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Farmworkers to Table

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Farmworkers to Table Farmworkers to Table Greg Asbed and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers are changing the lives of Florida’s tomato pickers. They’re hoping to bring their Worker-Driven Social Responsibility model to other industries. hirty-two pounds. That’s how much a full bucket of tomatoes weighs when farmworkers pick them from fields in southern Florida. Thirty-two pounds, a little more than a cinder block. Pickers are paid per bucket, on average 40 cents. To earn roughly T$50, a worker must pick about two tons of tomatoes—a day. Greg Asbed has been trying to change this small sector of the agriculture industry over the past 25 years with the Coali - tion of Immokalee Workers, a human rights organization he co-founded that unites tomato pickers in southern Florida. In 2003, a Justice Department official told a New Yorker reporter that Florida’s tomato industry was “ground zero for modern slavery.” Workers live overstuffed in trailers. Women are sexu- ally harassed. That 40-cent rate per bucket? Industry standard since 1978. Since 2005, though, CIW has catalyzed profound changes in Florida’s tomato fields. It secured workers a rate increase. It cre- ated a system to report abuse without fear of retaliation. It's bringing people who sexually assault women to justice and reforming a culture that permitted the assaults in the first place. All this has happened because of CIW’s Fair Food Program, Bret McCabe which was developed by and for the workers in the fields. “We photography Brian Tietz have a theory of change,” Asbed, SAIS ’90 (MA), told me about 42 | johns hopkins magazine 43 | Volume 70 No. 3 Fall 2018 images © John D. anD Catherine t. maCarthur FounDation—useD with permission the program, “and it works.” It works because worker out there, along with a tiny chisel,” he says. CIW negotiates deals with the large corporate “Every time they see a violation of this blueprint, buyers who set the prices from tomato farms. they’re chipping it off. And through all these little Since 2005, the Fair Food Program has negoti- efforts—all these workers, all these little chisels— ated binding legal agreements with 14 fast-food we’re creating a beautiful sculpture out of this and retail supermarket chains, from Burger industry that doesn’t exist anywhere else.” King, McDonald’s, and Taco Bell to Trader Joe’s, Walmart, and Whole Foods. ver the years, Asbed—who co- One holdout has been Wendy’s. If Wendy’s founded CIW in 1993 along with wouldn’t come to the table, then CIW would his wife, Laura Germino, SAIS ’91 come to Wendy’s. In March, workers traveled to (MA), and farmworker and orga- New York to protest in front of the burger chain’s nizer Lucas Benitez—has devel- corporate parent, the multibillion dollar asset Ooped a thought exercise he likes to use when “Through all management firm Trian Partners. For five days talking to a group of people about farm work. starting on a Sunday, more than 80 tomato pick- Imagine driving through a rural part of the state these little ers fasted in front of the midtown firm’s building. and coming across a farm stand selling fruits efforts—all For this Freedom Fast, people from local and and vegetables. You stop to get some. Now, what these workers, regional peace organizations, faith-based com- if while you were paying you saw, behind the all these little munities, grassroots organizations, and labor stand, a farmer beating a worker or intimidating chisels—we’re unions joined the fasters in bracing 40-degree a woman, or a worker standing in 90-degree heat creating a temperatures. They were also joined by college with no water or shade. Would you still buy that beautiful students who arrived by bus from campuses in tomato? This scenario involves “a consumer buy- sculpture out Florida, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, and Mas- ing something, but now how that thing is being of this industry sachusetts. As part of a protest march that produced is right in front of my eyes,” Asbed that doesn’t marked the end of the fast, nearly 2,000 people says. “And I can’t turn away from that. Now I’m blocked traffic as they crossed Second Avenue. hearing a scream while I’m buying. Does that exist anywhere Asbed was somewhere among this throng. change my mind?” else.” Chatting with him you get the feeling he prefers Asbed didn’t hear the scream until he was Greg Asbed organizing workers over public relations. Since studying at SAIS. And to understand Asbed— being named a 2017 MacArthur Fellow last fall what motivates him, what sustains him in the for the human rights work CIW is pioneering, patient, incremental progress