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NEWS & LETTERS, DECEMBER 2003Grocery worker solidarityOakland, Cal.--In solidarity with the 70,000 grocery workers on strike in southern California, a few hundred supporters came out for a very lively march here on Saturday, Nov. 22. We marched down College Avenue to the Safeway store at 51st Street. When we got to the store the crowd grew bigger, and we massed in front of the doors, blocking the foot traffic in and out of the store, and blocking the car traffic through the parking lot, chanting, "Boycott Safeway, boycott Safeway!" Everyone got into making a lot of noise and really letting Safeway know how seriously folks take this strike. I think we especially enjoyed it in front of the store because while we didn’t have a permit to march and had to stay on the sidewalk going there, once there the police couldn’t do anything about us taking over the place for a while. Two strikers, a man and a woman, had come up to the Bay Area to participate in the march, help with our solidarity movement up here, and speak to the crowd. Union activists from different industries participated, a lot of anti-war youth came out for it, and some grocery workers from the area. The strikers pointed out how crucial this strike--which started Oct. 11 at Vons and Oct. 12 at Safeway, Ralph's and Albertsons--is for grocery workers across the entire country. You just can’t say it’s just about these three companies, nor even just about California. Earlier in the week we spoke to a woman from Ralph's who said she views the strike "more like a revolution than a strike" because of how important it is. She added, "Why do you think more than 95% voted to strike? Because by our calculations a family of four will be paying $450 a month in a few years for healthcare with what they were offering. They want to Wal-Martify the whole grocery industry. This is one of the last few places someone without a lot of education, or someone who hasn’t been corrupted, can make $17 an hour. It really is about Americans losing the grocery industry to Wal-Mart and others who pay pathetic wages and saddle you with this healthcare crisis." --Mitch Weerth |
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