We are community members in and around Denver who work in partnership with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a grassroots human rights organization of farmworkers working to end modern-day slavery and sweatshop labor conditions in Florida agriculture.
Through an alliance of Denver residents and Florida workers, we seek to transform the purchasing practices of the corporate food industry in order to advance the human rights of farmworkers at the bottom of corporate supply chains.
"Becoming a sustainer is one of the easiest and most direct ways to enable this important work to continue on its own terms." -Sean, former SFA staff member
How much do you spend every week on coffee or beer? Every month?
How much do you spend when you go to the movies?
What if, for a fraction of what you might spend on those items, you could make a monthly contribution to help the Student/Farmworker Alliance — one of today's most dynamic youth and student movements fighting for economic justice — achieve new victories and climb new heights as we work to transform our food system (and build a base of stable, independent, no-strings-attached, grassroots funding in the process)?
Today you can. Click here <http://sfalliance.org/sustainer.html> for more information on this exciting new campaign and to become a Student/Farmworker Alliance Sustaining Member!
As a SFA Sustaining Member, a small monthly contribution of your choice ($5, $10...) will automatically and securely be deducted from your bank or credit account to help our movement grow.
We've set a very lofty goal that we'll only reach with all of your support: To sign up enough Sustaining Members so that SFA earns at least $1,000/month, nearly covering an entire SFA staff member's salary and allowing us to divert that money to our exciting organizing work!
And, as if helping to build a national student/youth movement and securing human rights and dignified wages for farmworkers wasn't enough, we have some exciting incentives and goodies in store for Sustainers: check out the details at <http://sfalliance.org/sustainergoods.html>, where you could also find talking points and info to help you recruit other Sustainers.
On the eve of our 5th-annual Encuentro and a season of intense organizing and action around the Dine with Dignity campaign, our movement is stronger than ever. It also needs your support more than ever. We all know that money is tight in these tough economic times, but with just a small contribution, you (& your friends, family members, and co-workers) can strengthen our movement as we continue to fight for fair food, dignity, and respect!
In Solidarity, The Immokalee crew & 2009 SFA Steering Committee
“I see something special when I see SFA in action. It gives me hope that this world will be a better place, and I see us transforming it little by little, one corporate giant after another." - Juan, SFA member
When we presented Chipotle with the names 16,000 people, including key leaders from the food justice and sustainable food movements – not to mention the makers of the very film that Chipotle CEO Steve Ells thinks everyone should go see – who signed an open letter to the company stating that “we view the CIW’s struggle for dignity as a non-negotiable part of the struggle for a sustainable food system,” the company did not embrace the call of thousands of concerned consumers that it “work with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers as true partners in the protection of farmworker rights.” Instead the company told us, in more words or less, that the human rights of farmworkers are negotiable and can be negated for their business preferences.
To give a little background, in July Chipotle announced that it was sponsoring 32 free screenings around the country of the hard-hitting new documentary Food, Inc. As part of its long-running efforts to align itself with the growing movement for sustainable food, Chipotle explained that “the issues raised by the film Food, Inc. are important and complex, and everything we do at Chipotle strives to address them.”
But the many allies of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers were not about to let Chipotle off the hook so easily. For far too long, Chipotle has left out a vital perspective from its vision of sustainable food – that is the view from farmworkers, the women and men who perform the difficult and dangerous work of harvesting the food we eat. Just a few weeks before Chipotle announced it’s Food, Inc. promotional deal, more than two-dozen prominent activists from the sustainable food and food justice worlds issued the above-mentioned open letter to Chipotle. Among the letter’s signers are none other than the director of Food, Inc. Robert Kenner and co-producer Eric Schlosser (author of Fast Food Nation).
Outside the Chipotle-sponsored Food, Inc. screenings, Fair Food activists circulated the open letter among moviegoers and collected more signatures of support. American Rights at Work, a Washington, D.C.-based labor rights organization, also circulated the letter nationwide and encouraged concerned consumers to call and Tweet Chipotle. In the resulting public relations blow back, food, social justice, environmental blogs and even an investor blog scrutinized the contradiction between Chipotle’s stated committed to “food with integrity” and its failure to adequately address the human rights crisis faced by the farmworkers. Robert Kenner and Eric Schlosser also reiterated their support for the CIW and their disagreement with Chipotle regarding the company’s response to the Coalition.
