Modern-Day Slavery Museum FL Tour
Week Four:

The museum crew stayed busy throughout Week Four with tour stops at the Dandelion Cafe in Orlando, the Unitarian Universalist church and University of South Florida's campus in St. Petersburg, and a northern swing through St. Augustine, Jacksonville, and DeLand. At the University of North Florida in Jacksonville (above), over fifty students from an introductory sociology class waited patiently for their turn to study the inside of the box-truck-cum-exhibit, which was parked in the very heart of campus. Don't miss the Florida Times-Union's excellent blog coverage of the UNF stop, "Florida as bloody as a Tomato," including an extensive photo gallery.

But even amidst such an eventful week, there was one stop that truly stood apart from the rest: St. Augustine, the nation's oldest city and site of the first Spanish colonial settlement in Florida.

St. Augustine was a fitting location for such a meaningful visit, given its often overlooked yet indispensable role in the history of the Civil Rights Movement. During May and June 1964, nightly marches to the Slave Market, as it's popularly known (pictured above), were met with fierce segregationist violence. While local law enforcement turned a blind eye to the brutality of white segregationists, hundreds of marchers, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., were arrested only to be corralled in a shadeless outdoor stockade after the jail reached capacity. In fact, many historians believe that the ../images of violent white resistance to desegregation emanating from St. Augustine and circulating widely via television and newspapers -- including a notorious photograph of a hotel owner pouring muriatic acid into a swimming pool after a group of black and white protestors jumped in -- played a timely role in breaking a steadfast filibuster and, in turn, paving the way for Senate passage of the Civil Rights Act on June 19, 1964.

After briefly soaking in St. Augustine's rich history and powerful sense of place, we were joined by our new friends from Mercury Films who are documenting the museum and upcoming Farmworker Freedom March for an adaptation of "Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth," the bestselling book by Margaret Atwood.

And while the day began much like any other, with presentations to visitors including this Spanish class from nearby Flagler College...

... we were soon unexpectedly joined by two retired farmworkers from Hastings, Florida. Above, the men, who had spent their adult lives working in fruit and vegetables fields up and down the Atlantic Coast, examine the panel on a topic it would turn out they knew all too well: "Peonage in the Age of Migrant Labor."

The men made their way through the inside of the box-truck, learning about six of the seven cases of forced labor in Florida agriculture -- involving well over 1,000 workers -- that the US Department of Justice has prosecuted since 1997.

When they arrived at the last panel before exiting the truck, however, they stopped, slowly and deliberately reading the details about the 2007 case of US vs. Ronald Evans, Sr. As it turns out, the men actually worked for Evans until 2005, just two years before the crew boss was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison on drug conspiracy, financial re-structuring, and witness tampering charges, among others.

As reported in the Associated Press ("Authorities say farmworkers lured into servitude with drugs, alcohol"), Evans recruited homeless US citizens from shelters across the Southeast, including New Orleans, Tampa, and Miami, with promises of good jobs and housing. At Palatka, FL and Newton Grove, NC area labor camps, the Evans' deducted rent, food, crack cocaine and alcohol from workers' pay, holding them "perpetually indebted" in what the DOJ called "a form of servitude morally and legally reprehensible." The Palatka labor camp was surrounded by a chain link fence topped with barbed wire, with a No Trespassing sign. The picture above was taken following the 2007 raid on Evans' Florida camp.

The Times-Union writes, "One former laborer, who worked in Florida and North Carolina, said he heard Evans Sr. confront another worker about stealing crack cocaine from the kitchen. About 30 minutes later, the former worker told investigators, several men broke the worker's jaw, split his head open and knocked out several teeth.The former worker heard Evans Sr. tell the beaten man he owed him $5,000 and 'by the time you pay me you will have died up here,' according to court documents.'"

Incredibly, in Florida, Evans worked for grower Frank Johns. Johns was 2004 Chairman of the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association, the powerful lobbying arm of the Florida agricultural industry. As of 2007, he remained the Chairman of the FFVA's Budget and Finance Committee.

After the two men descended from the truck, they agreed to do an interview with the film crew in which they described in painful detail their experience working Evans. One spoke of eleven years worth of debt, the beatings workers incurred if they tried to leave the camp, how Evans used to gather and lock up the workers' shoes at night, and his own eventual escape through the woods and fields outside East Palatka, terrified that each pair of oncoming headlights he saw in the distance belonged to an enraged Evans on the hunt for his escaped worker.

The other man cataloged the specific abuses and mistreatment, including violence, workers faced in the fields harvesting tomatoes, cabbage, sweet potatoes, and other crops for Evans.

All the while, members of the museum crew listened with rapt attention, deeply moved by the opportunity to add this moment of living history to the growing catalog of people's history that is the Modern-Day Slavery Museum.

In the end, the men left to return to Hastings, but not before pledging to join the museum crew at next month's Farmworker Freedom March. The march's simple demands -- freedom from forced labor, freedom from poverty, freedom from abuse -- touched the men, and though the march will certainly be a challenge, they were determined to do their part to end decades of farm labor exploitation in Florida.

