Videos about Food Workers and Food Justice

The Food Chain Workers Alliance and some of the our members have created or participated in the creation of videos that show the exploitation of food workers and how the workers are organizing to improve their wages and working conditions, as well as to make our food system more sustainable.

  • For International Food Workers Week FCWA produced “Food Worker Heroes” a video series where workers share about their work, why they are proud of the work they do and some struggles they face.
  • The Food Chain Workers Alliance has produced a video series entitled “The Hands That Feed Us.” Part I features workers throughout the food system talking about health and safety issues in the workplace and the lack of paid sick days. Part II focuses on low wages and long hours. Part III exposes the various types of discrimination that food system workers face. The videos are available bilingually in English/Spanish and also with Chinese subtitles. Watch Part I here and see below for more videos!
  • Alliance Executive Director Joann Lo and Coalition of Immokalee Workers Organizer & Farmworker Gerardo Reyes-Chavez gave talks at TEDxFruitvale in October 2011. Joann’s talk “Organizing the Workers in the Food Chain” is a great short introduction to the issues facing food workers and to the Food Chain Workers Alliance.  Gerardo’s talk “Making Corporations Pay” is about the Campaign for Fair Food – its successes and the challenge to get supermarket chains to sign on to the Fair Food Agreement.
  • CATA and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers are featured in this short video series “Fair Food: Field to Table,” a multimedia presentation promoting a more socially just food system in the U.S.
  • The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has its own channel, CIW Videos, on YouTube. The latest video is called “One Penny More” which exposes the power of supermarkets in the conditions that farmworkers face. Watch it below!
  • The Center for New Community created this short video about its Midwest Immigrant Health Project which is organizing immigrant workers and families to secure better health care.  The video also talks about the history of meatpacking and the exploitation of workers in this industry.
  • The Student/Farmworker Alliance, a close ally of the CIW, offers a free Campaign for Fair Food discussion guide based on “Harvest of Shame.” This historic television documentary, presented by journalist Edward R. Murrow on CBS in 1960, illustrated the terrible conditions faced by American migrant farmworkers. Contact SFA for a free DVD: organize (at) sfalliance.org.
  • The Farmworker Association of Florida has a series of videos about farmworkers and its organization, including “Sowing the Seeds of Justice“, a history of FWAF; “Elvira a Farmworker,” about Elvira’s experience as a woman working on farms; “Yolanda” about a farmworker and now organizer with FWAF; and “Out of the Muck Grant Trailer” about Geraldean Matthew and her work to lift her fellow former Apopka Farmworkers who are mostly African American.
  • Warehouse Workers United launched a video series “Voices/Voces from the Warehouse“, featuring stories of workers in Walmart warehouses in Southern California.
  • Food MythBusters uses the power of storytelling and entertainment to address some of the biggest myths about food security, sustainable farming, hunger and the environment. The first film, “Do we really need industrial agriculture to feed the world?”, narrated by Anna Lappé, exposes the biggest players in the food industry—from pesticide pushers to fertilizer makers to food processors and manufacturers—that spend billions of dollars every year not selling food, but selling the idea that we need their products to feed the world. But, do we really need industrial agriculture to feed the world? Can sustainably grown food deliver the quantity and quality we need—today and in the future? The first Food MythBusters film takes on these questions in under seven minutes. So next time you hear them, you can too.
  • “Hungry for Justice: Spotlight on the South” is brought to you by Little Bean Productions in partnership with Florida Organic Growers and the Agricultural Justice Project.

Documentaries

Urban Roots: We  recommend the documentary film “Urban Roots.” Produced by Leila Conners (The 11th Hour) and Mathew Schmid and directed by Mark MacInnis, the film follows the urban farming phenomenon in Detroit. Urban Roots is a timely, moving and inspiring film that speaks to a nation grappling with collapsed industrial towns and the need to forge a sustainable and prosperous future. Buy the Urban Roots Film and the FCWA will receive 35% or $7 of the total price of the DVD. This donation will further help our work to improve wages and working conditions for all workers along the food chain. Click here to buy the film!

The Harvest/La Cosecha: We also recommend this documentary by U. Roberto Romano about the more than 400,000 American children who are torn away from their friends, schools and homes to pick the food we all eat.  Zulema, Perla and Victor labor as migrant farm workers, sacrificing their own childhoods to help their families survive.  THE HARVEST/LA COSECHA profiles these three as they journey from the scorching heat of Texas’ onion fields to the winter snows of the Michigan apple orchards and back south to the humidity of Florida’s tomato fields to follow the harvest.

One Penny More