Tomatoland (18 page)

Two years later,
McDonald’s signed a similar agreement. But the coalition was making little headway against
Burger King, a situation that was all the more painful because the chain was founded in Miami in the 1950s and was still headquartered there, less than one hundred miles from the fields of Immokalee. If any group of fast
food executives should have been aware of the plight of the people who picked their tomatoes, it was the officers who ran the world’s second largest hamburger chain. Instead, they mounted aggressive resistance to the overtures from the workers’ representatives. It was an approach that backfired badly.

In 2007 and 2008, a writer who went by the
Internet pseudonym surfxaholic36
frequently attached ungrammatical but scathing comments to articles, blog postings, and YouTube videos mentioning the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. A typical one read, “The CIW is an attack organization lining the leaders pockets… They make up issues and collect money from dupes that believe their story To bad the people protesting don’t have a clue regarding the facts. A bunch of fools!” In a reply to a story in the
Naples News
that covered a visit to Immokalee by Senator
Bernie Sanders (I-VT), surfxaholic36 wrote: “The CIW is an attack organization and will drive business out of Immokalee while they line their own pockets. They make money through donations by attacking large companies and have attacked Yum, McDonald’s and now Burger King to get money for there own organization. They are the lowest form of life exploiting the poor workers to line there own pockets. I will buy all the Whoppers I can, good going Burger King for uncovering these blood suckers.”

Amy Bennett Williams, a reporter at the
Fort Myers News-Press
, decided to do a bit of Internet sleuthing to see if she could uncover the true identity of surfxaholic36. It didn’t take her long to trace the alias back to
Shannon Grover, who lived in the Miami area. Williams put in a call to Grover, and a youthful female voice answered. Williams identified herself, making sure that the girl on the other end of the line knew that she was speaking to a reporter and understood the ramifications. Grover confirmed that she was indeed surfxaholic36, mainly when she visited social networking sites. Williams then asked her about the vitriolic comments, and Grover said, “I don’t really know much about the coalition and Burger King stuff. That was my dad.
My dad used to go online with that name and write about them.” Williams asked the middle-school-aged girl if she had ever written about the coalition online. “No,” she replied adamantly. “That was my dad. That was him.” Shannon Grover’s dad was
Steven F. Grover. At the time, he was vice president of food safety, quality assurance, and regulatory affairs for Burger King. “This is a huge black eye for Burger King. It’s the type of situation that lands companies in public relations textbooks on how not to engage the press, the public, and your critics,” said
John Stauber of the
Center for Media and Democracy.

It was not the only
textbook-quality public relations flub
made by Burger King. In November 2007, shortly before the coalition was scheduled to march to the company’s offices to present a petition, the fast food chain teamed up with the
Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, an agricultural cooperative representing more than 90 percent of the state’s producers, to sponsor a junket for a group of journalists to Immokalee. The idea was to let the reporters see firsthand that all was well in the tomato fields. Burger King took the occasion to present the
Redlands Christian Migrant Association with a check for $25,000 to support the network of daycare centers and schools the association runs. “We found an organization we could trust and we could help,” Grover said.

“We finally said, ‘Enough,’” Reggie Brown, the executive vice president of the Tomato Growers Exchange, told the reporters. “We’re not going to be accused of things we don’t do. This is certainly not a labor force held in servitude.” Brown’s assertions were supported by
André Raghu, the managing director of
Intertek, a firm that conducts audits to ascertain whether suppliers to food-service companies follow proper quality, safety, and regulatory protocol. Raghu said that his investigators had found “no slave labor” in the tomato fields, which was an odd assertion given that a quick Google search would have popped up at least five Florida cases that had been successfully prosecuted by that date. Nonetheless, the journalists dutifully quoted the Tomato Growers Exchange and Burger King. In a seeming coup for the fast food chain and its suppliers, the
Miami Herald
ran a lengthy
article detailing what the reporters had heard and seen. It ran on November 20, 2007.

The timing could not have been worse. That article appeared on the very day that the workers for the Navarrete family escaped from the locked truck in Immokalee and reported to police that more than a dozen migrants had worked as slaves in one of the most heinous cases of human trafficking ever prosecuted in Florida. Finally, in mid-2008,
John Chidsey, chief executive officer of Burger King, agreed to join the Campaign for Fair Food. “We are pleased to now be working together with the CIW to further the common goal of improving Florida tomato farmworkers’ wages, working conditions and lives,” he said at a signing ceremony:

The CIW has been at the forefront of efforts to improve farm labor conditions, exposing abuses and driving socially responsible purchasing and work practices in the Florida tomato fields. We apologize for any negative statements about the CIW or its motives previously attributed to BKC or its employees and now realize that those statements were wrong. Today we turn a new page in our relationship and begin a new chapter of real progress for Florida farm workers.

For more than 50 years, BKC has been a proud purchaser and supporter of the Florida tomato industry. However, if the Florida tomato industry is to be sustainable long-term, it must become more socially responsible. We, along with other industry leaders, recognize that the Florida tomato harvesters are in need of better wages, working conditions and respect for the hard work they do. And we look forward to working with the CIW in the pursuit of these necessary improvements. We also encourage other purchasers and growers of Florida tomatoes to engage in dialogue with the CIW in support of driving industry-wide socially responsible change.

Steven Grover was no longer with the company.