What about you? Will you join us to help make history? Go to the march website now to find all the information you need to be there this April 16-18 when we march to demand that Publix join the movement for Fair Food.

Modern-Day Slavery Museum FL Tour
Week Three:

The week began last Sunday at San Juan Del Rio Catholic Church in St. Johns, Florida, whose members contacted us several weeks ago to request a visit by the museum. By the time we had left the parish hours later that afternoon, we did so having made many new friends committed to joining us in putting an end to farmworker exploitation.

Directly after Holy Communion during each of the morning Masses, Deacon Larry Geinosky, a member of San Juan Del Rio's sizable Just Faith group, warmly invited CIW member Leonel Perez to the pulpit to share about efforts to enlist supermarket support for the Campaign for Fair Food.

We were overwhelmed by the outpouring of interest by the parishioners, several dozen of whom signed up for email updates on our Publix campaign, and numerous more who viewed the museum and took home additional literature with them. We want to particularly extend our gratitude to Cathy Guevarra and friends from Just Faith, as well as Father John Tetlow, whose inspiring words of support for our work for justice are most appreciated.

The museum crew worked hard in St. Johns to make its message heard well beyond the church walls. Here, Leonel Perez does and interview with a Jacksonvillle station, while the remainder of the crew broke into two teams to flyer at two nearby music festivals, the Southern Exposure Festival and the Harvest of Hope Festival.

Then, it was on to the state capital, Tallahassee, for a visit with one of the Campaign's strongest bases of support in the state -- the students and faculty at Florida State University.

With the state capitol looming in the distance (the thin building on the right in the far background), the museum set up in a space graciously provided by museum endorser Florida State University's Center for the Advancement of Human Rights. Directly across from the CAHR office is the FSU law school, where the Advocates for Immigrant & Refugee Rights (AIRR, a law student association) organized a pizza dinner to draw hungry students -- hungry for knowledge... -- out to the museum.

For more on the FSU visit, check out this story, "Touring museum exposes abuse: Historic and modern-day slavery examined in exhibition" (3/18/10), from the FSU News.

Also in Tallahassee, the museum made a visit to long-time ally SAIL high school, an exciting alternative school for the arts, where the crew met with eight classes over three hours for a total of nearly two hundred students.

Finally, it was on to Gainesville and the University of Florida, where, thanks to the Latino student group CHISPAS, the museum got a plum spot in the heart of campus on the Plaza of the Americas.

Students going back and forth to classes stopped in their tracks to check out the museum and its scholarly -- and colorful -- displays. Here, two students check out the mural that served as a community petition in the late 1990's, after a grower told a friend of the CIW the the tomato growers refused to enter into dialogue with the CIW because, "The tractor doesn't tell the farmer how to run the farm." The caption below the tractor, which was signed by hundreds of Immokalee workers, reads "We are not tractors. We are human beings and we deserve respect and dignity."

The UF student paper, the Independent Florida Alligator, also contained some good coverage that helped drive students to visit the museum, entitled, "Mobile museum outlines Fla. farmworkers’ poverty," (3/18/10).

The table at the conclusion of the museum was a popular place, with flyers about the Farmworker Freedom March and contact information for getting on the Gainesville-to-Tampa caravan of students -- spearheaded by the UF Student/Farmworker Alliance branch (which has provided some incredible leadership in the Aramark campaign on campus) -- that will be joining hundreds of workers from Immokalee and allies from across the state for the historic three-day march on Publix in Lakeland this April.

Photo Report
Days 3-6
Naples, Ft. Myers, Sanibel

The museum tour continued on Monday at the Quality Life Center in Ft Myers, where both students and numerous passersby stopped in to see the exhibit. This day was a little different from the first few days on the road, however, as several of those who toured the museum were in fact former farmworkers themselves. Sharing their own tales of how it was to work in the tomato industry years ago, many of those former workers also shared their dismay at the fact that the picking piece rate, and a day's wage, had barely budged since their own days in the fields.

Next up was Bishop Verot High School in Ft Myers, where the principal (and longtime friend of the CIW), Father Chris Beretta, arranged for over 700 students to visit the exhibit throughout the day.

The CIW's growing corps of "grassroots docents" expertly guided students through the museum. Here, students learning about the Campaign for Fair Food through the display entitled "Forging a Solution" are treated to additional background on the campaign's many highlights by Docent Julia Perkins.

The students at Bishop Verot proved that they are not only great soccer players (shameless plug for the boy's varsity team, which recently won the state championship...), but thoughtful, caring young people, too. Throughout the day, students reacted viscerally to the unbroken history of farm labor exploitation in Florida, and many left strong comments in the museum guestbook. Here are just a couple of examples:

"All people deserve justice"

"I will be making choices that will help stop this horrible situation"

Some students also pledged to join Bishop Dewane of the Diocese of Venice in writing a letter to Publix to encourage the company to follow other large retailers in demanding more humane labor standards of their tomato suppliers.

