Celebrate the Life of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta

Celebrating Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta 

 

1972- Sacramento 

March 31  is Cesar Chavez’s birthday and Cesar Chavez Day – a state holiday in California,  one of eight states to recognize the  date, and one of the few holidays  in the nation  dedicated  to a labor leader.   Sacramento and dozens of cities, counties and labor federations will celebrate the life of Cesar Chavez.

 

The year 2012 was the 50^th anniversary of the founding of the United Farm Workers (UFW) by Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Philip Vera Cruz and others.  Celebrations held that year focused on the historic struggle for union rights and justice in the fields of California.

April 11, 2023 will be the 5^th Annual Dolores Huerta Day in California. It will be her 93^rd. birthday.  Dolores Huerta was formerly an Honorary Co-Chair of Democratic Socialists of America.

Dolores Huerta. 2023

 

For an update on the UFW 2023 see. 

https://antiracismdsa.blogspot.com/2023/03/farmworkers-union-seeks-california.html

 

 

The UFW was the  first successful union of farm workers in  U.S. history.  There had been more than ten prior attempts to build a farm workers’ union.   Each of the prior attempts was destroyed by racism and corporate power. Chávez and Huerta chose to build a union that incorporated the strategies of social movements and community organizing and allied itself  with churches, students,  and organized labor.  The successful creation of the UFW changed the nature of labor organizing in the Southwest and contributed significantly to the birth of Latino politics in the U.S. The UFW showed unions that immigrants can and must be organized.    

 

Both Chavez and Dolores Huerta ( formerly a DSA Honorary Co Chair )  have received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and have been recognized by the U.S. Department of Labor and in the California Hall of Fame for their work. 

 

Dolores Huerta remains active as a staunch advocate for women’s rights and reproductive freedom.  She is an honorary DSA chair, a founding board member of the Feminist Majority Foundation and a member of the board of Ms. Magazine.  She is active in Democratic Party conventions and campaigns and frequently speaks at universities and organizational forums and union halls  on issues of social justice and public policy. Huerta  continues to develop community leaders and to advocate for the working poor, immigrants, women and youth as president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation.

 

Today, school children study Chavez’s life - but the study of Dolores Huerta’s life is prohibited in Arizona and severely limited in Texas as socialist,  “revolutionary,” or anti-American.

 

César Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Philip Vera Cruz, and others deliberately created a multiracial union. Mexican, Mexican-American, Filipino, African-American, Dominican, Puerto Rican and Arab workers, among others, have been part of the UFW.  This cross-racial organizing  was necessary in order to combat the  prior divisions and exploitations of workers based upon race and language. Dividing the workers on racial and language lines, as well as immigration status,  always left the corporations the winners.

 

In the 60's, Chávez and Huerta became the pre-eminent civil rights leaders for Mexican and Chicano workers, helping with local union struggles throughout the nation.  They worked tirelessly to make people aware of the struggles of farm workers for better pay and safer working conditions. It is a testament to their skills and courage that the UFW even survived. They were opposed by major interests in corporate agriculture, including the Bruce Church and Gallo Corporations as well as the leadership of the Republican Party, then led by  Ronald Reagan.   Workers were fired, beaten, threatened and even killed in pursuit of union benefits . Non-union  farm workers today  continue to live on  sub-poverty wages while producing abundant crops in the richest valley, in the richest state, in the richest nation in the world.  

 

In response to corporate power, Chavez developed new strategies such as the boycott, based upon  his personal  commitment to  non-violence in the tradition of Ghandi and  Martin Luther King Jr.  César Chavez died in his sleep on April 23, 1993 near Yuma, Arizona. 

 

Today Mexican, Mexican-American and Latino  union leadership is common  in our major cities and in several  industries and Latino union leaders increasingly play an important role in local, state, and national elections.  For example, the mobilization of Latino families and voters was critical to the re-election of Barack Obama.  The UFW was a school for organizing.  Hundreds of activists in labor and community organizations owe their skills to UFW training and experience.    Along with improved working conditions, salaries, and benefits for the unionized workers, training this cadre of organizers remains a major legacy of the UFW.

 

The UFW is also known for helping to create the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act in 1975, under then-Governor Jerry Brown, which gives farm workers collective bargaining rights.  The law was made necessary by a 1972 Teamsters Union raid on UFW contracts.  Sadly, the victory was only partial. While farm workers are often able to win elections under the ALRB, they seldom can win a contract.  Growers stall and delay until the workers leave the area. 

 

Today, under the leadership of UFW president Arturo Rodriguez, only about 25,000  farm workers enjoy benefits on the job. Wages and benefits in non union  farm labor have again been reduced to the pre-union levels.  

