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MIAMI - Three Florida farm worker advocates who have fought modern-day slavery and for higher wages will receive the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award today.
Lucas Benitez, Julia Gabriel and Romeo Ramirez, leaders of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, are the first recipients of the human rights award to be part of a U.S.-based organization. The $30,000 award was established in 1984 to honor individuals who overcome humans rights violations at great personal risk.
"It's a tremendous support, and a recognition that humans rights are still being violated in the United States," Benitez said. Benitez, who is originally from Mexico, and Gabriel and Ramirez, who were born in Guatemala, have worked to improve the labor conditions of thousands of farm workers who pick Florida's winter vegetables and citrus.
They include farm workers who have been held against their will by labor contractors. Gabriel at one time was a captive worker for an employer who eventually was convicted of running a slave ring.
"For too long, people in the U.S. think human rights violations have occurred somewhere else," said Todd Howland, director of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights in Washington. The farm worker advocates also have led a boycott of Taco Bell restaurants in an effort to compel the chain's owner YUM! Brands to pressure tomato growers to increase wages for their pickers.
Kennedy's brother, U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., will host the award ceremony in Washington. The award will be presented by Ethel Kennedy, Robert Kennedy's widow. The Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights also plans to work with the coalition in the future to draw attention to farm workers.