UFW Petition

Five Harvard students, together with a United Farm Workers (UFW) protest coordinator, last night presented the management of the Fresh Pond Stop and Shop supermarket with a petition signed by 240 Harvard students requesting that the store stop selling Red Coach brand lettuce.

The students, members of Harvard's Friends of the United Farm Workers organization, presented the petition as part of a continuing campaign of pickets and protests to persuade Stop and Shop Companies Inc. to join the UFW boycott against Red Coach lettuce, which is grown by a company that does not have a contract with the UFW.

John Panasuk, Stop and Shop's produce manager, accepted the petition, saying, "I'm not responsible for this thing. They tell me what to do--I want to keep my job, so I do it." He said Red Coach is not the only brand of lettuce Stop and Shop sells and added that his superiors told him last week he had "nothing to worry about," as long as he offers customers a choice.

"We're asking you to consider your responsibility to the workers in California who are suffering to put the lettuce in this store," Nicholas Fish told a Panasuk.