40 Days of Fair Food

http://www.tedxfruitvale.org/

Who picked your food? For too long, the faces of the people who harvest this country’s food have been invisible, and their voices have gone unheard. On Friday, October 14, the Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation will convene TEDxFruitvale, the first-ever TEDx conference focused on farmworkers.

Guatemala Fair Food Fight Series

Part 1: History of Fatima Farming Community

Here at Escuela de la Montana in Guatemala, learning about the history of displaced and mistreated farmworkers is integrated into the Spanish language curriculum. Each week the school provides cultural and historical presentations in English and in Spanish about the rural communities in this region. The first farmworker who spoke to us was Ruben Escobar Orozco.

Ruben and 80 other families had been living and working on a coffee plantation owned by a European couple for generations. They had maintained the plantation for low pay for years without any complaint or action. After the wife died, the plantation went to their grandson. In 1994, he started forcing the workers to work on his mango plantation several miles away. A truck picked them up at 3am so they could start working at 7am and they would return to their homes on the coffee plantation at 10pm.

In 1996 they decided to talk to the owner about increasing their pay from 17.70 Q ($2) to 22Q (less then $3) for a day’s work to compensate them for the extra travel time they were forced to undergo (roughly an extra eight hours of travel time round trip per day). The owner agreed, but they got no pay increase. They decided to sit down on the mango plantation without working until the owner agreed to meet with them to discuss the pay increase. When he arrived, he shot at the mango branches and ordered the truck driver to bring them back to the coffee plantation.

Of the 60 workers who had sat down on the plantation that day, 15 decided to form an organization to address their grievances by drawing legal complaints in various tribunals. When the owner demanded to know who the 15 workers were, they revealed themselves. The owner offered each of them $125 if they would drop their complaints, but they told him “The law isn’t a toy and we won’t accept your offer.” The owner fired and blacklisted those 15 workers which resulted in the neighboring plantations refusing to hire them. Additionally the owner closed the access routes which meant that medical help couldn’t get through and expelled their children from school. During this time one worker died from an accident because he couldn’t get to the hospital in time. He also prohibited the women in these 15 families from using the the water sources on the plantation and hired security guards to prevent the families from gathering firewood and food. After more workers joined their struggle, they formed an official union so they could more effectively address their legal grievances.

To avoid paying back the workers what he owed them, the owner payed off judges and local officials. He later got a search warrant from a judge who was a relative of his, falsely saying that the workers were armed. He also payed $2 million Q ($25,000) to mobilize the army and police, comprised of more than 300 people, to carry out the search warrant early in the morning. By chance, one worker was outside of the plantation and saw the army and police coming and went to get help from a priest who got help from MINUGUA, the UN mission in Guatemalan at the time. MINUGUA conducted an investigation which revealed the union members were innocent of any crimes and the owner had curried favors with local officials.

It was after this, that in 2001 the owner finally started negotiating with their union. During this negotiation, the union members accepted back payment for their work on the condition that they leave the plantation. They used this payment to purchase the land they now call Fatima in the Boca Costa region of Guatemala. The Catholic church and the Mountain School helped them to build houses and infrastructure. Today their living conditions are better than when they lived on the previous plantation, but they are still basic. Some people grow small quantities of coffee on their land for their own use and some sell it to middlemen, but none of them can subside on it alone so they are dependent on day labor. Few opportunities for day laborers exist in Guatemala, so even this is rarely sufficient.

Sign Fair Treatment for Farm Workers Act (SB 104) to allow California farmworkers to unionize and demand safe working conditions.

Prevent negligent farm conditions from leading to serious medical conditons and death, such as the case of 17 year old Maria Isabel who died from heat stroke in Stockton in 2008.

The 2011 Dining with Justice Guide is here! This guide lists the top 12 restaurants in San Francisco that “follow labor laws and treat their employees with dignity and respect”.

In my opinion, this survey is by no means exhaustive or comprehensive, but it is a good starting point to support establishments that have been documented as places that treat their workers well. My favorites include Arizmendi, Poesia, and Mission Pie.

Do you work in one of these restaurants or know someone who does? If you work for a food or drink establishment, how well do you rate your working conditions? Let us know if there are other restaurants that deserve recognition or improvement.

The Green and Just Guide for the Bay Area and LA is here! Although the focus of this guide is to provide resource for Jews who want to buy sustainably (low environmental impact as well as using ethical labor) for Jewish celebrations, the Other Resources links provides some info about fair trade and union-made resources.

The G & J Guide also proposes alternatives to typical nuptial consumption such as second hand wedding dresses and using potted flowers or edible centerpieces instead of cut flowers, due to the social and environmental impact of flowers sold in the US that are typically flown in from Colombia and Ecuador.

If hipster coffee = living wage for farmerworks, count me in!

Today I made it to the mythical, unmarked Four Barrel Coffee Shop and had a great conversation with Brett who carefully made my cup of coffee. I paid $0.60 for 23 minutes of parking on Valencia Street and $3.50 for a delicious cup of direct trade coffee from Buenos Aires (I could tell it was richer than coffee I often drink, but I still couldn’t match it to it’s allegedly citrusy description).

Mark Bittman changed my domestic life. A couple years ago my friend sent me his cookbook “How to Cook Everything Vegetarian”, and my non-cooking boyfriend turned into a soup stock creator. Now Bittman is praising the labor victories of the abused tomato pickers in his visit to Immokalee, Florida. 

http://bittman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/12/immokalee-americas-tomato-capital/

Program for both events:
7:00 – Schmoozing, free fair trade coffee and chocolate tasting
7:15 – “Dark Side of Chocolate” DVD, documentary on child labor
8:00 – Discussion about Passover, fair trade and chocolate
8:30 - Fair trade Kosher chocolate tasting and sales, haggadah supplement and other Passover materials, advocacy opportunity

Does he ever rest? Jimmy Carter makes me proud to be an American. At the halfway point of Fair Food Lent and with Cesar Chavez Day around the corner, I must admit I have wavered in my active commitment to Fair Food (food produced by foodworkers receiving adequate pay and enjoying basic rights to take breaks and drink water). As a new overworked teacher, I teeter on the brink of feeling entitled to sip my lattes without guilt and devour cheap oranges from Florida without question. Then I think about Carter who has devoted his life to controversial causes and advocating for people with little access to legal means of advocacy. Surely I can make time for at least two fair food campaign actions in April. 

President Carter Visit to CIW Modern-Day Slavery Museum
Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia 
March 17, 2011
(photos by Emiko Soltis)

President Carter arrived — in full motorcade — at the end of a long-day for both the President and the museum crew. But despite a schedule that would exhaust a man half his age, the President arrived with the unmistakable, and undiminished, smile and personal touch that were the trademark of his long and distinguished political career.

http://www.ciw-online.org/pres_carter_visit_to_museum.html

An awesome fair food ally and friend participating in the CIW action in Boston, Ma calling on Stop and Shop to sign the agreement with farmworkers to pay a penny more per bushel of tomatoes.