All told, activists spoiled Chipotle’s public relations party in over a dozen cities, generated hundreds of tweets (becoming a top Twitter petition) and made over 600 phone calls to Chipotle headquarters. More than 16,000 people emailed Chipotle and added their names to the open letter. Knowing that emails and phone calls can be ignored all too easily, last Wednesday members of Denver Fair Food along with compañeros from Denver’s labor, student and community organizations delivered in person to Chipotle headquarters the open letter with all its signers.
The two Chipotle public relations spin doctors – Chris Arnold and Joe Stupp – who eventually met with us seemed untouched by many signers to the letter insisting to us that, while Chipotle isn’t willing to join in formal agreement, they are “working with the CIW” to find a grower who will pass along the penny-per-pound wage increase to the workers.
But Chipotle is unwilling to guarantee that it will not back out of its penny-per-pound payments, unwilling to share information about its supply chain or verify that it is doing what it claims, unwilling to include the CIW in the development and enforcement of a worker rights code of conduct for its tomato suppliers, and unwilling to maintain an open line of dialog with the CIW about these issues – hardly what could be described as an “working relationship.” It’s Chipotle's equivolent to confusing flirtation over a phone dating service with the bonds of holy matrimony.
Eventually the Chipotle representatives conceded that “we are working with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers . . . okay maybe not to their satisfaction but we are working with them.” In one of his most famous speeches, MLK stated: “There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, ‘When will you be satisfied?’” To which he reponded: “We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors . . . as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity . . . No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until ‘justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.’”
Likewise, today the CIW cannot be satisfied with the actions Chipotle has taken in response to the dire crisis faced by farmworkers. Farmworkers deserve a fair wage, and none of us can be satisfied as long as Chipotle refuses to guarantee that it will not back out of its commitment to contributing to one. Farmworkers have a fundamental right to have a voice in the industry of which they are a part, and we will never be satisfied as long as Chipotle denies them the ability to participate in the decisions which impact their lives. Proctecting the rights of farmworkers is not possible without transparency about purchasers’ business practices, and we cannot be satisfied while Chipotle continues to meet us with only secrecy and closed doors. We cannot be satisfied with Chipotle’s response any more than we can ever tolerate the existence of poverty, exploitation and slavery.
When we repeated our position – and the position of thousands of others – that “we view the CIW’s struggle for dignity as a non-negotiable part of the struggle for a sustainable food system,” the chipotle representatives told us that we should “recognize that things are negotiable and that there are no non-negotiables . . . recognizing that there is more than one way to solve a problem, instead of saying: here is the one solution – take it.”
There are certainly multiple solutions to any problem. But is that the same as saying there are no non-negotiables, nothing so fundamental, so valuable that it cannot be sacrificed? Human rights are non-negotiable; human dignity cannot be taken away when it becomes inconvenient. And therefore, the solutions to human rights problems must be embraced fully regardless of the burden. There are not steps which can be left out because they do not mesh with your preferences – not without compromising the solution for which you are working.
The fact is that Chipotle’s “solution” to the human rights crisis in Florida’s fields is not a solution at all. While no one from Chipotle would out right say that farmworker poverty is an acceptable price to pay so that Chipotle can avoid a binding commitment or that a little bit of slavery in its supply chain is preferable to joining in a formal agreement with the CIW, Chipotle’s actions speak loudly that continuing its preferred manner of doing business is more important to it than doing everything possible to ensure that farmworkers’ human rights are respected. Without accountability, transparency or the participation of farmworkers, there is no vehicle through which to make human rights in the fields a reality and all Chipotle’s promises amount to little more than words on paper – pretty maybe, but meaningless.
These are principles far too important to be negotiable – to be sacrificed for the sake of other interests – because they form the very basis upon which farmworkers can actualize their human rights and dignity. If Chipotle proposes an innovative new way for implementing these principles or thinks a particular idea is best suited to its supply chain, then I’m sure the CIW will listen with open ears. There is more than one way to solve a problem. But until then we will never be satisfied.
“No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until ‘justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.’”
View the unedited video from our debate with Chipotle’s PR reps:
It's official. You've got Chipotle feeling the heat.
