I Am Not a Tractor!: How Florida Farmworkers Took On the Fast Food Giants and Won
296
I Am Not a Tractor!: How Florida Farmworkers Took On the Fast Food Giants and Won
296Hardcover(New Edition)
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Overview
Marquis credits this success to the immigrants from Mexico, Haiti, and Guatemala who formed the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a neuroscience major who takes great pride in the watermelon crew he runs, a leading farmer/grower who was once homeless, and a retired New York State judge who volunteered to stuff envelopes and ended up building a groundbreaking institution. Through the Fair Food Program that they have developed, fought for, and implemented, these people have changed the lives of more than thirty thousand field workers. I Am Not a Tractor! offers a range of solutions to a problem that is rooted in our nation’s slave history and that is worsened by ongoing conflict over immigration.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781501713088 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Cornell University Press |
| Publication date: | 12/15/2017 |
| Edition description: | New Edition |
| Pages: | 296 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
TO BEAT ONE OF US IS TO BEAT US ALL!
God, it was frustrating, but the two knew they were in the right place. When Greg Asbed and Laura Germino looked out the window of the small storefront office, they faced the cracked asphalt, broken concrete dividers, and courageous weeds that made up the Pantry Shelf parking lot. Throughout the day, the occasional beat-up Ford or rusted Chevy would pull in, seeking the shade of the grocery store wall. But most were walking. Women, arms loaded with bags, walked out the market's doors and down streets patterned by the shade of trees loaded with Spanish moss and the glaring sun of southwest Florida. Some carried fruit that reminded them of home in Haiti, but most were carrying the soda, chips, and other junk food that was cheapest in the overpriced market.
The two paralegals, who made up two-thirds of Florida Rural Legal Services' Immokalee operations, had to arrive early if they wanted to witness the reason for this unincorporated town's existence. Immokalee was effectively a labor reserve for the big citrus, pepper, tomato, and other produce farms that filled the interior of the state. In the dark of predawn, a hundred or more (mostly) men shifted from one group to the next, clumped around the late-model pickups, the harshness of the headlights emphasizing the exhaustion on their faces. Men stood in the beds of the trucks or on the concrete dividers, shouting in Spanish and English, and indicating with a jerk of the head, a wave of a thumb, that the lucky souls could board the worn-out buses waiting there. If you didn't get on the bus, you weren't working that day.
Greg Asbed and Laura Germino were here because of this flood of farmworkers. If you were going to work with farmworkers, if you believed it was possible to take on one of the most intractable labor issues in the United States, Immokalee was the place to be. Laura had seen the opportunity first. Over and over again she heard the name: Immokalee. Working intake for the farmworkers picking apples in the mountainside orchards outside of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, she kept writing it down as the migrant workers gave Immokalee, Florida, as their permanent address. Laura had just returned to the United States after serving with the Peace Corps. And what she saw was troubling. First with the workers in Pennsylvania's apple orchards and later with the migrant workers arriving in Maryland, Laura learned more about the working and living conditions of those who moved up and down the East Coast, following the seasons and the crops. "Poor" was the kinder term. "Beaten down" seemed like a better fit. Three things became increasingly clear: outside of the workers, few seemed to care about their plight; conditions were bad everywhere; and Florida in particular was an arena of untrammeled abuse. Even as she worked for the advocacy nonprofit Friends of Farmworkers, it wasn't clear that her work — or the work of similar activist groups — was doing much to improve the lives of farmworkers.
While Laura was in Burkina Faso, Greg had been in Haiti. He was now in graduate school. When Greg and Laura found time together, their conversation returned time and again to two subjects: the seemingly insurmountable challenges facing farmworkers and the profound lessons Greg had learned during three years in Haiti. Stepping off the plane in Port au Prince, Greg had been reasonably sure this was not what the other neuroscience majors from Brown University had been preparing for. Haiti was in the turmoil of the last six months of the twenty-eight-year Duvalier family dictatorship. That was followed by Duvalier's overthrow and two-and-a-half years of military junta, when the real violence and instability broke out. Undaunted, Greg joined in, becoming part of the grassroots movements building in protest across the island. The protests weren't the blindness of angry mobs, but Greg realized instead that communities were organizing themselves. Most importantly, the organization was done from the inside; it was community-led action, declaring the right to jobs and housing and their right to elect the nation's president. When Jean-Bertrand Aristide reclaimed the presidency from the military junta, these community groups cheered the victory they helped make possible.