 

Chavez taught us that all organizations have problems, that all organizations are imperfect. Many curriculum packages for schools stress his emphasis on service to others.  The service side of Cesar’s work was certainly inspiring. In the last decade, several books have been written criticizing the Chavez legacy. The union experienced both external and internal conflicts. But building popular organizations, while messy, builds people's power and democracy. In creating the UFW, Chavez and Huerta organized thousands into a union and inspired millions. 

 

The organizing side of the UFW legacy changed the Southwest and organized labor.      The movement led by Chavez and Huerta reduced the oppression of farm workers. Many people, descendents of earlier generations of farm workers, learned to take a stand for justice.  They learned to not accept poor jobs, poor pay, or unsafe working conditions as natural or inevitable.  Rather, these are social creations which can be changed through organizing for economic and political power.    

 

Today, thousands of new immigrants harvest the crops, often indigenous Zapotec and Mixtec people from the south of Mexico, and only a small percent are in unions.  The new generations of immigrants and migrant labor hardly know Chavez’s name nor the UFW’s contributions. Yet, in other regions immigrants are being organized into unions such as Justice for Janitors and Unite/Here by activists who learned their organizing skills working with the UFW. And, Latino political leaders often made their first commitments on a UFW picket line.

 

The generation that created the UFW is passing. A new generation of political activists, mostly within the Democratic Party, has emerged since the Chavez generation.  Organizing the May Day 2006 massive immigrant rights demonstrations was significantly assisted by persons trained within the UFW.  A new, significant Latino union and political base has been created in the nation. 

 

Chavez's and Huerta’s legacy is significant for popular struggles, Chicano/Mexicano self-determination and immigrant workers’ unions.  The UFW taught us how to organize for power and for justice.  Chavez is present in all of our work.  You can find out more about this remarkable leader at www.ufw.org; http://www.chavezfoundation.org/;

http://www.farmworkermovement.org/ : and MexicanAmericanDigitalHistory.org

 

Duane Campbell is professor emeritus of bilingual/multicultural education at California State University-Sacramento; author of Choosing Democracy: A Practical Guide to Multicultural Education, 4th Edition, (Allyn and Bacon,2010); and chair of Sacramento DSA.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cesar Chavez and California Framworkers

Chavez and author Campbell ,1972. 

Let us be clear.  Chavez was religious, but he was not a saint. Neither were the growers, their  Teamster collaborators, nor corporate agribusiness saints.  Celebrations should not be about hero worship or uncritical praise, nor  should we ignore the present oppression of farm workers in the U.S.  

What they did  accomplish along with Philip Vera Cruz ,  Marshall Ganz, LeRoy Chatfield, Gil Padilla, Eliseo Medina and  hundreds of others was to   organize in California the first successful farm worker union against overwhelming odds. 

Each of the prior attempts to organize a  farm worker union  had been  destroyed by racism and corporate power.Chavez, Huerta, Philip Vera Cruz, and the  others deliberately created a multiracial union; Mexican,  Mexican American, Filipino, African-American, Dominican, Puerto Rican and Arab workers, among others, have been part of the UFW.  This cross racial organizing  was necessary in order to combat the  prior divisions and exploitations of workers based upon race and language. Dividing the workers on racial and  language lines, as well as immigration status  always left the corporations the winners.

 

The violent  assaults  on the farmworkers and UFW from 1960- 1980  along with the current reconquest of power in the fields  by corporate agriculture are examples of strategic racism, that is a system of racial oppression created and enforced because it benefits the over class- in this case corporate agriculture and farm owners.  Strategic racism as described by Ian Haney López  in Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism & Wrecked the Middle Class ( 2014) is the development and implementation of  racial practices because they benefit a group or a class. 

 

Chávez chose to build a union that incorporated the strategies of social movements and community organizing.  They allied the union   with churches, students,  and organized labor.  The successful creation of the UFW changed the nature of labor organizing  in the Southwest  and contributed significantly to the growth  of Latino politics in the U.S.

 

The UFW and Chavez and Huerta have always had severe critics from the Right and  from corporate agriculture. Dolores Huerta  has  been  banned from the history text books in Texas and Arizona as too radical. Both also have critics from the left.  

