Police pester pickle protest

The advent of St. Patrick's Day not only brought some proud Irish folk with it, but a cause for and a call to action as well.

On that day, about 30 students, 15 speakers and fellow activists from the surrounding community gathered on a corner of Tappan Square to begin a protest against the Mount Olive Pickle Company. The protests cite evidence that the company treats workers in unfair and inhuman ways.

The protest began with a rally led by several speakers such as Jerry Gordon, who is the president of the Ohio State Labor Party, and the Reverend Steve Hammond from the local First Baptist Church. After this brief rally, the protesters marched down to Missler's grocery store, because this local store sells Mount Olive Pickles.

The group passed around petitions to urge Missler's to stop selling this brand of pickle until the boycott was over, and fliers to try and inform people of the atrocities that have been going on in relation to these migrant workers.

According to senior Sara Marcus, who helped organize the event, the protest met with police confrontation. The protesters, who began their protest at the front of Missler's, were pushed back to the street by the police and then totally off the property, told their protest was illegal.

The protest was not just about pickles, as many people mistakenly believed. The group was simply trying to point out the unfair conditions of this one known pickle company, whose workers do not have an organized union.

The protest was organized by the Farm Labor Support Committee of the Student Labor Action Coalition. They became interested in the protest when Baldemar Velasquez, the president of the Farm Labor Organization Committee came to Oberlin to give a lecture about the issue of unfair labor conditions for these migrant workers.

In preparation for their protest, the organizers received boycott training from Jack Kilroy of the Grassroots Leadership Development program.

Sophomore Brendan Cooney wants people to realize that this pickle protest is not some invention of Oberlin students, but a national organization; and a strategically planned effort to stop the injustices of the pickle company. The campaign was made public this year March 17.

Despite the protesters' efforts, Mount Olive Pickles continues to assert that it is not their place to bargain a contract for the farm workers. They assert that the workers are independent contractors.

Participants in the rally and protest were satisfied with the efforts. The protest lasted about two hours, including the rally and march/protest at Missler's. Contrary to popular belief, they did not dress up in pickle costumes, but they did construct a large papier-mâché pickle to get their point across. Sophomore Laurel Paget-Seekins said that she thought the rally went well and a lot of community members reacted positively.

Sophomore Justin Sifford-Angotti thinks that the protest and rally went well in the way of making this issue known to the public, reflected by the amount of petition signatures they received, and the general interest shown by customers of the grocery store. However, he feels that the message was a bit misconstrued because people started thinking that the protest was against pickles, or pickle companies as a whole.

All in all, if the protest did not have any immediate effects, it surely raised community awareness of this issue. Missler's has not yet stopped selling Mount Olive Pickles, however. Manager Ronald Garrison feels that it is not the store's responsibility to make this issue known to the public. He feels that it is up to the students to make it known to consumers, and that the group was wrong in boycotting the store.

Evidently, the group did give Missler's a fair warning of their actions. The store owner could not be reached for comment.