Now, back in the United States, Greg asked, "What if?" The conversations he and Laura were having converged. What if instead of concerned outsiders advocating for workers, the workers themselves came together as a community? What if instead of legal aid groups fighting individual legal battles, playing whack-a-mole with those caught violating the law, the workers' community fought for their human rights? What if the lessons of Haiti were applied in the farm fields and communities of the United States? What would change then? And could it be done?
It was increasingly apparent that Immokalee was the key. It was the hub of the East Coast farmworker community, the source of the river of migrant workers that flowed from Florida to Maine. And while issues of wage theft, dilapidated housing, and poor working conditions existed in all of the eastern farming communities, the abuse was greatest, the conditions harshest, in Florida. If anyone was going to shed light on the treatment of farmworkers, Greg and Laura knew it had to be there. So, like the immigrants who flooded into Immokalee each season, the two Brown graduates looked for a way to get there.
"Community specialist paralegals," that's what the Florida Rural Legal Services advertisement said. Florida Rural Legal Services, FRLS (sometimes jokingly referred to by themselves as "Frills"), was one of those organizations, like Friends of Farmworkers, inspired by Harvest of Shame. The legal advocacy group had been founded as a branch of the Legal Services Corporation in 1966. The often Ivy League-trained lawyers who moved to Florida or other rural areas believed in the power of the courts and in attacking farmworker abuse and exploitation as a series of legal violations. FRLS worked through "impact litigation," social change through the law. FRLS took on cases of migrant worker abuse, usually representing a single worker or small group working for the same employer. The most frequent violation was wage theft, but they also went after cases of unsafe working conditions and overcrowded and filthy housing. At the time, FRLS also helped workers get their immigration documentation. Three lawyers and six paralegals made up the FRLS troops representing a half-million Florida farmworkers. In the early 1990s, one of these lawyers and two paralegals ran the "Immokalee district," which covered about half the state. For FRLS, success was winning reparations for their worker clients related to specific legal violations. Success required workers willing to come forward to file the case and then all the complications and delays of working through the court system.
Let's be clear up front: Laura and Greg weren't heading to Florida to join in the FRLS program of addressing specific violations of laws rarely enforced when the victims were migrant workers. Not at all. Whether it was vision or cluelessness, they were headed to Immokalee in hope of effecting cultural change in the direction of human rights and dignity, and not for a single victim at a time but for the entire community of workers. The two did not hide their purpose: "We gave FRLS fair warning. We were coming down [to Florida] to work with the community on self-directed change." Despite this warning, or perhaps recognizing that there weren't that many people with Greg and Laura's experience and training willing to settle into Immokalee, Florida Rural Legal Services hired them. It quickly became apparent that FRLS hadn't realized what they had signed up for.
Laura, of course, knew Florida. Though she grew up in Virginia, Laura is a fourth-generation Floridian and spent her summers as a child there. She knew the light and beauty of the Atlantic beaches not far from Deland. She knew warm nights with grown-ups on the porch while she raced around barefoot with her cousins during summers spent with Granny. She knew also the darkness of Florida, hidden from beachgoing winter visitors: early childhood memories as segregation ended, kicking and screaming and unsettling stories Granny told about Florida's not-too-distant past. Pulling into the parking space next to the FRLS office, Greg and Laura were greeted by the same Immokalee that greeted the flood of new and old immigrants completing their long and crowded van rides from Arizona and Texas at the start of the season in late September. Like the rest of Florida, Immokalee offered the workers, Greg, and Laura both light and dark. The promise of work and the possibility of effecting real change mixed with the reality of abusive working conditions and growers who had been running their farms the same way for a long time and had little interest in doing things differently.
