Ariana MacMartin and Tommy Coleman Interview, September 29, 2023

Do I have permission to report this interview?

Yes.

Yes.

Perfect. And if you guys wouldn't mind telling me your name.

Hi, I'm Ariana MacMartin.

Sorry I'm chewing gum, one second. I'm just going to put it right here and take it with me. Alright. Hi, my name is Tommy and I also run Farmers Markets.

Could you tell me a little bit about your story and your Farmers Market?

Yeah, so, yeah, I'm Ariana. [gestures to Coleman] Tommy. And I started at Fresh Farm Farmers Markets last year and I ran the Rosslyn Farmers Market, the Penn Quarter Farmers Market, and I still run Monroe Street Market. Last year we began the process of unionization. This year we won our union and we became the first unionized farmer's market in the United States. We unionized with UFCW Local 400 and it's really great. We unionized to build a better future for the folks who run the farmer's markets. We organize for better pay, better working conditions, sexual harassment protections, clean water, access to bathrooms, basic respect, anti-racism. We just wanna feel safe where we work and make a really great future for not just us, but we wanna set a precedent that if you work at a farmer's market, you have a job that can pay your bills and you can afford to live in dignity, and get the respect that you deserve while at work. And right now, Tommy and I are on the bargaining team. So every week we prepare or we meet with Fresh Farm to bargain our contract and I'm really excited about it. One of the proposals I'm the most excited about is our menstrual leave proposal, which is really important to build equity for people who menstruate. So I hope that we can get things like gender-based violence and harassment protections and menstrual leave for folks who are in the farmer's markets.

Yeah.

Anything you would like to add?

We love our job. We love working at Monroe Street. We do the Monroe Street market together. And it's lovely seeing families come out with their children at that market. We have so many young children who come to play in the fountains and come to shop. We have so many seniors that come from a senior living facility there and they use our SNAP benefit programs that we have, to get more money to basically be able to—we match up to $30 of their SNAP money, and we match their senior benefits, we match their WIC benefits. So it's great helping out people in need and making the farmer's market a more accessible—a more accessible place for people to shop.

You mentioned that you guys just got your union, right?

Yes.

So could you tell me a little bit about the events that led up to that?

Yeah, so before we got our union, as a collective, the farmer's market managers discussed our working conditions and we all talked about how, you know, we're working outside in the elements, in the snow, in the rain, in the heat, in lightning. And we were not getting compensated enough for the job. We were not given proper safety equipment, PPE, like things that keep us safe and warm and dry and hydrated at the markets in order to do our job. So things like that, and very basic things like protections against racism and gender-based violence and harassment. We talked about that, we came together and we wrote a letter asking for improvements to our working conditions. We all wrote that democratically and then I think over 90% of farmers market managers signed off on it. We delivered it to management and management said, "we will not discuss your conditions unless you are in an organized group." So we were like, okay, it's time to unionize. So then we held card signings and we had more than critical mass of cards—of card signing managers approving UFCW for our union and management still did not recognize the farmer's market. So then we moved to an election and then we won the election overwhelmingly and then we were recognized by Fresh Farm and it was actually amazing because Fresh Farm posted on their public Instagram "Congratulations on the union," and we're so excited. So that show of good faith is really important for us in bargaining, and it shows that Fresh Farm is really committed to food justice and equity because they're supportive of the union, so that was a great show of support from them.

Yeah, I'd just like to second that, yeah, we just want sustainable jobs. We want jobs that can sustain a living.

Yeah. And that helps support our mission. Our mission is food justice and equity. And you can't have food justice and equity if the folks who are running your market are struggling to pay rent, are getting sexually harassed at market, you know, they don't have health insurance or benefits. So it is vital for not just our nonprofit, but every single nonprofit to utilize labor that is dignified, that the people are respected and that there is room for growth. That it's not just a dead-end job. This is not an in-between job for college students. This is not—We shouldn't be looked down upon just because we're young or just because we just graduated. These jobs deserve dignity and we're super excited and happy to bargain with Fresh Farm to create a contract that enshrines these very basic protections to make a better life for these working class folks.

