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Pressuring Publix

The Fair Food Program is viable, it’s working and, with our help, it could eventually fulfill its enormous promise as an unprecedented collaborative model for farm-labor justice.

Peter Rothberg

December 6, 2012

Two weeks ago, as families across the US gathered for Thanksgiving, the Campaign for Fair Food released a powerful video highlighting the unconscionable poverty of our nation's farmworkers and calling on Publix to join the Fair Food Program—a growing partnership between farmworkers, growers, consumers, and retail food corporations. (Details here.)

The video reflected on a food system that marginalizes the very people who labor to produce our nation’s bounty, and on a supermarket industry that is turning its back on the first real solution in decades to the longterm crisis of farmworker poverty before concluding on an optimistic note, underscoring the common humanity uniting farmworkers and consumers in the campaign for fair food. “A Tale of Two Holidays” generated such strong interest and positive feedback that the savvy strategists at the CFF have re-cut it for a second run for a new holiday.

Watch and share the video, then add your name to this open letter to Publix imploring the supermarket giant to join eleven major food retailers including McDonald’s, Whole Foods and Chipotle in the Fair Food Program. It would require only a small increase in the price it pays for tomatoes, compliance with a new Code of Conduct and the implementation of a system of Health and Safety volunteers on every farm to give workers a structured voice in the their work environment. Even if you throw out morality, the PR benefit could be invaluable.

The Fair Food Program is viable, it’s working and, with our help, it could eventually fulfill its enormous promise as an unprecedented collaborative model for farm-labor justice.

Peter RothbergTwitterPeter Rothberg is the The Nation’s associate publisher.


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