Arriving in Immokalee, Greg and Laura showed up with the commitment you'd expect from all who worked for Florida Rural Legal Services, people who picked up their lives to fight for migrant farmworkers. But Greg and Laura brought something else, something new to the equation. Experience working in struggling "Third World" communities was a plus. After all, as one observer noted, up through 1969 "the Peace Corps used Immokalee as a training area for people who were going to the Third World [and] it seemed like the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica even in the early 1990s." Immokalee's newer immigrants were from Mexico and Guatemala, joining the Haitians who had begun to arrive over the previous decade. English was rare. Spanish was often a second language at best. Greg's and Laura's ability to speak Haitian Creole and Spanish was invaluable. Along with suitcases and duffel bags, they brought to Florida their experience and the intelligence to apply what they had learned in new ways in a new world.
Many days at FRLS, the incessant demands of trying to right the often routine, and too frequently gross, abuse of Immokalee's farmworkers threatened to overwhelm the small staff. The lawyer and the two paralegals pushed against a tide that had rolled in a hundred years before and always seemed to be flowing in one direction. There was a never-ending stream of workers coming to the office to report not being paid, crew leaders who subtracted "taxes" or "Social Security" from workers' pay and pocketed the money, crummy housing, and the risk of being beaten if you dared complain.
It could have played out in two ways. Helping this steady stream of clients could take over all available intellectual and emotional energy. Recovering a few hundred dollars in back pay or assisting a Guatemalan worker in getting his work permit and legal documentation were victories. But these small, albeit real, victories were not why Greg and Laura had moved to Immokalee and not why they stayed. Small victories were not why Greg and Laura were patiently taking the time to become part of the community, talking and listening with workers not only in the FRLS office but also in the housing areas, on the steps leading to overcrowded trailers, and on the corners near convenience stores. They learned about price gouging in Immokalee's stores, exorbitant rents, and little to do when there was no work. At some level, to understand what is to come, it might be helpful to understand Greg Asbed and Laura Germino. There's an intensity there, grounded in deep belief. This belief was in the need to take a different approach if farmworkers were ever going to be able to positively change their lives, and a belief that focusing on the community was the first step in attaining this objective. The strength of Greg and Laura's belief resulted in an unswerving commitment to fighting this fight. Come to think of it, this same determination and persistence in commitment is the characteristic that ties them all together: Greg, Laura, Lucas, Gerardo, Steve. But first things first. Let's start with Greg and get to know each in turn.
Settling in at the table at the shop in Ave Maria, the closest "real" coffee shop to Immokalee, it doesn't take long to see that Greg Asbed is one tightly wound, highly physical man. Spend some time talking with him and you'll see that all that barely controlled energy is linked to a tremendous analytic intellect. This is not the scattered energy of hyperactivity. This is the tightly focused energy of someone who is confident he knows where true north lies. Leaning forward, hands tight on his knees, there are things to be said, things to be explained. There's a lot going on: Walmart, Pacific Growers, training, audits. So much finally happening that it all comes out in rapid fire. Look, he says, here's what you need to understand.
Greg reads everything and is an accomplished writer, having published academic book chapters, commentaries in traditional newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times, and online in blogs including the Huffington Post. Greg is an avid basketball player and a fanatical Dallas Cowboys fan. Both are essential to keeping Greg sane in the midst of twenty-five years fighting this battle and figuring out how to make it work. With some pride in his willingness and ability to do hard physical labor, Greg waxes rhapsodic when telling of the skill and talent of the ClW's much-sought-after watermelon harvesting crew that he worked on for years. It is not hard to imagine what he dreams of when tossing or catching a melon.