 

Miriam Pawel in The Union of Their Dreams: Power, Hope, and Struggle in Cesar Chavez’s Farm Worker Movement(2009)  uses individualist, personality driven reporting to assert  that Chavez himself organized “Witch hunts” to expel union staff who disagreed with his leadership.  See Steve Early’s essay  non Talking Union. http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/a-union-of-their-dreams-becomes-a-nightmarehas-ufw-history-been-replayed-in-seiu/  

What the left critics allege, 

Frank Bardacke’s Trampling Out the Vintage: Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers. (2011), Verso. is the view of a well- informed observer  who  worked in the lettuce fields near Salinas as is Lettuce Wars: Ten Years of  Work and Struggle in the Fields of California (2012) by Bruce Neuberger.  These books, along with Pawell’s have been reviewed in prior posts on Talking Union.  See review here. http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/its-a-long-way-from-delano-to-watsonville-a-review/

These books argue  a peculiar point of view:   they  strongly and persistently imply that the  current  problems of exploitation of workers  in farm labor was caused by the destructive behavior of  Cesar Chavez,  his instability, and his ego  - not by corporate agriculture; not by the racist state in rural California

On the other hand Cesar Chavez was  given the U.S. Presidential  Medal of Freedom posthumously  in 1994, and Dolores Huerta ( A DSA Honorary Chair) was given the Medal of Freedom in 2012.   Teaching materials and videos have been made recording their work.  Schools, scholarships, foundations,  organizing institutes and political organizations  have been named after them.  Few  labor or Latino leaders  have achieved such positive recognition.   

I, for one, wonder why these authors and some  other left writers  see the major problem as the growth of  what they see as a legend and myths about Cesar Chavez ( and recognition of the UFW) rather than the major problem being the role of corporate agriculture, exploitation and racism.

When writers take this view,  they then  need to explain why and how the parallel decline of the Teamsters, the ILGWU, the Auto Workers , the Steelworkers, the IAM, and other unions  occurred during this  same era.   Compare the period of decline of 1977-1986 in the UFW to the complex battles of  the Reuther Brothers to gain control and to keep control of the  United Auto Workers, including the UAW’s relationship with the AFL-CIO . (1949-1970).  The UAW went from 1.5 million members in 1979 to 390,000 in 2010, and the United Steelworkers and other unions  suffered similar declines. 

It doesn’t require a theory of emotional instability and personal interventions  to explain that the smaller, less established, less well funded  union – the UFW-  suffered dramatic  declines  from racial oppression and the brutal assault on the union  in the fields of  Texas, Arizona and California.

The above critics under play the role of the corporate assault on unions, and in particular the assault on a union led by  Mexican American leaders. This was, after all,  the era when  Ronald Reagan came to power in California along with the organization of the forces that came to be called neo-liberalism.  It was also a time of  consolidation of racial power in agriculture.  

Marshall Ganz, who was a leader in the union and a participant in the internal struggles, tells a more complex and more complete story in his book, Why David Sometimes Wins. (2009) See  the review in Talking Union http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/why-david-sometimes-wins-marshall-ganz/

This isn’t to say that Chavez, Huerta and many on the UFW Executive Board  did not have shortcomings.  They did.  Ganz describes  several of these in his  book and in interviews he participated in for the new book, From the Jaws of Victory by   Matt  Garcia (2012).  Ganz provide some well researched and insightful observations on the dynamics of a union trying to transition from a movement to a union- or to something else.   This analysis is helpful to organizers trying to build unions. 

There were conflicts and internal contradictions.  Not many movements last for even ten years let alone thirty.    In addition to the assault from corporate agriculture, the Republican Party, Ronald Reagan, neoliberalism and racism, the UFW was confronted  with internal union struggles for democracy,  an intra union assault by the Teamsters,  and with the tumultuous and disruptive  politics on the left in the 60’s and 70’s. 

In my opinion, Bardacke, Pawell, and Neuberger under analyze the nature of the racial state and  the interaction of racial and economic oppression in the fields.  And, these critics significantly  failed  to see the they dynamics of  the struggle for  Chicano/Mexican American self determination within the UFW. 

The role of racism, and the individual reactions to systemic structural racial oppression are complex and  vary in part based upon the differences in experiences of the participants.  As the Chicano movement argued at its core- the experiences of U.S. born and reared  Mexican Americans and Chicanos were different than the experiences and the perceptions of racism of Mexican immigrants, both documented and undocumented.   There are a diversity of racisms and a diversity in the manner in which workers   learn to respond  to oppression.  Chicanos and Mexican Americans grew up, were educated, and worked in an internal colony.  Their schools, their unions, and their political experiences were structured along racial  lines.  They learned colonized structures.  The authors do not sufficiently  acknowledge the struggle of the UFW and the Chicano Movement in breaking this colonial legacy. 

