Another World is Possible

A Sermon on Exodus 3:1-15

The Rev. Noelle Damico, National Coordinator
Campaign for Fair Food, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

As I read this passage from the Exodus story I cannot help but be reminded of an actual freedom story taking place in our midst. It's the story of the Taco Bell boycott; how farmworkers from Florida worked together with church people and students to take on the largest fast food company in the world and win an incredible victory for human rights. It was amazing.   It's never before happened in history. And it's changing the way the fast-food and agricultural industries do business. Let me tell you about it.

Immokalee, which rhymes with Broccoli, is located about 40 minutes due east from Ft. Meyers in southwest Florida. There are over 12 languages spoken in Immokalee among the Mexican, Guatemalan, and Haitian day laborers who pick tomatoes and citrus that end up on our tables here in NY and on the tables of fast-food restaurants around the country. Workers seek work each day by coming to a local grocery store's parking lot at 4:30am in the morning. If they are successful and are chosen, crew leaders will drive them in old school buses to tomato fields which are 20 to 200 miles away. There, if weather permits, they will work 10-12 hours picking at a per bucket rate that hasn't changed in more than 25 years, namely 40-45 cents per 32 pound bucket. According to the Department of Labor they earn about $7,500 a year.

While all workers who are picking are exploited through sub-poverty wages, lack of protections for organizing, no health benefits or overtime pay, and frequent instances of wage theft by the crew leaders that manage them in the fields, some workers are actually picking in modern day slavery. Now when I say slavery I don't mean "slave-like" conditions. I mean very specifically that there are people picking in the fields who are trafficked, sold by the head for $2000, and forced to work-off their debt in the fields. Of course their owners keep track of the "payment" records, money is deducted for costs such as housing, food, transportation etc. and surprisingly people can never earn enough to leave. They are typically under guard either by men with machine guns or men with cellphones who can call the men with the guns. If they try to escape and fail they will be beaten publicly within an inch of their lives as an example. If they are female, they are subjected to rape and other violent sexual intimidation.  

In 1993 farmworkers formed the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to address these problems collectively. They engaged in hunger strikes, work stoppages, and appeals to government leaders to address the exploitation in the fields. But there was no significant movement from the growers to raise wages or to dialogue with the workers. Meanwhile the CIW investigated and exposed 5 cases of slavery in the fields, and freed more than 1,000 slaves. With the help of the U.S. Department of Justice the CIW prosecuted the slavers who are now serving decades in federal prison, convicted under laws put on the books during reconstruction as well as the new anti-trafficking law of 2000. But the farmworkers knew this was only the tip of the iceberg. If the widespread exploitation in the fields was to change for more than a few people, a more comprehensive approach must be developed.  

Slavery and exploitation exist in the agricultural industry because there is a high demand for cheap labor and because laborers lack basic rights that workers in other industries have - like the right to organize and bargain collectively. So after studying "who buys the tomatoes" and who has the responsibility and power to actually change the situation in the fields, the farmworkers came up with a novel approach that is critical for ending these conditions. Eliminate the market conditions that demand exploited and enslaved labor. Demand that fast food companies take responsibility for conditions in their own supply chains.

In 2001 the workers called for a boycott of Taco Bell restaurants and products until the company agreed to work with the CIW to address wages and working conditions of farmworkers picking tomatoes for their suppliers. When the farmworkers did this the company ignored them and even people who thought their conditions were deployable, laughed. How could some of the poorest workers in America take on Taco Bell and its parent company Yum, which is the largest fast food company in the world? But in June 2002, the 214th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted to support the boycott and became a crucial partner of the CIW.  

Presbyterians across the country wrote letters, prayed, fasted, protested, and provided hospitality or material support to the farmworkers as they sought to establish socially responsible purchasing by Taco Bell. The PC(USA) also encouraged other national religious bodies to join the workers in the boycott. As a result of these efforts and the efforts of students across the country who "booted the Bell" off their campuses, on March 8th, 2005, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and Taco Bell Corporation reached an historic agreement that concretely addresses the sub-poverty wages and working conditions of farmworkers and is the first step toward moving the fast food industry toward a new way of doing business that respects human rights. Upon reaching this agreement, the farmworkers called for an end to the Taco Bell boycott.

While the Taco Bell boycott is over, the campaign for fair food continues as together with the farmworkers we reach out to McDonalds, Burger King, and Subway and ask them to meet with the CIW and institute socially responsible purchasing practices within their own supply chains. I encourage all of you to learn more about the history of the boycott, the nature of this ground-breaking agreement, and the next steps for creating industry wide change by reading the handout and visiting the Presbyterian Church's website.

