(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)

NEW YORK — During the early evening hours of August 19th the street in front of the new Trader Joe’s store on 6th Avenue and 20th Street in NYC was filled with about 200 chanting, placard carrying demonstrators and a brass band, the Rude Mechanical Orchestra. Organized by a group representing the tomato pickers in Immokalee, Florida, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), and supported by their many allies, it was part of a campaign to get the Trader Joe’s market chain to agree to join with Whole Foods, McDonald’s, Subway, Taco Bell, and Burger King who are already working with the CIW to improve the working conditions and wages of the farm workers who pick the tomatoes that these stores sell. Essentially, that would mean that Trader Joe’s would have to pay an additional penny a pound for their tomatoes. The agreement between the Florida growers and these retailers requires that the retailers demand more humane standards from their Florida tomato suppliers, and for that they will agree to pay a higher price for the more fairly produced tomatoes, and they will only buy from growers who meet those higher standards. The Immokalee workers are trying to establish the principle of “Fair Food”.

(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)

The CIW is responding to a human rights crisis in Florida’s tomato fields. Pickers earn 40-50 cents for every 32 pound bucket of tomatoes that they harvest. That pay rate has not risen since 1978. A worker has to pick 2.5 tons of tomatoes to earn a minimum wage for a 10 hour day.

(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)

In 2008 2 farm labor employers in Immokalee each got 12 year prison sentences for enslaving tomato harvesters. The pickers were held against their will, beaten, chained, and locked up at night. During the past decade there have been 7 convictions of tomato growers, involving over 1,000 workers, for servitude/slavery.

(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)

The CIW did not gain the power to represent the workers easily. They began organizing in 1993 in a room in a local church. Their goal was to better their lives and the lives of their community. It took 3 community wide work stoppages, a month long hunger strike by some of them, strong pressure on the growers from groups that supported the workers, and a historic 234 mile march in 2000 from Ft. Meyers to Orlando to enable them to gain recognition and win industry wide raises of 13% – 25% for the harvesters.

(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)

As people passed Trader Joe’s they were handed leaflets explaining the action and very many stopped to talk. The demonstrators explained that they were not asking anyone to boycott the store yet. Postcards signed by people in the street that were addressed to Dan Bane, Trader Joe’s CEO, urging him to work with the CIW to ensure fair wages and working conditions for the farm workers, were delivered to the store manager.

(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)

After about 90 minutes, as the colorful signs and musical instruments were packed up, there was one final militant chant, “We’ll be back and we’ll be stronger. We won’t take this any longer.”

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The theater marquee
(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)

NEW YORK — On August 13th the film, Neshoba: The Price of Freedom, opened at the Village Cinema in NYC. It is about the murder by the Klu Klux Klan of 3 civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Mickey Schwerner, in Neshoba County, Mississippi during the Freedom Summer – 1965 – when people of conscience who were trained in non-violence traveled south to work on voter registration with the Black community. Goodman and Schwerner were shot and Chaney, from the area, was tortured to death.

Ben Chaney being interviewed
(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)

The film, which took 6 1/2 years to make, was directed by Micki Dickoff and Tony Pagano, and went beyond that event. In 2004 a small group of black and white citizens of Neshoba, calling themselves the Philadelphia Coalition, reached out to each other in an effort to heal, to erase the blemish on their community, and to try to achieve a degree of justice by finally punishing the 8 people still alive out of the original 20 that participated in the crime. They were only able to get an indictment against one, Edgar Ray Killen.

Director Micki Dickoff
(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)

There are extensive interviews in the film with the families of the young men as well as with a full spectrum of locals. A lot of time was given to Killen, now an 80 year old unrepentant bigot (‘They just came here to teach the people how to rape a new white woman every week’). The film led the viewer to believe that in Mississippi the so called “new south” wasn’t very new.

Shirley Chaney
(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)

A long line formed waiting to get into the sold-out showing. People were clearly moved, emotional. This was a pain that could never go away. There were many reunions taking place among former activists that haven’t seen each other in many years. When the families of the murdered young men arrived, as well as the film makers, Dickoff and Pagano, there was excitement. People rushed over to embrace them.

All of the siblings were there, Ben, Julia, and Shirley Chaney, Steve Schwerner, and David Goodman. They, as well as the directors, spoke to the audience after the film. They spoke of the unending family trauma, about the remarkable work of the Philadelphia Coalition, and about being able to give up the rage. Over 100 people were disappeared in Mississippi in that era (their names were listed at the end of the film) and their deaths were never investigated. The Chaney, Schwerner, Goodman case only gained national attention because 2 of the people murdered were white. Someone asked why this matter was relevant today. Tony Pagano responded saying that racism in the world had not changed and the press is just as bad now as it was then. Today, when people express ideas that the country doesn’t like they aren’t labeled “communists” or “Jews” as was the case in the 60′s. The current epithet is “terrorists”.

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