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.”
Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.
Our digital archives are a work in progress. Let us know if corrections need to be made.
Annual & Monthly subscriptions available.
- Print & Digital Issues of CT magazine
- Complete access to every article on ChristianityToday.com
- Unlimited access to 65+ years of CT’s online archives
- Member-only special issues
- Learn more
More from this Issue
Read These Next
- From the MagazineMy Dreams Had Come True. But the Panic Attacks Remained.How I discovered God’s peace and found relief from debilitating anxiety.Português
- Editor's PickN.T. Wright: What Jesus Would Say to the ‘Empire’ TodayHow Jesus and the Powers, cowritten with Michael F. Bird, calls Christians into the political sphere.