Encore!

Two weeks ago, as families across the country gathered in preparation for Thanksgiving, the Campaign for Fair Food released a powerful new video highlighting the unconscionable poverty of our nation’s farmworkers and calling on Publix to join the unprecedented partnership among farmworkers, growers, consumers, and retail food corporations that is taking root today through the Fair Food Program. The video was a moving reflection on a food system that marginalizes the very people who labor to produce our nation’s bounty of fruits and vegetables, and on a supermarket industry that turns its back on the first real solution in decades to the age old problem of farmworker poverty and abuse. “A Tale of Two Holidays” concludes on an optimistic note of thankfulness, underscoring the common thread of gratitude for the changes brought about by the Fair Food Program that unites farmworkers and consumers in the Campaign for Fair Food.

Playing on Publix’s iconic holiday commercials, the video points the camera at the real story behind Publix’s cloying holiday message. As we wrote at the time, the holiday season:

“… has become an annual reminder that Publix — a company founded by a man, George Jenkins, who famously said the words ‘Don’t let making a profit stand in the way of doing the right thing’ — is a company that has lost its way. Like any family, the families who own and run Publix gather around their holiday tables and reflect on their joys and struggles. For the families who run Publix, among those joys, year after year, are soaring profits. Yet they inexplicably continue to turn their backs on the farmworkers who make those profits possible.

Despite the tremendous strides made by the Fair Food Program in recent years — progress made possible thanks to tens of thousands of consumers, dozens of Florida tomato growers, and eleven multi-billion dollar food corporations that have joined farmworkers at the Fair Food table — Publix refuses to do its part to help farmworkers live a dignified life for the backbreaking, essential work they do day in and day out. In the words of the CIW’s Lucas Benitez, ‘Publix doesn’t want us at the table. They want us under the table.'”

The video generated such strong interest and positive feedback — including tweets of support from food movement leaders like Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman and blog posts from faith leaders and food writers across the country — that we have decided to bring it back for a second run, so that its message of justice and reconciliation, the true meaning of the holiday season, might ring out once again as we enter the holiest days of the year!

So watch the video again above for another dose of inspiration, then help us spread its message through your own email, Facebook, and Twitter networks. Let’s make this holiday season the beginning of a bright new future for Florida’s farmworkers in which Publix, and all the major supermarkets, do their part so that the Fair Food Program may continue to fulfill its enormous promise and be the beacon for farm labor justice — not just here in Florida, but across the country — that it can be.