Today, Wendy's took their denial of farmworker women's basic rights to a despicable new level. Responding to
the Huffington Post, Wendy's spokesperson Heidi Schauer
shamelessly went on the record with the fast-food holdout's latest:
“There’s no new news here, aside from the CIW trying to exploit the positive momentum that has been generated by and for women in the #MeToo and Time’s Up movement to advance their interests."
Speaking for Wendy's, Ms. Schauer's statement is a wildly disrespectful attack on the leadership of farmworker women in the decades-long fight to end sexual violence in the fields, a fight that long predates the critical momentum garnered by the recent #MeToo and #TimesUp movements. It is a disgraceful response to the sacrifice of the dozens of farmworker women who fasted last week in New York to hold Wendy's and its Board Chairman Nelson Peltz accountable for the company's failure to join the Fair Food Program, a successful solution designed by farmworkers to halt sexual abuse in their workplace.
Time's Up leader Alyssa Milano immediately rebuked Wendy's offensive attack
on Facebook:
"...Wendy's, this is very simple: These women are the #MeToo movement, which is a grassroots movement of women from all corners of society exposing the painfully common experience of sexual harassment, misconduct and assault. The Time's Up movement was created in part to "lift up the voices, power, and strength of women working in low-wage industries."
To suggest that farmworker women — whose voices, power, and strength were on impressive display in front of the offices of Wendy's Board Chairman all last week during their Freedom Fast — are somehow unwelcome intruders in the fight for dignity and safety for women is downright absurd and unbelievably offensive. And that such a statement was made by a company like Wendy's, who pulled their purchases entirely from "the best working environment in American agriculture" and now partners with an industry with well-documented human rights abuses, including sexual violence, is even more outrageous. I stand with our sisters in the fields, and applaud their efforts to expand the new protections guaranteed in the Fair Food Program to the millions more women who are seeking change.
And a final word of advice, Wendy's: If you really want to get on the wrong side of the Time's Up movement, keep using our name to attack and belittle farmworker women who are fighting to keep themselves and their sisters safe from rape in the fields."
Meanwhile, acclaimed playwright Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues, fought back on Instagram:
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