Today’s Almanac-March 31, 2010
If a person is extremely fortunate in his life, he may have an opportunity to meet-and better yet support in some meaningful, if small way-his heroes. I have been blest beyond measure by knowing and working closely some of the legendary figures of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). I got to meet and march with Martin Luther King in Chicago. And I got to meet César Chavez, born on March 31, 1927 on his family’s hardscrabble farm near Yuma, Arizona. When his family lost the farm in the Depression they were forced to become migrant laborers, following crops across the Southwest. Despite an insatiable curiosity and a thirst for reading young, César attended more than 30 different schools before he was forced to drop out after the eighth grade to help support the family. Too young for service in the Second World War, he none the less enlisted in the Navy in 1946 and served for two years in the Pacific. Upon returning to California, he married a girl he had met in the grape fields, Helen Fabela, and began to raise a family. He based the family in a barrio of East San Jose known as Sal Se Pueda-“Get out if you Can.” The young and growing family-there would eventually be eight children-continued to follow the crops and Chavez became more and more concerned with the desperate conditions in which his people labored. In 1947 and again in 1948 he joined two fledgling labor unions struggling for a toe hold in the fields. In 1952 Fred Ross recruited him for the Community Service Organization (CSO), which was organizing Latinos in the model of Saul Alinsky’s community organizations. Chavez found meaningful work for which he was extraordinarily gifted. In his years with the CSO he organized successful voter registration drives in many California communities and conducted campaigns against racial and economic discrimination in several cities. He excelled both at bringing sometimes frightened residents together to assert their rights and as a public speaker who could give voice to their aspirations. He rose steadily in the organization and became its national director in 1958. All the time he read voraciously in history, philosophy, theology, politics, and natural sciences giving himself the university level education that had been denied him. Inspired by the events of the Civil Rights Movement, and particularly by the philosophy and tactics of nonviolence espoused by Martin Luther King, he decided to forgo the security of a regular pay check. Instead, we went to Deleno, in the heart of the table grape region, and launched the fledgling National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) with his long time associate Dolores Huerta in 1962. He aimed at uniting labor traditions with the new militancy of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1965 he threw the support of the NFWA behind Filipino workers striking in Deleno. He broadened the strike to other fields bringing out Chicano and other migrants. Within a few months he led a historic march from Deleno to the state capitol in Sacramento to demand better wages and working conditions in the fields. The Deleno strike dragged on for five years, with picketers regularly attacked by grower hired thugs and harassed by local police and Sheriff Departments. In the face of many provocations, Chavez always counseled his members in nonviolence. The national news media began picking up on the struggle, particularly after the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor’s Subcommittee on Migrant Labor came to California to hold hearings where member Robert F. Kennedy expressed strong support for the workers. It was the beginning of a long relationship between Chavez and Kennedy Prince. The NFWA merged with the Agricultural Organizing Committee, sponsored by the AFL-CIO to become the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC), which launched a nationwide boycott of table grapes to pressure the growers into concessions. As tensions in the fields grew, some rank and file members began advocating self defense against attacks by thugs and police and perhaps action against scabs in the fields. In 1968 Chavez launched his first great fast, 25 days long to rally his people to nonviolence. He attracted the attention and support of his hero Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy returned to California to participate in the peace mass that broke the fast. In return UFW members worked hard for Kennedy in the California Presidential Primary that spring. They, and Chavez, were devastated by his murder at the very moment of his victory. In 1970 UFWOC stepped up its national grape boycott campaign, organizing local support committees around the country to picket markets selling “scab grapes.” Which is where I came into the story. I was the IWW representative on a Chicago Labor Support Committee that included members from the United Steel Workers, United Auto Workers, Service Employees, and others. Our pickets covered the Chicago area, particularly targeting the market dominating Jewel chain. I got to meet Chavez when he came to town to bolster our efforts, do some public speaking, and raise money. The boycott was effective. In 1970 the most growers had enough. Even the recalcitrant Deleno growers filed into the dilapidated union hall to sign an agreement. The grape strike and boycott was no sooner won than California lettuce growers signed “sweet heart” contracts with the Teamster’s Union aimed at keeping the UFW out. Chavez led some 10,000 farm workers out on strike in protest, prompting many growers to abandon the Teamsters and sign with the UFW. A new nation-wide boycott of non-union and scab iceberg lettuce was launched. When Chavez was jailed for violating a court order against the boycott, he was visited in jail by Coretta Scott King and Bobby Kennedy’s widow Ethel. When the original UFW contracts with table grape growers and vintner Ernest and Julio Gallo expired in 1972, growers rushed to sign with the rival Teamsters without any consultation with their workers. Chavez led thousands out strike in protest while growers obtained injunctions against picketing. Over 3500 strikers were arrested, hundreds beaten and at least two shot and killed. Alarmed by the violence, Chavez halted the walk out but announced a second grape boycott. Within a few months an astonishing 17 million Americans were boycotting scab grapes, lettuce and/or Gallo wines. California Governor Jerry Brown helped Chavez achieve his long cherished goal of a state agricultural labor relations law that guaranteed the right of farm workers to organize in 1975. Despite this the balance of the ‘70’s and much of the ’80’s was a long running battle between the UFW, since 1972 an official independent affiliate of the AFL-CIO on one side, and growers, their Teamster allies, and Republican politicians on the other. There were many strikes and boycotts, long marches and hunger strikes. Chavez and the union were under constant legal harassment by growers filing multi-million dollar law suits against them. Through it all Chavez persevered and held fast to his cherished nonviolence. In the mid eighties Chavez turned his attention to the use of pesticides in the fields and the health effects on workers and-ultimately-consumers. Yet another grape boycott was called to protest the use of poisons and in 1986 Chavez went on his longest, and last fast, lasting 36 days to draw attention to the cause. Chavez never fully recovered from the effects of that fast, although he continued his tireless work. On April 18, 1992 at the age of 61 and worn out, he died in his sleep in the modest home of an Arizona migrant worker. Forty Thousand mourners marched in his funeral. In September President Bill Clinton, posthumously awarded Chavez the Presidential Medal of Freedom. But César Chavez’s greatest legacy is the union he left behind and the millions he has inspired. ¡Si, se puede!