Yesterday, members of Fair Food Austin took their message about labor conditions in Florida's tomato fields to the student body at the University of Texas at Austin with a powerful skit recreating the brutal facts of a 2007 slavery case in Immokalee, Florida.Accompanied by the musicians of Son Armado, the performance consisted of an endless cycle of day and night scenes in which farmworkers were forced to harvest tomatoes against their will under a scorching sun only to be robbed of their pay and chained inside a u-haul truck at night. Over the course of the 90-minute performance, hundreds of flyers were distributed outlining the link between farmworker exploitation and the purchasing practices of UT foodservice providers Armark and Sodexo. Students were provided with the telephone numbers of Aramark officials and encouraged to call and voice their support for the Campaign for Fair Food.
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers originally performed the theater piece this year on the steps of the Florida Capitol to dramatize the indifference of Florida Governor Charlie Crist to the slavery epidemic in Florida agriculture involving seven federally prosecuted farm labor slavery cases and well over one thousand workers since 1997 alone.
Click here for pictures from yesterday's action!
