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PAGE 3 - June 7,1973
Another “Grapes of Wrath” Summer in the Making
BY JERRY FILTEAU
(NC News Service)
Another “grape war” is shaping up
for the summer in 1973.
As he did in 1968, Cesar Chavez, the
head of the United Farmer Workers
Union (UFWU), has called for a
nationwide boycott of table grapes that
are not picked by UFWU workers.
He has spoken of the boycott at
meetings and press conferences around
the country since a number of growers
in the Coachella Valley of California,
signed what Chavez described as
“sweetheart” contracts with the
Teamsters union in an effort to oust the
UFWU.
The UFWU immediately called for a
strike against the Teamster-signed
growers. It has not made a formal
statement calling for a nation wide
boycott yet, but Father John Banks,
spokesman for the Coachella strike
committee said, “As far as we’re
concerned, the boycott is on.”
But the scenario for this year’s battle
is different from that of five years ago.
On the plus side for the UFWU are
several factors:
-- The UFWU, a member of the
AFL-CIO, has received a $1.6-million
strike fund from the parent
organization, giving it an economic
punch which it never had in its previous
efforts.
— It has a nationwide network of
local offices with organizing
experiences, which it did not have five
years ago.
-- It has the wide support
of numerous religious organizations and
groups, support that has grown and
solidified over the past five years.
- It has the advantage of a widely
increased grass-roots awareness of the
UFWU.
On the other hand, several
complicating factors now make it more
difficult to organize an effective
boycott:
-- In 1968 the issue was union against
non-union. With the Teamsters in the
picture, the issue of the surface looks
like a simple union-against-union
jurisdictional dispute.
-- In 1968, when no growers were
signed up with the UFWU, there was no
question of selective boycotting. Now
consumers who wish to buy UFWU
grapes and boycott others are faced
with the problem of discovering from
reluctant grocery store personnel
whether the grapes sitting on the
produce counter are UFWU grapes.
Because the Teamsters are
portraying the issue as a jurisdictional
conflict, the boycott cannot count on
the almost automatic support of
pro-unionists.
But Chavez unionists feel confident
that they will win their new battle.
“The people will boycott now, and they
will boycott with a vengeance, because
they know what’s going on,” said
Father Banks.
He said that the 1968-70 table grape
boycott was “not just an economic
pressure, it was a pedagogy. People are
more informed about the farm labor
issue.”
The harvest begins in early June in
the Coachella Valley.
It starts a co»ple of weeks later in
the Arvin-Lamont area, where the
growers’ contracts are with the
Teamster, then in the Delano area,
where UFWU contracts are in effect
until July 29, and finally in the
Lodi-Fresno area, where most of the
UFWU contracts have expired and
growers have not entered into new
contracts with either the UFWU or the
Teamsters.
Naturally, the growers with later
harvests are watching the Coachella
strike very carefully. If the Coachella
growers cannot harvest their grapes or
sell them, it may convince the upstate
growers to sign with the UFWU.
Across the country local UFWU units
are gearing up for boycotts and picket
efforts, aimed primarily at the nation’s
two largest supermarket chains, A & P
and Safeway. Supporting them in their
efforts will be a number of religious and
interfaith groups.
Father Banks pointed out that
California’s bishops have issued a
statement supporting the UFWU strike.
He also pointed out that the Northern
California Ecumenical Council
requested free union elections among
the workers, an action the UFWU has
consistently supported and the
Teamsters have rejected.
The Board of Rabbis of Southern
California, in an open letter to William
Mitchell, president of the Safeway chain
in California, asked Safeway stores not
to buy any lettuce or table grapes that
are not picked by UFWU labor.
“With that kind of support in
California, we’ll unquestionably have
ecumenical support across the country,”
Father Banks said.
The Social Development Committee
of the U.S. Catholic Conference (USCC)
has discussed supporting the UFWU in
the conflict and “a statement is being
contemplated,” said Msgr. Harrold
Murray, USCC secretary for social
development and world peace.
And the growing numbers of local
and statewide religious groups who have
been endorsing the UFWU lettuce
boycott are beginning to add table
grapes to their boycott statements.
Father Banks said he did not expect
the boycott to hurt the growers who
renew their UFWU contracts. He
pointed out that when the
Lionel-Steinberg company signed with
the UFWU in 1970 before the end of
the boycott their grapes brought
premium rates “because they were
UFWU.”
