Coalition of Immokalee Workers holding farmworker freedom festival

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers is holding its inaugural Farmworker Freedom Festival from March 8-10 in Palm Beach, Fla.

Organizers say the event will encompass three days of celebration and creative arts highlighting the historic human rights progress achieved through the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Fair Food Program. The organization said the festival will also remind consumers and food industry leaders alike of the road ahead in the fight to expand those gains to hundreds of thousands of U.S. farmworkers beyond the reach of the Fair Food Program’s protections.

The festival will include the CIW’s Modern-day Slavery Museum, a collection documenting the history of forced labor in Florida’s fields, from the chattel slavery of antebellum Florida and the debt peonage and convict-lease system of the Jim Crow era to the modern-day slavery that continues in the state to this day, according to a news release. CIW said this collection will include photos, reporting and artifacts from forced labor prosecutions in which the organization said it played a key role since the early 1990s. 

The festival will also include street theater created and performed by farmworkers from Immokalee, interactive visual arts and a two-story tall puppet of a woman farmworker named Esperanza, who will join workers and their allies on walks through the streets of Palm Beach throughout the event. 

The centerpiece of the festival is a benefit concert, which will feature a lineup of musical acts scheduled to perform from 2-7 p.m. March 9, including artists Malacates Trebol Shop, Olmeca, Rara Lakay, Bomba, and Illusion 711, the release said.

CIW said the organization chose Palm Beach to bring the message home to the city’s business and financial leaders with the power — and responsibility — to help expand the Fair Food Program to new farms.

“As farmworkers, it is important to celebrate how far we have come thanks to the Fair Food Program, with its unique protections against wage theft, sexual harassment, and even climate change, including mandatory rest, shade and water. But we know that for every farmworker empowered by the [Fair Food Program], there are many more still toiling in extreme exploitation outside the program's bounds,” Lupe Gonzalo, a farmworker and senior staff member of the CIW, said in the release.