Displayed in a large font, the flyer told recipients to ‘BOYCOTT COORS BEER’. The flyer was decorated with an illustration of a Coors beer can that had been crossed out. In 1977, brewery workers belonging to the trade union division Local 366 of the Adolph Coors Beer company printed and distributed a small flyer with one objective: to persuade the public to endorse their strike. The manner in which Coors violates the law. is convinced that a boycott will not work because theyĭo not believe the consumer really cares about human rights or ‘A Political Fight Over Beer’: The 1977 Coors Beer Boycott, and the Relationship Between Labour–Gay Alliances and LGBT Social Mobility Crucially, promoting a boycott enabled an economic spat to snowball into a wider social movement, as it was taken outside the parameters of the factory floor. Boycotting an alcohol brand allowed consumers to exercise their fundamental American rights, which, in turn, promoted their legitimacy as American citizens. By examining newspaper articles, trade union pamphlets and visual iconography, the paper highlights how labour forces invited the LGBT community because their bars were a powerful tool in forming a gay identity and allowed LGBT consumers to utilise their economic agency. The workers’ strike demanded an end to the mandatory, homophobic polygraph tests to do so, workers went on strike and asked San Franciscan gay bars to boycott Coors beer. This paper examines the 1977 Coors beer boycott, to analyse the interplay of socio-political groups during 1970s America promoting the idea that labour and gay forces could form an alliance over economic disputes that were mutually beneficial. Kieran Blake is a postgraduate student of History at the University of Lincoln, researching twentieth-century American social movements-specifically addressing queer studies and the history of sexuality.
1942 GAY BAR DENVER COLORADO ARCHIVE
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