A Bright Orange Letter

“Urge your friends not to buy grapes. (…) Get together with friends and visit every chain-store manager in your neighborhood and tell them you won’t shop there until they remove the grapes.” – These were the words that “friends” of the United Farm Workers (UFW) received in a bright orange letter in the final weeks of 1968. The letter was not an isolated affair, or one-off demands of a fringe anti-grape lobby. Between the years of 1965 and 1970, there were large-scale protests, a hunger strike, and a 280-mile-long march—all about grapes.

The Idea of Relational Consumption

While the fruit has since lost its ability to polarize communities, in their campaign against the grape industry, the UFW made implicit claims about consumers and laborers that may still hold value today. The union made the case for a relational understanding of consumption—one that implies that consumers hold special obligations to the laborers upon whom they rely.

The Delano Grape Strike

The Delano Grape Strike and its associated consumer boycott that started in Delano, CA was sparked by discontent first felt far before 1965. In the 1950s, the United States government implemented the Bracero Program, an agreement with Mexico that allowed Mexican men to legally cross the border for agricultural work. The program was exploitative of the temporary Mexican workers and also detrimental to the interests of U.S. workers in Central and Southern California.

When the Bracero Program ended in 1964, local union organizers saw an opportunity to negotiate with growers to increase the wages of their workers. The Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee and the National Farm Workers Association, two groups that eventually merged to form the UFW, demanded higher wages, better working conditions, and union recognition from the vineyard owners who employed them. While the strike and boycott were initially limited to 10 vineyards in Delano, by January of 1968 the action spread to include all non-union table and wine grape products across California.

The UFW Christmas Letter

The letter quoted in the opening sentences of this article was circulated just before the UFW’s nationwide push for a near-total boycott of grapes. Although the exact writers of the letter are unclear, the recipients were Los Angeles residents who supported the United Farm Workers’ organizing efforts.

The letter demonstrates a keen awareness of the importance of consumer attention. From its vivid hue to its Christmas-themed political cartoon, the letter almost demands to be read. One can almost imagine the paper being distributed not as a sheet, but as a folded pamphlet of sorts. The reader would be immediately confronted with the world-weary Santa and the plea to not buy grapes, before unfolding the paper to read the UFW’s lengthier entreaty.

Redirecting Consumer Attention

After capturing the reader’s attention, the letter asks recipients to shift their focus towards the farm workers on strike: “This is a season when men pay special attention to the needs of their brothers. Please remember the Farm Worker, who harvests your food.” This clause implicitly supports this claim on the recipient’s attention – readers ought to attend to the interests of farm workers because they harvest the reader’s food. The reader’s obligation is justified not by an appeal to rectify unjust social conditions or to uplift oppressed populations, but rather by an appeal to support the workers who enable their very existence. This difference becomes clear in examining common contemporary consumer action. In his paper “Is Ethical Consumerism an Impermissible Form of Vigilantism?”, philosopher Waheed Hussain draws distinctions between three different types of ethical consumerism, according to their varied motivations: clean hands ethical consumerism, unmediated ethical consumerism, and social change ethical consumerism.

Three Types of Consumerism

Hussain argues that clean hands ethical consumerism is motivated by a desire to avoid contributing to the unjust or immoral practices involved in producing certain commercial goods. Consumers who refrain from purchasing animal products because they do not wish to be implicated in animal suffering engage in this type of ethical consumerism.

By contrast, unmediated ethical consumerism is motivated by a desire to personally advance a non-economic concern. Consumers who refrain from purchasing disposable bags because they wish to reduce the number of plastic bags in use engage in this form of ethical consumerism.

Social change ethical consumerism is motivated by a desire to create economic incentives for other parties to behave in ways that advance a non-economic concern. This category includes consumers who boycott fast fashion companies because they wish to incentivize better environmental and labor standards in the clothing industry.

Consumer Typology, Applied

The same action can fall into more than one category of ethical consumerism, depending on the internal motivation of the consumer who took that action. An example is the action of refraining from purchasing non-union grapes: The clean hands ethical consumer might boycott grapes to absolve themselves of any culpability attached to buying non-union products. The unmediated ethical consumer might boycott grapes to reduce the profit gained by anti-union vineyard owners. The social change ethical consumer might boycott grapes to create economic incentives for vineyard owners to work with unions.

The UFW’s Distinction

The letter from the UFW is importantly different from all these stances. The motivation implied by the letter stems not from any general beliefs about the proper interaction between farmworkers and growers, but rather by the reliance of these consumers on farmworkers. The letter seems to prompt readers to recognize that consumers and laborers share a sort of kinship – a mutual reliance that generates specific obligations.

The End of the Strike

Over 17 million American and Canadian consumers participated in the Delano boycott, leading to a 33% percent decrease in grape shipments throughout North America. In December 1970, 150 grape growers signed contracts with the UFW, which had grown to represent 50,000 farmworkers in California. Although later years would bring more challenges to the bargaining power of farmworkers, the Delano Grape Strike remains a historically valuable example of coalition-building between laborers and consumers.