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'Viva la causa!' — Long live our cause!
By Matt Kapko
News Editor
The Lumberjack
March 31, 2004
The work and legacy of Cesar Chavez is something that concerns every person.
You just can’t escape the need for food. It’s a fact of life that one must eat to survive and Chavez was determined to protect the livelihood and survival of those that produce and harvest our food.
Just as everyone should be concerned with DDT and pesticides on their fruits and vegetables, the poor working conditions that farmworkers continue to face should equally trouble them.
Despite the many victories that Chavez and his organization, the United Farm Workers, have achieved, there are still many migrant workers laboring under conditions that some compare to modern-day slavery.
Chavez saw significant legislation passed while leading the UFW. The Cesar E. Chavez Foundation’s Web site states, “He led successful strikes and boycotts that resulted in the first industry-wide labor contracts in the history of American agriculture.”
The 1975 California Agricultural Labor Relations Act was groundbreaking in that for the first time farmworkers won the right to unionize and collectively bargain for labor agreements.
“The laws were passed when he was around,” Richard Arreola, human resources manager at UFW, said. “He gave the farmworkers the right to organize.”
Looking up to Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., Chavez followed the principles of nonviolence. He effectively used peaceful tactics such as fasts, boycotts, strikes and pilgrimages. He fasted numerous times for periods longer than three weeks to highlight the need to gain social justice for farmworkers and all others that are poor and disenfranchised.
Chavez was born near Yuma, Ariz., on March 31, 1927. After his family lost their farm during the Depression he became a migrant farmworker with them. He was 10.
Migrating across the Southwest, working in the fields and grape vineyards, Chavez was exposed to the injustices of farmworker life.
After serving in the Navy following World War II, he returned to Central California to marry Helen Fabela and settle in the East San Jose barrio of Sal Si Puedes (which means “get out if you can”).
He began organizing for a Latino civil rights group, the Community Service Organization, in 1952. By the late ‘50s he was the organization’s national director.
His real dreams were realized when he resigned from CSO in 1962, moved to Delano and created the National Farm Workers Association to protect farmworkers, whose plight he had shared.
In 1965, Chavez and the CSO joined forces with Filipino-American members of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to strike against Delano-area grape growers. Chavez and a small group of strikers embarked on a 340-mile pilgrimage from Delano to the state capital in Sacramento.
Empowered by their progress, Chavez’s organization and the AWOC merged to form the UFW a year later.
In 1967, the UFW began a boycott of all California table grapes and a nationwide boycott of lettuce began in the summer of 1970.
In 1973, when a bitter three-month strike by grape workers in the Coachella and San Joaquin valleys resulted in violence (and even the murder of two workers), Chavez called off the strike and jumpstarted it again at a later date.
“His motto in life – ‘si se puede’ (it can be done) – embodies the uncommon and invaluable legacy he left for the world’s benefit.
“Cesar’s life cannot be measured in material terms. He never earned more than ,000 a year. He never owned a house. When Cesar passed, he had no savings to leave to his family,” the foundation writes on its Web site.
Since his death on April 23, 1993, seven states and dozens of cities and counties have honored Chavez and his legacy by establishing the Cesar Chavez Day of Service and Learning, which we celebrate today.
Although California established the statewide holiday in August 2000, just three years later in August 2003 Assembly Bill 1756 was passed, suspending all grant funding for the holiday from July 2003 to June 2006.
Currently, the UFW, which has 27,000 members, is involved in a high-profile struggle alongside the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, demanding that tomato pickers in Florida be paid a living wage.
There’s nothing special about these tomatoes, but they do have the honor of making their way into millions of hastily made meals at Taco Bell, a major buyer of tomatoes in Florida.
Taco Bell earned
$5 billion in 2001, while the average farmworker earned between 40 and 50 cents for every 32-pound bucket of tomatoes they picked, according to a CIW Web site. “At that rate, workers must pick and haul two tons of tomatoes to make
$50 in a day,” it adds.
The organization suggests that if Taco Bell would only pay one penny more per pound of tomatoes that it buys from Florida growers the workers’ income would nearly double. That poses the question: “Would you be willing to pay a quarter of a penny more for your chalupa if it meant that farmworkers could earn a living wage?”
While the protests highlight the continuing hardships, there have been significant victories in recent years. A major obstacle, lasting for decades, was many ranchers’ refusal to negotiate with the workers.
“Even though we won an election to work to unionize, ranchers would never negotiate in good faith,” Arreola said.
Vanessa Rhodes, contract administrator with UFW regional offices in Santa Rosa, said “This is the crooks of the class struggle – where the rich meet the poor.”
She, along with longtime organizer Salvador Mendoza and others, work to get fair contracts for their 200 members in Sonoma and Napa counties.
“The fight happens on so many different levels,” Rhodes said. The UFW’s most significant goal right now is to legally obtain permanent resident status for the half a million undocumented workers currently working on farms throughout the United States.
Without the legalization of these undocumented workers, companies will continue to be allowed to violate labor rights, Rhodes said.
The Agricultural Job Opportunity, Benefits, and Security Act of 2003 is still waiting to be put on the Senate’s agenda. Sen. Ted Kennedy helped introduce the bill and according to the staff at his office, there are currently 55 co-sponsors. It is equally divided among Republicans and Democrats, they added.
The bill would provide opportunity for migrant workers to become legalized. There’s a long list of specifics, including amount of days worked and length of employment, that farmworkers will be required to meet before being granted resident status.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform recognizes the potential improvements that can occur with the bill’s passing, however it maintains a mostly critical stance on the legislation. “The bill contains no provisions that would effectively discourage more people from entering the United States illegally or deter employers from hiring them,” the organization states on its Web site.
George Estrada, a journalism professor at Humboldt State University, had the pleasure of interviewing Chavez and marching alongside him in Oakland.
“I was a rookie reporter and very keen on meeting Chavez because he was one of those icons of the Left,” Estrada wrote in an e-mail interview.
“I do remember running up alongside Chavez, introducing myself and asking him several questions.” He added, “Cesar was charismatic, and seemingly a very gentle man. He was also very passionate about his cause.”
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