When Food Workers Rebel | Part 1 in a Series



















Migrant Berry Pickers boycott Sakuma Bros. Farm Berries over wage theft and mistreatment. Photo by Tomás Madrigal.


Moderator’s Note: This summer I have been following and writing about
the indigenous farm workers of Washington State and their heroic struggle for
workplace democracy and a living wage at Sakuma Brothers berry farms in
Burlington. While this courageous group of Mixtec and Triqui workers rebel, the
fast food industry workers across the country have also risen-up in struggle.





The
entire capitalist food chain is under siege and experiencing workers’ rebellion
and this is already transforming the way our food is produced, transported,
stored, warehoused, processed, cooked, served, and sold. From berry farms to
Walmart and from vegetable fields to McDonalds, workers are mobilizing at an
unprecedented scale.





With
this post, I am initiating a long-term series of posts on the rebellion of food
chain workers who are struggling from the farm fields to the restaurant table;
from factory farm to warehouse. The first in this series is an eloquent
Solidarity Statement from the grassroots food sovereignty organization,
Community to Community Development, which is actively supporting the berry
workers’ strike in Washington State.










C2C
Solidarity Statement with Striking Workers Across the Food Chain





Rosalinda Guillen | Bellingham, WA | August 23, 2013





To striking McDonalds
Workers in Seattle, Detroit, and New York,


To striking Food Service
Industry Workers across the U.S.,


To SEIU rank and file
members and leadership,


To our allies and to civil
society in general,


To the governments of the
City of Seattle, the United States and the wide World.





From
our home on occupied Coast Salish land, under the shadow of Kulshan, at the
northwestern most corner of the United States, we extend our humble word as
displaced, resettled immigrants, farm workers and families, who are together
Community to Community Development. We send our warm greetings and our strength
in solidarity to all of those brave families who have have taken a stance
against wage theft across the food chain, may you be well.





We
applaud with great admiration this historic and unprecedented mass mobilization
of fast food workers against systematic wage theft and for their dignity, in
multiple cities across the United States. Your courage brings us strength on
the production end of the food chain, as we are also presently involved in a
struggle for dignity and against systematic wage theft and the mistreatment of
migrant farm workers by a multi-million dollar vertically integrated
agricultural corporation. Knowing first hand the quotidian violence, both
symbolic and material, that you have and will continue face at the hands of
your employers, in an attempt to break your unity, we say to you that you are
not alone. We are with you, and the well being of your families matter to us.





We
demand the immediate release of the eight fast food workers and activists who
were arrested on Friday, August 2, 2013 in Seattle, and that all charges be
dropped. These striking fast food workers were engaging in their right to
freedom of speech, guaranteed to all by the first amendment. As Martin Luther
King, Jr. once eloquently stated in A Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963),
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” he continued, “We are
caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of
destiny. Whatever affects one affects all indirectly.” It is with this in mind,
that we understand that what happens to other workers along the food chain,
also impacts us, and therefore it is our duty to stand together, in solidarity.





Towards
this end, we call upon all of our allies and to the local and global civil
society to join this historic struggle against wage theft and mistreatment
along the food chain. If you eat, the way that the folks who grow your food,
ship your food, prepare your food and who serve your food are treated, directly
affects you. We call on you to stand in solidarity with Striking Fast Food
workers, striking migrant farm workers, and hunger-striking prisoners in
Guantanamo Bay, California, and at the Eloy Detention Center. These struggles
are food justice struggles at their very core.





Sincerely,





On
August 6, 2013


From
Community to Community Development Headquarters


203
W. Holly, Ste. 317

Bellingham, WA 98225



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