“We’re putting pressure on the stores
and on the brokers with the threat of
boycotts and pickets,” he said.
ARCHBISHOP SHEEN
Denial of Guilt “Sign of Times
9?
TORONTO (NC) - One of the most
distressing signs of contemporary times
is the denial of guilt, Archbishop Fulton
J. Sheen said here.
“Guilt has practically disappeared
from our culture,” he told the Thomas
More Lawyers’ Guild, an association of
Catholic lawyers.
The 78-year-old archbishop, a former
television personality who once had a
North American viewing audience of
about 30 million, said that psychology,
sociology and legalities are sweeping
guilt away.
He said psychology tells people
“we’re no longer penitents, but
patients,” and sociology says that the
environment, not the person, is
responsible for behavior.
To explain how legalities are being
used to excuse moral guilt, the
archbishop told of a union-management
battle over a cashier caught taking
money from the cash register.
For three months, he said, the union
fought the dismissal of the cashier on
the grounds that management did not
tell her it was wrong to steal. Finally, to
avert a strike, management agreed to
reinstate the cashier and pay her three
months’ back pay.
But now she knows it’s wrong to
steal, Archbishop Sheen said.
Twenty to 30 years ago, Archbishop
Sheen said, the North American
atmosphere was predominately
Christian. A person could walk the
streets of New York City, he said,
honesty was accepted, and the profit
motive was not the only consideration
of business.
It was a time, the archbishop said,
“when it was easy to be good, just.” But
today, Christians must stand up and be
counted, he said.
“It is very easy to flow with the
current. Dead bodies flow downstream.
It takes live people to resist the
current.”
“It’s all happened before,” he said.
The world, he charged, is being divided
into groups of love and hate and two
symbols of this division are emerging:
-The clenched fist-the sign of hate
and violence;
--The hands folded in
prayer -- symbolizing love and
reconciliation.
“It’s great to be alive,” he said. “We
live in days that matter.”
Archbishop Sheen said a decisive
moment in contemporary history was
the 1968 publication of Humanae Vitae,
Pope Paul’s encyclical reaffirming the
Church’s opposition to artificial birth
control.
He said this document, an
affirmation of life and love, was
primarily discussed from moral and
theological points of view.
“In an erotic age, this was a
document of life. It divided people. It
was a turning point.”
The archbishop said that even though
Christianity is going through a time of
great crisis, and the Christian ethic is
being increasingly discarded, he is not
discouraged, but filled with hope.
He predicted that a creative minority
of Christians will survive whose faith in
God and love of neighbor will be
stronger than the hate and violence in
which the world is immersed.
Pope Urges World to Save
Africa’s Starving People
VATICAN CITY (NC) - Pope Paul
VI urged the world to save hundreds of
thousands of people in Africa mainly
nomadic herders of the vast Savannahs
below the Sahara Desert, who face
starvation in the wake of devastating
drought.
Calling the African drought “a
calamity of immense proportions,” the
Pope said he had been “stormed with
telegrams” soliciting help for those who
live in Africa’s so-called Sahelian zone.
These peoples, he told Sunday
crowds in St. Peter’s Square May 27,
“are dying of thirst, along with their
only resource, their animals, because of
an obstinate and burning drought.”
ABANDONED IN SAIGON -
A Vietnamese child, reportedly
fathered by a U.S. serviceman and
abandoned by his mother, looks
up forlornly from the floor of a
Buddhist pagoda in Saigon.
Catholic and Buddhist groups have
been called on to take care of
many such children, one more
legacy of a tragic war. (NC Photo)
He praised nations and international
organizations for their work in the
drought-stricken lands, and singled out
the U.S. Catholic Relief Services.
Meanwhile, UN secretary general
Kurt Waldheim put final responsibility
for the UN’s multi-agency struggle
against the Sahelian drought into the
hands of the UN Food and Agricultural
Organizations (FAO) which has its
headquarters in Rome.
The director-general of FAO Dr.
Addeke Boerma, has been trying to alert
the world to the lethal drought in Africa
since early spring.
In May, Boerma sent out telegrams
to potential donor nations asking for
airlifts and $15 million to help six
drought-stricken countries in the
Sahelian zone of Africa: Mauretania,
Senegal, Mali, Upper Volta, Niger, and
Chad. The response was disappointing,
according to well-informed sources
within FAO.