And many were not satisfied with expressing their concern in words alone. A good number of both administrators and students expressed interest in coming to the Farmworker Freedom March, starting in Tampa on April 16th.

On Wednesday, the museum pulled into Naples, where some great coverage in the Naples Daily News brought a steady stream of hundreds of visitors that lasted through the day and into the next. The good folks at First Christian Church invited the CIW to set up the modern slavery exhibit in their sanctuary -- safe from the sun and a surprisingly strong wind (which seemed particularly determined to send the museum's displays hurtling down the street in the direction of the Publix plaza next door!).

North Naples United Methodist Church also played host Wednesday night, where congregants from that evening's Lenten service joined others in touring the museum. Some of the reflections from the guestbook in Naples conveyed the shock of museum goers learning about Florida's "harvest of shame" for the first time:

"Scary - when will we learn?"

"Still??????"

"It's hard to believe what I taught my students about slavery and the civil war still abounds today. Thank you for enlightening me."

Still others called for action in pursuit of justice:

"Continue to stand up and shout out..."

"Go for the fairness"

"The enslaved workers in your photos will be the Rosa Parks that my eventual grandchildren will study in school. Keep up the fight!"

"Continue to expose"

"It starts at the top! Big business through the chain onto the fields -- God bless you and keep up the good work."

From Naples, the museum headed up the coast to Sanibel Island, where we were graciously hosted by the Sanibel Congregational Church.

Participants in the ecumenical World Day of Prayer, held in the church, stopped by the museum at the conclusion of their program. One woman shared how the exhibit's content reminded her of the Bible verse read as part of the morning's activities. (In it, from Acts 16, Silas and Paul aid an enslaved girl, provoking the ire of her captors who "realized they had lost all chances for making more money"...)

For many islanders, including members of Zonta Club and Human Trafficking Awareness Partnerships, the issue of forced labor -- and working for its end -- is nothing new, as evidenced by many of the well-informed comments in the guestbook:

"Organization is the key -- good for you!"

"Publix -- step up to the plate"

"Keep pressing for fairness"

"Do not patronize Publix until they change their policy"

"It must and will change. Keep up the pressure"

We'll conclude this update with a reflection from one of the museum visitors at Art Walk in downtown Ft. Myers, where the museum set up shop on Friday evening. Art Walk is a Ft. Myers staple, a once-a-month gathering where hundreds (thousands, when the weather's good), of people gather and tour the downtown's many shops, restaurants, and art galleries.

On this night, the Strayhorn law offices were kind enough to let us set up in their driveway. As fate would have it, the museum was directly across the street from the federal courthouse where the Navarrete slavery case was prosecuted in December 2008, the case that inspired the truck that houses the museum.

In this inspiring setting, one visitor summed up the museum's message in a few short words:

"Seeing injustice should move us to action!"

And with those words we leave you until the next update from the 2010 Modern-Day Slavery Museum Florida tour. Check back soon for news from Estero, Venice, and Sarasota.

Photo Report
Days 1 & 2
Cape Coral, Ft. Myers

The Modern-Day Slavery Museum embarked on its six week-tour this past Sunday to large crowds and rave reviews.

The tour kicked off at Grace Church in Cape Coral, one of the state's fastest growing Methodist churches, where CIW members were invited to speak for a few minutes during each morning's service about efforts to end slavery in the fields by eliminating the pervasive powerlessness and poverty that enable it to take root...

... Break From Tradition Alert!...

For those of you who have followed our tours in the past through our regular photo reports, you know that we usually tell the story of the tour with a narrative that runs through the captions under each photo. But for this first report from the slavery museum tour, we are going to give the podium over to those who experienced the museum and shared their impressions with us via the guestbook. You see, accompanying the museum everywhere it goes is a guestbook (above) that dozens of those in attendance took the time to sign, many of them leaving comments behind.

We hope their comments will inspire others to take the tour, and to leave their own reviews and reflections for still others to see.

So, without further ado, here we go, comments from the museum guestbook:

"... Very emotional. The idea that modern-day slavery occurs in places close by is shocking."

"A powerful call to action!"

"Really opened my eyes."

"We can do better!"

... Hold on... Sorry... There were just so many good anecdotes from the first days that we can't resist sharing just one... At the Grace Church stop, a burly ex-marine emerged from the museum and immediately sought out one of the CIW members on the museum crew, Leonel Perez. A little unsure of what to expect, Leonel braced himself when the former marine leaned in and grabbed him in a bear hug, declaring, "I fought for this country, and slavery is something I just cannot tolerate." It was a powerful moment for everyone.

OK, now, back to the guestbook comments, and we promise, no more interruptions...:

"I was on the grand jury that indicted some of the people who did those things."

"Such a national shame -- it must stay on the front burner until it is no longer. Thank you for your dedication."

"Thank you for pointing out that this issue is repeatedly covered by the media. You have taken away the excuse that people didn't know."

"I want to help."

"Fantastic. My belly does not need to be nourished by the sweat of others."

"All people deserve justice and freedom."

"God Bless."

Check back soon for another update from the road, as the museum continues its tour of Florida.