Wendy’s Week of Action off with a bang! Actions kick off in Orlando, Austin…

The Alliance for Fair Food takes a great big selfie at Tuesday's Wendy's protest in Orlando

“We plan to fight until Wendy’s agrees to respect the dignity of the farmworkers its business depends on…”

And, they’re off!  Starting last Sunday, the Student / Farmworker Alliance — cheered on by the rest of the Alliance for Fair Food — kicked off the National “Schooling Wendy’s” Week of Action.  Although we’ll be sharing the full round up after the jam-packed week wraps up this Sunday, we couldn’t help but share a few highlights at halftime!  Down here in Florida, we started off the week with a high-spirited picket at a Wendy’s in Orlando, along with 30+ local allies from YAYA-NFWM and Orlando’s two Unitarian Universalist congregations (resulting in the infectiously high-spirited top photo).

But the call to Wendy’s is being heard far beyond Florida.  Leading the charge are students at University of Texas in Austin, who took action for Fair Food not once… not twice… but three times this week!  UT students started off on Monday with a screening of the award-winning documentary “Food Chains,” spreading the word around campus about the Campaign for Fair Food.  

The city’s principal weekly paper, the Austin Chronicle, caught wind of the students’ campus actions — here is an excerpt from their excellent article, “UT Students Want to ‘Boot the Braids‘,” which quoted UT SFA member Carlos Salamanca, who pointed out that while Wendy’s has clearly made an effort over the past few years to modernize its image, “Now it’s time to modernize the way they treat their workers.”

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To help Wendy’s do that, the UT students decided to hold a bake sale outside the Wendy’s in the student union, in order to “raise money for Wendy, who, at the moment, refuses to participate in the Fair Food Program because she can’t afford to pay her farmworkers a premium of a penny more per pound of tomatoes she buys from farms in Florida.”  

Then, taking Wednesday’s bake sale a step further, students led a musical march from the center of campus into one of the two campus Wendy’s to deliver a letter to the local manager, demanding that the fast food giant join the Fair Food Program:

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Even as their message to Wendy’s resounded across campus through on-the-ground actions, the students published a powerful open letter to the newly-inaugurated President of UT Austin, Gregory Fenves, inviting the administration to build on its commitment to social change by cutting the institution’s ties with Wendy’s.  Here is an excerpt of the letter (though we strongly encourage you to read the whole thing over at the SFA website!):

UT’s chapter of the nation-wide Student/Farmworker Alliance would like to formally invite you to stand in solidarity with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers  and cut our University’s contract with the two Wendy’s locations that now reside on our campus.

[…] A new dawn has broken in the U.S. agricultural system. In March 2005, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), an organization led by Florida tomato pickers, with the support of the Student/Farmworker Alliance (SFA),  made history: after four years of the SFA’s participation in its landmark Boot the Bell Campaign, Yum! Brands—a restaurant corporation that owns Taco Bell, KFC, Long John Silver’s, and Pizza Hut—finally agreed to hold the farms that they work with accountable for the conditions in which their farmworkers pick our fruit. […]

[…] Since the CIW’s first victory in 2005, 14 different corporations have agreed to work with the CIW—including major fast-food organizations Burger King, McDonald’s, Subway, KFC, we well as major food retailers Wal-Mart and Whole Foods.  As a result, between 2011 and 2014, corporations have paid farmworkers a collective $15 million in wages; the Fair Food Standards Council has interviewed 7,500 workers regarding their working conditions; CIW representatives have educated 22,000 workers regarding their labor rights; and the Fair Food Standards Council has addressed 600 worker complaints.  These numbers are ever-increasing as the Program continues and expands beyond its birthplace in Southwest Florida, once dubbed “ground zero for modern-day slavery,”  to Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and New Jersey. 

However, despite the CIW’s successes, a handful of corporations continue to refuse to participate in the FFP. Prominent among these fair food holdouts is Wendy’s,  the last of the five major fast food giants to agree to join the Program. Consequently, in January 2014, after a year of CIW pressure with little response, the Student/Farmworker Alliance announced its Boot the Braids campaign,  in which students demand that their universities cut campus contracts with Wendy’s until it agrees to participate in the FFP. In March 2015, the SFA escalated its campaign by announcing the launch of its national student boycott of Wendy’s. 

UT students bear a special place in the CIW’s triumphant history. In 2001, shortly after the SFA’s inception, UT was one of the first schools to bring the landmark Boot the Bell campaign onto its campus.  After four years of creative and powerful student action in solidarity with the Florida farmworkers, however, the University administration failed to address the SFA’s demands.

We are writing, President Fenves, to notify you that UT’s renewed branch of the Student/Farmworker Alliance is once again bringing the fight for fair food to our 40 acres. We hope that you, unlike your predecessors, make space in your working relationships for us, because we are organized and we plan to fight until Wendy’s agrees to respect the dignity of the farmworkers its business depends on.  Read more

Over the course of this week, UT students and Orlando Fair Food supporters are being joined by conscientious consumers in over 25 other cities in turning the spotlight on Wendy’s — so stay tuned next week for the full update.  

And if you don’t already have an action or letter delivery on your calendar for the next few days, pencil it in!  For more resources, get in touch with the Alliance for Fair Food at organize@allianceforfairfood.org.