Marshall Ganz in Why David Sometimes Wins,  does a better job of describing the internal dynamics of UFW organizing- after all he was there.  He describes  some of the racial fault lines of  farm worker organizing.  Ganz was the director of organizing  for the UFW in Salinas and a long time member of the UFW executive board.

Chavez knew well some of  the failings of unions  in the 1960’s, including  the problems of a growing internal bureaucracy, but the UFW in the 1980’s  was not able to create a viable  democratic union movement.  Marshall Ganz argues that Chavez deconstructed the organizational strength of the UFW in the 1979 -1981 period in an effort to keep personal control of the union.  (Ganz, p. 247 ) 

The critics  who blame individuals for the union’s decline  also miss the important rise of Latino politics in the Southwest today.   Chavez and the UFW played  a significant role by training  generations of future leaders as organizers as is well described  in Randy Shaw’s, Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW, and the Struggle for Justice in the 21^st. Century.   The UFW was a  place  where hundreds learned organizing skills, politics, discipline, and how to work in multi racial  movement politics – skills needed by many on the left.   Today hundreds of union and community leaders, particularly in California are veterans, trained in for the long distance struggle of  the UFW. 

The Current Situation – Strategic Racism 

 The movement led by Cesar Chavez , Dolores Huerta  and others  created a union and reduced the oppression of farm workers for a time.   Workers learned to not accept poor jobs, poor pay,  unsafe working conditions as natural or inevitable.  Then the corporations and the Right Wing forces adapted their strategies of oppression.  

            

The assault on the UFW and the current reconquest of power in the fields are examples of strategic racism, that is a system of racial oppression created and enforced because it benefits the over class- in this case corporate agriculture and farm owners.  The current renewed oppression is a product  of strategic racism including  a complex structure of institutions and individuals from police and sheriffs, to immigration authorities and anti immigrant activists, and elected officials and their support networks.  These groups foster and promote inter racial conflict, job competition, and anti union organizing,  as strategies  to keep wages and benefits low and to promote their continuing white supremacy in rural California. 

 As the union was weakened by the Right Wing corporate assault, the conditions in the fields returned almost to their prior level of exploitation.  The Agricultural Labor Relations Act had it budget cut  by 30 % for years under Governor Deukmejian in 1982- 1986 along with other assaults on the law.   Now, thousands of new immigrants harvest the crops and only a small percent are protected by  union contracts.  Over 200,000 indigenous workers, mostly from Mexico, harvest the crops in the Southwest.  They are Mixtec, Zapotec, Triqui and more.  They do have a few health, safety and wage protection by California labor laws,  along with the right to  farm worker collective bargaining elections and binding arbitration  established significantly by the political activity of the current UFW – more than farm workers have in any other state.  For a record of this period see David Bacon’s,  The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration (2013). 

 

Duane Campbell is a professor emeritus of bilingual multicultural education at California State University Sacramento, a union activist, and a former  chair of Sacramento DSA.  He was a volunteer for the UFW from 1972- 1977. He is the Director of the Mexican American Digital History project. www.MexicanAmericanDigitalHistory.org 

Cesar Chavez Dolores Huerta, the UFW, and Strategic Racism.

Cesar Chavez  & Duane Campbell, 1972

Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed.  You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to read.  You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.  Cesar Chávez.  November 9, 1984.

by Duane Campbell

On March 31, 2018,  Eleven  states  and numerous cities will hold holidays celebrating  labor and Latino Leader Cesar Chavez. Conferences, marches and celebrations will occur in numerous cities this weekend and particularly in rural farm areas  of the nation.  A recent film Cesar Chavez: An American Hero, starring Michael Peña  as Cesar Chavez and Rosario Dawson  as Dolores Huerta presents important parts of this story.

Meanwhile,  in March of 2015  hundreds of farmworkers have walked off their jobs in Baja California, Mexico, from the agricultural fields just a few miles from the U.S. border , fields developed to provide a harvest to the U.S. markets.  Farm labor strikes and violence against strikers remains a volatile issue.  Farm workers deserve dignity, respect, and fair wages.  Achieving these goals will require a union.

The  current UFW leadership, as well as former UFW leaders  and former DSA Honorary Chairs  Eliseo Medina and Dolores Huerta  are recognized leaders in the ongoing efforts to achieve comprehensive immigration reform in the nation.

