Victory in the Vineyards

Wearing rosaries and carrying a sequined banner that pictured the Virgin of Guadalupe, along with crudely lettered union slogans, 100 Mexican-American grape pickers last week finished a monthlong, 300-mile march of penance and protest through California's Central Valley from Delano to Sacramento. Marching with them were Roman Catholic priests and nuns and Protestant ministers, and the mood of the demonstrators was triumphant. For shortly before the protesters reached the state capital, they had won recognition of their embryonic union, the National Farm Workers Association, from Schenley Industries Inc., which owns about 2,400 acres of vineyards in the Delano area.

More than anything else, this first breakthrough in the bitter fight between growers and workers, who have been on strike for recognition since last September, had been achieved by the massive support given to the strikers by California's churches. "It is the single most important thing that has helped us," says Cesar Chavez, organizer of the union.

A Moral Issue. When the strike began, Chavez could count on the sympathy of only a few churchmen, mostly the radical young Protestants of the California Migrant Ministry. Gradually, more influential Christian leaders came to see in the strike a moral issue: the need to end the grapes-of-wrath poverty of the farm workers.

The workers' demand for recognition of their right to organize was explicitly endorsed in a statement signed by California's eight Roman Catholic bishops, including James Francis Cardinal McIntyre of Los Angeles and Archbishop Joseph McGucken of San Francisco. Citing papal encyclicals and documents of the Second Vatican Council, the bishops warned that "unless farm workers are given a chance to organize, they are going to become the wards of the state." Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike of San Francisco urged his congregants to join the march in sympathy. The National Council of Churches formally endorsed the strike in a statement written by Dr. Arthur S. Flemming, the first vice president of the council and president of the University of Oregon. McGucken sent three official representatives to join the march, while Pike's diocesan Intergroup Relations Committee sponsored a collection of food, clothing and money for the strikers. In a number of U.S. cities, clergymen urged their laymen to boycott Schenley products.

The Servant Church. Hierarchical enthusiasm for the strike has been a cross for the ministers and priests of Delano, who have tried to stay neutral between the growers and vineyard workers--and have been under considerable pressure to stay neutral on the growers' side. After Archbishop McGucken endorsed the march, one vineyard spokesman warned that "the church leaders had better start looking for other financial means to carry out their radical theories." But now that Schenley has agreed to accept the union, most of the vineyards are expected to follow suit. Delano's largest grower, Di Giorgio Fruit Corp., has already agreed to let its workers vote on whether they wanted a union or not. (Two other unions besides Chavez's Farm Workers Association are trying to organize the vineyards.)

Why had the churches endorsed this particular strike with the same kind of zeal they gave to Selma? One reason, possibly, was guilt: until recently, the churches had largely ignored both the spiritual and material welfare of California's farm workers. Another reason, certainly, was the growing theological conviction of today's servant church that Christianity must take the lead in supporting secular causes that promote justice and equality.

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