[10-2-03]

THE EVERYDAY FACE OF CORPORATE GLOBALIZATION:

Farmworker Poverty, Fast Food Profits, and You

The Mexico Solidarity Network (MSN) currently seeks community, faith and university-based sponsors for a special mid-west tour with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a community-based farmworker organization in Southwest Florida. The Coalition's members are largely Latino immigrants and farmworkers. MSN has worked with the Coalition for the past 3 years by working to amplify CIW's demands to end sweatshops in the fields, and create just wages and working conditions for the millions of immigrant farmworkers throughout the US. We are looking for sponsors in Wisconsin, Chicago, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. To sponsor an event in your community contact: msn@mexicosolidarity.org or call 773.583.7728.

The CIW emphasizes creative mobilization tactics to put pressure on local growers, state authorities and corporate powers that control US agricultural markets. In the past year, the CIW has been widely recognized, including articles in the New Yorker (April 21-28, 2003) and National Geographic (Sept. 2003). The CIW found an outpouring of public support for its, Boot the Bell campaign, which calls for a boycott of Taco Bell, a major buyer of the Florida tomatoes that CIW members harvest. To date, students at sixteen universities nationally have expelled Taco Bell from their campuses to protest the exploitative practices of the fast food giant in Florida's fields. This fall CIW members will embark on a four-day march from Lake Worth, FL to Miami to protest the Free Trade Area of the Americas Meeting from Nov. 15-19.

The terms, sweatshops and slavery, are laden with images of foreign lands and centuries past. Few associate such terms with life in 21st century United States. Yet, for immigrant workers who toil in the fields of the US to put food on our plates sweatshops, and slavery, are a reality.

Farmworkers are among the poorest, most vulnerable and exploited class of laborers in the US. They possess no right to organize without fear of retaliation, no right to overtime pay, sub-poverty wages, no access to benefits. In extreme cases, farmworkers live in slavery. Florida prosecutors, for example, have won convictions in five cases of modern-day slavery since 1998.

In our mid-west tour, CIW and MSN reps will utilize interactive theater and other creative exercises to empower audiences to make clear links between farmworker exploitation, fast food profits and young consumers, the primary target market for the fast food industry. Participants will be offered a variety of actions to take to end farmworker poverty and exploitation.

CIW speakers include two young dynamic immigrant farmworker leaders: · Romeo Ramirez, a 23-year old farmworker from Huehuetenango, Guatemala, featured in Global Uprising: Confronting the Tyrannies of the 21st Century. Stories from a New Generation of Activists;, published in 2001 and co-recipient of the 2003 RFK Human Rights Award. · Francisca Cortez, a 21-year old farmworker from Oaxaca, Mexico, featured in the Center for Economic and Social Rights Human Rights in the USA 2002 Calendar.

The MSN representative is: · Jason Wallach, a Grassroots Coordinator for the Mexico Solidarity Network. Jason has edited two books on economic literacy and popular education methodology for the Highlander Research and Education Center and Atlanta-based Project South. He is also published in Global Uprising: Confronting the Tyrannies of the 21st Century and featured in White Men Challenging Racism: 35 Personal Stories, by Duke University Press.

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Mexico Solidarity Network
http://www.mexicosolidarity.org