Born in Baltimore and raised in Washington, DC's suburbs, Greg attended the prestigious Landon School before heading to Brown. But, like many Americans, Greg traces his family history to immigrants arriving in Baltimore in search of a better life. Greg's history is just a bit more recent than some. After seeing all but her older sister killed in their village of Izmit by Turkish gendarmes during the Armenian genocide in 1917, Greg's grandmother Hripsimee survived a five-hundred-mile forced march and was then sold by Turks to itinerant Kurds, who in turn sold her to another Armenian family fleeing Turkey into Syria. The two goats and a single coin paid for her as a child bride also likely saved her life and resulted in the son who became Greg's father, Norig Asbed. Settling in what is now Kobane, Syria, Norig revealed himself to be a brilliant student. Upon his completing the village's parochial school, the village supported Norig's enrollment at age eleven at the Melkonian Institute in Cyprus, a school for Armenian children. Norig was unable to return to Kobane and his family for six years. When he did, he taught at the local school and elsewhere in the Middle East, eventually becoming a student of nuclear physics with Nobel laureate Niels Bohr and then taking on doctoral studies and completing his master's degree at the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University. Norig fell in love with Ruth-Alice Davis, a noted pediatrician and early woman graduate of Columbia University's medical school, who was chief of the maternal and child health clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital while Norig was in graduate school.
When Greg talks about his grandmother's strength as a young girl in the face of so much violence and fear, his pride in his father's overcoming poverty, and his admiration for his mother's work in the Philippines and in public health in Maryland, it is evident that this history is still very much alive and running through his veins. Out of his family's history grows a strong sense of the risk of the vulnerability of immigrants, anger at injustice, and a belief in the strength of community. Greg's anger combines with respect for the courage and hard work of the farmworkers, a respect born of eighteen years harvesting watermelons side-by-side with other CIW members from Florida to Missouri.
It's worth talking for a moment about those watermelons. Harvesting watermelons is hard. Unbelievably hard. You may remember Edgerrin James, an all-pro running back who played for the University of Miami and then for the Indianapolis Colts. James was raised in Immokalee and harvesting watermelons was, as he lets us know, "the highest-paying job I had before my $49 million one with the Colts." The point here is that when James showed up at "the U," his coaches were in awe of his strength and endurance. Summers harvesting watermelons built James. "It helped shape me so much that I was all muscular when I got to Miami even though I never lifted a weight in my life. I was hardened in every way." Florida watermelon crews — known as "gators" when they were largely African American and then "sandillero" when the demographic shifted to Latinos — were known for their skill and strength. The CIW watermelon co-op was no different.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "I Am Not A Tractor!"
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Copyright © 2017 Susan L. Marquis.
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Table of Contents
List of CharactersAcronyms and OrganizationsAcknowledgmentsPrologue: Getting to Immokalee1. To Beat One of Us Is to Beat Us All!2. "Bang Your Head against the Wall Long Enough..."3. Campaigning for Fair Food4. Has Anyone Talked with These Guys?5. Eyes Wide Open6. Forging the Path by Walking It7. "Value" Can Have a Different Meaning8. What Difference?9. Designed for the FutureA Note on SourcesNotesBibliographyIndexWhat People are Saying About This
"I Am Not A Tractor! explores what today's corporate giants fear the most: democracy. Marquis tells the extraordinary story of how some of the poorest people in America overcame some of the most powerful to obtain justice. If immigrant farm workers in Florida can do it, so can other workers throughout the United State—and this fine book shows how."
"Susan Marquis tells the powerful story of an innovative human rights organization that has dramatically improved conditions for Florida farmworkers. Her portrayal of a group of heroic individuals from different cultural and educational backgrounds should resonate for readers who don’t ordinarily think about labor rights issues. In addition, Marquis offers trenchant analysis of the challenges facing millions of low-wage workers in agricultural supply chains."
"Those who have been looking for the definitive story of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the origins of the country’s most effective labor monitoring program, need look no farther. Susan Marquis has written a terrific account of the rise of CIW and the Fair Food Standards Council. She has asked all the right questions about the remarkable transformation they have brought about in Florida’s tomato fields—including, how to expand it beyond Florida and agriculture."
"This is a critically important book for social entrepreneurs, innovators, and change agents. Well written, deeply researched, and an uplifting read. You will not put this book down until you hit the final word."
"How on earth did a ragtag group of impoverished and marginalized farm workers bring true labor justice to the nation's fields, an accomplishment that President Clinton has described as ‘the most astonishing thing politically in the world we live in today?’ Susan L. Marquis provides answers in this masterful investigation—detailed, academically rigorous, and impossible to put down."