A Tale of Two Thanksgivings, redux…

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With Thanksgiving now only two weeks away, it’s time to drag out the projector, dust off the lens, gather ’round with loved ones and watch the old family movies… which, in the case of a Fair Food family, is “A Tale of Two Thanksgivings,” the special, two-minute video that we produced last season as a Fair Food take on Publix’s famous holiday commercials.  It’s good enough to take a second look this year, so we are posting it again, along with the reflection that accompanied it the first time around.

So, enjoy this new Fair Food Thanksgiving tradition, and be sure to read through to the end, where you can sign a petition for the Publix campaign from our partner Walk Free, a leading anti-slavery organization, that has collected over 330,000 signatures already!  

A Tale of Two Thanksgivings:

(click on the expand icon — the four arrows in the bottom right corner — for optimal viewing)

This holiday season, ask Publix to join us at the Fair Food table…

The holiday season is upon us, which means it’s time again to gather around the table with loved ones to celebrate another year of life together, of new beginnings and old friends, of triumphs and of the challenges ahead.

The holiday table unites us, and reminds us that — no matter how high, or low, our day to day lives may take us — in the end, we always make our way back to those whom we love the most, and when we are with them, the world feels right.

Love is the essence of the holidays. Love for our parents and their parents, love for our children and their children. Love for our friends, and love for all men and women with whom we share this fragile world. The holiday table reminds us that, in the end, we are all family, and that we can only truly enjoy the bounties that life gives us if we all enjoy them together, as one.

No one knows this better than Publix. Its holiday commercials (right) are a tour de force in touching that place deep inside each of us that loves not just our families and friends, but our fellow man, too, regardless of the divisions that may separate us in our daily lives. Publix commercials never fail to remind us just how much we have to be thankful for, and how powerful an emotion our love can truly be.

But love without goodwill is an empty emotion. And, sadly, 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.”

No matter what your faith or philosophy, the holiday season is a time to remember that no one was born into this world to suffer, and that, in some real way, the suffering of one diminishes us all. This year, let’s remind Publix of the true meaning of love, a love that goes beyond the bottom line and embraces all the people that make up Publix’s extended family, including the farmworkers that put food on their shelves and the consumers who ask their favorite grocery store to make that food Fair Food.

To do so, you can click here to sign a Walk Free petition to Publix today. Ask Publix CEO Ed Crenshaw to ensure that his company “to make the right decision to join the Fair Food Program and ensure our tomatoes meet the highest human rights standards in the food industry today.

Have a happy, and safe, Thanksgiving.