smartMeme : Brand Busting for Human Rights

"SmartMeme's work blended creativity, strategy, and alliance building facilitation. The result is we now have 30 leaders in the room who speak and think differently about our stories and memes. It was a very helpful way to get us focused on messaging."

-Eli Il Yong Lee, Executive Director, Center for Civic Policy

Brand Busting for Human Rights

The Student Farmworker Alliance ROCKS! SFA has worked as an ally to Coalition of Immokalee Workers, organizing students and youth across the country to brand-bust fast food chains that source sweatshop tomatoes, and build the youth movement for human rights.

Student/Farmworker Alliance: Building a Fair Food Nation

Student/Farmworker Alliance
Immokalee, FL

The Problem: Modern-day slavery and human rights violations are rampant in the tomato fields of Florida. Low wages, long hours, and abuse of workers are all too common. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) set their sights on changing the purchasing practices of the fast food companies that buy the tomatoes wholesale, and whose customers are mostly young, student-age consumers.

The Solution: The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has directly and successfully targeted major brand fast food chains who source tomatoes (Taco Bell, McDonalds, Burger King) with the demand that they pay 1 penny more per pound in order to give farmworkers a fairer wage for their labor. CIW also proposes companies adopt a human rights code of conduct and include farmworkers in the monitoring and accountability for upholding it.

The Strategy: SFA has worked as an ally to CIW, organizing students and youth across the country to boycott and brand-bust fast food chains that source sweatshop tomatoes, and build the youth movement for human rights. Their tactics have included popular education, petitions and creative protests –always taking leadership from CIW. SFA has built a strong leadership base with a large and diverse steering committee, and has worked side by side with CIW to win victory in the campaigns targeting Taco Bell/Yum Brands, McDonalds, and Burger King.

Watch The Whopper [Tomato] Freakout by Student/Farmworker Alliance Friends

smartMeme’s Role:smartMeme regards SFA as an exemplary model of an effective network of youth leaders working in accountable relationship with a directly impacted community in a worker-led alliance. The SFA operates in a youth-led model of mobilizing students through a corporate campaign, that is led by people who are most directly affected in the corporate race-to-the-bottom. SmartMeme has supported SFA in developing their message and media capacity, as well as their overall story and visual brand. SmartMeme also supported leadership development work through the (now annual) “Youth Encuentro in Immokalee,” facilitating strategy sessions and offering story-based strategy trainings.

The Result: The CIW’s core philosophy is “consciousness + commitment = change” and again and again they prove it to be true! SFA is stronger than ever and is building the fair food generation!

Learn more about the Student/Farmworker Alliance

Watch the historic highlights from the press conference and agreement signing ceremony of Burger King and the CIW at the US Capitol: