Environmental for Food Justice

Moderator’s Note: The struggle of the indigenous berry pickers in Washington State is capturing the attention of labor and working-class movements and organizers everywhere. It should.  This is a historic strike and, now, boycott. It is the first farm worker strike in Western Washington conducted by workers without a formal union; this strike represents a pure form of worker direct self-organizing.  It is the first strike in which the workers are not just demanding a fair living wage and better working and living conditions but are also asking for a direct role in the management of production. In a word, they are demanding workplace democracy. And this is the first strike in Washington State history organized and led by indigenous farm workers, in this case Triqui and Mixteco Mesoamerican diaspora workers. Given the state of the “labor” movement in this country – which faces a fifth decade of declining membership and withering political power – the self-organization of the w...

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 fa...