By Adam Rabiner
Immokalee Florida plays a very important role in the half century long and continuing fight of farm laborers for justice. In 1960 Immokalee was featured by famed television journalist, Edward R. Murrow in a groundbreaking CBS report, Harvest of Shame. In a post war economy that was largely prosperous, the news cameras focused on the hidden experiences and exploitation of poor migrant farm laborers. Murrow gravely intoned, “These are forgotten people, the unprotected, the undereducated, the under-clothed, the underfed.” Fifty-four years later, director Sanjay Rawal returned to this town to discover that, sadly, the earlier expose did not change things significantly for this itinerant population. Perhaps his film, Food Chains, will.
While the day to day living conditions of migrant laborers in Immokalee have not changed all that much since the sixties, one important facet of this story has. In the early days of the movement for better pay and working conditions, the workers focused on the farm owners, their direct employers. However, in today’s economy, the farmers themselves are hard pressed to earn a profit. Due to industry consolidations, the power has shifted to fast food restaurants and supermarket chains. Indeed, it is these connections between farm laborers on the one end and supermarkets, fast food purveyors, and consumers, on the other, along with a more sinister allusion, that the title Food Chains refers to.
The primary demand of the Consortium of Immokalee Workers (CWI) is to pay farm workers two cents for every pound of tomatoes picked, instead of the current penny. The typical laborer picks about 4,000 pounds in a day earning about $40. While a raise of $40 per day would go a long way to improving the lives of workers, the effect on profits and consumers is not significant.
After some initial resistance, the Taco Bell Chihuahua, Ronald McDonald, Colonel Sanders, and The Burger King conceded to this demand (as well as others such as Walmart – surprise, surprise). Publix, the regional supermarket, however, has not. The cost to Publix would be negligible, about one million dollars out of its two billion in annual profits. And if they passed this cost along to consumers, a family of four would need to pay an average of about 44 cents more per year. Yet despite these calculations, Publix refuses to even meet with the CWI, which is staging a public, non-violent, protest and hunger strike.
Many food documentaries explain how farm subsidies have artificially lowered the price of many commodities such as corn, soy, sugar, and meat. These films reveal how retail supermarket prices do not adequately capture the true price of these foods which do not include external costs associated with medical bills, environment degradation, etc. Food Chains shows how labor exploitation, like farm subsidies, also deflates consumer prices. Publix claims it pays a “fair market price” for its tomatoes. What it fails to say is that the market is an unfree monopsony in which a single buyer, Publix, sets the price for its suppliers.
And that unfair price of a penny a pound, while keeping salads cheap and helping to ensure that Publix is perceived by its shoppers as a “friendly family supermarket” also guarantees that largely Mexican farm laborers, despite long days in the fields, never even make it to the poverty level. It explains why they live fifteen to sixteen people in small trailers, like animals in cramped houses. It explains why they wake up at 5:00 a.m. to catch buses to the fields where sometimes they wait around for hours, unpaid, until their first bucket is filled. It explains why they put up with heat, pesticides, and for many women sexual harassment. Finally it explains why they can no longer abide these conditions and their Fair Food campaign insists on better pay, working conditions, and an end to sexual exploitation.
Food Chains captures all five days of the CWI protest. Despite initial optimism that Publix would come to the table, and even a failed attempt by Sanjay Rawal to get a company spokesperson to engage in dialogue with a CWI leader, Publix never agrees to talk. On the final day of the strike, the hungry and tired workers, men and women, young and old, as well as some of their supporters in the community, march to the Publix headquarters and place hand-made colorful paper notes in the company fence saying “I go hungry today so my children won’t have to tomorrow,” “I am human too,” and “Love thy neighbor.”
They gather to hear words of support from allies such as Ethel Kennedy and her son, Robert Kennedy Jr., taking on the mantle of Robert Kennedy who had championed their cause in his ill-fated 1969 presidential campaign. It is a moving scene conveying the sense that this is a final frontier in a larger fight for civil rights. Another chain that ties the Immokalee farm workers to black Americans and others who are oppressed. And another chain that will someday be broken.
