God’s newness, the heart-written covenant and the McDonald’s campaign
We read in verses 31-34 specifically of a new covenant which is different from the former covenant to which Israel was unfaithful. In this covenant God promises to Israel through the words of Jeremiah,“I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (c.f. 33b). The new covenant is not different in kind (it is still based, like the former covenant on God’s intention for justice), nor different in terms of the community to whom it is given (it is still given to the Jews who received the first covenant), but it is different because God’s forgiveness has made possible a new kind of covenant that frees the Jewish exiles from their understanding of law as a cycle of reward and punishment. Instead, the law written on the heart is a law that binds people in loyalty to God in a way that is so natural, that it will be something the community can live into and live with, not fear, fight against, or even, ultimately fail to observe. For God’s faithfulness and forgiveness is the guarantee of the efficacy of this new, heart-based covenant.
Brueggemann cautions us, however, not to over personalize the writing of this heart-written covenant which effects “knowledge of God.” While it certainly forms the deep identity of the Jewish people, and Christians to whom, by grace, this covenant has also been offered, it is not a matter of simple personal righteousness or faithfulness. “…the ‘knowledge of Yahweh’ means affirmation of Yahweh as sovereign LORD with readiness to obey the commands for justice that are the will of Yahweh.” 2
So as we think about the “newness” that God offered to the Jewish community while in exile in Babylon, and which God offers to our world and to us we see that it is profoundly social, concrete, and relational. Brueggemann maintains, “the newness this God will work out beyond the failure of Jerusalem and the dominance of Babylon is never otherworldly or private, but always public, social, political and economic.” 3
Because this text from Jeremiah is so familiar to us, it is easy for our eyes to pass over the phrases without really hearing the profoundly egalitarian nature of this concrete promise of social transformation that is rooted in God’s faithfulness. In verse 34, God speaks through Jeremiah to make it absolutely clear that everyone shall know God — “for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.” All will have shared access to God; from the “least” in society to the “greatest.” Everyone is on equal-footing before God and no one lacks what is required Brueggemann insists. “All know the story, all accept the sovereignty, and all embrace the commands.” 4
God’s vision is of a world where each person has worth, each person is capable, each person does justice and ensures the well-being of all. This is a profound proposition when we consider it in light of the current response of McDonald’s to the CIW’s invitation to work as partners in improving wages and advancing farmworkers’ rights in the company’s tomato supply chain.
In early 2005, the CIW sent a letter to McDonald’s seeking a meeting to discuss how they might work together. However, following the ground-breaking agreement between Yum! Brands and CIW in 2005, McDonald’s decided instead to meet independently and confidentially with the growers that supply the company to create a group called SAFE, Socially Accountable Farm Employers. In November, McDonald’s publicly announced that it was doing a new thing — but closer scrutiny revealed not only was it not new in terms of substance (the code developed just asks growers to obey the law and says nothing about improving workers’ wages or advancing their rights), it was also, sadly, not new in terms of how, in the creation of the code, the farmworkers, the very people who are the supposed beneficiaries of McDonald’s efforts, had been excluded.
Until the agreement between CIW and Yum! Brands in March 2005, Florida farmworkers have never had a place at the table to dialogue about wages or to have a role in protecting and advancing their own rights in the workplace. Instead, for generations they have been “done unto” by individuals, employers, corporations, service organizations, government, and yes, even churches, both from a so-called charitable motive of “doing good” as well as from a self-serving interest in protecting profits and power. We do well to remember the words of poet William Blake penned in 1789, “Pity would be no more, if we did not make somebody Poor.” 5
Responding to McDonald’s public insistence that it is helping farmworkers, Todd Howland, Director of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights said recently, “McDonald’s has put out a lot of PR about what it is supposedly doing for farmworkers, but McDonald’s has yet to meaningfully work with farmworkers themselves to address stagnant poverty wages and their systematic lack of rights. Farmworkers are neither objects nor children. They are human beings who must be accorded a role in the protection of their own rights.”
Of course such an approach of “doing good for others” (while never consulting them) can do wonders for a company’s public relations. But McDonald’s approach, if pursued, would actually roll-back the historic gains made in the CIW-Yum! agreement in March 2005 by pushing farmworkers away from the table. So McDonald’s initiative is not only not something new, it actually opposes the truly new and substantial gains that were made by Yum! Brands and CIW in the March 2005 agreement.
The PC(USA) as well as other organizations from the newly formed Alliance for Fair Food 6 have joined the CIW in insisting that farmworkers must have a role in the protection of their own rights. And while this is first and foremost a matter of human dignity, it is also the only way to truly guarantee the effectiveness of any change. For a code of conduct to be effective, it has to have provisions that can be concretely implemented on the ground and processes for monitoring that will give reliable reports about how that code is being followed by the growers and the crew leaders.
The Code that McDonald’s suppliers established not only did not include farmworkers in its writing, and therefore doesn’t address important concerns like stagnant poverty wages, it also has no role for farmworkers in the monitoring of the code. One of the most important precedents set in the CIW-Yum! Brands agreement is that the CIW farmworkers have co-authored Yum!’s code of conduct for its tomato supply-chain with the company, and are named as a monitoring body to ensure growers supplying the company uphold this code.
In order to construct and monitor a meaningful code of conduct, the authors need to have experience with the daily work, systemic abuses, and power dynamics in the tomato fields. The CIW has worked with the U.S. Department of Justice and the F.B.I. to investigate five cases of modern-day slavery in the fields, free more than 1,000 slaves, and prosecute the slavers who are serving decades in prison. The DOJ, FBI, and police turn to the CIW because its members are workers themselves. The CIW is in a position to go undercover to assess slave-rings, as they have in the past, as well as to provide safe haven for survivors who have escaped, because some of the workers are former slaves themselves. The CIW daily fights against wage-theft, getting growers to pay workers what they are owed as well as occasionally prosecuting systemic wage theft fraud with the Department of Labor. The farmworkers understand the barriers of language and the dynamics of power that often prevent workers from reporting abuses in the field because they fear retribution from crew-leaders or are fearful of other authorities like the police. In early March a crew-leader threatened a worker with a knife that was a foot-long. CIW was able to help the worker and the police with the complaint process.
Reflecting on its experience working with the CIW during a December 2005 interview with the Nation’s Restaurant News, the premier retail food industry journal, Rob Poetsch of Taco Bell said, "The relationship between Taco Bell and CIW has been very good. We hope other companies follow our lead and participate in the program too.”
To change our world for the better, to address systems of production, purchasing, retail and consumption that involve millions of people and billions of dollars, means that the primary stakeholders — the farmworkers, McDonald’s and other fast-food companies, and the growers that supply them — must work together. |
