Dear friends,
Twenty-five years ago, men and women harvesting tomatoes first gathered in Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in Immokalee, to discuss how they would confront violence in the fields. They brought their analytical skills, their creativity, and their courage to bear on what had been seemingly intractable exploitation.
They stepped out in faith to create a future that only they envisioned at the time and, in so doing, they ignited the consciences of us all.
Then, farmworkers harvesting at the very foundation of the food industry did a simple, yet profound, thing. They began talking with consumers who purchase produce at the top of that same industry. And from this conversation grew an unswerving commitment that together, we would create a new food system – one in which the dignity and humanity of every person was respected.
Since the beginning, people of faith not only believed this was possible, but they also reached out to their congregations, organizations, and denominations, helping inspire hundreds of thousands of people to also believe that these brutal conditions could be changed. Ended. Forever.
From that seed of belief grew a Fair Food movement that, twenty-five years later, has delivered the substance of things hoped for in the Fair Food Program, and the promise of realizing rights for hundreds of thousands more. Justice, justice let us pursue!
The Fair Food Program is significant because it reminds us that in the most basic and essential aspects of our life together — food and work — we are interconnected; that our choices and actions impact one another, and that we have both the power and the responsibility to create economic systems that promote and protect human well-being.
The Fair Food Program recognizes the fundamental dignity and equality we share as human beings and that it takes the dedication of us all — consumers, corporate leaders, growers, farmworkers – to translate the ideals of justice into the reality of justice. In seven years the Fair Food Program has eradicated exploitation that has persisted for three hundred years, for tens of thousands of farmworkers. Imagine, with the foundation of your financial support, what it can accomplish in the next seven for thousands more!
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