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and Student/Farmworker Alliance for future actions in their campaign for fair food.)

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Stir It Up Joins the CIW in the Northeast!

Submitted by Kyle Schafer on Tue, 03/01/2011 - 19:06

Even in the cold and snow, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers manages to host some of the most vibrant marches I’ve ever joined. After a great weekend plotting a movement for food justice at the Real Food Challenge summit, me and about 900 other folks gathered, shivering, in Boston’s Copley Square. With marching band, colorful signs and enthusiastic chanters in tow, we headed a couple miles down the street to call on Stop n Shop’s parent company Ahold to come to an agreement with the CIW.

It always amazes me how much fun I have on these marches, and I can’t really do it justice in a quick blog post. Of course, the best recap comes straight from the CIW anyway. Check out the photos and a rundown of the day’s events, and make sure to follow the rest of their tour too! I look forward to joining the crew down in Tampa on Friday and Saturday with the rest of the supermarket industry firmly in sight.

For details on the tour stops between Boston and Tampa this week, go to the list of events on the Do The Right Thing tour website. And don’t forget to sign the Student/Farmworker Alliance petition on Change.org – it is already approaching 15,000 signatures and will be delivered to Publix this weekend.

Hope to see you in sunny Florida!

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"Unity. Community. Movement."

Submitted by Kyle Schafer on Mon, 02/28/2011 - 12:58

On Friday night, the youth leading the Real Food Challenge’s Northeast Food and Justice summit stood up in front of hundreds of people and kicked off an incredible weekend with a simple theme. In between giant icebreakers, stretches, step lessons and poetry performances, the youth leaders had everyone in the room repeat the theme aloud over and over again.

“Unity. Community. Movement.”

Days later those three words are still resonating. They are three words that describe the conference perfectly and simply, and what strikes me most is that the word “food” doesn’t count among them.

Yes, over the three days we talked a whole lot about food. But anyone expecting a conference full of a new generation of snobby “foodies” who only want high-quality food for themselves would have been sorely out of place. This conference was about changing the world for everyone by creating a food system that works for everyone – from farmworkers and dining workers who deserve a fair wage to high school students who deserve a healthy meal. It was about food, sure, but at its core it was about a whole lot more than that.

Honestly I felt honored just to be part of it. In the Stir It Up workshop, “Worker Leadership in the Fight for Sustainable Food,” worker leaders from UNITE HERE Local 35 at Yale talked about their own struggle to keep good food in their dining halls. Many years ago, to protest fresh baked goods being replaced with packaged ones, the Yale dining workers held a taste test in the middle of campus. They won. Much more recently, when Yale started an expansive sustainable food program, the workers figured out how to make it practical for them too. The program couldn’t work without their input. I could barely keep track of all the hands up from workshop participants wanting to understand the worker perspective and remarkably eager for advice on how to involve workers in sustainable food projects at their own school. In other workshops we attended that day, such as ones put on by Slow Food USA, the Student/Farmworker Alliance and the Food Chain Workers Alliance, the energy seemed just as high.

On the third and final day, the conference closed by recognizing the love that went into the meals prepared for us over the weekend and by talking about youth in the Civil Rights movement who also changed our world. I think to most of the people in the room, those weren’t two different topics. I don’t know if the food movement is the next big movement that will radically change our society, but after this weekend, I feel like it could be.

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Join Us at the Real Food Summits!!

Submitted by Kyle Schafer on Thu, 02/10/2011 - 14:46

Over the next three weeks, our friends at the Real Food Challenge are leading summits all across the United States to bring together people fighting for justice in our food system. Stir It Up is honored to have the opportunity to present at four of the five summits, and we hope to meet you there!

This weekend, in Tempe AZ, we’ll kick it off as part of the United Students for Fair Trade / Real Food Challenge Southwest Convergence at Arizona State University. In workshop session one on Saturday, Feb 12, meet concessions workers from Phoenix’s airport to hear about what it is like to work in the food service industry. Later in the day, we’ll go over the basics of the campus dining industry and lead a training on Building Community Across Counters.

Next weekend, Feb 18-20, we’ll be in two places at once! Find us at the Strengthening the Roots Convergence in Santa Cruz, CA and at the Midwest Real Food Summit near Chicago, IL. At both conferences, you’ll have a chance to talk with food workers about their experiences in the cafeterias and their fight for justice in the workplace. We’ll also run down the campus dining industry and train students on how to start building a campus community inclusive of dining workers at their own school.

We’ll wrap up our tour at Northeast Food and Justice Youth Summit in Boston, Feb 25-27. In addition to the campus dining basics, Boston attendees will have a special opportunity on Saturday, Feb 26 to talk with campus dining workers from Yale who have played a critical role in making that school’s sustainable food program a success both for those who cook the meals and the students who eat them.

Then on Feb 27, we’ll hit the streets of Boston with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the Student/Farmworker Alliance, joining farmworkers and other allies in the March to Stop Sweatshops in the fields.

It promises to be an exciting few weeks in the movement for real, sustainable and fair food. If you haven’t registered for any of these conferences yet, you may still have a chance! Check out Real Food Challenge’s central summit website for all the links you need.

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“All the News that’s Fit to Print”: CIW Victory Hits the Times

Submitted by Ian Mikusko on Mon, 01/24/2011 - 19:50

Here at ‘the blog of record’ (Stir It Up), we’ve been covering the Coalition of Immokalee Workers,

Student Farmworker Alliance struggle for the past two years. Following our lead, no doubt, the New York Times recently published a story describing the huge CIW victory in their Campaign for Fair Food.

