Campus Engagement Reflection--CIW

Emily Helm

WST 3015

February 29, 2012

Campus Engagement Reflection

 

Last Monday, YAYA hosted an event to educate students about the campaigns and conditions of farmworkers in Central Florida. Representatives from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a community-based organization of immigrants working throughout Florida, spoke about the labor-intensive environment in which they work, poor housing conditions, and lack of respect from farmers. One man, who is a leader in the CIW, spoke while the other translated for him.

Language, a barrier in that both his words and my questions were interpreted, simultaneously became a way for our ideas to connect. The words he used were familiar to me as part of an activism discourse. He spoke of solidarity and justice, fair food and improved housing conditions. He spoke about concepts that I read about in textbooks, but applied them to his own life, showing how I am implicated.

I also realized that, despite a language barrier, I was able to pinpoint his persuasive rhetoric. To make an emotional appeal he talked about how the enforcement of minimum wage improved his life in more ways than by just increasing his pay. The workers now have punch cards, as farmers don’t want to pay them for the four hours they used to spend waiting for work to begin. They are picked up later for work, which enables him to eat breakfast with his family and take his children to school.

When describing how his wages have not increased since the 1980s, he asked how much a coke cost to buy in 1980, which was roughly 25 cents. With the 50 cents he earned per pail of tomatoes picked in 1980 he could buy two cokes. Now, with that same 50 cents, he can buy one half of a coke, sometimes less depending on the vending machine. I thought that was a really accessible example to communicate why an increase in wages is so vital.

            They talked about the fair food action they’re planning on March 5-10^th. They will hold a six-day hunger strike outside of the Publix headquarters in Lakeland to protest Publix’s refusal to raise their prices by one cent per pail of tomatoes. This idea literally hit me close to home, as I live five minutes from Publix headquarters and know countless people who work for or with Publix at an executive level. This really made me realize how close to this movement I am, as well as how implicated my entire community is in the oppression of farmworkers. So now I guess I’ve finally made Spring Break plans…

            I think I’m choosing to participate in solidarity in their hunger strike (I won’t be fasting for the duration) in part out of guilt—I have received scholarships from Publix, I’m zoned for George Jenkins High School, I used to babysit for their CFO—but mainly because I want to communicate with the farmworkers. I can read endless theory and texts about Marxism, grassroots movements, and worker’s rights, but I’m realizing that I will never understand any aspect of my ever-more complicated world without communication that leads to relationship building, that leads (hopefully) to mutual understanding.

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