Modern Slavery

In textbooks across the country, students are still taught that slavery
in the US ended with the adoption of the 13th Amendment in 1865.

But the Coalition of
Immokalee Workers (CIW) knows better, and its Modern-Day
Slavery Museum is traveling
throughout Florida to drive that point home--that slavery persists
in the agriculture fields of the state right up through this very day.

The Village Voice recently described the significance of the
museum this way: "Though it's unlikely to compete for crowds with
Disneyworld, the Modern-Day Slavery Museum may be Florida's most
important new attraction."

The bulk of the museum is housed inside of a 24-foot box truck--a
replica of the one used by the Navarrete
family in Immokalee to hold twelve farmworkers captive from 2005 to
2007. The workers were beaten, chained and imprisoned inside of the
truck, and forced to urinate and defecate in the corners. US Attorney
Doug Molloy called the operation "slavery, plain and simple."

Inside of the truck visitors learn about seven cases of farm
labor servitude in Florida successfully prosecuted by the US Department
of Justice over the past 15 years. Workers were held against their will
through threats, drugs, beatings, shootings, and pistol-whippings.
These cases meet the high standard of proof and definition of slavery
under federal laws and resulted in the liberation of over 1000
farmworkers--CIW worked with federal and local authorities during the
investigation and prosecution of six of the seven cases.

Barry Eastabrook described
his experience in the truck for The Atlantic: "Inside, the
vehicle was stacked high with cardboard tomato cartons. The floor was
chipped and scuffed. There was a plywood sorting table--which doubled as
a 'bed' for the workers. But what stays with me was the heat. Outside,
the day was chilly and overcast, but inside the truck, even with the
cargo door all the way open, the temperature became borderline
unbearable. The stale air was uncomfortable to breathe. Sweat soaked the
back of my shirt. And I was in there for less than five minutes, not
two and a half years."

But it's not just the contemporary slavery examples one finds inside the
box truck that educates the visitors. The museum is designed to look
at the history of slavery and forced labor--the evolution of it--and the
fact that there has never been a period in Florida agriculture when
there wasn't some form of forced labor. The exhibit was vetted
by historians, slavery experts, economists and other academics,
including Nation editorial board member Eric Foner who said, "A
century and a half after the Civil War, forms of slavery continue to
exist in the world, including in the United States. This Mobile Museum
brings to light this modern tragedy and should inspire us to take action
against it."

Before entering the truck, the museumgoer is given a booklet

and sees two large exhibits which provide historical context--examining
slavery from Spanish settlement through Edward R. Murrow's acclaimed CBS
documentary Harvest of Shame in 1960. Forms of slavery include
chattel slavery, the convict-lease system through 1923, and debt
peonage.

Another display plays a 1993 60 Minutespiece on
Wardell Williams, a former crew leader in Florida who kept workers
in debt while also supplying some with drugs and alcohol.

Inside of the truck the seven cases are described powerfully through the
use of primary sources--court documents, indictments, criminal
complaints, testimony. Miguel Flores and Sebastian Gomez held 400
workers under the watch of armed guards and assaulted--even shot--those
who tried to escape. Abel Cuello held more than 30 tomato workers in
two trailers in the isolated swampland west of Immokalee. Once out of
prison, Cuello was able to resume supplying labor to Ag-Mart Farms in
Florida and North Carolina. Michael Lee recruited homeless US citizens
to harvest oranges, creating debt through loans for rent, food,
cigarettes, and cocaine. Ramiro and Juan Ramos had a workforce of over
700 farmworkers and threatened with death those who tried to leave.
They also pistol-whipped and assaulted at gunpoint van service drivers
who gave rides to farmworkers leaving the area. Ronald Evans also
recruited homeless citizens throughout the southeast with promises of
good jobs and housing, then kept them in a labor camp surrounded by a
chain link fence topped with barbed wire. He also made sure they were
perpetually indebted to him, deducting money from their pay for food,
rent, crack cocaine, and alcohol.

When the visitor steps out of the truck he sees a panel which gets to
the heart of CIW's analysis around modern slavery--that it's not
something that takes place in a vacuum, but it's tied to the broader
conditions in the agriculture industry--sub-poverty wages and
substandard working conditions; from the earliest days of slavery
through today, farmworkers in Florida are among the least paid and least
protected workers in the nation.

On the panel are two artifacts to drive home that message: the bloody
shirt of a 17-year old boy who was beaten in 1996 for stopping to take a
drink of water while working in Immokalee. In response, there was a
nighttime march by 400 workers to the crew leader's house. This was a
significant moment in CIW's history because that kind of violence was
routine and never received a widespread organized response.

There is also testimony blown up from a 1970 Senate hearing convened by
Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale illustrating that these same issues
were being discussed 40 years ago. Next to it is a video by Iowa
public TV of a similar
hearing held just two years ago by Senators Bernie Sanders, Edward
Kennedy, and Richard Durbin.