 On immigration, UFW President Arturo Rodriquez says, “We urge Republicans to abandon their political games that hurt millions of hard-working, taxpaying immigrants and their families, and help us finish the job by passing legislation such as the comprehensive reform bill that was approved by the Senate on a bipartisan vote in June 2013,” Rodriguez said.  Similar compromise proposals, negotiated by the UFW and the nation's major agricultural employer associations, have passed the U.S. Senate multiple times over the last decade. The same proposal has won majority support in the House of Representatives, even though House GOP leaders have refused to permit a vote on the measure. “The UFW will not rest until the President's deferred relief is enacted and a permanent immigration reform, including a path to citizenship for all 11 million undocumented immigrants, is signed into law.”  www.UFW.org

What Chavez, Huerta  did  accomplish along with Philip Vera Cruz ,  Marshall Ganz, LeRoy Chatfield, Gil Padilla, Eliseo Medina and  hundreds of others was to   organize in California the first successful farm worker union against overwhelming odds.

Dolores Huerta - A Film Review

Dolores – A Film Review

by Duane Campbell

There is an important new film out – Dolores, the story of former DSA Honorary Chair Dolores Huerta and her fight for justice. (All DSA honorary chairs were eliminated by the 2017 DSA convention.) She is the woman holding the Huelga sign on the DSA landing page. If you want to be inspired by her struggle for social justice, go see the film.

Although at times ignored by the Anglo media, and at other times castigated as a red and an “outside agitator,” Huerta tirelessly led the fight for racial and labor justice alongside Cesar Chavez, becoming one of the most important feminists of the twentieth century. If you don’t know her story, you should ask yourself why.  She continues the fight on many fronts to this day, at age 87. With unprecedented access to Dolores, the film reveals important parts of the struggle for dignity and justice for farmworkers, as well as the raw, personal stakes involved in committing one’s  life to social change. 

Dolores, produced by PBS and Independent Lens, serves labor history well by accurately describing the often overlooked role of Filipinos who initiated a strike in Delano in 1965, which the nascent NFWA (National Farm Workers Association) joined to create the great Grape Strike that changed labor history in the Southwest.

Video clips in the documentary illustrate the hard work required to build a union -- particularly a union of Mexican, Filipino, and other migrant workers.   Former DSA Honorary Chairs Eliseo Medina and  Gloria Steinem, along with activist Angela Davis, provide historical records, commentary, insights, testimonies, and evaluations of Huerta’s important life work.

After negotiating the first union contract in grapes, Huerta moved to New York in 1968 to build the Grape Boycott, developing great union support for the effort to build a union for farmworkers. There she encountered Gloria Steinem and the New York feminist movement of that era.  Over the years, Dolores became a well-known Latina/Chicana feminist as well as a union leader. Her participation contributed to a broadening of the mostly white feminist movement of that time to include the struggles of working-class women of color.

Dolores - A Film Review

Dolores – A Film Review

by Duane Campbell

There is an important new film out – Dolores, the story of Dolores Huerta and her fight for justice. She is the woman holding the Huelga sign on the DSA landing page. If you want to be inspired by her struggle for social justice, go see the film.

Although at times ignored by the media, and at other times castigated as a red and an “outside agitator,” Huerta tirelessly led the fight for racial and labor justice alongside Cesar Chavez, becoming one of the most important feminists of the twentieth century. If you don’t know her story, you should ask yourself why.  She continues the fight on many fronts to this day, at age 87. With unprecedented access to Dolores, the film reveals important parts of the struggle for dignity and justice for farmworkers, as well as the raw, personal stakes involved in committing one’s  life to social change. 

Dolores, produced by PBS and Independent Lens, serves labor history well by accurately describing the often overlooked role of Filipinos who initiated a strike in Delano in 1965, which the nascent NFWA (National Farm Workers Association) joined to create the great Grape Strike that changed labor history in the Southwest.

DOLORES - A Film Worth Seeing

A great film. A tribute to a great organizer !

SACRAMENTO SCREENING

DOLORES  |  1 hour 38 minutes

FRIDAY, SEP 22- THURSDAY, SEP 28

The Tower Theatre

David Bacon to Speak at Sac State on Wed. Sept, 13

FILM IN HINDE, UNIVERSITY UNION   3 PM

KEYNOTE SPEAKER AT GUY WEST PLAZA  David Bacon, Free. 5:30 PM

as a part of the campus Farm to Fork celebration.  Sept  13. 

"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. . . They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

-Donald Trump, June 16, 2015

In the Fields of the North/ En Los Campos del Norte by David Bacon

Univerity of California Press, 2017

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Reviewed by Duane Campbell

“We are not animals. We are human beings.”

In an impressive and important new book, David Bacon effectively counters the racism and xenophobia advanced by our current president and promoted in right-wing media by providing hundreds of photos and clear descriptions of the real life and work of the immigrants harvesting the food we eat.  

