The Activist

Since 2001, the Florida-based Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and their partner the Student Farmworker Alliance (SFA) have worked tirelessly to fight for the rights of immigrants and tomato pickers. Their battle for an extra penny per pound of picked tomatos. Although the battles have been hard fought, they’ve won several huge campaigns against powerful corporations like Yum!Brands, McDonald’s, and Burger King. The CIW and SFA now turn their attention towards Whole Foods, Subway, and Wal-Mart. The Young Democratic Socialists have stood with our partners in their work over the past few years. We not only want to continue to do so, but we want to amplify our work as well.

YDS contributed to CIW’s struggle in modest ways. Our University of Chicago chapter spoke at a town hall meeting to show solidarity with the university coalition that kicked Taco Bell off campus. In the spring of 2007, YDS members from around the country rallied in Chicago celebrating CIW’s victory over McDonald’s. In the fall, YDS chapters hosted talks about connecting corporate globalization and migration, and emphasized corporate exploitation of farmworkers.

It was the in the spring of 2008 that YDS’s participation in farm worker solidarity reached its high water mark. During the Student Labor Week of Action (SLWoA), YDS chapters like the College of Wooster and Wichita State University (WSU YDS) and members like Alyssa Cundari (herself on the SFA Coordinating Committee) helped obtain hundreds, if not over a thousand, signatures for SFA’s petition against modern-day slavery directed at Burger King. WSU YDS’s Day of Action with Farmworkers event was highlighted by Jobs with Justice in their coverage of the 2008 SLWoA. In many ways, however, our work as socialists was incomplete.

U.S. democratic socialists have always played an important role in farm worker solidarity. From organizing sharecroppers during the New Deal and Great Depression, working with Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers in the grape boycott, to addressing racial injustice in the farm worker struggle, American socialists have been in and around the movement for justice in the fields. YDS views our activism with CIW and SFA as a continuation of that tradition of labor solidarity.

However, labor solidarity by itself is not enough to transform society and protect worker rights. Agreements between workers and business will not change labor laws that curtail farmhand collective bargaining rights. Such contacts can not undo the racist legacy of excluding farm workers (like domestic workers) from the National Labor Relations Act because many of them are people of color. It is the role of socialists in the United States to do public education on capitalism’s systemic exploitation of farm workers, the need for legal protections for farm workers, and address the underlining bigoted nature of existing labor laws.

YDS will do the following:

• YDS Coordinating Committee and National Office will develop talking points for chapters and members to discuss why we should support the Coalition of Immokalee Workers campaign as democratic socialists. This specifically calls upon YDS developing literature as to why capitalism has exacerbated exploitation of farmworkers in the U.S. both socially and economically.

• YDS Coordinating Committee and National Office will coordinate actions similar to the events of the past year emphasizing YDS’s national commitment and energy around farm worker rights.