Students Walk in Shoes of Farmworkers

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)
Students at the Key School in Annapolis got a glimpse of the struggles facing farmworkers last week as part of a lecture series on migrant farm laborers, reported Raymond McCaffrey in Sunday’s Washington Post. Students listened to Gerardo Reyes-Chavez – a farmworker and member of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) – detail the hardships of migration and working the fields, participated in role-playing exercises, including running a hypothetical agricultural cooperative and “harvesting clover with strict instructions to clear dirt from the stems,” and signed a petition in support of farmworkers’ rights, McCaffrey reported. “At the front of the classroom was a bucket filled with two bags of rice, which weighed about 32 pounds, so students could get a sense of how heavy a load of tomatoes is for workers to shoulder throughout the day. On a video screen, they saw images of the workers with worn hands.” “After class, Meagan [a seventh-grader from Annapolis] said the lecture had taught her about the tough work conditions faced by many immigrants, not just those who work on farms.” The lecture series precedes a kick-off signing ceremony today at US Capitol  -- with Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and other labor rights organizations – for the CIW’s national petition campaign. The petition demands Burger King and other food industry leaders work with the CIW to improve wages and working conditions for the farmworkers who pick their tomatoes and end modern-day slavery and human rights abuses in Florida's fields. Click here to sign the petition.