"Coors Beer, No Way!": The Coors Boycott Coalition & the Grassroots Battle against the New Right in the '80s
Between 1957 and 1987, myriad labor and community organizations launched boycotts of the Colorado-based Coors Brewing Company for its discriminatory, anti-union policies and for the Coors family's far-right conservatism. Into the 1980s, the boycott evolved into a political movement, supported by a coalition of labor, gay, Latinx, and black activists. The rejection of Coors' brew became an empowering expression of solidarity and political protest. Through the testimonies of key organizers, this paper (a chapter in a forthcoming book on the Coors boycott) uses the campaign as an example of the promises and pitfalls of grassroots organizing in this period.
Respondents: Jack Metzgar, Roosevelt University and Emily Twarog, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign