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First - Donate to the CIW!

We need your support to keep the boycott, the anti-slavery campaign, and everything else we do going strong!

Click on the Pay Pal link below to send a secure donation now!

Then, use these tools to bring the Taco Bell boycott to your own community:

Action Alert
a concise explanation of the boycott with contact info for TB

Sample Press Releases
use them as a model for your own actions at home

E-mail Petition
send an email to Emil (Emil Brolick, TB's CEO)

Flyers
post 'em everywhere, they really do work

CIW Listserve
join and stay updated on boycott

 
Coalition of Immokalee Workers

WHO WE ARE


1995 General Strike
Immokalee, Florida

The CIW is today spear-heading the Taco Bell boycott. But before we launched the national boycott in April of 2001, we had been organizing locally for many years in an effort to modernize labor relations in Florida's fields, improve wages and working conditions for our members, and eliminate modern-day slavery.

To learn more about the history of the Coalition, you can go to the CIW site where you'll find all the non-Taco Bell info on the Coalition from 1995 to 2001, including past CIW campaigns, Press Archives, Photo Galleries, and more!


1997 General Strike
Immokalee, Florida

Or, you can simply click on some of the links here below to go directly to the pages from the CIW site that interest you... just remember to hit the back button on your browser to return to the boycott site!:

ABOUT CIW

PHOTOS

NEWS ARCHIVES

EDITORIALS & CARTOONS

STATISTICS

WASHINGTON DC, 4/13/03 -- 3,000 OUTSIDE TACO BELL AT 14th & U!


Sunday, April 13, saw one of the biggest, most exciting actions to date in the two-year old Taco Bell boycott, as over 3,000 people joined CIW members in a powerful protest to demand that Taco Bell take responsibility for the sweatshop conditions in the fields where its tomatoes are picked. How did such a remarkable action come about?


Solidarity, that's how. The weekend began on the 12th, when the CIW contingent joined an estimated 30,000 people in a Saturday March for Peace through DC's downtown streets. As do most labor organizations in this country, including the AFL-CIO, the CIW opposes the war in Iraq as unnecessary, unwise, and unjustified -- and we were far from alone in that opinion on Saturday in DC!


The march was part of a day of activities organized by the Latin American Solidarity Coalition, a conference examining issues affecting Latin America and the Latino community here in the US, with a particular focus on the possible consequences of the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas for poor rural and working communities.


In the evening of the 12th, Lucas Benitez of the CIW addressed the conference, describing in a moving speech a "chain of solidarity" that ties together small farmers from Mexico, Guatemala and Haiti, farmworkers here in the US, and US family farmers, all of whom are forced to struggle just to survive by the giants of corporate farming that have come to dominate agricultural production in the hemisphere.


The evening ended with a little warm-up performance by JG & HavikenHayes for the conference crowd...


... and then it was time for the march. Sunday greeted the marchers with beautiful weather -- there are few cities on the face of this earth more beautiful than Washington, DC, in the Spring, by the way...


The march was organized as a "March of Shame," pausing from time to time along a lengthy route at landmarks symbolic of exploitation of Latin America, including on its route the Taco Bell restaurant on 14th & U in recognition of the Taco Bell boycott.


The CIW, of course, traveled to DC with a van load of banners...


protest art...


... and spirit to make the Taco Bell stop a raucous, joyful experience!


Once we arrived at Taco Bell, the CIW contingent went quickly into action...


Banners took up their positions in front of the restaurant...


... a restaurant that, of course, had a hearty contingent of DC police standing guard, once again unnecessarily (when will they learn that the Taco Bell boycott isn't about violence or vandalism -- the message, "End Sweatshops in the Fields," is powerful enough on its own).


Once the banners were in place and the press team was busy with radio, tv, and newspaper interviews,...


... it was time for some music to move the marchers minds and bodies to the boycott message so tightly captured in the track "Hunger Days" (download it here)...


In his inimitable style, JG of Over the Counter Intelligence got the crowd to sing the hook, "Yo no quiero Taco Bell"...


... and an incredible crowd it was, in case we hadn't mentioned that fact recently...


And of course, HavikenHayes had to add his own style to the mix, here helping JG wrap up the song with the support of his own senior posse of loyal fans... All in all, an unforgettable day, one made possible by the Latin American Solidarity Coalition and by people from across the country who truly believe, in the words of the sign above, "A better world is possible!"


 

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