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Present in the World Economy: The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (1996–2007)

2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 5; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14747730802252495

1474-774X

André C. Drainville,

Globalization and Cultural Identity

Abstract To think through what new, perhaps transformative, way of life and struggle might be in the process of being invented by social forces moving on the terrain of the world economy, we must look into real concrete organizations binding people together. Only then can we begin to see what might be most radical about contemporary social movements: the putting into dialectical relation of two relatively autonomous, spatially specific, modes of struggle: a local ‘wars of position’ and a ‘war of movement’ that takes place on the terrain of the world economy. This article deals with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), which has just won a 10-year-long campaign to raise the income and better the living conditions of tomato pickers in Southwest Florida. For all its specificity, this campaign presents us with a concrete organizational experience from which we can think more generally about the political significance of what has been variously and vaguely termed ‘the new internationalism of social movements’, ‘the anti-globalization movement’, or ‘globalization from below’. Para estudiar detenidamente qué forma de vida y lucha nuevas, quizás transformativas, podrían estar en el proceso de ser creadas por fuerzas sociales que se mueven en el terreno de la economía mundial, debemos estudiar a las organizaciones concretas reales que integran a la gente. Sólo así podríamos comenzar a ver el aspecto más radical de los movimientos sociales contemporáneos: la introducción de la relación dialéctica de dos formas de lucha relativamente autónomas y espacialmente específicas: ‘guerras locales de posición’ y una ‘guerra de movimiento’ que tienen lugar en el terreno de la economía mundial. Este artículo trata sobre la Coalición de los Trabajadores de Immokalee (CIW, por sus siglas en inglés), que acaba de ganar una campaña de 10 años para aumentar el ingreso y mejorar las condiciones de los recolectores de tomates en el suroeste de la Florida. Por toda su especificidad, esta campaña nos presenta una experiencia organizacional concreta, de la cual podemos pensar más en general sobre la importancia de lo que se ha denominado diversa y vagamente ‘el nuevo internacionalismo de los movimientos sociales’, ‘el movimiento antiglobalización’, o ‘la globalización desde abajo’. Notes Quoted as an epigraph in Howard (1971) Howard, D. 1971. Selected Political Writings of Rosa Luxemburg, Edited by: Howard, D. New York and London: Monthly Review Press. [Google Scholar]. Anton Pannekoek ‘Massenaktion und Revolution’, quoted in Bricianer (1978) Bricianer, S. 1978. Pannekoek and the Workers' Councils, St Louis: Telos Press. [Google Scholar]. The reference to the UFW is not gratuitous. Also composed of migrant workers and also led by a charismatic leader who came to personify the struggle, the UFW also grew in visibility when it called for a nationwide boycott of a well-known brand (‘Schenley, a well known liquor producer with a recognizable brand name and a non-unionized farm workforce’) that got widespread support from‘… university students, urban unions, … churches groups …’ and from such public figures as Senator Robert Kennedy. Like the CIW's ‘Truth Tour’, the UFW organized ‘a twenty-five-day long, 340-mile march from Delano to Sacramento’ said to be ‘inspired by the Freedom March held in Alabama two years before …’ and it‘… gained a favorable national media attention, particularly when growers responded by harassing pickers and threatening violent retaliation’. Citations from Rothenberg (2000) Rothenberg, D. 2000. With These Hands: The Hidden Work of Migrant Farmworkers Today, Berkeley: University of California Press. [Google Scholar]. Taco Bell buys 7% of Florida tomato production, or 10.9 million pounds of tomatoes a year. Thirteen of thirty-two items on the Taco Bell menu include tomatoes as a principal ingredient. http://www.tacobell.com. In an interview (7 July 2004), Lucas Benítez could recall the names of seven of the twelve founders: Pedro López (Guatemala), Felipe Pascual (Guatemala), Greg Asbed, Laura Germino, Elvira (México), Ramiro Benítez (México). Lucas Benítez himself is from México. The core group of marchers was roughly 70 strong, including coalition members, local supporters, and representatives of workers' rights groups from Atlanta and Philadelphia. Two dozen community organizations and religious groups joined them at send-off. The largest crowd of supporters numbered in the thousands. Five thousand people signed the petition that was presented to Florida Governor Jeb Bush on 17 March (Peltier, 2000 Peltier, M. 2000. Coalition workers meet with Governor over petitions. Naples/Collier News, [Google Scholar]). Among organizations