Nonetheless, FAO and the UN World
Food Programs, have succeeded in
mastering the approximately
half-million tons of food deemed
necessary to stave off starvation in the
Sahelian zone.
FAO officials estimate that about
180,000 tons have already arrived in
Africa, and more than 300,000 tons are
on their way.
Problems of transport, however, are
immense. The ports are crowded now
and were hardly adequate to begin with
(Maurentania’s only port has a single
wharf, distances are tremendous (the
Sahelian zone is about 2,000 miles long
from the Atlantic to the Sudan), and
the rains are due to set in about
mid-June, isolating many areas.
Airlifts are believed in FAO circles to
be the only hope. In fact, the drought
has driven a big part of the nomadic
population to the cities and towns,
which can be reached either directly by
airlift or by a combination of airlift and
tricking over paved roads.
Missioners and technicians passing
through Rome from the Sahelian zone
report that hospital stations are treating
starved or dehydrated children from the
outlands.
FAO officials report children and old
people have been left to die, in Mali
especially.
It is estimated that one-third of the
Sahelian zone’s 30 million inhabitants
are exposed to serious peril from the
drought in the short-term, that is,
during 1973. But the long-term effects
are expected to be just as serious:
-Already the herds that were the
principal support of most of the
Sahelian nomads have been decimated.
At most FAO officials hope to save
perhaps one out of ten for breeding. Yet
those that survive will be disease-prone.
-Farmers and their families have
eaten the grain they would have planted
as seed for next season’s crop.
-Herdsmen, their families and their
animals have moved south into the
farming lands of other tribes.
Resentment is already ripe. Tribal
warfare is an ever-present possibility.
FAO appears to be the only body in
the world capable of coping with such
an emergency and its effects.
FAO’s apparently slow start-it sent
up the danger flags last October-is
explained by the political factor. It
must be invited by the various national
governments to bring aid. In some cases
it had to alert the governments to
alarming situations within their own
vast national borders and suggest that it
be invited to help.
Despite FAO’s relative lack of
experience in rushing vast amounts of
food to disaster areas, it is the only
body possessing the know-how and the
corps of technicians who can get the
Sahelian economy working again. It has
the animal biologists, the water
engineers, the soil chemists, the seed
experts.
PRAYING FOR DAD -- Father George Beck of
Houston, Tex., greets Mrs. Joseph Kerwin and her
children Kristina (left), Joanna and Sharon, as they
arrive for Mass. The shy Kristina leans on her sisters for
comfort. The family prayed for Dr. Kerwin, science
pilot for the Skylab orbiting workshop. Life in the
space station will give clues to man’s endurance in
space. (NC Photo)
Church Shelters Tornado Victims
JONESBORO, Ark. (NC) - Blessed
Sacrament parish center which, with
other Catholic Church property here
escaped damage in killer tornado,
became a haven for refugees in the
hours following the storm.
The tornado claimed three lives and
injured more than 200 persons May 27.
Father Joseph N. Doyle, Blessed
Sacrament’s pastor, said his chruch and
the school together with Saint Bernard’s
Hospital and Holy Angel Convent,
mother house of the Olivetan
Benedictine Sisters, escaped damage.
Only two blocks away from Blessed
Sacrament tornado winds had
approached from the south leaving a
path of devastation with iosses
estimated by Arkansas officials at
between $25 and $40 million. Scores of
injured people were treated at St.
Bernard’s Hospital and as the initial
shock of the storm wore off, dozens of
men, women and children went to the
Blessed Sacrament where the Olivetan
nuns set up cots and prepared food.
Neighboring parishes were
immediately asked to provide help.
Father Earl J. Booth of Saint John’s
Parish of Engelberg drove 50 miles into
this shattered town with a cargo of
clothing collected by his parishioners.
The Catholic Youth Organization of
nearby Saint Paul Parish made radio
appeals for food and clothing and began
delivery of the collected supplies
immediately.
The following morning about 50
persons were at Blessed Sacrament for a
special thanksgiving Mass for the
twister’s relatively light toll of lives.
Later in the day as clean up work
began, Holy Angel Convent and the
church provided rescue workers with
food, which, Father Doyle said, will be
forthcoming as it is needed.
An official whose job is to render
federal assistance following natural
disasters, said the tornado here was the
worst he had seen in the 13 years he has
been assigned to the Southwestern
United States. President Nixon declared
Arkansas a disaster area.
HI