Nashville Fair Food, in solidarity with Florida farmworkers, challenges corporate irresponsibility.

“We are not in agreement with fair food.” That’s what Publix’s spokesman Mike VanDervort told us after our picket in front of their Belle Meade supermarket in Nashville today. Other than that he refused to tell us who he was (or anything else), except that he had flown in from Publix corporate headquarters in Florida to watch our protest and prevent us from talking to our local store managers.

The students, church members, and youth in our delegation looked at each other with surprise. We had spent the last hour talking with the neighboring businesses and Publix customers as they arrived to shop, and literally every single person we talked to had said that they support Publix signing the Fair Food Agreement with the workers who pick Publix’s produce. Even the woman in the upscale consignment shop next door who initially greeted me with a skeptical “who pays you to protest?”, after ten minutes of hearing about recent Southwest Florida slavery cases and how the Fair Food Agreement works, said she would take a letter to the manager of her local Publix in Goodlettsville and urge him to sign the Fair Food Agreement. And now, Mike was telling us exactly what would shock his customers the most: the truth that Publix is prepared to hold out and block the entire industry-changing Fair Food Program from going forward.

At our last picket, in June, Publix had sent two managers from corporate headquarters, including Mark Codd, their head of labor relations. This month, we counted no less than 7 different managers milling around watching the protest, at least two of them executives from headquarters in Central Florida. Obviously, Publix is becoming in creasingly agitated as their customers learn about the Fair Food program and question Publix’s plans to expand throughout Middle Tennessee while doing everything they can to keep Florida’s farmworkers impoverished and powerless.

The picket started with rain, but about fifteen community allies came out to chant, sing, and march together. Just after we began to walk the sidewalk and pass out flyers to curious customers, the clouds broke and the sun came out. That’s exactly the kind of bright turnaround we’re hoping to see from Publix. If not, we’ll be back next month.