Note #9228 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:
06192 March 29, 2006
Marchers back farm workers
Presbyterians join tomato harvesters for Louisville stop on 'Truth Tour'
by John Filiatreau
LOUISVILLE - The Florida tomato pickers are 1,000 miles into their latest "truth tour" when NPR airs a story about Americans taking to the streets to protest an immigration bill that would put up a West-Bank-and-Gaza-style barrier between Mexico and the United States, all across California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas.
The purpose of this Great Wall would be to keep out hundreds of thousands of Mexicans and others desperate to get into this country to take "the jobs Americans workers won't do."
Jobs like picking tomatoes. Here's the truth of that:
Leave home and family far behind and sneak over the border - becoming a criminal and a fugitive - to live in an alien culture in an un-air-conditioned high-rent dorm with dozens of strangers. Get up well before sunrise every morning to go stand in a dusty lot with throngs of other men and women, all hoping to be chosen to put in a 14-hour day of bend-at-the-waist labor under the searing tropical sun - toil for which, if you are young, strong, male and relentless, you might be paid $50. You have no health insurance or benefits, you get no overtime pay, you haven't had a raise in 30 years, and your hosts are talking about building a 1,000-mile-long wall between the likes of you and the American dream.
That's the uncomfortable truth that these six vanloads of tomato pickers are hauling from Immokalee, FL, to Chicago, to drop on the suburban lawn of McDonald's, the nation's top tomato buyer and the biggest restaurant company in the world.
The "McDonald's Truth Tour 2006: The Real Rights Tour" culminates on April 1 with a rally near the hamburger company's corporate headquarters.
The aim is to raise awareness of egregious conditions in the Florida fields; get McDonald's to pay its suppliers a penny per pound more and pass that 1 cent along to the farm workers; and persuade McDonald's to establish an enforceable code of conduct to ensure fair and safe working conditions and to include farm workers in the creation and monitoring of that code.
As their vans approach Louisville - the fifth and final stop on the first of three legs of the journey - a group of about 40 allies and supporters has been marching for 45 minutes on the sidewalk in front of a McDonald's restaurant at Second and Broadway, waiting for the farm workers to join them for a rally. "What do we want?" they shout. "Justice!" "When do we want it? Now!" The drivers of passing cars blow their horns in support. Despite the din, Stephen Bartlett, the Presbyterian who's coordinating the event, is able to get a progress report by cell phone. Twenty minutes more.
The tour chugged into Louisville Monday evening bearing about 45 travel-weary farm workers belonging to the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), the throwback labor organization that last year successfully concluded a four-year national consumer boycott against Taco Bell and its Louisville-based parent company, Yum! Brands.
Through the boycott, which from the start had the solid support of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the CIW secured a 1-cent-per-pound raise for the Florida workers who pick for the growers who supply the tomatoes that go into and onto Taco Bell salsa, tacos and enchiladas.
That doesn't sound like much. But it means that a picker who was getting 40 to 50 cents for filling a 32-pound bucket with tomatoes and hauling it to a truck - a rate of pay that hadn't changed for three decades - now gets more like 75 cents; and the worker who busted his hump to earn $50 for a day's labor now gets about $90.
But that's just for the approximately 1,000 who pick tomatoes sold to Taco Bell. The CIW represents more than 3,000 mostly Mexican, Guatemalan and Haitian farm workers throughout Florida, and hopes eventually to persuade all major fast-food companies to pay more for tomatoes.
So the struggle continues.
The labor organization has not called for a boycott of McDonald's. "We don't want to get to that point," says Julia Perkins, a CIW spokeswoman.
The Louisville march was a low-key affair. The participants were mostly kids and old people, all unfailingly polite. A few police officers stood around drinking coffee and being a "presence," but it was all pretty friendly. A few McDonald's customers looked on in what appeared to be puzzlement. Chants that started enthusiastically - "McDonalds! We're not lovin' it!" - quickly trailed off to silence.
Things picked up when the farm workers arrived. Several thumped on plastic tomato buckets with sticks. One had a bullhorn: "One penny more! One penny more!" "Un centavo mas! Un centavo mas!"
Two young black girls carrying book bags came upon the sidewalk demonstration and gaped as if they'd stumbled across the civil-rights movement. They got out cell phones and took each other's pictures with the marchers in the background, then took up signs - "You see tomatoes, we see exploitation!"; "Super-size the wages" - and took their place in line.
This is the fifth Truth Tour. The first four were part of the Taco Bell boycott.
"We want to raise consciousness ... (that) McDonald's is not following Taco Bell's lead," said Lucas Benitez, a CIW organizer and tour organizer.
The 214 th General Assembly of the PC(USA) in 2002 voted to support the Taco Bell boycott and called for discussions involving the chain, its suppliers and CIW representatives. During the boycott, PC(USA) officials helped arrange meetings between members of the coalition and Yum! executives.
Monday evening, Mark Lancaster of the Presbyterian Hunger Program was just beginning to address the demonstrators - quoting a scriptural mention of "righteousness flowing down like water" - when a cold drizzle started falling, dampening the marchers and their spirits.
The farm workers and some of the other demonstrators later were fed at Urban Spirit, a facility in a former church at 26th and Bank streets where the Rev. Deborah DeMars Conrad, a Lutheran minister, runs an "urban poverty immersion" program. The farm workers were to spend the night there before hitting the road again, this time en route to St. Louis.
Evening events included live music, addresses by CIW leaders and the screening of a funny video in which "Ronaldo" McDonald, red wig, clown shoes and all, joins a tomato-picking crew in a Florida field.
Eusabio Rodriguez of the CIW told the crowd: "McDonald's has not really taken us seriously - yet. But the fact is, many of us are still living in sub-poverty conditions, and we can't stop the struggle until all workers have a living wage. These are really very humble achievements we're trying to get. With the support of students and people of faith, we won't be stopped. We will achieve this."
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