Farmworkers March on Miami
"Sadly, free trade has come to mean that governments are freed of guaranteeing protections for workers, and corporations are freed of responsibilities for their workers well being. When governments don't listen to people, they take to the streets." Minor Sinclair, who directs Oxfam America's domestic program
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| Lucas Benítez, a march organizer and member of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers: "There is trouble brewing in the fields in America." By: Minor Sinclair/Oxfam |
Nearly a thousand anti-FTAA marchers chanting "free trade, no way" entered Miami last night to demonstrate against the Free Trade in the Americas (FTAA) agreement. US farmworkers, students, and inner city activists from Miami walked for three days and covered 34 miles, a mile for each of the 34 countries who they say would be injured by the proposed free trade agreement.
"There is trouble brewing in the fields in America. Farmworkers receive the same piece rate wage today that they did 40 years ago. To solve real problems, we must look at the root causes," said Lucas Benítez, a march organizer and member of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.
Benítez said that the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) led to a crisis in Mexico's countryside, large-scale emigration of Mexicans to the US, and a downward spiral of worker rights and wages both in the US and in Mexico. Extending NAFTA throughout the hemisphere under the proposed FTAA agreement would be to "globalize misery."
The demonstrators halted briefly in front of the Taco Bell restaurant on Biscayne Boulevard in Miami where the marchers demanded "no sweatshop tacos." Benítez and others urged Taco Bell to pay one penny a pound more for tomatoes from Florida growers which, if passed onto the farmworkers, would place farmworker wages above the poverty line.
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| By: Minor Sinclair/Oxfam |
According to Minor Sinclair who directs Oxfam America's domestic program, "Sadly, free trade has come to mean that governments are freed of guaranteeing protections for workers, and corporations are freed of responsibilities for their workers well being. When governments don't listen to people, they take to the streets."
On Thursday, November 20th, Benítez and two other farmworker activists will receive the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Human Rights award on behalf of the Coalition. For the first time in 20 years, the RFK human rights prize will be awarded to a US-based organization.