The University of New Mexico fights to 'Dine with Dignity'

Today we have a guest post from University of New Mexico student Mike Butler.  Mike and his fellow UNM students are fighting to make sure their campus food service is both sustainable and in line with their belief in social justice.

The Fair Trade Initiative at the University of New Mexico (UNM) has a three-pronged campaign. Like most college/student labor groups, we are working in solidarity with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers on the ‘Dine With Dignity’ Campaign to demand that food service providers, like Chartwells at our campus,  pays one penny more per pound for tomatoes they purchase. We also want to see an increase in food that is Fair Trade certified.  With this in mind we are pointing out that “green” and “organic” do not mean fair.  However, the third part of our campaign is to see an increase in organic and local food in the cafeteria.

To promote both fair trade food and the “Dine with Dignity” campaign, we have been passing out fliers to go along with fair trade coffee almost every Wednesday on campus. We are also setting up a meeting with Chartwells to discuss what we want to see on our campus.  And we are going to be showing food and labor related films the week of May Day to promote the campaign.

What we are doing as students is reshaping our University. We are taking things into our own hands and using our voices to demand justice not just for ourselves but also for workers. We believe that this is going to be beneficial for us because in 10 years we want to have a local food shelf, a unionized food labor force, and a student body that is powerful politically.