What:  A 3-day celebration of farmworkers’ human rights featuring the CIW’s mobile Modern-day Slavery Museum, a benefit concert, and original farmworker theater and art, including a two-story tall, life-like farmworker puppet walking the streets of Palm Beach, giving voice to the country’s farmworker community in their ongoing fight for fundamental human rights

When, Where:  March 8-10, 2024, Palm Beach, Florida

Details:  In just under two months, the first-ever Farmworker Freedom Festival will take place in the mansion-lined streets of Palm Beach, Florida, three days of celebration and creative arts highlighting the historic advances in farmworkers’ human rights achieved through the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ worker-driven, Presidential Medal-winning Fair Food Program – and the long road that remains ahead of expanding those victories to hundreds of thousands of US farmworkers who continue to toil in poverty and abuse.

Over the past several years, the CIW has led inspiring, art-filled, and peaceful marches through the elegant streets of Palm Beach, sparking the public’s consciousness with a powerful message about the longstanding abuses – including sexual harassment and assault, wage theft, and even modern-day slavery – that have haunted our agricultural industry for generations, and about the proven solution to that exploitation, the Fair Food Program. The Harvard Business Review counted the Fair Food Program among the 15 “most important social-impact success stories of the past century,” while the MacArthur Foundation recognized the program with its coveted  “Genius Award”, calling the FFP “a visionary strategy… with potential to transform workplace environments across the global supply chain.” In 2015, the Obama Administration awarded the CIW and the Fair Food Program a Presidential Medal in a White House ceremony for its “extraordinary efforts in combatting human trafficking.”

But despite the Fair Food Program’s unprecedented success, many food industry leaders remain opposed to embracing its proven ability to protect vulnerable farmworkers in their supply chains from longstanding abuse.  And that is why recent CIW protests have focused on the billionaire enclave of Palm Beach, home to many business and financial leaders with the power – and, thus, the responsibility – to help expand the FFP to new farms and fields, business leaders like Palm Beach resident and Wendy’s Board Chair Nelson Peltz.  Indeed, rather than help spearhead the FFP’s expansion to thousands of farmworkers beyond the reach of its protections today, Chairman Peltz has long rejected calls for Wendy’s to participate in the award-winning Program.

This year, farmworkers and their consumer allies will once again arrive in Palm Beach – this time not just for a one-day march, but for three days of events designed to invite the beachfront community into a deeper conversation about the future of the food industry, one rooted in the respect for human rights, not the exploitation of human beings.  And that conversation will take place in the language of the creative arts: Interactive visual arts, historical exhibits, music, and theater (Stay tuned for more details on the festival in the weeks ahead!).

Coalition of Immokalee Workers
110 S 2nd St
Immokalee, FL 34142
United States

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