Chipotle: Greenwashing or just green?

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The above picture is from a local Chipotle.  The poster reads:

“I hope all of our customers see this movie. The more they know about where their food comes from the more they’ll appreciate about what we do.”

If you go to the website, Chipotle urges you to see a free screening of Food, Inc.  I can’t wait to see  the movie, but does Chipotle really qualify as a fast food chain that that should get props from Michael Pollan or Eric Schlossler?  Or is this another example of a corporation greenwashing?

There is no doubt that Chipotle is way ahead of most fast food.  Check this blog out for more info about what the chain is doing right.

But all isn’t right.  I’m sure the workers who make the burritos are paid nowhere near a living wage.  More so,  Chipotle refuses to have labor standards for its tomato growers.  What kind of message is that? Does Chipotle really care that are pigs are cheated humanely but do not care  about the labor rights and civil rights  of the actual people who pick the tomatoes for their salsas?

McDonald’s hamburgers and Chipotle’s burritos earn about 45 cents for every 32-pound container of tomatoes they pick, a subpoverty wage that has remained stagnant for almost 30 years.

Here is a recent summary of the situation from the The Nation:

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has made great organizing strides and has succeeded in convincing numerous commercial giants, including both Burger King and Taco Bell, to increase wages, benefits and observe a strict set of guidelines outlining workplace safety rules.

Chipotle, however, the country’s fastest-growing fast food chain, has resisted efforts by farm-workers demanding a lasting commitment to ending the brutal exploitation in Florida’s fields.

Filed under: Food Independence Day, Immigration, Mexico, POlitics, agriculture, community organizing, farming, film, human rights, progressive , agriculture, chipotle, eric schlossler, farmworkers, florid, florida, food, food standards, human rights, immokalee, immokalee workers, inc, labor, living wage, michael pollan, organic farming, social justice, taco bell, the labor movement, the nation, tomatos, unions, workers

United Methodists on the border (Where we Should be!)

For students at Lydia Patterson, who live in Juarez and cross the bridge each weekday, the small, United Methodist preparatory school has become a safe haven in the months since drug-related violence in Juarez has intensified

The above is from a recent CNN report on the Lydia Patterson Institute.  According to its website, LPI is

…the only remaining United Methodist institution in the United States, that serves a predominately Hispanic population Lydia Patterson Institute continues to serve as a church-related and church-supported institution because of its mission to serve a special human need in a environment where faith and knowledge interact to enrich our lives and develop Christian leadership for church and society.

As a High School sophomore, my youth group from Calvary United Methodist Church made the two day drive to El Paso, Texas to volunteer at Lydia Patterson.  As mission trips go, it was great.

We got to see a glimpse of life on the border and we ventured several times into New Mexico and saw the beautful places like Aguirre Springs, White Sands, and Carlsbad Caverns.  We hung out with another youth group from Kansas and did some grunt work (I think we scraped and painted desks and cleaned classrooms) for LPI.

We also crossed the border into Juarez. We went to a market and had lunch, but most importantly we went into a migrant’s slum, full of cardboard houses.  Here is a description of these places–writen a decade after we had visited there as high school students

Unfortunately life has not changed for everyone in Juárez: hourly pay is still about $1.25. Many workers have to travel hours each way by bus from colonias like Anapra, subdivisions that have sprung up without paved roads, water or sewer service. The homes look like preschool art projects, glued and stapled together from cardboard and plywood and tin. Bootleg power lines drop from overhead wires, loop down to the ground and are held in place by a rock, then snake through the sand to a house. Some wires are live, and arc and spit when it rains. The young women who live here are favored by the maquila bosses for their nimble fingers and obedience. But more than 200 women, many of them maquila workers, have been murdered since 1993 — often raped, strangled and mutilated during their long, dark treks home to remote colonias. Most large maquilas have begun providing bus service, but it has failed to stop the killings.

For United Methodists, we must start and be a part of more projects like Lydia Patterson. And as mission trips go, lets not be afraid to show our young adults (and adults) society on the edge.  And let’s give them the theological, intellectual, and organizing skills to become part of the solution to these huge problems.

Aren’t we supposed to “make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world”?

Filed under: Christians, Immigration, Indianapolis, church, economy, environment, evangelism, human rights , Aguirre Springs, Brownsburg, Calvary United Methodist, Carlsbad Caverns, church, Ciudad Juarez, CNN, El Paso, Juarez, Lydia Patterson, Lydia Patterson Institute, maquilas, methodist, mission trips, slums, Texas, united methodist, White Sands, youth group

What would Jesus Do? Not listen to Mike Delph nor support Indiana’s horrible new immigration legislation.

In Indiana, the scapegoating is on. Never mind that we will probably spend $2 trillion on the wars in Afghanisan and Iraq with nothing but death and chaos to show for it. Or that people are losing their homes at record rates.

Lets go after the latinos!

Tbe Indiana statehouse is busy finalizing details of SB 335. This immigration bill would be one of the harshest pieces of legislation for undocumented workers in the nation. Oklahoma and Arizona have passed similar legislation with many an unintended consequence. As one Oklahoma Republican said, ” You really have to work hard at it to destroy our state’s economy, but we found a way.”

Anyway, yesterday at the Indiana statehouse, pastors were pleading with legislators to take their time with this issue and consider that the well being of tens of thousands of people are at stake. SB 335 author Sen. Mike Delph (R-Carmel) was having none of it.  He released a statement to these pastors that “Jesus obeyed the law.”

Jesus obeyed the law? Not in my bible.

Really, he did? I am not sure what bible they preach out of up there in those big mansions in Carmel, but last time I checked disobeying the law was what got Jesus strung up on the cross in the first place.

If you could listen to the posted above Youtube video long enough, Delph even quotes Martin Luther King, Jr to support SB 335. Yikes! Here is a blog with a good take on the use of Dr. King—who broke many laws– in this debate.  According to Delph, he is doing immigrants a favor by running them out of town.

Rev. Richard Clark, Delph’s pastor at Carmel Christian Church, is backing SB 335. He was one of the few pastors who spoke in favor of the legislation, but he wanted to put more of a social justice spin on it.  He, pretending to do his best Cesar Chavez impression, claimed ““These companies, many of whom take unfair advantage of (employees’) illegal status, pay them below-standard wages.”

He is right I guess.  But by causing a mass migration out of Indiana isn’t really supporting worker’s rights.

A Real Path to Citizenship

If Clark really wanted to stand up for worker’s rights maybe he should get involved with some of the union campaigns that are going on in Indianapolis and Carmel. Latino janitors are in the middle of negoiating a union contract and Latino hotel workers are in the middle of fighting to to get their union recognized. 

Instead of creating a climate of fear like SB 335 would, these union campaigns are actually trying to pave a path to both real and economic citizenship.

And ultimately, I think that is what Jesus would prefer.

Filed under: Immigration, Indiana State House, POlitics, progressive , Carmel Christian Church, HERE, illegal immigration, Indiana politcs, martin luther king, MIke Delph, SB 334, SEIU, undocumented workers, UNITE, UNITE HERE