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Oregon-Idaho MFSA Chapter News MFSA Chapter Sponsors and Endorses Walk for Farmworker Justice The Oregon-Idaho Chapter of MFSA joined a coalition of more than eighty organizations from all around the United States who sponsored or endorsed the Walk for Farmworker Justice through farm and city communities in the Willamette Valley of Western Oregon during the week of June 18-24, 2001. The Walk, endorsed by the Oregon-Idaho Annual Conference the week before, included the participation of MFSA and other United Methodist members on both the Walk planning committee and as participants in the Walk itself. From several hundred to more than a thousand walked and demonstrated each day to communicate the simple message: it’s time for NORPAC (farmers’ co-op) to negotiate with PCUN (farmworkers’ union) and bring about an end to the nearly nine-year boycott of NORPAC products. The Walk also called for just treatment on the job and legal status for the undocumented. At every step walkers carried banners and placards. United Methodists showed up each day to join Rev. Eleazar Romera-Garcia and Rev. John Pitney, Methodist members of the organizing committee, to march behind the United Methodists for Farmworker Justice banner made by Rev. John Schweibert. The Walk attracted farmworker supporters from around Oregon, the U.S. and Canada to see conditions first-hand and make a tangible show of support in farmworker communities. In Salem, Oregon_s capital city, significant support in the person of Mayor Mike Swaim energized and heartened the 350 workers and supporters who picketed the Pictsweet plant (mushroom farm) located in the outskirts of the city. On Sunday, June 24, the Walk_s final day, more than a thousand workers and supporters gathered on the steps of the State Capitol in pouring rain to listen to further words of support and encouragement from Governor John Kitzhaber, Mayor Swaim, church leaders and labor union leaders from across the country. The Walk received significant media coverage in Oregon newspapers, TV and radio (especially by listener-sponsored KBOO radio in Portland and the Independent Media Center, whose reporters accompanied the Walk all week and posted daily reports on its website. Sponsors of the Walk agreed that it clearly achieved its objectives of broadening awareness and visibility, especially nationally, of the farmworker struggle in Oregon for collective bargaining, of spotlighting dialogue as the central issue, and of deepening commitment to justice through action. In recent weeks since the Walk, both Fred Meyer and Safeway grocery stores have discontinued sales of Pictsweet mushrooms, citing Pictsweet_s long history of worker safety abuses and its refusal to recognize workers_ rights for collective bargaining. In regard to progress in the nine-year boycott against the farmers cooperative, NORPAC, called because of repeated documented mistreatment of their workers by a number of the largest and most influential growers in the co-op, growing numbers of organizations are supporting the boycott of NORPAC-packed products. Bon Appetit, the fourth largest food service in the U.S., recently announced it will no longer purchase NORPAC products. |
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