Meat Cutters Union for support, but the union could promise only to make the boycott an issue in future negotiations with Canadian markets. Union organizers experienced far greater success appealing to Toronto consumers, who showed much sympathy for the farm workers’ struggle and responded favorably to Toronto media coverage of the boycott. Consumers tended to show greater support for the boycott in locations where chain stores rather than independents dominated the grocery market landscape. Toronto was one such place, with more than 85 percent of food sales concentrated in four stores: A&P, Loblaw’s, Dominion, and Steinberg’s. Unfortunately for Ganz and the boycotters, Canada also maintained laws against picketing in store parking lots, a lesson they learned when police arrested the president of the Canadian Labor Council for trespassing when he attended a public rally for the UFW in front of one of the chains. The law forced Ganz to make a decision: either engage in civil disobedience in an attempt to change the law, as he had done in Mississippi several times, or pursue a different approach. Based on his experience in the civil rights movement, Ganz understood that the former often took many years to achieve results. Changing the law was not the primary goal; applying economic pressure in the service of the farm workers and achieving victory in the fields of California were. Consequently, Ganz had to devise an approach that did not squander the goodwill of the public while avoiding becoming embroiled in a legal battle on foreign soil.
Ganz adapted to local conditions through a combination of diplomacy and creative protests that played on public sympathies. Rather than approach the most obstinate storeowner first, he made a private appeal to Sam Steinberg, an owner who had a reputation for being fair with his employees and had already stated his support for the grape strike. Ganz reminded Steinberg of upcoming contract negotiations with the Amalgamated Meat Cutters Union, whose president had expressed his displeasure at handling scab grapes from California. Deciding to observe the boycott, Ganz argued, would give Steinberg an advantage in dealing with the union representing his workers and competing with other markets that showed no signs of complying with the boycott. To convince Steinberg of public opinion in support of the UFW, the local boycott committee directed Ontario residents to send letters or visit the market personally to express their intentions not to shop at his store as long as he continued to sell grapes.
Unlike his competitors, Steinberg and his legal advisor, Irving Levine, showed respect for the union. During the negotiations, Steinberg turned to Levine for guidance. Levine had recently returned from a trip to California to inspect the fields for himself and reported, “Conditions are feudal.” According to Brown, this information moved Steinberg: “He [told] us, ‘We are not going to handle grapes anymore. In fact, we’re going to put color signs of the fields up at our empty grape bins to explain to our customers why we’re supporting the grape boycott.’”44
Other stores, however, resisted such appeals. Dominion, the largest of the Canadian chains, openly flaunted its disdain for the boycott by refusing to meet with Ganz while defending customers’ “freedom to choose” whether to buy grapes. In response, the boycott committee bypassed the parking lots for the interior of the stores. Once inside, boycotters engaged in “creative nonviolence” by filling their basket, wheeling it to the front of the store, then leaving without making a purchase. The stunt upset store managers who had to assign workers to reshelve merchandise.
In another action reminiscent of the theatrical protests by the emerging Youth International Party, or Yippies, boycotters carried helium-filled balloons into the store with the message “Don’t Eat Grapes” written on them, and distributed them to children while letting others float to the ceiling. When managers ordered employees to pop the balloons, confetti carrying pro-UFW messages rained down upon the store, causing another mess and infuriating store managers. In response to the protests, Dominion executives questioned the legality of such actions and publicly labeled Ganz and his merry group of pranksters “union goons.” The press, which had been called in anticipation of the theatrics, covered the balloon incident in a sympathetic tone that swayed public opinion toward the union. On one Toronto radio broadcast, a local deejay composed and delivered the following poem:
If all the goons popped toy balloons
And sprayed us with confetti
Then cops and crooks would use dirty looks
And guns that shoot spaghetti.45
Soon after that broadcast, Dominion retracted its denunciation of the boycotters and agreed to suspend the sale of California grapes indefinitely.
Volunteers celebrated such victories but also valued the day-to-day excitement of building a movement within a given city. Nick Jones, for example, recalled the difficulty of adapting to the cold and rainy Northwest but found it manageable because of the relationships he developed in Portland. “We conceived it as one big committee and we took probably about 25 or 30, maybe as many as 50 people and really worked with them for months, bringing them into committee meetings and movies … working with them to get the boycott work done.” Picket line volunteers eschewed intimidation and assumed most consumers possessed a moral responsibility critical to the success of any consumer activism. This approach earned the respect of their adopted community and drew in many new recruits to the campaign. “We got together regularly and did pot lucks,” recalled Jones. “We became a pretty tight community.” The cramped quarters of many houses meant that people often slept on floors and clashed with one another, although the spirit of camaraderie in the early days of the boycott shaped the culture of most boycott houses. Service on the front lines of the boycott best represented what many in the union called “missionary work,” seemingly impossible tasks that, when accomplished, drew people closer to one another.46
The work of boycott volunteers in cities also paid dividends in shoring up political support for the Migrant Ministry among Protestants at a time when it drew fire for supporting the UFW. Although Chavez drew on Catholic symbols and rituals to appeal to a mostly Catholic workforce, it was Hartmire and Drake, Protestant ministers, who were the first religious leaders to get behind the movement. When members of the rural denominations discovered that their donations had been funding the Migrant Ministry’s activism, many of them passed a resolution demanding that the Ecumenical Ministry of the Protestant Churches terminate Hartmire’s budget. The conflict initiated a “two-year war” among Protestant churches in California as to the fate of the organization. “The rural churches wanted us gone, out, or dead,” Hartmire remembered. “Fortunately for us, the urban churches’ membership outnumbered the rural membership.” The boycott played a significant role in educating urban Protestants about the stakes of the farm workers’ struggle and convinced many urban congregants to encourage their ministers to fight for the preservation of the Migrant Ministry. The moral dimensions of the battle also persuaded many urban Protestants to contribute time and money to the boycott.47
As the examples of New York City, Los Angeles, Portland, and Toronto illustrate, boycott strategies varied from city to city, but overall the boycott seemed to be working. By mid-1968, under the auspices of Jerry and Juanita Brown, the UFW began to chart the progress of boycott houses by the changes in the quantity of car lot shipments to major North American cities. In New York City, for example, shippers delivered 801 fewer car lots than they had in 1967; in Chicago and Boston, the totals were down by 360 and 327, respectively. Although these numbers signaled success and overall shipments declined by 2,254 car lots in North America, the Browns also noticed increases in nontraditional cities: Miami was up 57 car lots; Atlanta up 16; Houston 36; Denver 12, Kansas City 11; Fort Worth 7. These numbers revealed the growers’ strategy of circumventing the boycott by marketing their table grapes to new markets, particularly in the South, West, and Midwest. In addition, although the UFW had established a presence in Canada, 1968 market reports suggested that shippers had redirected a number of car lots north of the border: Montreal was up 57 car lots, whereas Toronto climbed by 44.48 These were the trends that compelled Brown to challenge the union leadership to make a decision: either continue to treat the boycott as a supplement to the strike or place greater emphasis on it by embracing an approach that gave them a greater chance for victory.