At the foot of the panel is a 32-pound bucket of tomatoes. Harvesters
fill it up 100 to 150 times per day, on average. For that bucket the
worker receives 45 cents--a nickel more than the wage earned in 1980
(and that nickel is the result of general strikes organized by CIW in
the mid- and late-90s.) The museumgoer can pick it up, getting a sense
of how hard the work is for stagnant wages.

All of these exhibits allow CIW to make the arguments that they have
been pushing for over 15 years very tangible. It's one thing to tell
people about the conditions that persist in the fields. It's an
entirely different thing to show it inside of a rolling replica of the
most recently discovered slavery truck where people were held captive.

"The museum has made it possible to lay out our argument about slavery
from A to Z, in a sort of irrefutable package of completely documented
and totally unimpeachable facts," says CIW staff member Greg Asbed.
"And when you can see the whole history and evolution of four hundred
years of forced labor in Florida's fields assembled in one place, then
all the false assumptions about what drives modern-day slavery just fall
away. It's not workers' immigration status today, or a few rogue
bosses, but the fact that farmworkers have always been Florida's
poorest, most powerless workers. Poverty and powerlessness is the one
constant that runs like a thread through all the history. In short, you
see, it's not about who's on the job today. It's about the job
itself."

But the last thing CIW wants is for people to simply leave, shaking
their heads, saying, "Isn't that terrible. I can't believe slavery
exists." The goal isn't just to educate people about what's going on,
but also to show them what they can do about it.

The final panel outside of the truck lets people know there is a
solution underway with the Campaign for Fair Food.
Since 2001, farmworkers have been focusing on the retail level of the
food industry--forcing companies to take responsibility for the
conditions of their supply chain in order to alleviate the poverty and
powerlessness at the root of the industry.

"The key to making change happen--the absolute fundamental key to making
change happen--is for the major buyers to move their purchases from the
farms where bad stuff is happening, to the farms where good stuff is
happening," says Asbed. "Of course, there are no farms that you can say
are good across the board yet, that could be certified as 'fair food.'
The industry has a ways to go before it gets there. But you can
encourage better behavior by moving your purchases to follow the best
behavior, and you can eliminate the worst abuses by making sure growers
will lose business, and maybe even lose the ability to do business, if
abuses like slavery happen in their fields."

CIW has signed
code of conduct agreements and penny-per-pound
pay raises with the four largest fast food companies in the world;
the largest food service company in the world, Compass
Group; and the largest organic grocer, Whole Foods. In fact, the
latest slavery case--in which the farms that used slave labor were
identified--led to growers losing business for the first time thanks to
the code of conduct agreements.

CIW has now turned its attention to supermarkets, asking them to end
their tradition of buying tomatoes with no questions asked.

In the southeast, that means Publix. When
asked whether
the supermarket continues to purchase from farms that were recently
found to use slave labor a Publix spokesperson
"said the chain does purchase tomatoes from the two farms but pays a
fair market price." That's the kind of mentality CIW is up against in
trying to get them to change their ways and pay attention to working
conditions and wages. In the northeast, the focus is on Ahold, a Dutch
company which owns Giant Food and Stop and Shop. Ahold continues
to purchase tomatoes from Six L's, one of the growers that used
enslaved workers to pick tomatoes in the Navarrete case. Ahold will take up this issue on April
13 at its shareholder meeting. You can e-mail CIW for postcards to send to
any of these supermarkets, and also Kroger.

The final panel of the museum allows people opportunities for action.
They can get on the CIW email list, take a postcard to send to Publix,
or get information on the upcoming farmworker Freedom March

on April 16-18--25 miles from Tampa to Publix Corporate Headquarters in
Lakeland. Visitors can also sign a guest book to share some
reflections. Some of those comments over the last 3 weeks of exhibits
include: "Such a national shame--it must stay on the front burner
until it is no longer." "I will be making choices that will help stop
this horrible situation." "Seeing injustice should move us to action!"

Indeed, people across the state have been moved to action. At
churches, universities, high schools and other venues, the responses
from what one CIW member described as "scores and scores of focus
groups" have been amazing.

"They range from I had no idea this is going on, to what can I do to
help, to wanting to get involved," said CIW staff member Leonel Perez.
"And part of it's the presentation--once you're inside the truck, and
the use of primary sources--I think there's a very visceral component.
It really has been a pretty easy pivot to 'and here's what you can do
about it'."

This week in St. Augustine, two older African-American workers who used
to work for Ron Evans (U.S.
vs. Evans, 2007) visited the museum. They described their
experience in servitude and vouched for the museum's accuracy in
portraying the Evans' operations. One of the men had escaped by slipping
away in the middle of the night after working for Evans for 11 years.
They talked about the beatings they received if they tried to leave the
labor camp and how Evans used to gather up the workers' shoes at the end
of each workday so that even if they escaped, they wouldn't be able to
get far running barefoot through the fields and forest.

The Modern-Day Slavery Museum stops us from running in a very different
way. It forces us to confront the horrible truth that slavery still
exists in America, and that too many consumers and leaders in the food
industry simply turn a blind eye.

When the museum has finished traveling Florida, I hope legislators will
take an interest in bringing it to the National Mall. It's time to make
the fight against modern slavery part of our national consciousness.