Students and Community Activists Deliver Letters to Kroger

On Thursday, December 9, five UK students, two BCTC students, and three community activists delivered a total of 186 petition signatures to the management of the Euclid Avenue Kroger grocery store. We are asking Kroger to support just wages and humane working conditions for the immigrant farmworkers of Immokalee, Florida, by agreeing to pay one cent more per pound of tomatoes and to enter a code of conduct agreement opposing the sale of products made by victims of enslavement/human trafficking.

The local manager took the signed letters from us and agreed to inform the national office of Kroger about our visit.

In a local campaign initiated by the UK Socialist Student Union, 186 signatures were gathered in a single week at a variety of locations, including at the University of Kentucky Student Center, the Bluegrass Community and Technical College cafeteria, the Lexington Catholic Newman Center, and local meetings of the Central Kentucky Council for Peace and Justice and of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth.

This is just one step in an ongoing campaign demanding that the supermarket industry support "fair food" and negotiate with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) farmworkers in Florida. Look for more organizing on this issue by the SSU and other local activist groups in the spring, and please contact us if you'd like to be involved.

KFTC has posted a nice blog post about the action: http://www.kftc.org/blog/archive/2010/12/09/students-and-kftc-members-demand-that-kroger-supports-workers-rights/weblogentry_view.
(Photo credit: Ondine)

Delivering Letters to Kroger for Farmworker Justice

The U.K. SSU has now collected over 100 signatures on a letter asking Kroger to pay one cent more per pound of tomatoes and to enter a code of conduct agreement, to improve the wages and working conditions of immigrant farmworkers in Florida.

On Thursday, December 9, at 12:10 pm, we will be assembling on the public sidewalk at 722 Euclid Avenue to debrief and then to deliver the signed letters to the management of the Euclid Avenue Kroger. All are welcome to join us in peacefully making known our concerns, as customers of Kroger, about the human rights of Florida farmworkers.

For more information, contact standinsolidarity@yahoo.com or check the Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=113124448757361&index=1#!/event.php?eid=113124448757361.

If you have not yet signed the letter to Kroger, please sign the online version by Thursday: http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.change.org%2Fpetitions%2Fview%2Flexington_ky_asks_kroger_to_support_humane_treatment_of_farmworkers&h=0def3

72 signatures so far, and more rolling in!

UK SSU gathered 60 signatures tabling on campus on Tuesday, on the letter to the management of Kroger.

People were really receptive. This is a cause that it is hard not to care about, considering that conditions for these Florida farmworkers are so bad that two of the employers have even been imprisoned for beating and enslaving workers.

One student mentioned that she felt a personal connection to the issue because she had a family member who was a tomato farmer. Another student--yes, we asked her to sign up for the e-mail list, and she did--said in response to our spiel about exploited workers, "Figures. Capitalism [is the problem]!"

Tonight I briefed the board of the Central Kentucky Council for Peace and Justice (www.peaceandjusticeky.org) about the issue, at their monthly meeting. They were happy to sign the letter and will help us to get more signatures.