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Saint Petersburg, FL - The American Indian Movement of Florida (Florida AIM) announces its full and complete support of the efforts of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) in their efforts to obtain dignity, justice, fair wages and working conditions for farm workers in the Immokalee area.

While Florida AIM has, and will continue, to support all struggles of human beings for their inherent rights, the struggle of the Immokalee farm workers is of special concern to Florida AIM. AIM has long recognized that many of those struggling in the farm worker struggle are our Indigenous relatives from Mexico, Guatemala. Florida AIM recognizes its obligation as the state chapter of the international Indigenous civil, human, treaty, sovereignty, and spiritual rights organization, to stand with our relatives in their struggles.

We find it particularly ironic that Indigenous peoples from Central and South America are classified as “illegal immigrants” yet peoples whose families have only resided on this continent for a few generations are the ones making the decision to bar peoples whose ancestors lived within this Great Turtle Island 40,000+ years ago.

It is sadly unsurprising to us that as the dominant society shuns the Indigenous peoples of Meso and South America they continue to turn a blind eye to the rampant injustices against the Indigenous peoples of North America. The hate crime murders of so many Indigenous peoples in Nebraska, South Dakota, and Arizona have gone virtually unnoticed in America.

Therefore the Coalition of Immokalee workers has the full support of the American Indian Movement in its quest for justice. Florida AIM will have representatives standing in solidarity with the CIW at their February 19th, 2000 kickoff, in Fort Myers, FL for their March for Dignity, Dialogue and a Fair Wage for Florida Farmworkers., and at the culmination of their March on March 4, 2000 in Orlando, FL.