We began organizing in 1993 as a small group of workers who met weekly in a room borrowed from a local church to discuss how to better our community and our lives. In a relatively short time we have managed to bring about significant, concrete change.

Combining community-wide work stoppages with intense public pressure -- including three general strikes, an unprecedented month-long hunger strike by six of our members in 1998, and an historic 230-mile march from Ft. Myers to Orlando in 2000 -- our early organizing ended over twenty years of declining wages in the tomato industry.

By 1998, we had won industry-wide raises of 13-25% (translating into several million dollars annually for the community in increased wages) and a new-found political and social respect from the outside world.

Those raises brought the tomato picking piece-rate back to pre-1980 levels (the piece-rate had fallen below those levels over the course of the intervening two decades), but wages remained below poverty level and continuing improvement was slow in coming. At the same time, the phenomenon of modern-day slavery was establishing a foothold in Florida's fields. While continuing to organize for fairer wages, we also turned our attention to attacking involuntary servitude in our state. From 1997-2000, we helped bring three modern-day slavery operations to justice, resulting in freedom for over 500 workers from debt bondage.

Since then, our Anti-Slavery Campaign has earned national and international recognition, based on its innovative program of worker-led investigation and human rights education, and a track record of real success. Our latest victory against indentured servitude came in November of 2002, when three crewleaders from Lake Placid, FL, were convicted of forcing 700 workers into slave labor in Florida's citrus groves. They were sentenced in May, 2004, to a total of 31 years and nine months in federal prison, and were ordered to forfeit $3 million in proceeds from their immigrant smuggling operation. The case was the fifth major modern-day slavery case in the past six years in which the CIW has played a key role in the discovery, investigation, and prosecution of the operation.

The CIW is also a co-founder of the national Freedom Network Institute on Human Trafficking. We are Regional Coordinators for the Southeastern US for the Institute, conducting trainings for law enforcement and social service personnel in how to identify and assist slavery victims, as well as advocating for the full prosecution of all traffickers, including corporations and their sub-contractors. At the state level, we are members of the US Attorney Anti-Trafficking Task Force as well as Florida State University’s statewide Working Group against Human Trafficking through its Center for the Advancement of Human Rights.

In 2001, we turned a new page in our organizing, launching the first-ever farmworker boycott of a major fast-food company -- the national boycott of Taco Bell -- calling on the fast-food giant to take responsibility for human rights abuses in the fields where its produce is grown and picked. Taco Bell is owned by Yum Brands, the world's largest restaurant company (bigger than McDonald's), which pools the buying power of its five major chain brands (Pizza Hut, KFC, Taco Bell, Long John Silver, and A&W Restaurants) to demand the lowest possible prices from their suppliers, exerting a powerful downward pressure on wages and working conditions in their suppliers' operations.

The Taco Bell boycott has gained tremendous student, religious, labor, and community support in the nearly two years since its inception, including the establishment of boycott committees in nearly all 50 states and a fast-growing movement to "Boot the Bell" from college and high school campuses across the country. In 2003 we organized a 10-day hunger strike outside of Taco Bell headquarters in Irvine, CA -- one of the largest hunger strikes in US labor history, with over 75 farmworkers and students fasting during the 10-day period -- galvanizing the support of national religious, labor, and student organizations and thousands of individuals. During that strike we posed Taco Bell’s executives one question: “Can Taco Bell guarantee its customers that the tomatoes in its tacos were not picked by forced labor?” They had no answer. In 2004 we organized a cross-country tour featuring marches and actions in Louisville, KY, and Irvine, CA, lifting the campaign to new heights.

Over the past several years, through campaigns like the boycott and our anti-slavery work, Immokalee has evolved from being one of the poorest, most politically powerless communities in the country to become today a new and important public presence with forceful, committed leadership directly from the base of our community -- young, immigrant workers forging a future of livable wages and modern labor relations in Florida's fields. In recognition of their work, three CIW members were recently presented the 2003 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award , the first time the award has gone to a US-based organization in its 20 years of existence.