When we told you that Chipotle was standing by while the farmworkers who pick their tomatoes faced abuse and exploitation in the fields, you and over 16,000 others wrote Chipotle CEO Steve Ells, demanding that Chipotle live up to its "food with integrity" promise.
As a major buyer, Chipotle knows they have the power to intervene for the farmworkers.
We need your help to keep the pressure on and let Chipotle know that integrity can't be bought with half-efforts and excuses.
You've already signed our petition but there are a few simple ways you can help us keep the pressure on Chipotle:
*Spread the word, and ask your friends to join you by signing the petition to Chipotle.
*Help flood Chipotle's offices with calls in support of the farmworkers. Just dial 888-899-0017 and follow the easy instructions.
*Sign our Twitter petition to Chris Arnold, Chipotle's PR rep, urging Chipotle to partner with Florida farmworkers and end the exploitation.
To sign, just click here, and then click the "Sign and Tweet" button. If you've never used Twitter, you can set up a new account and sign the petition at the same time! NOTE: You may have to try a few times to get through if Twitter's web servers are busy.
Your actions now will help Florida farmworkers fight unimaginable abuse and exploitation. The average farmworker puts in a 10 hour day in the scorching Florida sun and must pick two and a half TONS of produce a day to earn $50 - that's only $10,000 per year. Powerful companies like Chipotle need to know they have a responsibility to exert their influence and give a fair deal to the workers who help boost their bottom lines.
That's why we're going to keep turning up the heat until Chipotle does the right thing and lives by their own "food with integrity" pledge. With your help, we can do just that.
We'll keep you posted, and thanks for all that you do.
-Liz, Manny, Elizabeth B., and the American Rights at Work team
P.S. If you've never signed a Twitter petition before, just click here and click the "Sign and Tweet" button. Signing our Twitter petition will make a huge impact because the signatures are public. If enough of us sign, Chipotle will be forced to respond! (NOTE: You may have to try a few times to get through if Twitter's web servers are busy.)
P.P.S. If you're already on Twitter, once you've signed the petition you can also help us spread the word about Chipotle by tweeting about the farmworkers. Make sure to use the hashtag: #Chipotle
Since we asked you a few weeks ago, more than 10,000 activists, signed the open letter to Chipotle, urging the company to stand up for exploited Florida farmworkers. (Sign the open letter here!)
Momentum is building. People around the country have been calling on Denver-based Chipotle to live up to its "food with integrity" promise - and now they've taken their demands to the streets, protesting in front of film screenings sponsored by Chipotle.
Can you back the efforts of these demonstrators by making a quick toll-free call to Chipotle's corporate headquarters?
Calling is easy to do: just follow these three easy steps:
1: Call Chipotle toll-free at: 1-888-899-00172
2: Tell the person who picks up the phone - or leave a message - saying that you want Chipotle to live up to its "food with integrity" promise by standing up for Florida farmworkers.
You can also add:
- The Florida workers who pick Chipotle's tomatoes have one of the worst jobs in America, with sub-poverty wages, back-breaking labor, and unimaginable exploitation.
- It's time for Chipotle to join in a formal agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers - a widely respected farmworker organization and a leader in the field of human rights.
- Partnering with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers will ensure the workers who pick Chipotle's tomatoesare treated fairly and paid a living wage.
3: IMPORTANT: If you get to talk to anyone at Chipotle, tell us how it went - email denverfairfood@gmail.com.
Hoping for a bit of good publicity, Chipotle has been sponsoring screenings of Food, Inc., a new documentary about injustices in the food system.
It's a good film - but Chipotle doesn't seem to be getting the film'smessage - they've refused to join in a formal agreement to build better working conditions for the Florida workers who pick their produce and face exploitation and poverty wages - even after the film's director and the film's co-producer demanded Chipotle to do this.
Activists have been demonstrating outside Chipotle's movie screenings to point out the hypocrisy, but Chipotle has tried desperately to stop the message from spreading - even going so far as to remove volunteers from tables they've reserved at the screenings!
Chipotle can't have it both ways. They can't claim to stand for "food with integrity" while ignoring worker exploitation in their supply chain. We're going to keep turning up the heat until Chipotle does the right thing and lives by their own "food with integrity" pledge.
And to do that, we need YOUR help! Please, call 1-888-899-0017 right now!