And how would you like to see your farmers market kind of, give this feeling of community within the community? How would you like to close it to the whole community?

Yeah, so we actually did a training, bargaining in good faith, or Bargaining for the Common Good training run through Georgetown. And that training's really great because it talks about how we can utilize our contracts in order to not just improve our working conditions, but improve the community as a whole. Because this contract shouldn't be seen as an isolated thing, you know, we're all part of the working class and we're all working together for our collective liberation, for our collective safety and human rights. So I think a lot of the things that we're asking for will improve the community at whole. One example is we're asking for water to be able to hydrate our community when they come. We run Monroe Street Farmers Market, and at that market, a woman actually collapsed of heat exhaustion because she wasn't properly hydrating. And one of the things we're asking for is access to clean drinking water for all the folks who come to the farmers markets, not just the market managers, but all of the customers themselves.

Yeah, it seems like an easy lift, and something that we've implemented at a bigger market like DuPont where people pass out from heat stroke every year. Yeah, we're working for that.

We're also asking for gender-based violence and harassment training, which will not just help our staff, but will also make the markets an even safer space to be. Because if all the staff there and all the vendors are trained on how to have a respectful environment, you know, these are front-facing customer service positions where you're interacting with the whole community, like no person's an island, we're all interacting. So if we train a bunch of people with the skills they need to be respectful to each other, to show people basic respect, and also training them in anti-racism. And we're giving them these tools. It's just going to ripple throughout the entire community.

Yeah, it's very important for market staff, market managers, to be trained in this sort of thing. We try to curate the vibes of the market.

Yeah.

Just make everyone feel like they belong there, make everyone coming feel like they have the same dignity as everyone else, so that no one feels any sort of way about coming up to our tent using our food incentive programs. It shouldn't be a second thought for someone to do that. And by curating these vibes at the market and making sure that the vendors know that they're safe, that the people coming know that they're safe, and the market managers there know that they're safe, everyone's going to have a great time in the market.

Yeah.

And is there anything that you guys want to touch on that I haven't asked you?

I think one thing I wanted to talk about is how much the folks who run the farmers market, the market managers, how much we do for the community. Because I don't think it's truly understood how hard we work. We aren't just sitting at a tent distributing our incentives programs. We are the ones who come at seven A.M. No matter the temperature, my toes are freezing off, we are the ones who pick the vendors. We're the ones who literally administer first aid when a vendor got stung by a bee—I put on gloves, I used the first aid kit, yeah, I took the bee stinger out. We call 911 when, you know, an auntie has a heat stroke at the market and collapses.

When someone has a mental health crisis.

Someone has a mental health crisis.

There's a fight at the market.

There's a fight at the market. We de-escalate fights.

Yeah, there's a lot of de-escalation depending on what market you're at.

There's so much work to be done at the markets and we have created such deep and respectful relationships with each of these vendors, producers, farmers, and this isn't a job that is replaceable like that. We have like so much institutional knowledge and know-how and I think that it's important that people that, you know, we are paid according to how much experience—and the deep love we have for the markets. We should be compensated fairly for that. So that way, our only job has to be the farmer's market. We don't have to pick up odd jobs during the year or work at a restaurant in the service industry to supplement that. I wish I could have stayed full-time at the farmer's markets but I couldn't afford rent. Like I want to make jobs where people feel supported and loved and they have insurance and they can just run the farmers market full-time because I wish I could have kept doing that but instead I had to find a different salary job and just run the farmers market every Saturday.

Yeah, yeah, there's no such thing as unskilled labor. There's no such thing as an in-between job here.

Yeah.

So, yeah, hopefully we're moving towards that in our bargaining.

And we care about food justice. We care about the mission of the organization, and we're excited about bargaining because we know that the values of Fresh Farm will hopefully align with the equity that we're pushing so hard for on behalf of UCFW, on behalf of our bargaining unit, to have a really good contract for these great jobs.

Well, thank you so much for all that you do, and thank you for your time.

Thank you.