GRAPE PICKETS IN DADE

FROM THE HARVESTER, MAY 1969

About 150 pickets marched in front of an A & P store on LeJuene Road in Coral Gables on a recent Saturday in support of the observance of “International Grape Boycott Day”* backed by the AFL-CIO United Farm Workers Organizing Committee.

The manager said he didn’t sell any grapes because “We haven’t had grapes in the store for two weeks.”

The manager didn’t say why he didn’t have any grapes to sell, but he did say the pickets helped business.

“People read about it in the paper and probably came over just to spite them,” he said.

This apparently was the only store picketed in Dade County.

What can the Dade County or other Florida grower do about such a boycott? Ignore it? This would be the same as a college president overlooking 50 to 60 militants in his office demanding to be paid for going to school.

A grower could call every friend he has – other growers first – and ask them to go to the store and buy a pound of grapes or tomatoes or peppers or sweet corn or whatever was being boycotted.

He could ask the friend to tell the store manager he’ll stop trading there if the store manager knuckles under to a few pickets and takes the item off the produce shelf.

To let the picket know that he’s not in an ivory tower fight, the friend could tell the picket, “Go jump in the lake,” or interesting variations thereof.

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*May 10, 1969, was declared International Grape Boycott Day. The shipment of table grapes was almost completely stopped to the cities of Boston, New York, Chicago, Detroit, Montreal and Toronto.