Bacon does so by interviewing farmworkers and photographing farmworkers in their “housing” and in their work. He reports and records the humanity of the thousands of people who come north to harvest our crops and to feed their families as best they can.

Photojournalist David Bacon has a long history of documenting the lives of immigrant people, including the important books:, Illegal People: How Globalization creates migration and criminalizes immigrants. (2008) and The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration (Beacon Press, 2013), as well as a long list of journal articles.

In The Fields of the North, Bacon uses his extensive and award-winning photography to tell more of the story. This is not just a book with some photos, but rather a series of extended photo essays (with over 300 photos)  showing that images and words have a combined power far beyond either words or images by themselves. Bacon tells the story of cycles of exploitation and poverty suffered by tens of thousands moving from season to season, working in the fields to harvest our food for subminimum wages, and facing the racism and political power of growers and their labor contractors.

Teaching the Legacy of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta

When we are really  honest with ourselves, we must admit that our lives are all that really belong to us.  So it is how we use our lives that determines what kind of people we are. ..I am convinced that the truest act of courage..is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally nonviolent struggle for justice.

Cesar Chavez (1927-1993)

by Duane Campbell

On March 31, 2017, Eleven states and numerous cities will hold holidays celebrating labor and Latino leader Cesar Chavez. 

Conferences, marches and celebrations will occur in numerous cities and particularly in rural areas of the nation. A recent film Cesar Chavez: An American Hero, starring Michael Peña as Cesar Chavez and Rosario Dawson as Dolores Huerta presents important parts of this union story.  With the work of the Chicano/Mexican American Digital History Project their story of union organizing will begin to be covered in all public school history texts in California this year, 

The current UFW leadership, as well as former UFW leaders and current DSA Honorary Chairs Eliseo Medina and Dolores Huerta are recognized leaders in the ongoing efforts to achieve comprehensive immigration reform in the nation.

UFW President Arturo Rodriquez says, “We urge Republicans to abandon their political games that hurt millions of hard-working, taxpaying immigrants and their families, and help us finish the job by passing legislation such as the comprehensive reform bill that was approved by the Senate on a bipartisan vote in June 2013,” Rodriguez said. “The UFW will not rest until the President's deferred relief is enacted and a permanent immigration reform, including a path to citizenship for all 11 million undocumented immigrants, is signed into law.” www.UFW.org

Labor Day and Farm Workers

Arturo Rodriguez, 

While a few short years ago a $15 minimum wage seemed like a moonshot, today municipalities and states across the country are standing with workers and adopting a minimum wage that will ultimately lift 35 million hard-working American families out of poverty.

Earlier this year, the Obama Administration expanded overtime pay protections to more than 4 million working Americans.

And in California we are on the cusp on progress that builds on what the President has accomplished and paves the way for reforms that have the potential to put millions of working Americans on a pathway to the middle class.

Last week, California lawmakers passed first-of-its-kind legislation that allows farm workers to get paid overtime like all other workers.

Teaching About Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta and the UFW

By Duane E. Campbell

Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed.  You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to read.  You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.  Cesar Chávez.  November 9, 1984.

On March 31, 2015,  Eleven  states  and numerous cities will hold holidays celebrating  labor and Latino Leader Cesar Chavez. Conferences, marches and celebrations will occur in numerous cities this weekend.  See the  post below  on the Cesar Chavez Youth Leadership Conference at UCD on March 28.   A recent film Cesar Chavez: An American Hero, starring Michael Peña  as Cesar Chavez and Rosario Dawson  as Dolores Huerta presents important parts of this story and shows how Chavez was lied about and attacked by Ronald Reagan, the Nixon Administration, the Republican Party and numerous right wing forces.  This film works well in high school classrooms. Lesson plans for teaching about Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta are here. https://sites.google.com/site/democracyandeducationorg/Home/lessons-cesar-chavez-and-dolores-huerta.Chavez lessons

The story of Cesar Chavez, and to a lesser degree Dolores Huerta is mentioned in history books for California students, however much of the additional Mexican American history is missing.  A group of scholars, teachers, allies, activists have joined  in our campaign to improve the history textbooks in California by including the histories of  Mexican American/ Chicano people.  More than 52% of California students are descendants of Latino and Mexican people. Unfortunately they  can't they be found in the textbooks.

You are invited to participate in this effort. We need each of  you and your friends to write a letter.  Here is a guide. Here is how to write a letter :https://sites.google.com/site/democracyandeducationorg/Home/latino-students-and-civic-engagement/project-plan---mexican-american-history

We can each do our part.

