Local food hub Farm Fresh RI and its local farm food rescue and hunger relief program Hope’s Harvest are proud to announce the “Fresh Tomato Film Series” will debut on Monday, February 27, with a screening of Sanjay Rawal’s “Food Chain$” film at the Farm Fresh RI building located at 10 Sims Avenue in Providence’s Valley neighborhood. The film will include Spanish subtitles. This is a free event, with donations accepted. Snacks will be provided for attendees. Registration is recommended at farmfreshri.org/foodchainsfilm
Special guest Catarina Lorenzo of the Alliance to Mobilize Our Resistance (amorri.org) will speak at the screening about her experiences with The Granja Sin Fronteras, a community farming project working in cooperation with Osamequin Farm in Seekonk, MA (osamequinfarm.org/resident-farmers).
“‘Food Chain$’ brings to light the human cost in our food supply and the complicity of the supermarket industry,” said Tasha Kaluzynski, the Hope’s Harvest AmeriCorps VISTA member who organized the event. “It makes us ask how we as individuals and collectives can do better, what we can imagine changing, and what kinds of power we can reclaim together and for each other.”
“Food Chain$” exposes the abuses rampant in farm labor in the United States and the retail forces behind that exploitation through the narrative of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a determined and empowered group of farm workers in Florida, and their battle against the grocery chain Publix to receive a penny more per pound of tomatoes. Interweaving the ongoing battle with historical moments in farm labor history, this film is grounding, sobering, transporting, horrifying, and inspiring all at the same time. (Content warning: mentions of labor abuse, poverty, sexual harassment, and slavery are present.)