Celeb Chef Paula Deen To Met By Prayerful Prostesters
Atlanta
area churches join campaign to get Paula Deen to meet with injured
and abused workers from Smithfield, the company she promotes
Rev. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Rev. Lowery, Danny Glover,
Susan Sarandon, Judge Greg Mathis, National Hispanic Leadership
Conference and others have mounted national campaign
to support Smithfield workers
Paula Deen will be met by a coterie of ministers
and their supporters at the Cobb Galleria Centre
cooking show she is headlining asking the celebrity chef to
honor her promise to meet with Smithfield workers
who have organized to fight for a voice on the job at the worldís
largest pork processing plant located in Tar Heel, North Carolina.
Atlanta churches involved represent tens of thousands of congregants
including Rev. Michel Wright of Concerned Clergy
of Metro Atlanta and Pastor of New Life Christian Church,
Rev. Richard Coble, Rev. David Hooker
of First Congregational United Church of Christ
and many others.
Deen,
in previous interviews on Larry King Live and
the syndicated radio show Diane Rehm, promised
to meet with these Smithfield workers who have
been fighting for over a decade to improve the working situation
in Tar Heel North Carolina.
At the Smithfield Tar Heel
plant workers suffer crippling injuries. They endure excessive
line speeds and receive inadequate training to do their jobs.
A 2007 Research Associates of America report, using company
data from federal safety and health reports, reveals that injuries
at Smithfield Tar Heel went up 200 percent between 2003 and
2006.
In 2006, a federal appeals
courts enforced the National Labor Relations Board decision
that found that the company assaulted people, harassed and threatened
violence against the Tar Heel workers during an election in
1997. Human Rights Watch, an organization that normally documents
abuses by foreign governments, published two reports, in 2000
and 2005, decrying the dangerous conditions and numerous abuses
that workers faced at the Tar Heel plant
Similar
to the Kathie Lee Gifford controversy, the
ministers want Paula Deen to meet with workers
and are appealing to her sense of morality and faith to ultimately
speak out on their behalf.
Kathie Lee eventually ended
the use of sweatshops to produce her clothing line and spoke
out forcefully against sweatshops.
For
information contact Leila McDowell at 202 728
1829 or Eric Wingerter in Atlanta at 202 243
9995.