Grapes. They are the fruiting bodies of the genus Vitis vine, have been cultivated for food and libation since at least 6,000 B.C., are frustratingly expensive at the grocery store, and are generally recognized as being wicked yummy.
(Did you know that Syrah is thought to be “Syrah” because in the Persian city of Shiraz, the noted A+ wine producer of the 9th Century Middle East, the origin of the Bahá’í religion, and the home of that religion’s founder, which was demolished and paved over in ’79? Nor did I. But then I wandered down the Wikipedia Hole.)
So grapes; yes, yummy, expensive, and that takes us to Mister César Chávez. Now I recall Chávez from elementary school posters that celebrated the grand and peacefully dissenting rainbow that is America, and I suppose that’s where I learned he organized migrant farm workers. But that’s about all I knew. Barack Obama, however, declared 105 acres of the Tehachapi Mountains in California a National Monument in October, and that sent me to the aforementioned Wiki Hole.
And that brings us back to expensive. Grapes can now be harvested by machine, but I presume they had to be done by hand back when Chávez was a kid picking them with his family in the ‘30s and ‘40s. Harvesting by hand costs a lot of money (for your consideration: contemporary strawberries), and migrant workers (for your consideration: contemporary undocumented immigrants) kept costs down for producers. And we all know migrants, the undocumented, refugees, etcetera are treated like crap.
So Chávez (American-born, btw) co-founds the United Farm Workers in ’62 and in ’65 
takes up the cause of Filipino American grape growers striking for higher wages. He leads a 340-mile march to Sacramento and ultimately lands a negotiated contract with Schenley Vineyards, the first legit union contract between a grower and a farm workers union in U.S. history.
Grape-related strikes keep going, off and on, for thirty years, at times over workers’ poisoning by pesticides, at others over the right to have a union at all. In ’75, a poll finds 17 million Americans boycotting grapes in solidarity.
I don’t know of 17 million Americans boycotting anything at the moment.
I do know that as of last Tuesday, about 17 million Americans have paid to see Spielberg’s Lincoln.
Not that Chávez wasn’t a drag at times. He was a hand’s-down walking contradiction when it came to immigration.
Maybe that’s why Obama declared that National Monument.
But Obama surely likes grapes and wine, Alexander the Great did, Bono does as well, and I certainly do. In fact, I bet Ayatollah Khamenei himself does, though he obviously hates himself for it. So I think it’s safe and expedient right here to tie all of us to both walking contradiction and the fruiting body of the Vitis vine.
Each has been around longer than any of us know.