One March evening, I received an invitation to drop over to the headquarters of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to take in an amateur
boxing match. The turnout was huge. I had to wait in line at the door, and once in, I was relegated to the back on one of several upended plastic tomato buckets that had been hauled out as overflow seating. It didn’t look like it was going to be a fair fight. In one corner of a cordoned-off area in front of a meeting hall was a lean, long-armed buff fellow in his late teens or early twenties. He stood well over six feet tall. In the other corner was
Emilio Galindo, who had told me about life as a picker earlier. At five-feet-two, he barely came up to his opponent’s shoulders.

Galindo’s dark blue T-shirt was inscribed in white with three five-pointed stars and the letters
C
,
I
, and
W
. His opponent wore a sign saying “Taco Bell.” A referee entered the ring and held up a piece of poster board with “2005” hand-lettered on it. A bell sounded, and the boxers warily approached each other. It was a hell of a bout. They tore into each other in a flurry of puffy red gloves, with each blow being either cheered (if Galindo landed it) or booed (if he was on the receiving end).Things were looking grim for the diminutive Galindo, but he delivered a quick upper cut. His opponent fell to the mat. The fighters returned to their respective corners, where women fanned the victorious Galindo with towels and offered him sips from a water bottle. The bell rang again, and another round ensued. This time the referee held up a poster reading “2007,” and Galindo’s tall opponent wore a McDonald’s sign. After a few minutes of back-and-forth flailing, he was KO’d again. Galindo was just getting warmed up. Burger King came at him in the 2008 round and landed one or two low blows that almost caused Galindo to topple backward. But he managed to stay upright and patiently waited for an opening, which he eventually got. Down went The King.

It was a stunt, of course:
theatro
meant to attract an audience and deliver a simple lesson at one of the coalition’s weekly meetings. Like many civil rights groups with Hispanic roots, the coalition embraces
the principles of “
popular education.” Developed in the late 1960s by an
exiled Brazilian scholar
named
Paulo Freire and described in his book
Pedagogy of the Oppressed,
popular education’s goal is to empower groups of people who have been marginalized socially and politically. The theory is that once people know where they fit on the social and economic continuum, they can begin taking steps to improve their lot.

Popular education avoids the rigid classroom/teacher hierarchy. A participatory process intended to be an exchange of ideas, it relies heavily on nontraditional means of teaching such as music, visual arts, theater—even faux boxing matches. An illiterate indigenous migrant who speaks no English and only rudimentary Spanish and has just arrived from a hamlet in the mountains of Chiapas may not have heard of Yum! Brands or have any real concept about what a multibillion dollar corporation is, but he can understand the symbolism of a well-liked, plump middle-aged guy in a coalition T-shirt getting whaled by a larger enemy and emerging victorious.

After the boxing match, Benitez came to the front of the room and sat on a desk, spreading his knees comfortably. He glanced out over the crowd of over two hundred—senior citizens, young women, mothers, kids, babies, and many working-age men, their hair oiled back, wearing clean T-shirts and blue jeans and either baseball caps or straw cowboy hats. The room was decorated with souvenirs from the coalition’s campaigns. Brightly painted native art murals, banners, and protest signs adorned the walls, along with color photographs of marches and protests.
Yo no soy tractor
headbands hung from window frames like pennants.

In an organization that has no official head (about ten members play key roles in its efforts), Benitez is a natural leader. He is a powerfully built man but speaks quietly. His oratory is soft, conversational, and spiked with low-key humor and good-natured ribbing. He rarely makes a direct statement, instead throwing out questions to his audience, or engaging in one-on-one banter.

“Who was Emilio?” he said, giving his own well-padded belly a few pats that drew a laugh from the crowd. Hands shot up. He pointed to one. “The coalition,” came the shouted reply. Benitez swung his head around the room nodding. “And who is the coalition?” he asked. No hands shot up. “Is it Pedro?” he asked, pointing to a worker in the crowd.

The room rumbled, “No.”

Indicating another audience member, he said, “Is it Lorenzo?”

“No.”

“Is it Lucas?” He pointed to himself.

“No.”

Very quietly he asked, “Is it us?”

The room erupted in a cheer.

“When did we start the campaign?” Benitez asked. No one answered. “I think it was in 2001,” he said. “What year was it that Taco Bell agreed to become part of it?”

Someone shouted, “2005.”

“How many years did it take?”

“Four.”

“And what year for McDonald’s?”

“2007.”

“And how many years was that?”

“Two.”

“And what year for Burger King, Subway, and Whole Foods?”

“2008.”

By that time, everyone had caught on to his message: The tiny coalition was taking on giant organizations and winning at an increasing pace.

By 2010, the fast food outlets had been joined by Bon Appétit Management Co.,
Compass Group,
Aramark, and
Sodexo, all major food-service companies that operate in hospitals, museums, and university campuses. Although major grocery chains (with the notable exception of Whole Foods) still held out, the Campaign for Fair Food was a phenomenal success backed by seemingly unstoppable momentum.

Unfortunately, one huge problem remained. The powerful Florida Tomato Growers Exchange adamantly refused to participate—even though the deals with the fast food and food-service companies would not cost its members a cent. The exchange went so far as to threaten any of its members who did participate with a
$100,000 fine
. Without the participation of the exchange and big farmers, who maintain employment records for their pickers, there was no practical way to get the extra penny per pound to the workers. Instead of going to people who desperately needed it, the money was building up in escrow accounts, where it benefited no one.

A PENNY PER POUND

T
he Coalition of Immokalee Workers has to have a graphic enemy, and I’m it,” said Reggie Brown, holding up his palms and flaring his fingers in a what-the-hell gesture. “I cannot get off the hook no matter what—” He was cut off when one of Florida’s vicious summer storms unleashed a timely bolt of lightning followed by a sharp crack of thunder.