Coalition of Immokalee Workers

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers recently distributed information about a new book and documentary film. I've reproduced some of the information below. First is an explanation of the group, taken from the group's website:

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is a worker-based human rights organization internationally recognized for its achievements in fighting human trafficking and gender-based violence at work. The CIW is also recognized for pioneering the design and development of the Worker-driven Social Responsibility paradigm, a worker-led, market-enforced approach to the protection of human rights in corporate supply chains.

Built on a foundation of farmworker community organizing starting in 1993, and reinforced with the creation of a national consumer network since 2000, CIW’s work has steadily grown over more than twenty years to encompass three broad and overlapping spheres: the Fair Food Program, the Anti-Slavery Campaign, and the Campaign for Fair Food.

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The new book Food, Inc. 2: Inside the Quest for a Better Future for Food— published last month ahead of the spring release of the long-awaited sequel to the 2008 Oscar-nominated documentary Food, Inc.— includes a chapter on the remarkable history of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the groundbreaking Fair Food Program that is a must-read for members of the Fair Food Nation, whose tireless support helped end generations of farm labor abuse, transform an industry, and launch a new model for human rights protection in corporate supply chains around the globe!

The newly published book is a companion to the highly anticipated documentary film Food, Inc. 2. The film features famed food writers Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser as they take us on a wide-ranging tour of our broken food system. From factory farms to monopolies creating fragile supply chains and industrial scale farming exploiting farmworkers, the film provides an unflinching look at U.S. agriculture, but also provides several vital rays of hope. Shining brightly among those rays are the CIW and the Fair Food Program.

The story of the Fair Food Program and the CIW’s larger struggle for dignity in the fields is brilliantly told by the CIW’s own Gerardo Reyes Chavez in the film, himself a farmworker for more than a decade. Through extended interviews, Gerardo walks the viewer through the CIW’s Campaign for Fair Food, launched in 2001, the birth of the Presidential Medal-winning Fair Food Program in 2011, and the urgent need to expand this uniquely successful worker-driven program as far and wide as possible today. With an eye to practical, proven solutions to the food system’s many ills, “Food, Inc. 2” and its companion book champion the Fair Food Program as the answer to preventing forced labor and other extreme abuses in agriculture, with a long and unequaled track record of results.

We're including an excerpt of our chapter on our website. If you’d like to read the rest of the chapter and the book — which includes chapters from Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, and Senator Cory Booker — you can purchase it here or look for a copy at your local library!

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Food, Inc. 2: Inside the Quest for a Better Future for Food

Edited by Karl Weber

[from the publisher]

An eye-opening guide to how America feeds itself and an essential companion book to the new documentary.

America’s food system is broken, harming family farmers, workers, the environment, and our health. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Here, brilliant innovators, scientists, journalists and activists explain how we can create a hopeful new future for food, if we have the courage to seize the moment. 

In 2008, the award-winning documentary Food, Inc. shook up our perceptions of what we ate. Now, the movie’s timely sequel and this new companion book will address the remarkable developments in the world of food—from lab-grown meat to the burgeoning food sovereignty movement—that have unfolded since then.

Featuring thought-provoking original essays from:

Michael Pollan • Eric Schlosser • David E. Kelley and Andrew Zimmern • Senator Cory Booker • Sarah E. Lloyd • Carlos A. Monteiro and Geoffrey Cannon • Lisa Elaine Held • Larissa Zimberoff • Saru Jayaraman • Christiana Musk • Nancy Easton • Leah Penniman • David LeZaks and Lauren Manning • The Coalition of Immokalee Workers • Michiel Bakker • Danielle Nierenberg

This book is the perfect roadmap to understanding not only our current dysfunctional food system, but also what each of us can do to help reform it.

Later.

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Manuel Ramos writes crime fiction. Read his latest story, Northside Nocturne, in the award-winning anthology Denver Noir, edited by Cynthia Swanson, published by Akashic Books.