Meanwhile,  in March of 2015  hundreds of farmworkers have walked off their jobs in Baja California, Mexico, from the agricultural fields just a few miles from the U.S. border , fields developed to provide a harvest to the U.S. markets.  Farm labor strikes and violence against strikers remains a volatile issue.  Farm workers deserve dignity, respect, and fair wages.  Achieving these goals will require a union.

Jose Montoya, activist, poet, artist, teacher, ally, friend

Jose Montoya, Sacramento poet, activist and  artist. RIP. –  Ally, Friend, Teacher.

 Jose Montoya, artist and activist, died Wed. Sept. 25, 2013 in Sacramento, California. Jose was a teacher, a poet,  and a community activist important to the Chicano movement as it developed in the 1960s and 70’s.  He was a poet Laureate of Sacramento and a co founder of  the Royal Chicano Air force- an artist collective who helped to define Chicano art and commit their art to political involvements.

 See https://sites.google.com/site/chicanodigital/home/table-of-contents/royal-chicano-air-force

The son of farmworker champion Cesar Chavez, Paul F. Chavez, and United Farm Workers President Arturo S. Rodriguez said in a joint statement, “We will always cherish Jose for how he inspired us as well as so many others through his art. But we will also remember him for the countless times when he walked picket lines, helped organize UFW events and fed the farmworkers during every major strike, boycott and political campaign. He was truly a servant of the farmworker movement and we will always be in his debt.”

  See: https://sites.google.com/site/chicanodigital/home/the-farmworker-movement-in-sacramento-1972-1976

Montoya influenced thousands of students and teachers during his 27 years as a professor of art at California State University Sacramento, as well his earlier years as a teacher in Wheatland.  He was a sought after speaker on issues related to using art  in teaching.

Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta recognized for leadership

Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta recognized for their life long contributions to organized labor and social justice.         

  Cesar Chavez Day is a state holiday in California – one of eight states to recognize the  date, and one of the few holidays  in the nation  dedicated  to a labor leader.   Sacramento and dozens of cities, counties and labor federations will celebrate the life of Cesar Chavez on March 31, 2013.

The  year  2012 was the 50^th. anniversary of the founding of the U.F.W.  by Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Philip Vera Cruz and others.  The   celebrations focused  on  the struggle for union rights and justice in the fields of California. 

 The United Farm Workers  (UFW) was the  first successful union of farm workers in  U.S. history.  There had been more than ten prior attempts to build a farm workers union.   Each of the prior attempts  were destroyed by racism and corporate power. Chávez and Huerta  chose to build a union that incorporated the strategies of social movements and community organizing  and allied itself  with the churches, students,  and organized labor.  The successful creation of the UFW changed the nature of labor organizing  in the Southwest  and contributed significantly to the birth of Latino politics in the U.S.

            Today, under the leadership of UFW president Arturo Rodriguez, only about 25,000  farm workers enjoy benefits on the job. Wages and benefit in farm labor have again been reduced to the pre union levels.  The UFW has shown unions that immigrants can and must be organized.   

          

Dolores Huerta recognized for leadership

Dolores Huerta. California Hall of Fame – 2013.

Induction will be March 20, 2013

DSA  Honorary Chair  Dolores Huerta  will be inducted into the   California Hall of Fame (2013) for her labor and community leadership.  She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.

 Huerta has contributed to movements for union rights and  social justice  since the founding along with Cesar Chaves, Philip Vera Cruz   and others  of the United Farm Workers (UFW) union and continues  through her current work in supporting union democracy,   civic engagement and empowerment of women and youth in disadvantaged communities. The creation of the UFW changed the nature of labor organizing in the Southwest and contributed significantly to the growth of Latino politics in the U.S.  In her frequent public engagements at college, universities and high schools  she presents  a Latina feminist perspective to civil rights and immigration issues.  Dolores continues active as  a supporter on union picket lines and union struggles throughout the state.

President Obama creates monument to Cesar Chavez

Dolores Huerta receives Presidential Medal of Freedom

Watch Dolores Huerta Calls Herself 'a Born-Again Feminist' on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Dolores Huerta is an Honorary Chair of DSA. 

Dolores Huerta to receive Medal of Freedom

Farm worker movement hails Dolores Huerta’s 
‘Lifetime of self-sacrifice and deep dedication’

 
United Farm Workers President Arturo S. Rodriguez and Cesar Chavez Foundation President Paul F. Chavez issued the following joint statement from the farm worker movement’s Keene, Calif. headquarters on the announcement that President Obama will present Dolores Huerta with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
 
Cesar Chavez once described Dolores Huerta as “completely fearless, both mentally and physically.”
 
