Shirt drive draws wide interest
Long-sleeve shirts offer protection against the elements, insects, scratches and direct contact with pesticides, but due to the physical nature of their job and the conditions they encounter, farmworkers can use up long-sleeve shirts in a matter of days, according to Tom Comerford, managing director of the Sacred Heart Outreach Center in Homestead. DROP-OFF LOCATIONSORLANDO | They deal with sunburn, heat, bad weather, insect bites, scratching thorns, snakes and pesticides in the fields. They may lack decent health care, basic legal protections, adequate housing or a minimum wage. While Florida’s migrant farmworkers make it possible to stock supermarkets, restaurants and kitchen tables across the country with fresh produce, they often can’t afford food for themselves. This Lent, readers of the Florida Catholic get a chance to make life a little easier for men and women working in the fields through the newspaper’s third annual “Long-Sleeve Relief” shirt drive. Last year, 6,300 long-sleeve cotton shirts, which offer protection and comfort to workers in the fields, were collected from Florida Catholic readers across the state and delivered through cooperating parishes and outreach centers to needy farmworkers. Parishes, schools and faith formation programs became involved in the drive, as well as 60-plus individual donors, according to Florida Catholic Parish Services Manager Mary St. Pierre. “We had individuals from every diocese who participated, individuals calling on a daily basis,” said St. Pierre. “You see them really rallying for people who need our help, for the people who put food on our tables.” Cotton long-sleeve shirts for men and women will be collected through Holy Thursday, March 20, and can be dropped off at one of the sites listed at www.thefloridacatholic.org, picked up by site volunteers or mailed. The Florida Catholic will reimburse postage costs if necessary for contributors who live too far from a drop-off point. Drop-off sites include farmworkers’ associations, outreach centers, Catholic Charities offices, thrift shops and Florida Catholic offices across the state. SHIRTS WEAR OUT FAST Long-sleeve shirts offer protection against the elements, insects, scratches and direct contact with pesticides, but due to the physical nature of their job and the conditions they encounter, farmworkers can use up long-sleeve shirts in a matter of days, according to Tom Comerford, managing director of the Sacred Heart Outreach Center in Homestead. Their limited means often make it difficult to make new clothing for work a priority, he said. “It breaks your heart,” he said. “Most of them are earning less than minimum wage. They take a day off and they don’t get paid. They don’t have health care. It’s a very, very tough life for them. Most of these people, almost all of their budget goes for rent. … They’ve got sheets over their windows, doors that don’t fit. People should not have to live like that in this country.” Last year, the Sacred Heart Outreach Center distributed “hundreds” of donated shirts at no cost to 700 patrons through its thrift shop. The recipients were primarily Mexican and Haitian migrants who pick tomatoes and beans on local farms, Comerford said. “People come in all the time looking for clothing, for long-sleeve shirts. They tell me that it helps a lot,” he said. In the Immokalee area, migrant tomato-pickers “generally make around 45 cents for every 32-pound bucket they pick, and that’s a rate that hasn’t seen a significant change since 1978,” reports Jordan Buckley of Interfaith Action of Southwest Florida, an organization that partners with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to advocate for farmworkers’ rights. They also receive fewer benefits: Migrant farmworkers are excluded from the National Labor Relations Act, which assures such basic protections as overtime pay and the right to form a union. That’s one reason the interfaith advocacy group continues to serve as a drop-off point for the shirt drive, Buckley, a Christian, said. “People of faith are well-recognized for their commitment to social justice in making sure that everyone in our society is protected.” PARISHES PLAY ROLE Catholic parishes across Florida seized on the shirt drive as a communal Lenten outreach project and as an opportunity to educate parishioners on the Catholic response to social justice issues. Joan Lilly, a parishioner at Epiphany Cathedral in Venice, read about the drive in an issue of the Florida Catholic last year and was struck by “what the implications were for workers: that they were working with pesticides and chemicals and things that were detrimental to them, plus protection from the sun,” she said. Lilly and her JustFaith adult formation group put an announcement in the parish bulletin about their participation, called neighboring parishes, and set up a booth after Masses at the cathedral to explain the drive to parishioners. The response, she said, was beyond her expectations. “When I went to the rector, I said, ‘We’ll probably collect about 100 shirts,’ and here we ended up collecting 1,000. I was astounded at the response,” Lilly said. “We became aware of something that we just took for granted. Realizing what the repercussions were: fertilizer, thorny bushes, things that you just didn’t think about. (The article) made it real for me, when I could visualize what they were doing and how they worked. The reality of their situation really came home to me.” The JustFaith group informed friends and family from around the country about the drive, garnering dozens of shirt donations from friends in New Mexico, Colorado, Philadelphia and Connecticut. The things they learned through the shirt drive inspired the JustFaith group members to take their education a bit further and focus on the Catholic response to environmental issues in their faith formation program this year. “I think it made the parish very much more aware as to what the conditions might be for the farmworkers in the fields, other than ‘they’re out there picking oranges and tomatoes.’ It sounded too easy before, but this is reality,” she said. For donor Agnes McGuire, a parishioner of Our Lady of the Springs Parish in Ocala, contributing to the drive was a very personal decision. After her husband died in 2004, she decided to box up the long-sleeve shirts that belonged to him and send them to the shirt drive. She said a similar contribution might be something for people in that situation to consider. “Usually, you just don’t know what to do with all the clothes,” she said. “I thought this was something worthy. I knew it was going to wind up on someone that really needs it. It’s more of a connection.” STUDENTS LEARN, GIVE Schools and faith formation programs across Florida used the shirt drive as a Lenten service project last year, and an educational tool to help children learn about current events and human rights issues. Resurrection Catholic School in Lakeland collected hundreds of shirts last year as a Lenten project. Students at Resurrection usually make the decisions as to what projects they like to do, said principal Nancy Genzel, and last year the student council voted on the shirt drive. “Where we live in Polk County, the farmworker is a very important part of our community and this was our way to give back,” she said. At St. Martha School in Sarasota, sixth-grade teacher Sister Cathy Bonfield, School Sisters of Notre Dame, let the school’s Association of Student Leaders know about the drive. In response, the students put out collection baskets throughout the school and sorted donated shirts, she said. They also appeared on the school’s closed-circuit television system to help students understand why the shirts were important, she said. Several parents participated by driving the collected shirts to a distribution point in Arcadia. “It has become one of our annual social outreach programs. I think it has helped create more of an awareness of farmworkers and what they go through,” Sister Bonfield said. According to St. Pierre, the Florida Catholic drive is beginning to have an effect on places outside the state: Groups in California, for example, will begin a similar drive for farmworkers there during this growing season, and some northern groups recently informed the paper that hearing about the drive made them look toward what they could do to similarly help farmworkers in their own areas, she said. “That’s really a neat thing, to think this is growing,” she said. Many volunteers hope that this year’s shirts will be accompanied by solidarity. “We’re called to be in solidarity with our poor brothers and sisters,” said Comerford. “Much of what we do in the outreach center is charity, but we are also called to do justice. This year being an election year, it’s very important that we let our candidates know that we have to do a better job of taking care of our needy brothers and sisters.”
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