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I’m back from a trip to visit the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Florida, as part of a delegation of food justice activists. For a full report, do read the thoughts of the excellent Tom Philpott. To supplement his report, though, I thought I'd jot down a couple of impressions.

Although I’d never been there before, our guided tour around the town of Immokalee felt familiar. Immokalee means ‘my home’ in Seminole. And it was peoples’ homes that I’d seen before, in another country. The trailers where tomato-pickers sleep reminded me of South African townships, filled with densely packed low-income houses, built by the government to keep the supply of black labour close, but not too close, to the cities where their work was required.

Except that the conditions in Apartheid era township houses were better than in Immokalee. ... read more »

Raj's blog | 184 comments

Posted on 7 March, 2009 - 17:15

From the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Florida comes this appeal. Click here to do the needful, and see the full appeal below.

If you could help end modern-day slavery in Florida's fields with an email, would you?

Please take a moment to send an email to Florida Governor Charlie Crist, asking him to take a stand against modern-day slavery in our food system.

Just this past December, farm labor supervisors were sentenced in federal court for enslaving tomato pickers, including beating, chaining, and locking them inside a truck at night. Unfortunately, this case is not the only one; since 1997, the U.S. Department of Justice has successfully prosecuted seven cases of slavery involving well over 1,000 farmworkers in Florida. Additional cases are currently under investigation. ... read more »

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Posted on 6 February, 2009 - 13:07

The New York Times carried an article by Eric Schlosser that complements yesterday's post on Hunger in America. ... read more »

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Posted on 3 December, 2007 - 20:07

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers won a major victory in 2005, when they brought Taco Bell to the negotiating table. The CIW are a broad coalition of farmworkers based in Florida, whose labour makes possible the ingredients in a wide range of foods. They protested their conditions of slavery in the US, and won substantial victories for their members. Read their history here, and then find out about their campaign for Fair Food, and more, at
http://www.ciw-online.org/

2 comments

Posted on 25 February, 2007 - 00:19

What do you get when you put together Fox News, the titan of mass media mendacity, with Monsanto’s truth-bending talent?

Here's a clip from the award-winning documentary by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan - The Corporation. It's a worrying tale of the suppression of information around Monsanto's hormone products, most commonly found in US milk. ... read more »

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Posted on 30 November, 2006 - 02:06