Over six decades, Dolores Huerta put the nonviolent fight for civil and labor rights ahead of her personal interests, and sometimes before her personal safety. Like all the farm worker strikers and boycotters, she accepted a life of voluntary poverty for many decades. Her dynamic and inspiring leadership through the most difficult and turbulent times in the farm worker movement’s history established her not only as a leader of farm workers but as a role model for women and men across this nation and beyond.
 
We congratulate Dolores on receiving the nation’s highest civilian honor. No one is more deserving after a lifetime of self-sacrifice and deep dedication to defending the poorest and most abused people in our country.
Dolores Huerta is an Honorary Chair of DSA. 

Celebrate Cesar Chavez Day - 50 th Anniversary

  Cesar Chavez Day is a state holiday in California – one of eight states to recognize the  date, and one of the few holidays  in the nation  dedicated  to a labor leader.   Sacramento and dozens of cities, counties and labor federations will celebrate the life of Cesar Chavez on March 31, 2012,

On March 26, U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis honored Cesar Chavez and the UFW founders by dedicating the auditorium at the Department of Labor in Chavez’s name.

Mexican labor leader Jose Humberto Montes de Oca of the SME, electrical workers union will lead the Sacramento  march on March 31.   Montes do Oca and the SME  in Mexico are fighting for survival against a repressive government.  In central Mexico 44,000 Electrical Power Workers (SME) were fired to  privatize the industry and destroy the union.

This year, 2012 is the 50^th. anniversary of the founding of the U.F.W.  The Cesar Chavez celebrations focus on  the struggle for union rights and justice in the fields of California.  Along with Dolores Huerta, Philip Vera Cruz, and others, César created the United Farm Workers  (UFW) the first successful union of farm workers in  U.S. history.  There had been more than ten prior attempts to build a farm workers union.

            Each of the prior attempts to organize farm worker unions were destroyed by racism and corporate power. Chávez chose to build a union that incorporated the strategies of social movements and community organizing  and allied itself  with the churches, students,  and organized labor.  The successful creation of the UFW changed the nature of labor organizing  in the Southwest  and contributed significantly to the birth of Latino politics in the U.S.

Trampling out the Vintage ? a review of a book on Cesar Chavez

Trampling Out the Vintage ?

A  dissident’s view of the rise and the fall of the United Farm Workers union.

By Duane Campbell

Frank Bardacke’s Trampling Out the Vintage: Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers. (2011, Verso). is the view of a well- informed observer  who  worked in the lettuce fields near Salinas for six seasons,  then spent  another 25 years  teaching English to  farm workers  in the Watsonville, Cal.  area. His views on the growth and decline of the United Farm Workers union – some of which I do not share–  offer  important points of history and reflection  for unionists today, particularly those working with the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Trampling Out the Vintage, provides several insights not previously developed in well informed books on the UFW  including  important  differences between grape workers and  workers in row crops such as lettuce; the length of time workers were in the UFW,  the more settled family nature of grape workers, the strength of each  type of ranch committees,  the leadership of ranch crews  ( and thus the potential differences in creating democratic accountability), and the differing histories of worker militancy in  different  crops.  The author correctly argues that each of these led to somewhat different organizing environment in building the  union. He also details problems of administrative mismanagement in the hiring halls in the grape areas and alleged  mismanagement of organizing within the union sponsored health care insurance and clinic systems .

UFW march on Sacramento - Labor Day Weekend

     Over 3000  UFW farm workers and their supporters marched on the California Capitol in Sacramento on Sept. 4 insisting on Fair Treatment for Farm workers Now.   The march began August 23 in Madera. The march was organized by the United Farm Workers to reach Sacramento on Labor Day weekend.  Marchers  are pushing for the enactment of the Fair Treatment for Farm Workers Act and the right to be paid overtime after eight hours. 

    As the farm workers reached the capitol an apparent agreement was reached among legislators  to pass improvements of the existing Agricultural Labor Relations Act.  Gov. Jerry Brown and pro farm worker legislators  have struck a deal to give state regulators new powers that could help agriculture workers unionize.

The new  measures, introduced in the Legislature on Friday, would allow the state's Agriculture Labor Relations Board to certify a union if it finds that a grower has acted illegally to affect the outcome of a labor election. Currently the ALRB makes 5-10 decisions per year and few of the decisions  result in elections. The legislation would also accelerate the mediation process for workers in disputes with their employers.

   The Governor would not agree to the Fair Treatment for Farm Workers legislation already passed by the legislature  which would have permitted card check verification to hold a union election.  Governor Brown  and Republicans argue that the ALRB, passed in 1976, needs more time to be developed before changing a fundamental issue such as elections.