Kerry Kennedy, President of RFK Human Rights: “This recognition is a personal honor and a reminder that the pursuit of human rights demands boldness, compassion and an unshakable commitment to justice.”
Kerry Kennedy: “I march with Coalition of Immokalee Workers to demand dignity and respect for farmworkers. I march for fair wages and humane working conditions.”
It is our great pleasure to share the news that Kerry Kennedy — a longtime ally of farmworkers, the CIW, and of human rights defenders everywhere — has been awarded the prestigious Oscar Romero Human Rights Award by the University of Dayton’s Human Rights Center last month in Ohio. Recognized for her tireless dedication to advancing justice for all, Kerry Kennedy leads RFK Human Rights, an internationally respected rights organization that has stood with the CIW for decades, providing vital support to the cause of farm labor human rights and helping the farmworker community in countless ways to forge the groundbreaking Fair Food Program.
During her stewardship of RFK Human Rights, Kerry Kennedy heard — and answered — the clarion call for justice emanating from the tomato fields of Immokalee in the early years of the Campaign for Fair Food. And after visiting the small agricultural town and meeting with CIW members and leaders, Kerry quickly became a dedicated ally of the cause for Fair Food. The farmworkers’ vision of a more modern, more human agricultural industry was still a distant dream, but the CIW’s fearless work fighting modern-day slavery had caught Kerry’s, and her mother Ethel Kennedy’s, keen eye. Together, Kerry and her mother recognized three CIW members — Romeo Ramirez, Julia Gabriel, and Lucas Benitez — for their exceptional courage and commitment with the 2003 RFK Human Rights Award at a gala award ceremony in the US Senate.
That national recognition helped put the CIW on the map, drawing widespread attention from media, allies, and corporations alike. Thanks in part to this new national spotlight, the CIW reached an historic, legally-binding agreement with Taco Bell’s parent company Yum! Brands in 2005 — the first of what would become 14 Fair Food agreements. The Taco Bell agreement marked he first concrete step towards the launch of the Fair Food Program in 2010 and the birth of the new paradigm for protecting human rights in global supply chains, the Worker-driven Social Responsibility model.
For the next twenty years, Kerry and her mother, who recently passed away after a lifetime of fighting for civil and economic rights around the globe, remained outspoken champions for the cause of farmworker human rights: they marched with us during major actions, spoke at shareholder and investor meetings, penned powerful editorials, and met with food industry and p0litical leaders alike to help us forge a brighter future for farmworkers from Florida to California, and beyond.
Not long ago, Kerry Kennedy told the story of her family’s history of support for farm labor justice spanning more than half a century, sharing a memory of her mother and father, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, standing up for farmworkers in California organizing with the Cesar Chavez and the UFW, writing:
