Tag Archives: justice

How much do your tomatoes cost?

by on April 26, 2010

Last Thursday I had the opportunity to tour the town of Immokalee, Florida, where the overwhelming majority of our tomatoes in America are grown.  The farmworkers in Immokalee work unbelievably long days under grueling heat.   They usually wake up at 4:30 or 5:00am, head to a pick-up site where they hope they will be chosen for work that day, and then are charged $7/day to ride the bus to the fields.  They spend the next 8 hours hauling buckets of tomatoes from the field to the trailer.  And for every 32-lb. bucket of tomatoes they pick, they are paid 45 cents.

Forty-five cents.

To put that into perspective, if they were to make minimum daily wage, they would have to gather over two and a half TONS of tomatoes.  Usually, time or tomato supply doesn’t allow that to happen.  After they have finished picking for the day, they ride back on the bus, usually arriving home between 6-8pm.  These men work from 5am to 6pm, doing hard labor, to be paid quite literally nothing.

We drove around Immokalee and saw the trailers that serve as the farmworkers’ homes.  A regular trailer (not a double wide) usually holds 8-15 occupants who have mats laid out one after the other along the length of the trailer.  They are required to pay $55/week (A WEEK) for this.  And let me be clear- these are not nice trailers.  These are falling down, non-air-conditioned, rusting and rotting trailers.  I wouldn’t pay $55 to own one.  And do the math:  8 men at 55/week is $1760/month.  If there are 15 men, it’s $3300/month.  So if these men were in Dallas, rather than living in that trailer, for that kind of cash they could rent in a high rise like this for $1200/month, including a pool and a workout room and other amenities:

Instead, they are paying for this:

Two years ago just blocks from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers building where we were sitting, a man was arrested and charged with slavery after men escaped the truck trailer where they were held against their will for 18 months.  The men were taken to work in fields by day and padlocked in by night, forced to use one corner of the truck trailer as the bathroom.  There were no windows.  There have been 7 slavery prosecutions in Florida in the past 12 years, which is why people call Florida “ground zero for modern day slavery.”

So when you go to a restaurant, or a fast food place, or your grocery store, or your child’s school cafeteria, and you see a tomato, think of these men.  And feel angry enough and guilty enough to do something about it.  Demand that you will not eat tomatoes that come from farm growers who treat their workers like this.  So far, Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Burger King and Subway have agreed to buy tomatoes only from growers who adhere to a Code of Conduct.  Whole Foods Market, Bon Appetit and Aramark have also signed on.  If you eat or purchase tomatoes anywhere else, your voice is needed.  Find out how to help here.  If you’re a person who asks grace over your meals, shouldn’t you be a person who asks grace for those who have toiled for your meal?

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Bread for the World Sunday and Stand Up

by on October 17, 2009

This Sunday is Bread for the World Sunday, a day when communities of faith across the nation come together to pray for those who are hungry among us, to confess that we have not done enough to feed them, and to renew our commitment to action. If you’re a pastor or faith leader, won’t you include this in your gathering tomorrow?

In addition, this is Stand Up Against Poverty weekend where literally millions of people across the globe will stand together in solidarity with the poor. Journey has participated in this for the past two years with a moment of silence and prayer, and we will do so again tomorrow.

I hope you’ll spend some time this weekend remembering those Jesus has commanded us not to forget.

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Justice Revival Block Party- Saturday!

by on September 18, 2009

justice revival
If you live in Dallas, come out to the Justice Revival Block Party this Saturday from 2-4. There will be free food, free music and the chance to meet a diverse group of people who are coming together to work for justice in our city. You can find all of the relevant information here. As you’ll see, you have an opportunity to bring a backpack with some basic items like shampoo and socks that will be distributed to the homeless through local shelters.

While you’re at it, be sure to put down November 10-12 on your calendar for the actual Justice Revival at Dallas Market Hall. A diverse group of pastors and leaders are joining forces to work toward creating 25 partnerships with local public schools and 700 units of sustainable permanent housing for Dallas’ homeless.

This is a great opportunity to work for positive and life-giving change in our city- hope you’ll find a way to get involved!

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A Peacemaking Kingdom

by on September 16, 2009

“We are called not to be a peaceable kingdom but a peacemaking kingdom”- Moltmann (in response to what he thinks of Stanley Hauerwas)

For the past few years I’ve been thinking through the relationship between church and nation/state/political powers. It’s a tricky affair. Truthfully, I haven’t figured out how to navigate those worlds together without feeling I’m rejecting one or the other. One trend that bothers me is what I think Moltmann meant by the peaceable kingdom. It is peaceable, but it is also removed. All of us agree it would be easier to pull away from society and live in our own little communities of justice. But then we would cease to be a peacemaking kingdom where it’s needed most. So the question is- without leaving our very complicated ties to political realities in favor of an isolated community, how do we live as people who seek God’s reconciliation?

