Katy Savage and Nashville Fair Food

Publix’s brass apparently knew we were coming, with enough advanced notice to fly out two higher-ups from corporate headquarters in Lakeland, Florida. It took a little digging to be sure, because the green-tie-wearing curmudgeon they had running interference between our picket and the supermarket entrance only introduced himself as “Mark.” When we asked if he was based in Nashville he responded sharply, “And why would you want to know?” His jaw clenched, and I found myself trying to tell him: “Don’t be mad at me–this is just about farmworkers having some basic power in their lives.” None of us had woken up hoping to ruin Mark’s day.

This is Mark Codd, Publix’s “manager of labor relations”, and the supermarket’s go-to man for busting unions and undermining the efforts of workers organizing for dignity and a living wage. He walked up to me while I was fliering:

“So, I understand that you’re going to try to end this little demonstration with a delegation to the manager.” Typically at demonstrations, a group of representatives from different faith groups and organizations deliver a letter expressing their concern to the manager. These delegations can be powerful, but are typically uneventful.

“We haven’t discussed yet what we’d like to do,” I answered.

“Okay. Well, we’re not going to be doing a delegation today,” Mark declared.

“We’re not?”

“Yeah, we’re not going to do that.” The half-dozen city police brought in by Publix for the event seemed to agree.

The pre-demonstration anxiety I always feel (what if nobody comes? what if the experience feels hopeless and unpleasant?) gave way as I saw the group of extraordinary people who came. Young folks from Vanderbilt Fair Food; new friends from Occupy Nashville, and seasoned campaigners from the Peace and Justice Center. What brought them is a sense that the war being waged for fair food in the rural areas of Florida–”ground zero for modern-day slavery,” as one federal prosecutor put it–has one of its most crucial battlegrounds right here in Nashville. Publix executives, who have refused to sit down with farmworkers to work out a deal guaranteeing basic human rights and improved wages, are also hoping to build dozens of new Publixes right here in Middle Tennessee.

All of this means Nashville is supposed to be brimming with eagerly-awaiting customers. Not demonstrators concerned over labor conditions in the fields where Publix sources their tomatoes. Our chants of “What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!” are so many little pins bursting their bubbles. At our picket in front of Publix in April, corporate headquarters had dispatched one rep to keep an eye on us. It was an encouraging sign that our actions in Nashville mattered, and we doubled our numbers for our demonstration in June. Hundreds of Nashvillians have pledged their support for the campaign, insisting that if Publix wants to expand in our backyards, we’ll hold them to a basic standard of responsibility. We talked to clerks and customers in all of the local shops neighboring Publix in this swanky Nashville suburb of Belle Meade, and received unanimous support when we explained why we were there–with some even offering to validate our parking for the next time we returned!

Perhaps that explains the extra edge of tension from Publix’s two corporate representatives, as well as the police officers who they seemed to have coached beforehand with Publix’s talking points. (We even heard a police sergeant repeating a tired old Publix line about how they aren’t involved in this ‘labor dispute.’) As their company’s brand has become associated with a unwillingness to end human rights abuses in their own backyard, they dump tremendous amount of time and resources into surveilling and following around individuals involved in the Campaign for Fair Food.

Publix’s response is especially ironic considering the family-friendly image Publix promotes to the consuming public, and given that what they are so stubbornly, blindly fighting is a world-renown human rights group supported by a broad swath of individuals and institutions, asking for something which is quickly becoming accepted as the future of the food industry and that has already been embraced by 10 leading retail food corporations, including Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, without any negative consequences for those companies.

And the new approach seems to be backfiring: now that Publix is adopting increasingly desperate tactics to intimidate some of America’s poorest workers and their allies, more and more consumers here in Nashville are starting to question the company’s happy-face public image.



After picketing in front of the store for a little over an hour, flyering passing cars, chanting and singing gospel songs, a group of four people peeled off towards the entrance of the store. Of course, everyone wanted to talk with the managers and express their concerns, but the hostility of Publix’s corporate reps and the police officers caused many to worry that trying to speak with the store manager would mean risking arrest.

We went inside and bought a pound of tomatoes, which cost $2.51. Ben handed a flier to the bagger at the check-out stand, but that’s when Mark caught up to us. “NO SOLICITING,” he barked, and Erin the bagger, a polite young woman, looked at him awkwardly, and handed us back the paper before she could read it.

We tried to explain to the manager that for a single penny–our tomatoes would weigh in at $2.52 instead of $2.51–the workers who harvested the tomatoes could make minimum wage, rather than the starvation wages they get now. But Mark refused to take our letter, using a booming-voiced police sergeant to threaten us out of the store. Finally, with other customers slowing down to take in the show, Mark’s sidekick took our letter, folded it without looking at it, and walked toward the trash can.

But Mark can’t fly up from his Central Florida office every day- we live here, and as one of our picketers called out on Saturday, “We’ll be back!”

Join us at Nashville Fair Food and let’s end farmworker exploitation together!