UFW grape boycott boosted as 3000 demonstrate in S.F

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Several thousand farm workers and supporters marched militantly through the Mission District of Sa HORNERS VITED 1-C0 On Saturday, Nov. 19, over 3000 Latinos, unionists, students and others marched through San Francisco to show their support for the United Farm Workers' national boycott of table grapes. They also protested he savage beating of the union's vice president, Dolores Huerta, by San Francisco police in mid-September.

The spirited demonstration was sponsored by the UFW, the San Francisco Labor Council, and the Mobilization for Peace, Jobs and Justice.

The marchers wound through the predominantly Latino Mission district. They were accompanied by Latino percussionists performing from a flatbed truck, by a marching band, and by an all-women percussion band, Sistah Boom. They stopped for brief rallies at two major intersections in the Latino and gay communities and at a Cala Foods store in the Mission. Before a change of ownership, Cala Foods had promised to stop carrying grapes, but now refuses to take them off their shelves.

The march ended in front of a large Safeway supermarket at the intersection of Church and Market streets, where there was a rally with speakers and music.

The speakers included Dolores Huerta; actor Martin Sheen; Sherry Chiesa, president, Hotel and Restaurant Employees, Local 2; Carlos Palomino, former world-welter weight champion; Jack Henning, president, California State AFL-CIO; Jimmy Herman, president, International Longshoremen's and Warehöusemen's Union; David Jennings, International Indian Treaty Council; and Baldemar Velasquez, president, Farm Labor Organizing Committee.

Grand jury white-wash

In addition to calling upon San Franciscans to support the boycott, speakers denounced the San Francisco grand jury's refusal to indict the police officers who beat Dolores Huerta almost to death. The incident occurred when Huerta was distributing leaflets at an anti-Bush demonstration; the police charged the crowd, clubbing demonstrators who could not disperse because they were surrounded by 16 SOCIALIST ACTIOI and other police and other demonstrators.

Huerta, who was struck repeatedly in the upper-back and kidney area, sustained three broken ribs and a ruptured spleen. She was hospitalized for over a week and, according to one doctor, almost died from internal bleeding.

In response to the outcry against police brutality that followed, the district attorney began a grand-jury investigation of the incident. The week before the demonstration, the grand jury ruled that there were no grounds for criminal charges and issued, instead of indictments, a report on crowdcontrol methods used by the police. The report contained a recommendation that police spy on protest groups.

"The attack on Dolores Huerta is being white-washed," said Jack Allen, spokesperson for Local 14 of the Service Employees International Union, at a UFW press conference. Other labor unions and civil rights groups have protested the grand jury's refusal to issue any indictments in the case and have denounced the grand jury's recommendations. Huerta responded to the cover-up with a $15 million-damages claim against the city of San Francisco.

Cesar Chavez was scheduled to speak at the Nov. 19 rally but was still too ill as a result of his 36-day fast this summer and a fall from his porch—in which he fractured an arm— early in November. Chavez fasted to draw attention to the five-year-old boycott of table grapes. Since his fast, according to UFW boycott organizer Dan Martin, the boycott has garnered a lot more support.

Boycott victories

The original boycott target areas-Boston, New York City, Detroit, Chicago, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Los Angeles-were chosen because they had the highest sales of table grapes in the country. Recently, Martin said, increasing support from other unions, from environmental and consumér groups, and from celebrities and local politicians has led the UFW to set up boycott offices in Austin, Texas; Toronto; Miami; Washington, D.C.; Baltimore; Philadelphia; and upstate New York.

In Chicago, New York, and the APES The composition of the demonstration reflected the coalition of the labor, peace and UFW sponsors.

Francisco Bay Area, according to Department of Agriculture figures, shipments of table grapes have dropped by 18 percent to 25 percent. This has been partially offset by a 22-percent increase in shipments to Los Angeles, where growers are forced to dump their grapes at a very low price-an average of three pounds for a dollar.

Red Apple Supermarkets, a New York City chain of 26 stores, has removed all table grapes from its shelves. And, as part of a week-long publicity blitz by the UFW, an additional 100 stores in New York will remove grapes from their shelves for the first week in December.

In New York and Boston, the City Councils have passed resolutions banning grapes from city institutions and urging citizens to join the boycott. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors will vote on a similar resolution Dec. 1.

Clearly there is widespread sentiment in support of the farm workers' struggle for better working conditions and higher wages. There is also deep concern about the effects of pesticides and other chemicals on our environment and on our health—as workers and as consumers.

Broadening boycott needed

The combination of the anti-intervention, labor, and community forces in the Mobilization for Peace, Jobs and Justice with the United Farm Workers and the San Francisco Labor Council "represents," in the words of Cesar Chavez, "the type of broad-based coalition crucial for the success of the grape boycott."

This powerful coalition was able to involve a large number of young Latinos and union activists in the leadership and logistical support for the demonstration. Monitors and fund-collectors were supplied by the UFW, Local 2 of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees union, community organizations, and the Alameda Central Labor Council. Latino activists declared that the march and rally had the largest participation and turnout from their community of any demonstration that has taken place in San Francisco.

The Mobilization has always strived to show the connections between the U.S. government's military intervention abroad and union-busting and cuts in social services in this country.

This demonstration, according to Carl Finamore, staff director of the Mobilization, facilitated making these connections because "it strengthened the ties between the labor movement, community groups, and the anti-intervention movements, providing the basis for mass-action protests against U.S. government policies here and abroad."

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