Tuesday, February 12, 2019

ART 2: University of Florida and the “4 for Fair Food” Tour… Coalition of Immokalee Workers

From the earliest – and we mean earliest – days of the Campaign for Fair Food in 2001, students from the University of Florida have stood with the CIW, hosting some of the most powerful, and creative, actions in the Taco Bell Boycott (which you can see for yourself from one of the stunning photos, here on the right, from a 2002 Gainesville protest replete with stilt walkers and fire dancers!). Florida “Gators” were among the founders of the Student/Farmworker Alliance (SFA) nearly twenty years ago. Today SFA has become a national force from coast to coast in the fight for Fair Food – and, of course, is the driving force behind the Boot the Braids Campaign to have Universities disassociate themselves from Wendy’s, the only major fast food chain not to support Fair Food!
With not one, but two Wendy’s on campus, UF students launched their campus-wide Boot the Braids Campaign five years ago, organizing colorful action after colorful action across the school’s sun-filled campus and marching to the Reitz Union, where the main Wendy’s is nestled in the school’s food court. 

Yet despite the strong and growing protest movement on campus, the President’s office has not once in five years agreed to sit down with students to hear their urgent concerns about Wendy’s unconscionable behavior. 

This year, the 4 for Fair Food Tour will be bringing the full force of the Fair Food movement to UF’s doorstep: farmworkers and their families from Immokalee on the official cross-country tour, fresh off of visits to Chapel Hill, Columbus, and Ann Arbor; caravans from cities across the south; and more farmworkers and their families from Immokalee, who will be taking advantage of spring break that week to bring their children and youth to the finale of the 4 for Fair Food Tour!

When:  March 14th, 12:30 PM
Where: Norman Field, 1200 SW 8th Ave, Gainesville, Florida
Contact:  Uriel Perez, uriel@allianceforfairfood.org

What could explain the University of Florida’s resistance to the Presidential Award-winning Fair Food Program? The dark history of the UF agricultural program and farmworkers’ human rights…

The fact that UF has managed to ignore the well-documented exploitation and abuse of farmworkers for generations may have an explanation. Perhaps the most widely-recognized and influential department at the University of Florida is the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS), a research and teaching institution that is intimately connected to Florida agriculture, providing cutting-edge research, resources, and freshly-trained leaders for the industry...
Coalition of Immokalee Workers
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