What I want to emphasize is that in this struggle to change conditions in the fields, it was the farmworkers themselves who led the way. They had both the analysis and the plan which had grown out of many years of experience in the fields. The church was a part of that plan as a moral voice in society as well as a body that had many, many customers of Taco Bell who cared that the food they purchased be produced fairly. But the church was not the savior. The church was not the hero. The farmworkers did not need us to be Moses for them.

When we read this passage from Exodus this morning there is a danger and that danger is that we read this story as a story about Moses and his mission to liberate the Hebrew slaves in the name of God. But the story from Exodus is not principally about what Moses does. It's about what God does. It's a story not about a hero and his mission but about God's sovereignty and the new world that is possible. It's about how the great I AM makes a way when there is no way.

If we read the story as a narrative about the hero Moses, we miss what God is doing then and now. For God uses many people to bring about widespread change. In the larger biblical narrative we learn that Miriam, Moses' sister, and Aaron, Moses' brother, who were themselves slaves, played a critical role; their courage inspired the people to trust and collective action. So we must remember that Moses wasn't a "lone ranger" riding in to save the day so to speak, and neither should we as individuals or the church adopt that model. If we do we will miss or divert what God is doing.  

Just like in Egypt, injustice and oppression often involve systems that neither an individual, nor a small group of people acting alone can rectify. Biblical scholar and theologian Walter Brueggemann helpfully illumines the economic and theological dynamics of the brickyard from which the Hebrew slaves cried out in their misery to God, relating them to our contemporary world in his book Living Toward a Vision (New York: UCC Press, 1982.)

"(The brickyard) is a place of competent production where the production schedule is taken with great seriousness. The brickyard is also a place of coercion and profit. It is profit for the people who own and sell the bricks and set the production schedule. But for the people who make the bricks, it is a place of coercion.   That is, they are there to meet other people's standards, to knuckle under to others' demands that they do not share...The gap between the people of profit and people who are coerced is not an accident of the system, but is built into the design of the system.   Most often the story of the brickyard is put out in the company literature. Remarkably, the biblical story of the brickyard is told from the perspective of the coerced." (p. 54)

Oppression comes far too often from "business as usual." It is not the fault of one particular person, but the product of larger systems that function in such a way as to consistently coerce some for the profit of others. To make change in such a situation requires examining and restructuring what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called "the edifices that produce poverty."   And in our efforts to change these "edifices;" these systems, institutions and structures that produce oppression, the church plays a crucial role in helping society the beliefs that legitimate these edifices and the oppression they produce.

In 1984 the General Assembly put out a statement called "Christian Faith and Economic Justice" which teaches:

Since the Lord is Ruler of all of life, the economic order in which we live cannot escape the careful scrutiny of faith. The patterns of our worship, our work, our consumption, and our economic practices are to be judged by the divine will. (29.077)  

And goes on to remind us:

But Christians reject any theory of economic determinism which proposes that we are merely products of economic forces. Rather, we are responsible to determine the economy, to make it the kind of system which most nearly protects the dignity of persons created in the image of God and allows all to share in the goodness of God's creation. (29.086)

The way things are is not the way they must be:   another world is possible. This is at the heart of what it means to believe in the saving power of God, not only for individuals but for the whole creation. The story of the Exodus is a story of God's sovereignty in the face of oppression. In the face of systems that are larger than any one person can change, God insists that "it could be otherwise" and in so doing, makes a way where there is no way.   

Walter Brueggemann suggests that the drama of the brickyard "has become the place where the question of power is asked: 'Who is in charge here?' And the question is answered: 'My name is Let-my-people-go!'   And Let-my-people-go is now in charge... The brickyard is "under new management." (p. 57)

When we believe "Let my people go" is in charge of the brickyard, we approach it in a different way than if we think the coercion of the brickyard is an unfortunate but unavoidable cost of doing business. When we believe "Let my people go" is in charge of the brickyard we do not confuse ourselves with God, but understand ourselves as partners with people who are poor in changing systems that affect all of us while coercing some immediately. When we believe "Let my people go" is in charge of the brickyard we are able to step forward in faith with God, making a way where there is no way.

The story of the Taco Bell boycott and the human rights victory that ensued, is a story of how the Church and farmworkers believed that "Let My People Go" was in charge of the brickyard, and by acting together, opened a way to another world. Another world is possible. The brickyard is under new management. Amen.