Our Statement on Florida’s HB1: Silencing, Penalizing, and Endangering Floridians
As an internationally-recognized human rights organization, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers has achieved transformative change for Florida farmworkers, ensuring dignity and respect in the fields through the Fair Food Program and establishing a model for human rights that has stood out as a beacon for low-wage workers across the country and the world. These changes, and the hope and life-saving protections they provide for the Sunshine State’s farmworkers, would never have been achieved without amply exercising our right to free speech and assembly.
For over three decades, the CIW has organized creative, peaceful, on-the-ground marches and demonstrations to educate citizens about farm labor exploitation, forging alliances with consumers strong enough to convince some of the world’s largest corporate buyers to use their market power to help end that exploitation. One of those marches — a two-week, 230-mile march from Fort Myers to Orlando, during which farmworkers and allies carried a large, contemporary sculpture of the Statue of Liberty as a farmworker — is featured prominently in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, DC. Without actions like that historic march, protected securely by the First Amendment, and many others we have undertaken, there is no doubt that the CIW’s Fair Food Program, which has received a Presidential Medal for its extraordinary success in combatting human trafficking, among many other awards, would not exist today.
We are adamantly opposed to HB1, and are deeply concerned that, in practice, this bill will silence, penalize, and endanger Floridians for exercising our First Amendment rights, and thereby close the door on an untold number of future victories for justice like those the CIW has achieved through decades of peaceful, vibrant protest.
