Farm Hero, Rick Friday, Fired for Speaking Truth to Power
Meet Rick Friday, a cartoonist who was just fired for highlighting the fact that in 2015, the CEOs of Monsanto, Dupont Pioneer, and John Deere made more money than 2,129 Iowa farmers
According to KCCI, Des Moines, Iowa, “Rick Friday has been giving farmers a voice and a laugh every Friday for two decades through his cartoons in Farm News.” But after publishing a popular cartoon last week, he was fired, for calling attention to how much the CEOs of Monsanto and Dupont are paid.
As he shared on his Facebook wall,
“Again, I fall hard in the best interest of large corporations. I am no longer the Editorial Cartoonist for Farm News due to the attached cartoon which was published yesterday. Apparently a large company affiliated with one of the corporations mentioned in the cartoon was insulted and cancelled their advertisement with the paper, thus, resulting in the reprimand of my editor and cancellation of It’s Friday cartoons after 21 years of service and over 1090 published cartoons to over 24,000 households per week in 33 counties of Iowa.
I did my research and only submitted the facts in my cartoon.
That’s okay, hopefully my children and my grandchildren will see that this last cartoon published by Farm News out of Fort Dodge, Iowa, will shine light on how fragile our rights to free speech and free press really are in the country.”
He only submitted facts in his cartoon. But apparently, even facts aren’t allowed in the free press, and Rick was fired. According to KCCI, Friday received an email from his editor at Farm New cutting off their relationship a day after the cartoon was published.
If these companies didn’t want anyone to see this message, they sure chose the wrong way to handle this.
We think Rick Friday is a hero. Please share so that others can see his story and scoop up this amazing talent.
