You are currently subscribed to the PCUSANEWS
email list of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
To ensure continued delivery, please add newsservice@pcusa.org to your address book or safe senders list.
========================================
This story and photos may be see here:
www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2008/08290.htm<http://www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2008/08290. htm
08290 April 15, 2008
CIW co-founder to testify on Capitol Hill
Working conditions in Florida's growing fields is focus of Senate hearing
by Evan Silverstein Presbyterian News Service
LOUISVILLE - The co-founder of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)-backed Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is to be among those testifying before a U.S. Senate committee today (April 15) about conditions facing farmworkers in the growing fields of southern Florida.
The CIW, an Immokalee, FL-based group of farmworkers, receives support from the PC(USA) and other faith groups.
The hearing, in Washington, DC, at 10 a.m. comes after U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) visited Immokalee in January to urge support for the CIW's Campaign for Fair Food, which is working to persuade Burger King and other food industry leaders to raise tomato workers' pay.
CIW co-founder Lucas Benitez, a former tomato picker, and investigative journalist Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, are among the witnesses expected to appear at the hearing of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee.
Sanders and U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), the committee's chairmen, will convene the proceedings titled: "Ending Abuses and Improving Working Conditions for Tomato Workers."
The hearing also comes on the heels of a federal indictment in January involving the seventh case of modern-day slavery to emerge from Florida's fields in the last 10 years.
"In an era of globalization the American people are becoming more and more concerned not only about the quality of goods they consume but about the conditions facing those who produce those goods," Sanders said in a press release. "In my view, the American consumer does not want the tomatoes they eat to be picked by workers who are grossly mistreated, underpaid and in some cases even kept in chains. This must not happen in the United States of America in 2008."
Also scheduled to testify are Mary Bauer, director of the Immigrant Justice Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, AL; Roy Reyna, a farm manager from Immokalee, FL; Charlie Frost, detective with the Collier County (FL) Anti-Trafficking Unit; and Reggie Brown, executive vice president of the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, an agriculture cooperative.
The CIW works to improve the lives of its mostly immigrant members, many of whom do low-wage labor in Florida's fields. It also is one of the nation's most respected anti-slavery groups, helping to prosecute six federal slavery cases, freeing more than 1,000 people and earning praise from FBI director Robert Mueller.
"What began as a cry for justice from Immokalee [FL] grew quickly into a national grassroots movement and now with this hearing the power and prestige of the federal government is being brought to bear in our Campaign for Fair Food," said Benitez, recipient of the 2003 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award. "Change is inevitable and this hearing brings us all - growers and farmworkers, consumers and retail food corporations - ever closer to the day when farmworkers receive the fair wages and the respect we deserve for our vital contribution to this society."
In recent years, the CIW has scored a number of hard-fought, high-profile victories. McDonald's and Yum! Brands Inc., the world's biggest fast-food chain and restaurant company, respectively, agreed to a coalition-supported penny-per-pound pay increase for tomato workers. Yum! signed on in 2005; McDonald's in 2007.
The Yum! Brands agreement followed a nearly four-year CIW-led boycott of Mexican-style fast-food giant Taco Bell, which is owned by Yum! Brands.
The PC(USA)'s 214th General Assembly in 2002 endorsed the Taco Bell boycott and called for discussions involving Taco Bell, its tomato suppliers and CIW representatives.
In 2006, the PC(USA)'s 217th Assembly approved a resolution calling for ongoing work with the CIW in the campaign to get fast-food and grocery corporations to ensure the human rights of farmworkers harvesting their tomatoes by partnering with the CIW and advancing the precedents established in the Yum! Brands-CIW agreement.
Last month, as Sanders called for Senate hearings on farm conditions, the Coalition launched a petition campaign. Backed with the threat of a boycott, it aimed to persuade Burger King and others, including the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, which also opposes the penny-a-pound raise, to pay it and to "eliminate slavery and human rights abuses from Florida's fields."
The Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the PC(USA)'s General Assembly and Linda Valentine, executive director of the PC(USA)'s General Assembly Council, are among notable Presbyterians that have already signed the petition.
"It is my sincere hope that by my signing this petition other people of faith and conscience will be inspired to make this commitment to advance human rights as well," Kirkpatrick said after signing the petition last month. "And that Burger King, which has worked so assiduously to avoid responsibility for shameful conditions in the tomato fields of its suppliers, would change course now and work with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers."
For information about the PC(USA)'s Campaign for Fair Food, click here [ www.pcusa.org/fairfood/<http://www.pcusa.org/fairfood/> ].
========================================
You are currently subscribed to the PCUSANEWS
email list of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
To unsubscribe, send a blank message to
mailto:PCUSANEWS-unsubscribe-request@halak.pcusa.org.
To update your email address, send your old email address and your new one to mailto:PCUSANEWS-request@halak.pcusa.org.
For questions or comments, send an email to mailto:PCUSANEWS-request@halak.pcusa.org.
To learn more, visit http://www.pcusa.org/pcnews/
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) 100 Witherspoon Street Louisville, KY 40202 (888) 728-7228