Malvina Reynolds: Song Lyrics and Poems  



Blood on the Grapes

Notes: words and music by Malvina Reynolds; copyright 1968 Schroder Music Company, renewed 1996. Written in support of the boycott of California grapes called for by Cesar Chavez and the United Farmworkers Organizing Committee in 1968.


Chorus:
There's blood on the grapes,
So we're not buying grapes this year.
They're pretty and sweet
But they're not fit to eat
'Cause there's blood on the grapes this year,
Blood on the grapes.

Do you know how the grape pickers live?
Do you know of their hot heavy loads?
When they turn to the union,
The thugs run them down on the roads.
Do you know of the starvation pay
For long grinding days in the sun.
And when they organize,
They are met with the club and the gun.

(Chorus)

The growers are lords on the land.
They rule over grape county law.
In the fields of our state,
There's no justice for workers at all.
The strikers are standing their ground,
The growers are brutal with fear,
And where I am concerned,
I am having no grapes this year.

(Chorus)


Malvina Reynolds songbook(s) in which the music to this song appears:
---- [none]

Other place(s) where the music to this song appears:
---- Broadside No. 94 (September-October 1968)
---- Broadside, Vol. III (New York: Broadside Magazine, 1970), p. 22

Malvina Reynolds recording(s) on which this song is performed:
---- [none]


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