and coalitions that have either been brought together by CIW actions or have offered support are: the United States Student Association (USSA), the Student Labor Action Project, the United Farm Workers, Jobs with Justice, the Students/Farmworkers Alliance, the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (the largest Chicano student organization in the US), the Campaign for Labor Right (that presents itself as ‘The Grassroots Mobilizing Department of the U.S. Anti-Sweatshop Movement’), the United Postal Workers of America (UPWA), the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, Students for Peace Action (SPA), the Civic Media Center, the Mexican-American Student Association (MASA), the Institute for Hispanic and Latino Cultures, the Green Party, the Student Environmental Action Coalition, Students Transforming and Resisting Corporations, the Presbyterian Church USA, Buddhist Peace Fellowship, the American Postal Workers' Union, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, ACORN, the United Church of Christ, Pax Christi International, Global Exchange, the Mexico Solidarity Network, the National Council of Churches Bishop, Oxfam America, the Alliance of Baptist Churches, the Episcopal Migrant Ministry, the Christian Church in Florida (Disciples of Christ), and the Radical Cheerleader (whose Auburn chapter occupied a local Taco Bell). For details, see the Students/Farmworkers Alliance's homepage: http://www.sfalliance.org/About/history.htm Founded in 1892, Sinaltrainal regroups mostly workers from the Colombian food industry working for such transnational corporations as Coca-Cola, Unilever, Freisland, Corn Products Corporation, Nabisco, Royal S.A., Kraft, etc. On 9 September 2003, FEMSA, Coca-Cola's largest Colombian bottler, locked out workers at 11 of 16 bottling plants. Since then, 20 Sinaltrainal are said to have been killed in the struggle, and more than 500 pressured into resigning. Sinaltrainal has taken its struggle to the international level, with ‘The Campaign To Stop Killer Coke’, details of which can be found at http://www.sinaltrainal.org/huelga/huelga.html#30. In interview (7 July 2004), Lucas Benítez emphasized the Coalition's support for Coca-Cola workers in Columbia and Guatemala, mentioning that Coca-Cola products are forbidden in the Coalition's cooperative store. Lucas also mentioned that Coalition members had toured villages in Guatemala to explain the struggle in Immokalee. No further details on these informal solidarity tours, that seemed to have taken place on the occasion of family visits, were available. Interview with Luis Adolfo Cardona, posted on the Colombian Action Network: http://www.colombiaactionnetwork.org/boycott.html. http://ecuador.indymedia.org/es/2002/10/355.html. http://www.ciw-online.org/tz_site-revision/breaking_news/2004pressrelease.shtml. ‘Taco Bell and YUM! Brands offer to assist Tomato Workers if they end boycott against Company. Universal Florida Tomato Surcharge Recommended Solution’. Press release May 20, 2004, http://www.tacobell.com/ourcompany/press/2004_05_20.htm. The CIW website provides a long and growing list of public figures that have endorsed the struggle in Immokalee. Among individuals mentioned are: Julian Bond (NAACP Board Chairman), Jimmy Carter, Lawton Chiles (a former Florida Governor, who wrote a letter on 2 January 1998 asking workers and growers to establish a dialogue), Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, Dolores Huerta (of the UFW), the Indigo Girls, Cardinal William H. Keeler (the Roman Catholic archbishop of Baltimore), Naomi Klein (of No Logo fame), David Korten (author of When Corporations Rule the World), Congressman John Lewis (D-GA), John J. Nevins (bishop of Venice in Florida), singer Bonnie Raitt, Mary Robinson (former UN Commissioner for Human Rights), Lynn Redgrave, Martin Sheen, Susan Sarandon, Eric Schlosser (author of Fast Food Nation), John Sweeney (AFL-CIO president), Ricky Martin, Utah Phillips, Jeff Bridges, and Cecil Martin, former fullback for the Philadelphia Eagles. Missing from the list is Bruce Springsteen: ‘The Boss’ gave CIW workers ten tickets to a local concert in March of 1997. In a featured article devoted (in all senses of the word) to Lucas Benítez, Mother Jones's Rob Gurwitt uses similarly hagiographic prose: ‘Benítez exudes the passion of an old-time labor agitator. He stands about five and a half feet tall, but his energy and earnest manner give him an authoritative presence. In his daily stint on CIW's low-power radio station, he deepens his voice, speeds up his Spanish, and rolls his R's for dramatic flair—’R-r-r-r-adio Conciencia!' he crows, as he reminds his listeners to take CIW's phone number with them and watch out for charlatans as they head north following the harvest.' (Gurwitt, 2004b Gurwitt, R. 2004b. Power to the pickers: Lucas Benítez demands a harvest without shame. Mother Jones, July–August [Google Scholar]) At the same time, NOW also honored Laura Germino a community educator with Florida Rural Legal Services and Lucas Benítez ‘for their outstanding efforts in the fight against poverty and for workers’ rights.' For more details of the Gabriel story, see Oxfam America (2004) Oxfam America. 2004. Like machines in the fields: workers without rights in american agriculture. http://www.oxfamamerica.org [Google Scholar]. Other ‘Just Coffee’ offerings include ‘Grounds for democracy’ (full-city roast, blend of café Timor and Chiapas; $4.00 of every pound sold going to ‘Democracy Now’), ‘Ya Basta’ (dark-roasted organic Zapatista Java from the Mut Vitz Coop in Chiapas), ‘Work for Peace’ (‘A blend of Chiapas, Colombian, and East Timorese coffee, its rich taste and deep finish (that) will send you off nicely to spread the word of peace’, $1 to the Madison Peace Coalition), ‘Café Timor’ (medium roast fair trade organic, $3 to the East Timor Action Network) and ‘Awakening’ (medium roast, $3 to the Zen Buddhist Temple in Chicago). See http://www.justcoffee.net/justice.html. See http://www.antislavery.org/ Wage figures are approximate at best, due to reporting conditions, accounting inconsistencies and task specificity: a‘… bucket of first-picked cherry tomatoes earns a picker $2.00; the later picking earns only $1.25. Plum tomatoes earn 75 cents per bucket and salad tomatoes only 40 cents. The pay varies depending on how numerous the tomatoes are on the vine, whether they are first picked, and how many buckets a picker fills in an hour.’ (Riley, 2002 Riley, N. 2002. Florida's Farmworkers in the Twenty-First Century, Gainsville: University Press of Florida. [Google Scholar]) For instance: ‘In Auburn, Alabama, a Take Back the Streets action of the Southern Girls Conference took over a local Taco Bell. In Knoxville, Tennessee, a picket of a Taco Bell organized by Jobs with Justice and the UNITE textile union drew 40 people—prompting managers to call in the police… . Students and anti-sweatshop activists in Los Angeles began organizing pickets in the summer at a Taco Bell restaurant in East LA. Protesters showed up each week with tomato-shaped signs that read “Support Farm Workers” and “Boycott Taco Bell”—and a 10-foot banner featuring an angry Chihuahua dog, like the one featured in the company's commercials, declaring Yo No Quiero Taco Bell’ (Damewood et al., 2001 Damewood, S., Kornfeld, E., Easterling, S. and Belmont, F. 2001. Boycott the Bell!. Socialist Worker Online, 14 September, http://socialistworker.org/2001/377/377_05_BoycottBell.shtml [Google Scholar]). For details of the ‘Boot the Bell campaign, see the Students/Farmworkers Alliance's homepage: http://www.sfalliance.org/About/history.htm. ‘During the past six years, there have been six federal prosecutions for slavery of farmworkers in Florida, five of them with the assistance of CIW’ (Schlosser, 2005 Schlosser, E. 2005. A side order of human rights. New York Times, 6 April [Google Scholar]; see also Oxfam America, 2004 Oxfam America. 2004. Like machines in the fields: workers without rights in american agriculture. http://www.oxfamamerica.org [Google Scholar]). In ‘A Profile of U.S. Farm Workers: Demographics, Household Composition, Income and Use of Services’, the Department of Labor describes the current US farm workers' population and trace trends since 1988, relying on data collected by the US National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS). The importance of age was underlined by the SFA's Julia Perkins in interview (5 August 2004). Many such anthologies have been published in the last few years that are often as interesting for the stories they document as they are noteworthy for the poverty of their theorizing. See, for instance, Desfor et al. (2002) Desfor, G., Barndt, D. and Rahder, B. 2002. Just Doing It: Popular Collective Action in the Americas, Edited by: Desfor, G., Barndt, D. and Rahder, B. Montreal: Black Rose Book. [Google Scholar]; Fisher & Ponniah (2003) Fisher, W. F. and Ponniah, T. 2003. Another World Is Possible: Popular Alternatives to Globalization at the World Social Forum, Edited by: Fisher, W. F. and Ponniah, T. London: Zed Books. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; McNally (2002) McNally, D. 2002. Another World is Possible: Globalization and Anti-capitalism, Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring. [Google Scholar]; Notes from Nowhere (2003); Sen et al. (2004) Sen, J., Anand, A., Escobar, A. and Waterman, P. 2004. The World Social Forum: Challenging Empires, Edited by: Sen, J., Anand, A., Escobar, A. and Waterman, P. New Delhi: The Viveka Foundation. [Google Scholar]. Mireidy Fernandez, interviewed 12 July 2002. In the same spirit, see also Smith (1994a) Smith, J. 1994a. Organizing global Action. Peace Review, 6: 419–426. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]; Weber (1999) Weber, D. 1999. Historical perspectives on Mexican transnationalism: with notes from Angumacutiro. Social Justice, 26: 39 [Google Scholar]. The relationship between transnational living and locality is well studied in transnationalism (Guarnizo, 2003 Guarnizo, L. E. 2003. The economics of transnational living. The International Migration Review, 37: 666[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Most often, authors emphasize the ‘trans-local’ dimension of the process: how, for instance, migrants' loyalty and commitment to their homelands, as well as their investments and money remittances transform local traditional structures. Though he no longer moves to follow crops, Benítez still ‘occasionally’ picks local citrus and watermelon (Driscoll, 2000 Driscoll, A. 2000. Former migrant organizes workers. Miami Herald, 9 May [Google Scholar]). The first citation is from Mireidy Fernandez, interviewed 12 July 2002. The second is from Sylvia Perkins, interviewed 7 July 2004. In interview, Lucas Benítez also emphasized the distinctiveness of the CIW in terms of its relationship with community. The citation is from ‘The transition from the war of manoeuvre (frontal attack) to the war of position’ in Hoare & Smith (1998) Hoare, Q. and Smith, G. N. 1998. Selections From the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, Edited by: Hoare, Q. and Smith, G. N. London: Lawrence and Wishart. [Google Scholar]. The reference to neighbourhoods is not extraneous to world order. One of the defining documents of neoliberal world order is the 1995 Commission on Global Governance's Report, subtitled Our Global Neighborhood, which seeks to define the terms of social comity in the world economy (Commission on Global Governance 1995 Commission on Global Governance. 1995. Our Global Neighbourhood, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]). A few years after the CIW began its ‘living wage’ campaign, 75 such campaigns were under way on US campuses across the US. The most publicized took place at Harvard University, Swarthmore, Princeton, Wesleyan, University of Virginia, Johns Hopkins, Brown, Stanford, George Washington, Fairfield, where both student activists and their tuition-paying parents became involved. On ‘living wage campaigns’ as structuring issues in campus politics, see Neumann (2001) Neumann, R. 2001. Living wage 101. Dissent, Fall, : 59–62. http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=904 [Google Scholar]. In this spirit, N. Brenner and N. Theodore (2002) write of international regulatory agencies looking for a ‘sustainable regulatory fix’. This argument is fleshed out in Drainville (2004) Drainville, A. C. 2004. Contesting Globalization: Space and Place in the World Economy, London: Routledge. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]. The exact membership of the Coalition is difficult to establish. Until recently, members did not pay for their cards, and—for obvious reasons of fear of police and immigration authorities—no list was maintained. Now, John Bowe (2007 Bowe, J. 2007. Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy, New York: Random House. [Google Scholar], p. 24) estimates the paying membership ($10/year) at roughly 3,000. Week in and week out, roughly 100 members participate in gatherings. How resources are utilized is also difficult to verify. When Lucas Benítez was awarded the $110,000 Brick Award Grand Prize, he announced that he planed to use the grant ‘to strengthen the Coalition, such as by adding and improving community programs’ (Osebold 1999 Osebold, E. 1999. Immokalee man wins national honor for community leadership. Naples News, 27 September [Google Scholar]). In the absence of financial reports, this information could not be verified. On 22 January 2007, the CIW's ‘Year of the Worker’ was inaugurated by a concert that drew more than 3,000 people, by some accounts, the largest festive crowd gathered in Immokalee history. Greg Shell is managing attorney for the Migrant Justice Project in Belle Glade. In interview, Lucas Benítez confirmed that relationship with other community groups in Immokalee was minimal, perhaps even thinner than that between the CIW and the Department of Labor: Nosotros no trabajamos mucho con grupos de abogacía. Nosotros no necesitamos que alguien hable por nosotros, nosotros necesitamos nuestra propia voz. Para estos grupos de abogacía es difícil entender que los trabajadores de Immokalee seamos un poco diferentes. Nosotros trabajamos con ellos en momento en que nosotros los necesitamos y tomamos la decisión, no cuando ellos lo deciden. Nosotros trabajamos mucho con el Departamento de Trabajo. Trabajamos con otras organizaciones comunitarias en otros estados. In interview (21 April 2005), Stephen D. Bartlett also emphasized the CIW's distinctness and, to a point, separatedness: Según mi entendimiento, ellos tienen un forma de trabajar muy diferente. La Coalición es una organización que lucha por reivindicaciones, de lucha laboral. La otra organización (FWAF) que busca como aliviar o mejorar las condiciones de los trabajadores, por ejemplo, programas de pesticidas. Ellos (FWAF) reciben dinero para hacer programas de pesticidas, los efectos dañinos. Son dos formas diferentes de trabajar. Marc Grossman interviewed 8 April 2005. Mireidy Fernandez, interviewed 12 July 2002.