I haven't eaten at a Taco Bell in nearly two years, because my church, the Presbyterian Church (USA), is part of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers' boycott of the franchise. I wrote about it here, and there was an update on it here.

Well, it's still going on, and it's pretty clearly God's work. The United Methodist Church is about to join the boycott. Nineteen college campuses have either blocked new Taco Bell franchises or evicted existing ones because the fast food chain, playing Pontius Pilate and saying it's not their issue, refuses to talk to tomato growers to pay one cent more per pound for fresh tomatoes so that the people who pick them can get their first raise in over twenty-five years.

This PC(USA) News story covers a trip by the Moderator of General Assembly, Rev. Susan Andrews, to Immokalee, Florida, to see just what was going on. Some of the details in there will make you never want a chalup again. Migrant workers with legal, honest green cards have to buy forged, illegal green cards or they can't get hired, because the labor contractors want the leverage of threatening to turn the workers into the INS. 20% of female farmworkers are sexually abused by labor contractors or the "coyotes" that bring them into the US for an exorbitant fee. Rice Krispies cereal costs 33% more in Immokalee than it does in Houston. Despite some of the lowest wages in the country, farmworkers never get any refunds on the state or federal income tax they pay, nor are the few regulations that should protect them ever enforced.

If you don't know why people are picking on Taco Bell, you have to read this story. Oh, and the fact about having to purchase forged green cards came from Presbyterian Hunger Program head Gary Cook, who posted on the boycott to this very site in November, 2002. Thanks, Gary!