Dear John,

When the groundbreaking agreement between the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the Florida Tomato Growers was announced in November 2010, CIW co-founder Lucas Benitez conveyed the significance of the partnership by calling it "a watershed moment." That hard-fought victory gave birth to the Fair Food Program and marked a turning point in the history of the state’s agricultural industry which, by joining in partnership with the CIW, broke away from generations of abusive conditions and abysmal wages and set a course instead for a new horizon of human rights and dignity for farmworkers.

That historic pivot never would have been possible but for two simple, powerful ingredients: An informed, active, and strategic base of farmworker leaders in Immokalee, and consumer allies like you, willing to stand shoulder- to-shoulder with farmworkers in order to change the course of history.

Over the next 10 days, we are asking you not only to celebrate all that we’ve accomplished together since the inception of the Fair Food Program, but to imagine what the next 10 years of the future of Fair Food could look like. If you're able to today, can you please sign up to become a monthly Fair Food Sustainer?

Sign up to become a Sustainer

The path that farmworkers have blazed from 2011 to 2021 — with the invaluable support of hundreds of thousands of allies like you — is nothing short of extraordinary.

In early 2011, members of the CIW’s Education Team stepped through the farm gate onto a Participating Grower’s farm for the very first time, speaking freely to workers about their rights under the Fair Food Program in fields that had been strictly off-limits to farmworker advocates for decades. It was not long before that this region of Florida had been dubbed “ground zero for modern-day slavery” by a Department of Justice prosecutor. The region earned that dubious distinction following the discovery of case after violent case of forced labor in Florida’s fields over the previous decade, a disturbing track record of human rights violations that underscored the urgent need to end the poverty and powerlessness that left farmworkers vulnerable to the worst forms of abuse.

Today, those fields would be hardly recognizable to workers who had labored at gunpoint, mired in debt and in fear for their lives, just a decade earlier. Together, we have not only rooted out the worst actors in the industry – those who for years sexually harassed and beat workers, stole wages, and forced men and women in the fields to work under the threat of violence – but we have forged an entirely new industry, one that ensures dignity and respect for those who harvest the nation’s food.

By working together and refusing to turn back in the face of tremendous obstacles, we have managed to change the lives of tens of thousands of farmworkers and surpass our wildest dreams of 2011 – and yet, the world we want to build is still far from complete. Be a part of building the future of Fair Food with us by signing up as a Fair Food Sustainer today. That is what being a committed, long-term donor and ally is all about: investing in the world that remains just beyond the horizon.

Become a monthly donor

And if our next 10 years are anything like our last decade, we have every reason to believe we’ll get there.

Sign up today, if you haven't already, to help us meet our goal of signing up 10 new monthly donors each day for the next 10 days. You can also call your friends, family members and colleagues and invite them to be a part of this ongoing story for farmworker justice by becoming a Fair Food Sustainer!