On Sunday, March 6, at 12:30 pm, hundreds of farmworkers, religious leaders, students, and consumers will gather at Goodale Park to march to Wendy’s at 3592 North High Street to protest the chain in its hometown for its failure to respect farmworker rights, and ending at Tuttle Park.

The protest, organized by local group Ohio Fair Food in partnership with the farmworker-led Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), is part of the CIW’s Workers’ Voice Tour, which builds on a three-year consumer campaign and a year-long national student boycott of Wendy’s, launched by Ohio State University students a year ago.

Organizers will announce a major escalation in their campaign to demand that the world’s third largest hamburger chain end its three-year refusal to join the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’Fair Food Program(FFP). Called “the best workplace-monitoring program” in the US in New York Times, the FFP is a groundbreaking social responsibility program that has won recognition from the White Houseto the United Nations for its unique success in addressing decades-old farm labor abuses.

Instead of joining the Fair Food Program and its widely-acclaimed, uniquely successful worker-driven model of social responsibility, Wendy’s has actively rejected farmworker human rights by halting purchases from Florida altogether following the implementation of the FFP there. The corporation has moved much of their purchasing to Mexico, where conditions have been found to be even worse than US conditions across the board, according to an expose in the LA Times.

In response to Wendy’s announcement last year that they are no longer purchasing in Florida, OSU students became the first university to announce a student boycott of the corporation, a declaration which snowballed into a national student boycott thousands strong. OSU students had previously been the first university to begin a “Boot the Braids” campaign to end university ties with Wendy’s until they join the Fair Food Program.

The Wendy’s holdout stands alone as the last of the five major US fast food corporations to refuse to join the FFP. McDonald’s, Burger King, Yum! Brands, Subway, and Chipotle are all participating retailers in the Fair Food Program.

CIW’s Santiago Perez stated, “Ten years ago, we sent a letter to Wendy’s asking them to follow Taco Bell’s example and work with us to protect farmworkers’ fundamental human rights in their supply chain. They refused then, and they continue to turn their backs on farmworkers to this day, even as we built a groundbreaking new approach to social responsibility in partnership with Florida tomato growers and fourteen other major food retailers. Instead, Wendy’s stands alone in deciding to pull its purchases from the Florida tomato industry altogether and abandon its longtime suppliers for participating in what has been called ‘one of the great human rights success stories of our day’ in the Washington Post.”

He continued, “Not to support human rights in your supply chain is one thing. To abandon an entire industry when it has become a global model for human rights is a shameless and callous abdication of responsibility in the 21st century. Today, hundreds of farmworkers and consumers are marching to demand that Wendy’s join the Fair Food Program.”

Columbus residents have worked for the past several years to build a local effort in solidarity with the Coalition’s work for justice in the fields. Ohio Fair Food and OSU Student/Farmworker Alliance work in partnership with the CIW to advance the Campaign for Fair Food and to build an intersectional local movement for justice. In 2014, nearly a thousand Ohioans, farmworkers, and national allies marched to the headquarters of Wendy’s in one of the largest mobilizations of the three-year campaign, and for the last two years, Columbus residents have been present in force at Wendy’s shareholder meetings. The movement has been instrumental not only in the CIW’s national ally network, but also in base-building in the community in a deep commitment to local organizing. Two corporate holdouts, Wendy’s and Kroger, are based in Columbus and in nearby Cincinnati, respectively.

The Fair Food Program is a groundbreaking partnership among farmworkers, Florida tomato growers, and fourteen major food retailers, including McDonald’s, Burger King, and Walmart, heralded as “the best workplace-monitoring program” in the US on the front page of the New York Times. Participating retailers agree to purchase exclusively from suppliers who meet a worker-driven Code of Conduct, which includes a zero-tolerance policy for slavery and sexual harassment. Retailers also pay a “penny-per-pound” premium, which is passed down through the supply chain and paid out directly to workers by their employers. Since the Program’s inception in 2011, buyers have paid over $20 million into the FFP. In 2015, the Program expanded for the first time beyond Florida to tomato fields in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and New Jersey, and in the 2015-2016 season, the Fair Food Program expanded to two new Florida crops, strawberries and bell peppers.

Wendy’s participation in the Fair Food Program is essential to its continued expansion to affect tens of thousands of workers in other states and crops. The March 6 March for Farmworker Justice will celebrate what farmworkers are calling a “new day” of human rights in the fields and call on Wendy’s to be part of it with music, art, and action. All are invited to join.