Immokalee Florida plays a very important role in the half century long and continuing fight of farm laborers for justice. In 1960 Immokalee was featured by famed television journalist, Edward R. Murrow in a groundbreaking CBS report, Harvest of Shame. In a post war economy that was largely prosperous, the news cameras focused on the hidden experiences and exploitation of poor migrant farm laborers. Murrow gravely intoned, “These are forgotten people, the unprotected, the undereducated, the under-clothed, the underfed.” Fifty-four years later, director Sanjay Rawal returned to this town to discover that, sadly, the earlier expose did not change things significantly for this itinerant population. Perhaps his film, Food Chains, will.
While the day to day living conditions of migrant laborers in Immokalee have not changed all that much since the sixties, one important facet of this story has. In the early days of the movement for better pay and working conditions, the workers focused on the farm owners, their direct employers. However, in today’s economy, the farmers themselves are hard pressed to earn a profit. Due to industry consolidations, the power has shifted to fast food restaurants and supermarket chains. Indeed, it is these connections between farm laborers on the one end and supermarkets, fast food purveyors, and consumers, on the other, along with a more sinister allusion, that the title Food Chains refers to.
The primary demand of the Consortium of Immokalee Workers (CWI) is to pay farm workers two cents for every pound of tomatoes picked, instead of the current penny. The typical laborer picks about 4,000 pounds in a day earning about $40. While a raise of $40 per day would go a long way to improving the lives of workers, the effect on profits and consumers is not significant.
After some initial resistance, the Taco Bell Chihuahua, Ronald McDonald, Colonel Sanders, and The Burger King conceded to this demand (as well as others such as Walmart – surprise, surprise). Publix, the regional supermarket, however, has not. The cost to Publix would be negligible, about one million dollars out of its two billion in annual profits. And if they passed this cost along to consumers, a family of four would need to pay an average of about 44 cents more per year. Yet despite these calculations, Publix refuses to even meet with the CWI, which is staging a public, non-violent, protest and hunger strike.
Many food documentaries explain how farm subsidies have artificially lowered the price of many commodities such as corn, soy, sugar, and meat. These films reveal how retail supermarket prices do not adequately capture the true price of these foods which do not include external costs associated with medical bills, environment degradation, etc. Food Chains shows how labor exploitation, like farm subsidies, also deflates consumer prices. Publix claims it pays a “fair market price” for its tomatoes. What it fails to say is that the market is an unfree monopsony in which a single buyer, Publix, sets the price for its suppliers.
And that unfair price of a penny a pound, while keeping salads cheap and helping to ensure that Publix is perceived by its shoppers as a “friendly family supermarket” also guarantees that largely Mexican farm laborers, despite long days in the fields, never even make it to the poverty level. It explains why they live fifteen to sixteen people in small trailers, like animals in cramped houses. It explains why they wake up at 5:00 a.m. to catch buses to the fields where sometimes they wait around for hours, unpaid, until their first bucket is filled. It explains why they put up with heat, pesticides, and for many women sexual harassment. Finally it explains why they can no longer abide these conditions and their Fair Food campaign insists on better pay, working conditions, and an end to sexual exploitation.
Food Chains captures all five days of the CWI protest. Despite initial optimism that Publix would come to the table, and even a failed attempt by Sanjay Rawal to get a company spokesperson to engage in dialogue with a CWI leader, Publix never agrees to talk. On the final day of the strike, the hungry and tired workers, men and women, young and old, as well as some of their supporters in the community, march to the Publix headquarters and place hand-made colorful paper notes in the company fence saying “I go hungry today so my children won’t have to tomorrow,” “I am human too,” and “Love thy neighbor.”
They gather to hear words of support from allies such as Ethel Kennedy and her son, Robert Kennedy Jr., taking on the mantle of Robert Kennedy who had championed their cause in his ill-fated 1969 presidential campaign. It is a moving scene conveying the sense that this is a final frontier in a larger fight for civil rights. Another chain that ties the Immokalee farm workers to black Americans and others who are oppressed. And another chain that will someday be broken.