of human rights he’s had to adjust to being a bit more visible. And work—is to recognize that the scream is per- he’s using those opportunities to amplify CIW’s sonal to him. Norig G. Asbed, Engr ’61 (MSE), efforts—not just public actions, such as the Free- A&S ’73 (MS), Asbed’s father, was an Armenian dom Fast and its march, but the slow, 20-years- immigrant to the United States. His father’s in-the-making consciousness-changing effort to mother survived the Armenian genocide; after create a model that gives the most marginalized most of her family was killed, she was sold to and underserved workers in America some another Armenian family fleeing Turkey. Norig, power to change their employment conditions. who was born in what is now Syria, excelled in They call this model Worker-Driven Social school, eventually becoming a student of nuclear Responsibility, and it’s being explored by dairy physicist Niels Bohr in Denmark. Norig’s gradu- workers in Vermont and textile workers in Ban- ate studies brought him to America, where he gladesh. Its transformative power resides in how met Greg’s mother, Ruth-Alice Davis, a pediatri- it activates all workers to know their rights and cian who was the chief of what was then the what to do when those rights are violated. Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Asbed likes to think of the exploitative agricul- Health’s maternal and child health clinic while ture system as a big, ugly, disfigured piece of rock, Norig was in grad school. She would eventually and the Fair Food Program as a blueprint for work in public health for the state of Maryland Michelangelo’s David. “What we did was make a and in the Philippines. Asbed’s mother died in million copies of that blueprint and gave it to every 1993, his father in 2015. 44 | johns hopkins magazine His family history’s combination of persever- they were there. And we were like, ‘Damn, we have ance and service inspired him to get involved in an opportunity here.’“ human rights work after he graduated from That opportunity was to unleash a process Brown University in 1985. He met Germino there, Asbed calls “conscientization”—developing a crit- and they both wanted to pursue activist work ical consciousness. What makes farmworkers (they would marry in 1993). The Peace Corps took poor? Why do they face so much abuse? What are Germino to West Africa while Asbed worked for the root causes of that abuse and what can be done democracy in Haiti. When they returned to the to address them? CIW’s founding motto is “Con- States, they figured they’d get graduate degrees sciousness plus commitment equals change,” and continue working in the developing world. Asbed says. “‘Consciousness’ comes first for a rea- While Asbed was at SAIS, Germino worked son, the idea of understanding critically the situa- with an organization providing legal aid to farm- tion you’re in, why it is what it is, and what direc- workers in southern Pennsylvania. She had a tion to go to address the root of that problem. case involving Haitians and brought in Asbed, From that comes the commitment to change it.” who had learned to speak Creole in Haiti, to Asbed in conversation is thoughtful, often translate. “That was the first time that I learned pausing to compose his next sentence. He firsthand about the conditions of farmworkers,” becomes more enthusiastic and animated when he says. “That was the first time I heard the talking about this process because he sees it as scream at the farm stand. And it was shocking.” the foundation of what makes CIW and the He and Germino moved to southern Florida Fair Food Program powerful: the community of in 1991, and initially worked with Florida Rural people involved in both analyzing problems and Legal Services to get to know farmworkers in the brainstorming solutions. He’s often referred to as community. Germino co-created CIW’s Anti- one of, if not the, chief architect of the program, Slavery Campaign in the mid-’90s, an effort that but he always redirects the discussion back to has investigated and assisted in the prosecution the role of the collective. This deflection isn’t of farm slavery operations, earning national the superficial, there’s-no-I-in-team thinking of and international awards, including a 2015 Presi- business leadership; it’s a fundamental insistence dential Award for Extraordinary Efforts to Com- on creating an organization and system where bat Trafficking in Persons. Immokalee, which everybody rises together. rhymes with “broccoli,” has been a major hub of The budding CIW started holding meetings, “We used to tomato farming in the country for decades. It inviting any workers who wanted to learn about own our slaves,” appears in Edward R.
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