In the article, After Long Fight Farmworkers in Florida Win Increase in Pay, the New York Times describes the struggle:

After fighting for more than a decade for better wages, a group of Florida farmworkers has hashed out the final piece of an extraordinary agreement with local tomato growers and several big-name buyers, including the fast-food giants McDonald’s and Burger King, that will pay the pickers roughly a penny more for every pound of fruit they harvest.

The Times also cites the reaction of an expert:

Read more

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A Visit to Immokalee

Submitted by Kyle Schafer on Fri, 12/17/2010 - 15:42

Right now I’m sitting in the Coalition of Immokalee Workers office and community center. It is my first visit to Immokalee since first being inspired by a CIW member way back during the Taco Bell boycott, and as usually seems to be the case with my CIW-related travels these days, I find myself reflecting on the movement.

Yesterday, as I drove down US-27, through a couple hundred miles of rural Central Florida, I thought about how incredible it is that this tiny place has become a beacon of hope, an example of the transformative potential of worker power and community solidarity. I have met people from all across the country whose first exposure to the labor movement has been through a CIW march or presentation in their town. For some of those people, far from the tomato fields, the experience has changed the course of their entire lives. I now sit in a room home to five desks, a table, the Student/Farmworker Alliance and Interfaith Action, surrounded by CIW allies who have moved to Immokalee and devoted their lives to solidarity and struggle.

Also as I drove yesterday, my friends and UNITE HERE members back in Chicago were on strike at the Palmer House hotel. At a brief stop on my drive, I had quickly emailed one of the professors who helped lead community support for the cafeteria workers at Loyola to tell her about the hotel strike. She almost immediately responded that in fact she had already spent her morning on the picket line.

From this vantage point, “movement-building” feels like a lot more than a high-minded phrase. It is actually happening! In unsuspecting buildings and rooms cramped with volunteers, picket signs and information packets. In churches, classrooms and basement apartments. Even if I think just of the people I have met through the CIW and through UNITE HERE, I feel like just maybe we’ve got a chance to turn the tide.

The victories won’t come easy, and the struggle will not end soon (or ever), but we’re building something that has real power. The activity in this small room will soon force the massive supermarket industry to start taking responsibility for workers in its supply chain. The activity surely happening near my own desk back in Chicago will continue to alter the power dynamics in hotels, cafeterias and neighborhoods across the United States and Canada.

It makes me think back to 2007, when I stood on a stage in suburban Chicago chanting “Ya cayó, ya cayó, El Rey ya cayó” with SFA – we were celebrating the CIW McDonald’s victory and were certain that Burger King (the next target at the time) had essentially already lost. We were right, and I still feel the sentiment on days like today: We are winning. And in some ways, we’ve already won.

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Tools of the Trade Edition One: The RFP Process

Submitted by Ian Mikusko on Mon, 11/29/2010 - 19:07

Those of you who are familiar with Stir It Up, know that it isn't just a website, it's the embodiment of a philosophy. Like our friends at the Student Farmworker Alliance and the Real Food Challenge, we believe that college students have a unique ability to fight for progressive change in the food service industry. The more students who insert themselves in campus food-related decisions, the greater the potential that we'll see justice in the food system.

With that in mind, Stir It Up will be unrolling a series of handouts with crucial information about the higher education food industry. Tools of the Trade, Edition 1 (available for download) features information about the Request for Proposals (RFP) process, which is an invitation for companies to bid on a university contract:

Though it is far from assured that an RFP for the food service operation will be issued while you are an active student (many food service contracts are for far longer than four years), if it does happen, the RFP process is an invaluable opportunity to influence your university's food service operation. Do not be discouraged if you do not have this opportunity, however, because there are plenty of other ways to get involved (many of which will be featured in the Tools of the Trade series).

If you are interested in seeing when your school's food service contract expires, check our contract database to see if we have a copy. If not (and you attend a public school) take a look at our Freedom of Information Act guide to learn how to obtain a copy of your school's food service contract (or you can let Heidi Heidi High-Tops guide you).

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Victories Roll In, The Struggle for Fair Food Continues

Submitted by Kyle Schafer on Thu, 11/18/2010 - 12:20

The past month has seen huge strides in workers’ struggle to win justice in the food chain, from the fields to our campus kitchens.

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has forever changed the agricultural industry in Florida, winning a groundbreaking victory with the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (FTGE), following victories with industry leaders Pacific Growers and Six L’s.

Meanwhile, in Chicago, tremendously courageous campus dining workers at Loyola University took a public stand and won a union, joining UNITE HERE Local 1. They join the union of campus dining workers across the United States and Canada, including those just a few miles away at DePaul University, who won a great new contract, which included important rights for immigrant workers.

Of course, the struggle is not over. We have to keep fighting, and we have to keep standing in solidarity with each other, connecting those who pick our food to those who cook it and serve it to us every day.

In that spirit, Alan Camacho, a cook and one of the worker leaders at DePaul, helped lead a delegation to Trader Joe’s as part of the Student/Farmworker Alliance national week of action to build on the recent CIW victories and hold supermarkets accountable for working conditions in Florida’s tomato fields.

Keep up with all of the other great events as part of the SFA week of action at http://www.sfalliance.org.

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Support the Student Farmworker Alliance

Submitted by Ian Mikusko on Tue, 10/05/2010 - 14:10

Ever since it came into existence ten years ago, the Student/Farmworker Alliance has been remarkably successful in organizing for social change. Recently in their Dine with Dignity campaign--which we followed very closely here at Stir It Up--they took on three multi-national food service companies and won agreements ensuring that the companies will work to improve wages and working conditions in the fields of their Florida tomato suppliers.

It has won all of these campaigns in spite of the fact that it is truly a grassroots organization; an organization that is able to function largely due to the support of its allies. So what better time than the tenth anniversary of its founding to become sustaining member....

Become a sustaining member of SFA today!