If there’s one conviction I have, it’s that much of our action has more to do with our presence than anything else. I don’t mean just showing up- I mean the WAY in which we show up, the way we interact with others, the way we speak our words. Part of my frustration I shared yesterday is that we’ve seemingly lost the ability to be present in ways that aren’t selfish, egotistical and even violent toward others. As God’s people, we need to be incredibly thoughtful and intentional about how we seek change. They will know we are Christians by our love, no?

While “peaceable” describes a state of being, “peacemaking” implies movement and action. It’s the far more complicated of the two- but it also happens to be the one that God commands of us. Anybody have good examples or stories of how we can do this? Any tips?

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Statistics as Art

by on August 20, 2009

As someone for whom numbers sometimes look like cute little characters that need a name before I pay them any attention, I can relate to the very real fact that statistics often hit us as meaningless. Chris Jordan in Seattle has created some amazing works of art to bring these startling statistics to life. You should go see the entire set, but here’s a preview. Below is a picture of one million plastic cups- the number used on airline flights every SIX HOURS. Maybe I’ll start packing a reusable cup in my purse…

chris jordan plastic cups

Detail image:
chris jordan plastic cups detail

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Feeling Good or Feeling Hopeful?

by on July 10, 2009

My friend Dallas alerted me to this Op-Ed piece in the New York Times written by Nicholas Kristof, where he asks this compelling question:  ”If the G-8 leaders are so willing to save one child, why are they collectively so far behind in meeting humanitarian aid pledges to save other children?”

Those of us with friends in nonprofit sectors will find much of this old news.  My friend Brad will tell you that if you want people to give to your cause, you have to make it personal, and you have to show them that they are making a very concrete difference.  This is not always a bad thing.  For instance, I’ve found a number of teaching moments with my children thanks to the magnet photograph we have on our refrigerator of the children we sponsor through ServLife International.  I find less compelling reasons for grown adults who could easily pick up a book or in a matter of seconds pull up a host of  Internet articles about global poverty.  The argument that we have to help adults feel good in order to get them to act brings to mind something akin to dressing up broccoli with cheese tops and zooming it into their mouths with airplane noises.

I suppose I could get over that easily enough.  As Kristof argues, we probably could fix much of this problem by simply revisiting the marketing issue with at least the same amount of energy we use when selling toothpaste.  I’m sure some PR firm somewhere is more than happy to dress up like a stalk of broccoli for the right price (even if that price is looking charitable, God help us).  The more compelling question to me is–Why do we have such a lack of empathy when true crisis confronts us?

A group of us at Journey are currently reading through Jurgen Moltmann’s A Theology of Hope every Tuesday night, so I am once again pondering the great and central role that hope plays in our lives.  For Moltmann, eschatological hope is the very essence of being Christian.  It is that which allows us to live into the dynamic future of God, always open to new possibilities.  As I read this article, I couldn’t help but wonder if our sudden attack of empathy-loss when confronted with the staggering number of children that die of malnutrition every day is not an issue of “feel good” but rather a lack of eschatological hope.  We do not feel paralyzed because we cannot find a way to put human faces on the numbers, but because we can no longer imagine making a difference.  We give up, because we become convinced that it is a lost cause.

I remember a number of years ago when reading Ronald Sider’s book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger he mentions a number of popular Christian excuses.  The one I found most puzzling was the tactic of quoting Mark 14:7, “The poor you will have with you always.”  Apparently, some believe that  Jesus  relinquished us from the responsibility of working toward eradicating poverty, since Jesus already said we wouldn’t be successful.  The early church hardly interpreted it this way, as the first few hundred  years of Christianity boasts stories of such radical giving  that even pagan historians of the time were compelled by them.  And in the broader context of Scripture, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who could argue the case that God’s command to care for the poor is not primary.   And yet, something about us- at least as Americans, if not simply as humans- zones in on the loophole and finds it acceptable to gloss over the very real call of Jesus to make a significant difference in this world.  It is a lost cause, we say.  Jesus even said so.

But if these are lost causes–these issues of global poverty and malnutrition and infant mortality and malaria outbreaks and prenatal care for women and proper education-if these are lost causes,  how can we claim to have faith in a God who promises to wipe every tear away?  How can we hold any sort of belief in a Kingdom where God will be all in all?

If we find our eyes glossing over and our hearts turning numb when we hear the very real statistics of those in the Two-Thirds World, it is not because we lack “feelgood,” lest we let ourselves off the hook far too easily.  It is because we lack faith in the God we worship, and we have lost all transformative hope in the promise God has surely given us.

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