Thanks you for all that you do. -The American Rights At Work Team
Chipotle is getting burned by the very scheme it cooked up as what it thought was a great public relations opportunitity - sponsoring free screenings of Food, Inc. - is becoming a PR fiasco.
Food, Inc. director Robert Kenner and co-producer Eric Schlosser speak out and Chipotle has to answer tough questions in Tom Philpott's must-read article on Grist.org "Chipotle Grilled: Burrito chain’s Food, Inc. sponsorship generates off-screen drama over farm-worker issues."
Schlosser explains that while many of Chipotle's efforts are great, he nonetheless "cares more about human rights than any of those things." He continues: "If Taco Bell, Subway, Burger King, and McDonald’s can reach agreement with the CIW, I don’t see why Chipotle can’t."
Kenner likewise, the article states, "made clear that he disagreed with the company’s position on the CIW" even if he agrees with other things Chipotle is doing. Kenner explains: "I was hopeful that by associating itself with a film that promotes workers’ rights, [Chipotle] might be inclined to sign with the Coalition . . . And now I’m not confident they will.”
Our cameo in this unfolding fiasco is also noted: "Chipotle clearly resents such critical statements at events designed to demonstrate its sustainability cred. At one of its screenings in Denver, Chipotle employees barred people from the Campaign for Fair Food to speak after the screening—overturning an arrangement that had been made with Food, Inc’s public-education campaign. " After investigating the incident, the article decides: "In other words, people wanting to discuss the CIW issue aren’t to be given stage time at the Chipotle-sponsored Food, Inc. screenings."
Of course Denver wasn't the only city where Chipotle got heat from Fair Food activists while trying to bask in Food, Inc.'s glory. All over the country allies of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers took to the movies to deflate Chipotle's hot air about "food with integrity" with some sharp truths about farm labor in Chipotle's supply chain. See the great photo report from the nationwide "Battle of the Burrito" on the CIW website.
References to this PR fiasco are popping up in unforseen places such as thedailygreen or even more surprising the mainstream investor blog The Motely Fool. And the bed which Chipotle made for itself in which it now must lie can't be feeling any more comfortable.
The lesson for Chipotle to learn from its bungled Food, Inc. PR experiment? The ecorazzi blog has these fitting words: "you can’t have your 1000+ calorie burrito and eat it too."
The Campaign for Fair Food and the new documentary Food, Inc. share – by any objective observation – a common vision and common struggle.
Food, Inc. is an urgent call to create a more just and sustainable food system while the Campaign for Fair Food has a broad network of people working on the ground to do just that.
The Campaign is seeking to raise awareness of the exploitation of farmworkers occurring in the shadows of our corporate-controlled food system – precisely the types of issues that Food, Inc. exposes.
Official Food, Inc. literature listing “10 things you can do to change our food system” encourages people to: “Demand job protections for farm workers and food processors, encouraging fair wages and other protections.” The Campaign not only encourages people to take action but actually provides an avenue to fight for and win fair wages and farmworker rights.
All this would explain why Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation and a co-producer of Food, Inc., has been a strong supporter and active participant in the Campaign, and why, when speaking about the film, he has highlighted the work of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers as a prime example of meaningful change. And it explains why Schlosser along with the director of Food, Inc. Robert Kenner (and dozens of other prominent sustainable food activists) signed an open letter stating: “We view the CIW’s struggle for dignity as a non-negotiable part of the struggle for a sustainable food system.”
These facts also explain why members of Denver Fair Food arranged with the local theater and Food, Inc.’s national public education campaign so that we could table and speak briefly with the audience before a film screening.
What it doesn’t explain is why when we arrived at the theater a peppy young woman with a talent for faux-niceness told us that we would not be allowed to speak before the audience or to set up a table. Could it be because we were working to create a more just and sustainable food system, because we were distributing a letter signed by the filmmakers, because we were encouraging people take action to demand respect for farmworker rights?
As strange as it sounds, these are indeed the reasons we were kicked out of the screening of Food, Inc. To make sense of this, you should first know that:
- Chipotle Mexican Grill has long been the main campaign target in our efforts to create a food system that includes farmworker justice – efforts which Chipotle has ignored, avoided and resisted. - The letter signed by the filmmakers that we were distributing is actually addressed to Chipotle, and lambastes the company for failing to ensure that the tomatoes in its burritos were not picked by exploited workers. - And the action which we were encouraging was to demand that Chipotle finally work with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in order to protect the rights of farmworkers.
