This week, farmworkers led a five-day, 45-mile (72-kilometer) walk on foot from one of the poorest communities in Florida to a mansion-lined, oceanfront town that is one of the richest in an effort to pressure retailers to leverage their purchasing power for better worker pay and working conditions.
The walk began in a town that is one of the poorest in Florida and ended in a town that is one of the richest. The hike started in one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in Florida and concluded in one of the most affluent towns in the state.
The farmworkers stated that they were participating in the march to bring awareness to the Fair Food Program, which encourages large corporations like McDonald’s, Walmart, Taco Bell, and Whole Foods to use their influence with farmers to improve working conditions and salaries for farmworkers.
The farmworkers claimed that they were participating in the march to bring attention to the Fair Food Program. They had great hopes that they would be able to convince additional businesses, such as Publix, Wendy’s, and Kroger, to participate in the program that had its origins in 2011.
The march got underway on Tuesday in the bucolic village of Pahokee, which is considered to be one of the most impoverished areas in Florida and has an average household income of around $30,000. A camp that served as a gathering place for farmworkers who had been forced to work for little to no pay by a labor contractor who had been found guilty and sentenced to almost ten years in prison the previous year was the point of origin for the march.
The labor contractor had been sentenced the year before. According to the Department of Justice of the United States, the contractor stole the Mexican farmworkers’ passports, demanded high fees from them, and threatened them with deportation or a bogus arrest in an effort to coerce them into paying the payments. This was done in an attempt to force them to pay the payments.