Grilling At BK

Burger King isn’t just refusing to pay tomato pickers an extra cent, it’s now engaging in attacks and other subversive activities against groups like the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the Student/Farmworker Alliance. According to an article in The Nation by Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Amy Bennett Williams of the Fort Myers News-Press wrote a story last week that tied Burger King to “libelous” attacks via email and online posts against the Coalition of Immokalee Workers–a respected anti-slavery group that has helped to prosecute six federal slavery cases and has been praised by the FBI, federal prosecutors, members of Congress, and civil rights organizations.

Even worse is an alleged attempt to infiltrate a key CIW ally, the Student/Farmworker Alliance, by using Diplomatic Tactical Services, “a security and investigative firm that advertises its ability to place ‘operatives’ in the ranks of target groups.”

When asked by The Nation whether the allegations of emails and online posts as reported by the Fort Myers News-Press were true or whether executives were aware that some of these posts and messages had been traced to Burger King Headquarters, Burger King declined to comment.

Burger King could not state for the record that no executives ever hired Diplomatic Tactical Services (or any other investigative firm) to look into CIW and/or the Student/Farmworker Alliance and that they never received any reports from Diplomatic Tactical Services or any other investigative firm regarding these groups.

Read the whole piece at Yahoo News, via The Nation.