As you may have guessed already, the woman who kicked us out worked not for Food, Inc. or the theater but for Chipotle. You see, Chipotle rented the theater that night – one of 32 free screenings of the film that it sponsored around the country – and did not want us pointing out the obvious contradiction between its sponsorship and its disregard for the worth and dignity of the women and men who harvest its tomatoes.
According to Chipotle, it was sponsoring the screenings because “the issues raised by the film Food, Inc. are important and complex, and everything we do at Chipotle strives to address them. Our philosophy of Food With Integrity is an active process of working back along the food chain . . .based on a foundation of not exploiting animals, the environment, or people.”
Chipotle can make such lofty claims only when it excludes farmworkers from its “philosophy.” When the fields from which Chipotle sources its tomatoes are the standard used to judge the integrity of its food, it cannot claim to not play a role in a system of food production based clearly on the exploitation of human beings. It cannot claim to be “working back along the food [supply] chain” while denying the farmworkers who actually work in that supply chain the ability to participate in the decisions about that supply chain which affect their lives. And it cannot claim to be addressing the issues raised by Food, Inc. and yet, when presented with an obvious path to address one such issue by committing to work with the CIW, be unwilling to take it.
Chipotle, despite trying to portray otherwise, is out of sync with the common cause articulated by Food, Inc. As Eric Schlosser, Robert Kenner and the other signers of the open letter to the company explain: “We applaud your goal of sourcing ‘food with integrity’ . . . Yet for us, naturally raised meat – important as it is – does not trump decently treated human beings.” Chipotle is stubbornly holding out against the progress achieved by the Campaign for Fair Food while those who truly want a sustainable food system – such as the makers of the film – are actively pushing the Campaign forward. There is a comic sensibility to seeing Chipotle hitch its brand image to the Food, Inc. bandwagon at same time as the film’s makers accuse it of “public relations damage control” in regards to its response to the CIW. Sadly the amusement is dampened when the reality sinks in that Chipotle’s sponsorship of Food, Inc. is a cynical attempt to exploit our dreams of a just and sustainable world as Chipotle is simultaneously suppressing farmworkers’ dreams of dignified working conditions.
Chipotle founder and CEO Steve Ells says, “I hope that all our customers see this film. The more they know about where their food comes from, the more they will appreciate what we do.” But if Chipotle’s customers knew that their tomatoes came from the exploitation of farmworkers and that Chipotle was not willing to take the necessary steps to do something about it, then they might not be so appreciative. In fact, they might be outraged; they might demand change, get organized and take action.
Chipotle knows this and thus doesn’t really want its customers to know the truth behind their food. That’s why we were kicked out of Food, Inc. And that’s why it was so important for us to be there.
Even though Chipotle ruined our plans to speak and even tried to have the cops called on us, we stuck around til the film got out and passed out copies of the open letter to Chipotle to a very receptive crowd, speaking with well over a hundred people while proudly holding our banner reading: “Food, Inc. – Great Film. Chipotle – Don’t believe the hype.” What’s more, throughout the country allies of the CIW took to the movies with the same simple but compelling message.
Chipotle can certainly try as it will to shut us up but it would do better to heed the words of Victor Hugo: “no army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.” Or to paraphrase the late Fred Hampton, you can kick a revolutionary out of a film screening but you can’t kick out a revolution.
A new action in our long-running campaign against Chipotle - check out this message from the CIW:
Last week, leaders of the food justice movement - including Eric Schlosser and Robert Kenner, producer and director of the hard-hitting new documentary "Food, Inc." - sent a strongly worded letter to Denver-based Chipotle Mexican Grill demanding that they "work with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers as a true partner in the protection of farmworkers' rights."
Now it's your turn to get in on the action. Add your name to the letter to Chipotle CEO Steve Ells demanding real "food with integrity" and an end to the human rights crisis in Florida's tomato fields.
Chipotle is getting burned by the very scheme it cooked up as what it thought was a great public relations opportunitity - sponsoring free screenings of Food, Inc. - is becoming a PR fiasco.
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