We typically dedicate this space to chronicling the many actions taking place around the country in the Campaign for Fair Food (and, more recently, the many advances taking shape through the Fair Food Program), but today we wanted to do something a little different. Specifically, we wanted to take a peek behind the actions, in this case, to share the very personal reflections of one student — a young woman studying at Denver’s Iliff School of Theology — who decided to tell the story of her own leap into activism for Fair Food, in the form of a very beautiful poem.

In some ways her poem, and her path to activism, is deeply personal. But in other ways, it is a captivating portrait of the very same movement from reflection to action that sparked the CIW’s organizing twenty years ago in Immokalee and continues to fuel the growth of the Campaign for Fair Food on college campuses and community gathering places across the country today.

For two decades, CIW members have built awareness in Immokalee among their fellow workers through the practice of what is often called “popular education”. Using drawings, theater, and other forms of art to provoke reflection and dialogue within the community, CIW leaders help other workers examine the root causes of their poverty and address those root causes through thoughtful, informed action. This poem, though born of a very different community, is every bit as powerful, and effective, as any art we have used over the years here in Immokalee. We share it with you today in the hope that its story serves to ignite the spark of activism in others, to, as her professor wrote when sharing it with us, “see her voice extended”: