Stated clerk gets NCC to join Taco Bell boycott
The Layman Online, November 10, 2003
Clifton Kirkpatrick, the stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (USA), has coaxed his allies in the National Council of Churches to join the PCUSA’s boycott of Taco Bell.
“Any time a Christian community comes together and seeks to exercise economic justice in this way, it is because there is a very serious injustice that cannot be resolved in any other way,” said the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, one of leaders of the social-activist ecumenical body which held its annual assembly in Jackson, Miss., on Nov. 6-8.
Kirkpatrick introduced the resolution calling on the NCC to join a tomato-picker’s labor union in its opposition to Taco Bell’s use of hand-picked tomatoes because, they say, pickers are not paid enough money for their toil.
Also, the National Council of Churches voted in favor of a boycott against Mount Olive Pickle Co. in Mount Olive, N.C., another target of farm labor. Mount Olive’s former president, John Neal Walker, is a devout Presbyterian. Furthermore, the company has been recognized by the N.C. Department of Labor as a leader in improving conditions for migrant workers.
An editorial in the Winston-Salem Journal, which is not a conservative newspaper, says that the farm labor organization that has called for the boycott against Mount Olive has conducted a campaign that is “tinged with deception.”
Dr. James McChesney, a retired Presbyterian pastor and former moderator of the Presbyterian Synod of North Carolina, has questioned “the fairness, the wisdom and even the helpfulness of the boycott of Mount Olive Pickle Co.”
Neither Taco Bell, whose parent company is Yum! Brands, nor Mount Olive Pickle Co. hires pickers. Taco Bell purchases tomatoes from contractors and Mount Olive buys cucumbers from contract growers. But farm worker unions contend that both companies have the clout to force contractors to pay pickers more money.
At its meeting at the end of September, the PCUSA’s General Assembly Council reaffirmed its support of the Taco Bell boycott after receiving a critical letter from the session of Second Presbyterian Church in Staunton, Va. The letter, noting the session’s unanimous disagreement with the boycott, said, “More sessions than ours are fed up with paying for things we do not support … We are the ones out here carrying the water for the PCUSA. Please stop shooting more holes in our bucket!”