TODAY: Stand with farmworker women by calling Wendy’s Board Chairman Nelson Peltz!

CIW members, Fair Food allies outside the office of Wendy’s Board Chairman Nelson Peltz in New York City at the launch of the nationwide boycott in March of 2016.

CIW Women to Wendy’s leadership:  “We need Wendy’s to join its peers in order to expand these crucial, life-changing gains to the hundreds of thousands of farmworker women who continue to labor under the oppressive conditions that persist beyond the Fair Food Program’s protections.”

This afternoon, dozens of CIW members and their children — accompanied by hundreds of New Yorkers and allies from across the Northeast — will march to the offices of Wendy’s Board Chairman Nelson Peltz in Manhattan.  As we head now into the holiday season, it has been months since the CIW Women’s Group penned a powerful letter to Mr. Peltz, demanding answers for why the the fast-food giant’s most influential leader refuses to use his power to end sexual harassment and assault in Wendy’s supply chain by joining the award-winning Fair Food Program.  His deafening silence — and Wendy’s decision to shift its tomato purchases away from the Fair Food Program and to Mexico instead, where gender-based violence is rampant and goes largely unchecked — will not go unchallenged by the Fair Food Nation.

What can you do to help?  As New Yorkers converge for this afternoon’s march through Manhattan, we need every single member of the rest of the Fair Food Nation to flood the phone lines of Nelson Peltz’s offices all day today!  Make the call, let us know how it went, and share the call to action with your friends!  Here are the details:

Call Wendy’s Board Chair and urge him to join the Fair Food Program on Nov. 20!

Call Nelson Pletz at Trian Partners in New York, New York at (212) 451-3000

Wendy’s Board Chair and major shareholder, Nelson Peltz, has been called upon time and again to bring Wendy’s into the Fair Food Program. As Board Chair and as chair of Wendy’s Corporate Social Responsibility Board Committee, Mr. Peltz should be upholding real human rights for farmworkers instead of hiding behind an illusory Supplier Code of Conduct that excludes workers’ voices and lacks consequences for abuses. 

Sexual violence and other human rights abuses are shockingly widespread in the Mexican produce industry where Wendy’s is currently buying its tomatoes.  Wendy’s urgently needs to join the Fair Food Program to do its part in building a future in which farmworker women no longer have to surrender their dignity just to put food on their families’ tables.

1) Call Trian Partners in New York, New York at (212) 451-3000.

2) Sample script:

“Hi, my name is _______ and I’m calling to leave a message for Mr. Nelson Peltz in support of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. The CIW is a farmworker human rights organization that’s calling on Wendy’s to end exploitation in their supply chain by joining the internationally-recognized Fair Food Program. I am currently participating in the national boycott of Wendy’s because of its ongoing failure to join. I’m aware that farmworker women have requested to meet with Mr. Peltz and Wendy’s CEO Mr. Todd Penegor to discuss the sexual violence faced by farmworkers in Mexico and Wendy’s ongoing refusal to join the Fair Food Program, with its proven protections that put a stop to sexual harassment and assault in Florida’s fields; and that neither has yet to respond to them. Farmworker women will be at Trian’s New York offices this evening to personally ask Mr. Peltz and Wendy’s leadership to support their human rights, once and for all. I urge you to bring Wendy’s into the Program immediately.

Thank you for relaying this message.”

3) Fill out the form on the AFF website: http://www.allianceforfairfood.org/call-wendys-peltz

Need a bit more inspiration?…  CIW’s “Harvest without Violence” Mobile Exhibit reaches thousands across New York City!

Today’s action is also the culmination of a packed week of Fair Food activities across the Big Apple.  Coinciding with the recent wave of extraordinary press coverage — from the airwaves of Public Radio International to the editorial pages of the New York Times — highlighting the unparalleled success of the Fair Food Program in putting a stop to sexual harassment in the fields, the CIW’s brand-new “Harvest without Violence” mobile exhibit reached thousands of New Yorkers throughout all five of the sprawling city’s boroughs, traveling up and down Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens over the past week.  For your inspiration as you prepare to call Mr. Peltz’s office today, here’s the photo report from the New York tour crew:

On the exhibit’s first weekend in the city, the CIW team kicked off the week at the Jewish Community Center of Manhattan’s Broadway sidewalk, as our Immokalee team braced the first blisteringly cold day of the season.

The exhibit was also set up on Saturday outside the beautiful and historic St. John the Divine Cathedral during the Convention of the New York Episcopal Diocese, welcoming visitors not only from the convention but also from Romemu, a local Jewish congregation, and from nearby Columbia and Barnard colleges.

Over the weekend, as the Harvest without Violence exhibit drew in hundreds of passers-by to learn more about sexual violence in the fields, CIW and Alliance for Fair Food members visited Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn, and Middle Collegiate Church and Fourth Universalist Society in Manhattan.  On Monday, the Harvest without Violence exhibit engaged hundreds of students — and provided a tour for CIW’s friends from nearby Riverside Church — while set up in the heart of Columbia University, in front of Low Library’s regal steps.

Later that evening, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance hosted CIW leaders for an inspired worker-to-worker dialogue hosted by Law at the Margins.  The next day, longtime CIW supporters from the Lower East Side Girls Club welcomed the mobile exhibit and later hosted our Immokalee crew to a warm Thanksgiving dinner with people from the community (as well as a bonus tour of the universe in their astounding planetarium)!

Finally, to top off the packed week, we headed downtown, settling in the heart of New York University in Washington Square Park’s Garibaldi Plaza.

Without a doubt, the powerful mobile museum drew in thousands of new supporters over the course of the week, building towards today’s march through the heart of Manhattan, straight to the doorstep of one of Wendy’s most powerful figures.  We leave you with a final tweet from the community of St. John the Divine, perfectly capturing the spirit of the city’s galvanized New Yorkers ahead of this afternoon’s action: