Friday, September 18, 2009

Bake Sales

My club had a bake sale recently, where we raised 94 dollars to buy a goat, miracle tree, and honey bees from Oxfam America. This was a really good amount for four hours of work. But this accomplishment was somewhat dampered by the fact that clubs are no longer allowed to have bake sales. The schools main provider of food (Aramark) is saying that students are not allowed to sell any sort of food item. This sucks! Clubs depend upon selling food, because what else are students going to buy?

Aramark is making the campus very unhappy, and not just because they are banning bake sales, but also because they fail to pay fair wages to the tomato pickers of Immokalee. The workers in Immokalee get paid a very small amount, far far below minimum wage. This is happening right by our school, in a little town that everyone overlooks because it is mainly a farmworkers town. A club at our school is trying to get Aramark to work with the CIW (Coalition of Immokalee Workers) to ensure basic human rights and dignity for the farmworkers in its supply chain, and to pay a penny more per pound for its tomatoes directly to the workers that picked them.

It is a big task to accomplish, but we must try for the sake of the livelihood of others, and I wish Angela and the other members of the Progressive Student Alliance luck!

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