Richard Herder, part-time instructor of Communication at Dalton State College, will give a public presentation on his new book, “Ending Slavery in the Corporate Supply Chain: Storytelling, Leadership, and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers,” on Wednesday, Oct. 2, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. in Gignilliat Hall, room 146, on the Dalton State campus. The event is free and open to the public.
Guest speaker, Gerardo Reyes Chavez, an award-winning spokesperson for the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), will join the presentation via live stream.
The CIW is a Florida-based farmworker’s coalition that has gained international recognition for their work investigating and eradicating slavery and slave-like working conditions in Florida’s tomato fields. Herder’s book explains how the CIW has been able to animate workers, fight slavery, influence multinational corporations and expand the Fair Food Program.
“When I first heard about the CIW and how they were attempting to improve working conditions in Florida’s tomato industry, I was highly skeptical. From what I could see, the growers and packing houses held all the power. It turns out I was wrong,” Herder said. “These immigrant farmworkers have taken on some of the world’s largest companies, including McDonald’s and Wal-Mart – and won.”
“Thanks to the work of the CIW, southwest Florida now has the best working conditions in U.S. agriculture, and probably the world,” Herder said. “They were able to accomplish this by partnering with local growers and their corporate buyers to create the Fair Food Program, a private initiative for monitoring labor conditions in commercial farming.”
Herder is a retired professor of Communication Studies from Southwest Minnesota State University.
