A rally here on March 20 highlighted "adopt-a-station" organizing, aimed at finding local unions willing to regularly picket Crown stations and the company's Fast Fare and Zippy Mart convenience stores.

"We had half of Crown's Richmond-area stations adopted at the rally, and several more since then," said James Broaddus, former president of PACE Local 2-1553 at Interbake Foods. "People are willing to do whatever it takes to win this fight for the workers locked out by Crown."

The rapid buildup in Virginia came after strong signals that the company would sell itself off or merge, in part because of the long-running labor dispute.

Broaddus, who is coordinating boycott efforts in Virginia out of the PACE regional office, has recruited local unions to adopt a station for regular picketing or hand-billing. Locals often schedule an action after each monthly or bimonthly union meeting. One Richmond family, Local 2-1553 Sec.-Treas. Arlene Long and her husband Edison, are personally targeting a station right down the street from their home.

Speakers at the Richmond rally and mobilization meeting included state AFL-CIO President Daniel LeBlanc, state Assembly Delegate Jack Hall and A. Philip Randolph Inst. chapter president Elizabeth Hargrove.

Hardy Smith, one of the 252 members of PACE Local 4-227 locked out three years ago at Crown's Pasadena, Texas, refinery, spoke for victims and their families.

"If you look at the states where Crown sells its gas, we have tens of thousands of members from the former UPIU them" Vice President Smith said.'We intend to take full advantage of that people power, and help end this lockout on a favorable note."

"Our brief experience in Birmingham, Ala., proved that trade unionists, civil rights activists and environmentalists will respond to the 'adopt-a-station' program," said PACE Special Projects Director Joe Drexler. "Now it will take continued hard work to sustain it"

Drexler expressed his appreciation to Vice President Smith for supporting the campaign so soon after the merger.

Locked-out Crown workers have carried their boycott message in recent months to Martin Luther King Jr. Day commemorations in Birmingham and Atlanta; the Jobs with Justice annual meeting in Louisville; a rally at Crown headquarters in Baltimore, marking the three-year anniversary of the lockout; and Baltimore's Black Expo, a weekend fair drawing thousands of city residents.

Six months of concerted activity in Baltimore has begun to chisel away the company's image as a leading citizen. In addition to picketing, special educational outreach has targeted the African-American community through civic groups, and black-oriented radio and newspapers.

The outreach to African-Americans is particularly important because the company heavily markets in inner-city neighborhoods. In addition to the labor dispute, Crown faces a major civil rights lawsuit charging discrimination against minorities and women in the workplace. Workers accused supervisors at the plant of circulating racist and sexist handbills and the company of unfair promotional policies.

"It's one thing to talk about racism and sexism, and another thing to see it in its raw form," said Ed Rothstein, Crown boycott coordinator for Maryland and Washington, D.C., of the literature's impact on community leaders. "We also strengthen our case--that management is to blame in the lockout--when we can demonstrate a long pattern of abuse toward workers."

The Crown boycott campaign also is forming alliances with the religious community. A committee of Catholic priests and congregational leaders is pressing Father Harold Ridley, president of Loyola College of Maryland and a board member of Crown, to meet and discuss the lockout. To date, Ridley has refused such a meeting.

Church leaders are also at the heart of boycott efforts in Birmingham. A resolution in support of the boycott and a letter to Crown CEO Henry Rosenberg, outlining ministers' concerns, came from Greater Birmingham Ministries, a 30-year-old interfaith social agency sponsored by ten major Christian denominations plus the city's Reformed Jewish synagogue.

While turning customers away from Crown gas stations may seem like a modest step toward victory back at the Texas refinery, the company's business difficulties have perceptibly shifted odds in the lockout toward workers.

"The company's bottom line is suffering and with that, its stock price," according to a prominent Washington Post article, discussing the lockout and pressures from the boycott.

(See: www.crownboycott.org for the latest information on the Crown boycott.)

The PACESetter, vol.1 no.2, April 1999