Was Ruth (Almost) Another Sexually Exploited Migrant Worker?

What is the purpose of this law?

Why are these particular categories of people singled out? How do these two texts differ? What category is a constant?

Who would be the parallel categories of people in today's society?

Why do Ruth and Naomi find Boaz's behavior to be so surprising and kind?

What are the implications for how things would have gone if Boaz had not stepped in?

In what ways was Ruth vulnerable in this story?

Why did things turn out as they did for her in this chapter and in the rest of the story?

An Open Letter from Women Leaders of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to the Time’s Up Movement (February 2018)

Dear Sisters,

We will get right to the point, as there is no time to spare.

We need your voice. We need your platform. We need your power. We need you to stand with us, shoulder to shoulder, and take action to end sexual violence in the fields.

We write to you today from the groves and vegetable fields of the South, where some of the lowest-paid, least-protected workers in this country toil every day to harvest the food that feeds all of our families. We have endured sexual harassment and rape, as well as forced labor and dangerous, humiliating conditions at our jobs. As our sisters in California with the Alianza Nacional de Campesinas said: “Countless farmworker women across our country suffer in silence because of the widespread sexual harassment and assault that they face at work.” Far too many of us have experienced these abuses personally in order to feed our children.

Today, however, we are not writing to lay bare our problems — thanks to your voices, and those of women who have spoken up across the country, the world is listening to the daily struggles we all face. Rather, we are writing today about a powerful new solution to end sexual harassment and assault against working women, and to ask for your help in bringing that solution to hundreds of thousands of more farmworker women across the country.

We are members of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, and we, together with our male co-workers, are building a new world for farmworkers, one in which we as women no longer face a daily barrage of catcalls, groping, and sexual assault in the fields. We have created that new world for tens of thousands of farmworkers under the protections of the Fair Food Program, the workplace monitoring program that has eliminated longstanding human rights violations in the fields, from rape to modern-day slavery.

The Fair Food Program is a proven, worker-driven model, tested in one of the harshest working environments this country has to offer. It has been acclaimed by human rights and legal experts from the White House, to the United Nations, to the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission. Fourteen of the world’s largest retail food companies support the program, agreeing to cut off purchases from growers who refuse to abide by an enforced code of conduct, failing to respect the dignity of their workers. Those companies include almost all the leading fast-food brands, from Taco Bell to McDonald’s. All except Wendy’s. And that is why we need your help today…

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is a worker-based human rights organization internationally recognized for its achievements in the fields of social responsibility, human trafficking, and gender-based violence at work. Built on a foundation of farmworker community organizing starting in 1993, and reinforced with the creation of a national consumer network since 2000, CIW’s work has steadily grown over more than twenty years

About the Fair Food Program -- from the CIW Website -- ciw-online.org

Recognition for the Fair Food Program is quickly growing. Secretary of State John Kerry awarded the CIW and the Fair Food Program the 2015 Presidential Medal for Extraordinary Efforts to Combat Human Trafficking. In 2014, CIW received the Clinton Global Citizen Award for the groundbreaking impact of the Fair Food Program, and in 2013, CIW also received the Roosevelt Institute Freedom From Want Medal.

…With the implementation of the Fair Food Program, CIW has achieved the ultimate goal of all anti-slavery efforts, that of prevention. To avoid the market consequences built into the FFP, including strict zero tolerance for forced labor, participating growers actively police their own operations, and the worker-to-worker education program at the heart of the FFP informs and empowers tens of thousands of workers to serve as real-time monitors to identify and expose perpetrators if any slavery operations were to arise.

There's a Sexual-Harassment Epidemic on America’s Farms

ARIEL RAMCHANDANI

The Atlantic JAN 29, 2018

Many of the women who work in agriculture often have few options but to put up with abuse on the job.

Wilfredo Lee / AP

Undocumented workers without papers and workers on temporary visas are extremely vulnerable to exploitation in the workplace. This exploitation takes many forms, including unfair labor practices, working without fair pay, and sexual harassment and assault. The agricultural industry in the United States is full of workers who are undocumented or on temporary work visas, people who are particularly vulnerable to exploitation. A report by Polaris, an anti-trafficking organization that runs the National Human Trafficking Hotline and the BeFree Textline … found that 91 percent of the cases involving modern-day slavery in agriculture involved foreign nationals…

In a 2012 Human Rights Watch report, nearly all of the farmworkers interviewed said they had experienced sexual violence or harassment or knew someone who had. In 2010, a study found that of 150 Mexican women working in the Central Valley in California, 80 percent had experienced sexual harassment. “Eighty percent—that’s a pandemic,” Noelle Damico, from the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative, told me. After explosive allegations of sexual assault against the Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, an association of farmworker women, submitted a signed letter of solidarity with the women of Hollywood: “We wish that we could say we’re shocked to learn that this is such a pervasive problem in your industry. Sadly, we’re not surprised because it’s a reality we know far too well.”

“The history of agriculture in the U.S. always been one of sexual violence,” said Mónica Ramírez, the president of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, who comes from a family of farmworkers.