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Supermarket Strike Slows Thanksgiving Business

Thanksgiving Day is the busiest time of the year for grocery shopping, but you won-t be able to buy any food at almost 900 markets in Southern California because of the strike by 70,000 grocery workers, joined this week by 8000 Teamsters. On Friday, the picket lines will return as markets open again and Vons, Pavilions, Ralph's, and Albertsons. After seven weeks, pocket books and patience are both running a bit thin on the picket lines. We look at the impact on holiday business, the strikers, and consumers with the president of the local United Food and Commercial Workers union, a reporter for the LA Business Journal and KCRW's own Matt Holzman. Making News: Southern California Travelers Expected to Pack Roads Despite crowds of travelers this holiday weekend, federal officials promise tight security at LAX and other airports. That means long lines and frayed tempers. But, most of the action will be on the streets and freeways. Jeff Spring is a spokesman for the Automobile Club of Southern California. Reporter's Notebook: The Woman behind Thanksgiving Day Pilgrims and Native Americans held the first feast of thanksgiving, but Thanksgiving Day wasn-t a national holiday until Abraham Lincoln proclaimed it in the midst of the Civil War. Laura Schenone, author of A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove: a History of American Women Told through Food, Recipes and Remembrances, says he might not have done it without the relentless campaigning of a magazine editor named Sarah Josepha Hale. (This segment was originally broadcast earlier today on To the Point.)