Five hundred supporters of the grape boycott—Catholics, Protestants, Jews, agnostics, and atheists—drank Paisano wine from gallon jugs during an ecumenical communion service in Washington, D. C., this month commemorating the fourth anniversary of the United Farm Workers’ strike in California table-grape vineyards.
“Oh Lord, grant that the business executives and the people who control the agribusiness may find the courage to do justice,” intoned the Rev. Richard McSorley of Georgetown University, leader of the service atop a subterranean Safeway store in the city’s gleaming new L’Enfant Plaza.
The supermarket chain has refused to remove the offending grapes from its shelves. A month earlier, eighteen persons (nine adults, including a priest and a nun) entered a Detroit store and, when the manager refused to remove grapes, walked out with their arms loaded with groceries and dumped them on the sidewalk. The Consumer Rights Service said the demonstrators called the unpaid-for food “reparations.”
While we pray for peace, we need moral clarity about this war.
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