Group rallies against Taco Bell chain

  COURTNEY STEWART/Daily Bruin Steve "V,"
a member of the organization "Chicos from Tusan," was one of the
many people participating in the protest against Taco Bell.

By Robert Salonga
Daily Bruin Staff

Sporting banners, costumes and a 7-foot-tall
papier-mâché chihuahua, more than 200 people chanted and
sang in Dickson Court Sunday to protest alleged abusive labor
practices by Taco Bell.

The rally was part of the Rise Up Conference, a collection of
workshops sponsored by several human rights groups to educate
participants about issues such as worker exploitation and how to
organize grass roots movements.

Conciencia Libre, Garment Worker Center, Student/Farmworker
Alliance and Sweatshop Watch were among the groups who headed
workshops in Rolfe and Royce Halls.

The Taco Bell outcry was largely initiated by the Coalition of
Imokalee Workers, the largest farmworker group in Florida, looking
to force the restaurant chain to raise wages for their suppliers
labor force.

“Doubling workers’ wages means nothing to a
billion-dollar corporation like Taco Bell. It’s like taking a
hair off a cat,” said coalition member Greg Asbed, a
watermelon picker in Florida, Georgia, and Missouri.

“No one would even notice, but it would make a huge
difference for these people,” Asbed added.

Appearing at the conference has become routine for the CIW,
which has been touring the nation in an attempt to gather sympathy
for the farmers’ cause. In addition to UCLA, the CIW has
visited Notre Dame, the University of Wisconsin and, most recently,
Fresno State University.

Taco Bell has said it has “contacted its Florida tomato
suppliers to explore the issue,” according to a March 7
Denver Post article. Today the coalition will march to Taco Bell
headquarters in Irvine to negotiate working conditions with Taco
Bell representatives.

Others contributed to the protest through art, designing banners
that will be used at today’s march on Taco Bell headquarters
in Irvine.

“This is unique in that it is a very grassroots
movement,” said Kyle Gleason, a first-year film student at
Pasadena City College.

“Hopefully negotiations can start and things can
improve,” Gleason said while he painted two raised fists and
a crossed-out Taco Bell logo onto a banner.

At the same time, a man dressed as a ten-foot high tomato
clamored for support.

Some students said they gained better perspective of the rally
from the workshops. For instance, Student Organizing 101 focused on
helping people build coalitions on campus, said workshop teacher
Saeed Khan.

“Labor rights are human rights,” said Khan, a
fourth-year liberal studies student at San Diego State
University.

A uniting theme in many of the workshops was the alleged
mistreatment of tomato farmers contracted under Taco Bell’s
suppliers.

Latin American studies graduate student Gustavo Arellano took
the La IndyMedia workshop, which discussed the role of independent
media in Los Angeles.

“It helped me to understand how various issues can unite
to a broader theme, such as the tomato pickers issue,”
Arellano said.

Other groups used the crowd of Taco Bell protest to further
other labor exploitation causes. Sweatshop Watch organized a picket
at the Forever 21 store on the Third Street Promenade, claiming
many of the store’s contracted laborers have either been
underpaid or received no wages at all.

The picket was sparked by Forever 21 seamstresses complaining to
the Garment Worker Center, a project of Sweatshop Watch designed to
monitor their working conditions.

According to Sweatshop Watch program coordinator Marissa Nuncio,
the GWC filed suit against Forever 21 and launched formal protest
last November.