As summer 2015 draws to a close, the Fair Food Nation has so much to celebrate. Ten years after the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and student, faith and community allies brought Taco Bell to sign the first-ever Fair Food Agreement, Ahold USA became the 14th corporation to join the Fair Food Program — an agreement that includes an expanded consumer education component and an annual contribution to the third-party monitoring body of the Program.
The CIW is about to enter the fourth full season of the Fair Food Program’s implementation, which in three short years has resulted in massive improvements to farmworkers’ wages and working conditions in Florida tomato fields. And, for the first time this summer, the Program expanded to tomato fields outside of Florida — to Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and New Jersey — where thousands of workers participated in worker-to-worker education to learn about their new rights under the Fair Food Program.
And this summer, the palpable momentum of this farmworker-led movement has involved more and more consumers, students, young people, community leaders, people of all faiths or none, food justice advocates and other workers and grassroots movements in the three-year call to Wendy’s, the final fast food holdout: Wendy’s, it’s time to join the Fair Food Program!
Farmworkers and allies have been inviting Wendy’s for years to become part of the solution to farmworker exploitation — yet Wendy’s still hasn’t joined, despite countless community marches and pickets, an ongoing Boot the Braids campaign to end university ties with Wendy’s and the growing national student boycott of Wendy's.
As we enter the fall season, the Student/Farmworker Alliance is calling on the entire Fair Food Nation to take action from Sept. 27 - Oct. 4 at local Wendy’s establishments!
As the summer draws to a close, join us as we keep the heat on Wendy’s, organizing pickets, theater pieces, marches and more within our communities, Fair Food Groups or congregations. As students return to the national student boycott of Wendy’s, the entire Fair Food Nation will be “Schooling Wendy’s” on the many ways Wendy’s has failed to make the grade: dignified wages and working conditions, the prevention of violence and forced labor and respect for workers’ voices, just to name a few.
Get in touch at organize@allianceforfairfood.org or 239-657-8311 to begin planning for the Schooling Wendy’s Week of Action in your city! Stay tuned for a Week of Action resource packet containing everything from an action organizing how-to guide to a sample press release.
Wendy’s, we’ll be seeing you in the streets!