Delano Grape Stikes
Delano Grape Strike Readings
Image description: A poster with the heading “There’s blood on those grapes” is above a cluster of green grapes with a drop of blood on them. To the side, smaller text reads “Boycott non-UFW grapes, lettuce, and Gallo wine.” Their actions included picket lines, marches, and an international boycott on table grapes. In the spring of 1966 they began marching from Delano to Sacramento. The march began with seventy workers, and ended with 10,000 supporters. A global boycott of table grapes began in July,1968, during a summer that involved many struggles for freedom around the world. After five years of hard work, cooperation, and people around the world refusing to eat Delano grapes, they reached a contract agreement with grape growers. Eventually Larry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz left the UFW.
They felt Filipino voices were not being equally heard within the union. The California farmworkers movement was not simply a Mexican American movement or simply a Filipino American movement. It was both, and it owed its success to that fact.
The erasing of Filipinos within the telling of this history mirrors the way Asian American struggles for social justice have been erased from public knowledge. Asian Americans are stereotyped as complacent, silent workers, completely ignoring their histories of radical labor organizing. Efforts are being made to bring this history back to light.
Californians celebrate Larry Itliong Day on October 25, and California schools are required to teach about the important role Filipino workers had in the California farmworkers movement. Please, continue to learn about and tell this history, so it can become common knowledge.
