Explorations in Leadership
César Chávez:
Fought for the rights of migrant farm workers.
Claudia Sibila
ITGS 400
BACKGROUND
Born near Yuma, Arizona, on March 31, 1927.
César Chávez employed nonviolent means to bring attention to the plight of farmworkers.
He formed the National Farm Workers Association, which later became United Farm Workers (Stavans, 2010, pp. 4-5).
RATIONALE
Chávez believed that the only permanent solution to the problems of farm workers lay in legislation.
Chávez supported the passage of California's Agricultural Labor Relations Act (the first of its kind in the nation).
This law promised to end the cycle of misery and exploitation and ensure justice for the workers (Rodríguez, 2011).
According to Alarcon (2003), Arturo Rodriguez, the president of the UFW, said,
Cesar Chavez’s legacy is all about peace and non-violent action. If there was ever a time for Cesar’s legacy to come alive it is now. Basic principle demands that the United Farm Workers of America, AFL-CIO, joins national and global efforts in opposing the Bush administration’s plans to mount a ‘preemptive’ war in Iraq (para. 15).
THESIS STATEMENT
César Chávez was an advocate for the working poor and migrant workers of California’s Central Valley.
His use of the grape boycott, Salad Bowl strike, nonviolent means and spiritual fasts helped to draw attention to the plight of agricultural workers.
These strategies were responsible for better pay and working conditions for migrant workers (Cowie, 2014).
“We will never give up. We have nothing else to do with our lives except to continue in this nonviolent fight” (Chávez, as cited in Stavans, 2010, p. 3).
aim
This presentation aims to provide an insight into how César Chávez's legacy lives in the social movements now developing across the United States.
These movements narratives and tactics are based on those of Chávez.
Chávez captured attention and changed hearts with strength in numbers.
MAIN POINTS TO BE COVERED
The Story of César Chávez
The Beginning
The National Farm Workers’ Association (NFWA) is Born
The Delano Grape Strike and Boycott (1965-1970)
The Fast
Proposition 14
Stop the Red Coach
The Death of César Chávez
The Beginning
There were many groups focused for the rights of farm workers during the 1950s and 60s, e.g. Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), Community Service Organization (CSO) (García, 2012).
Prior to 1964 the AWOC spent time campaigning against the bracero program and trying to organize workers.
The bracero program (from the Spanish term bracero, meaning "manual laborer" or "one who works using his arms") was a series of laws and diplomatic agreements between Mexico and the United States (Cowie, 2014).
The Beginning Community service organization
In 1952, Fred Ross (CSO founder) met and recruited César Chávez as an organizer for CSO.
Chávez was a young veteran of the U.S. Navy and a former farm worker(Levy et al., 1975).
CSO dealt with the displacement of local workers by braceros.
CSO organized people where they were, and not where the organizers wanted them to be.
Chávez knew rural poverty, so he was sympathetic to the plight of farm workers.
He was inspired to move the CSO in the direction of farm worker justice (García, 2012).
The Beginning
García (2012) further comments:
In 1959, Chavez researched the effects of the bracero program in Oxnard, California.
Chavez’s solution to rural poverty aimed to end the guest worker exploitation program (known as the bracero program) and to create a union.
Before César Chávez, every strike was crushed, and every union was defeated.
The national Farm Workers association is Born
In 1958, Dolores Huerta, who worked for CSO, formed the Agricultural Workers Association (AWA)
This organization melded with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) set up by the AFL-CIO the following year.
In 1961, the CSO voted not to support AWOC.
César Chávez resigned from CSO and set out to form his own union (Maya, 2019).
The national Farm Workers association is Born
The National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) was founded in 1962 (14 Dec) at a convention called by Chávez.
In 1965, AWOC struck the grape growers and Chávez joined with his NFWA.
That December marked the beginning of the first grape boycott.
In August of 1966, AWOC and NFWA merged to form the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC),
The next three years were marked by membership drives, grape and lettuce strikes, and boycotts (Pawel as cited in Green, 2011).
The Delano grape strike and boycott 1965-1970
According to Levy et al. (1975):
On September 8, 1965, AWOC Filipino American grape workers walk out on strike.
The strike was against table and wine grape growers.
It was to protest years of poor pay and conditions.
The Filipinos asked César Chávez and the NFWA to join the strike.
The NFWA union joined the Filipino workers’ walkout on September 16, 1965 (Mexican Independence Day).
Latino and Filipino strikers worked together, sharing the same picket lines, strike kitchens and union hall.
The Delano grape strike and boycott 1965-1970
Moreover, León (2007) states that:
Chávez asked strikers to take a solemn vow to remain nonviolent.
The strike drew unprecedented support from outside the Central Valley, from other unions, church activists, students, Latinos and other minorities, and civil rights groups.
Chávez led a 300-mile march, or peregrination, from Delano to Sacramento.
It placed the farm workers’ plight squarely before the conscience of the American people.
The strikers turned to boycotts, including table grapes, which eventually spread across North America
SI SE PUEDE BOYCOTT LETTUCE AND GRAPES – Susan D. Pearcy
The Delano grape strike and boycott 1965-1970
Following Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, César Chávez practiced militant nonviolence.
He believed nonviolence is more powerful than violence,
He believed nonviolence forces the individual to be creative, and that it supports people if their cause is just.
“However important the struggle is and however much misery, poverty and exploitation exist, we know that it cannot be more important than one human life” (Chávez as cited in Maya, 2019).
César Chávez quoted Gandhi often, with expressions like, “Do something! Offer your life! If you really want to do something, be willing to die for it” (Quiroz, 2007).
The Delano grape strike and boycott 1965-1970
“The United Farm Workers symbolized the potential of peaceful protest by a multiracial, intergenerational coalition of men and women at a time when social movements had begun to grow weary of such approaches” (Garcia, 2012, p. 9)
(Collection Spotlight: UFW Montreal Boycott Office Records, 2012)
The Delano grape strike and boycott 1965-1970
By the end of 1967, the unions hadn’t achieved their goals, and many strikers wanted violence.
Following the example of Gandhi, Chávez started fasting in February 1968.
He fasted to rededicate the movement to nonviolence.
It was an act of penitence for those who advocated violence.
It was also a way of taking responsibility as leader of his movement (Stavans, 2010).
The fast
The fast divided the UFW staff. Some didn’t understand why Chávez was doing it. Others worried about his health. But the farm workers understood. A Catholic mass was said daily near where Chávez was fasting in a tiny windowless room of an adobe-walled gas station at the Forty Acres, the UFW headquarters outside Delano. Hundreds, then thousands, came (Quiroz, 2007).
(Marez, 2013)
Claudia Sibila (CS) - Marez, 2013
Claudia Sibila (CS) - How do I mark this as an mp4 file?
The fast
Barrera (2009), comments:
The fast worked. All conversations about violence stopped. Dr. King wrote to Chavez expressing admiration and solidarity.
The fast ended after 25 days during a mass in Delano with thousands. Senator Robert F. Kennedy was there, he said, " out of respect for one of the heroic figures of our time."
Chávez fasted many times. He repeated the fast in 1972 for 24 days, and again in 1988, this time for 36 days. At the end of the first fast his message was read for him, it ended with:
It is my deepest belief that only by giving our lives we find life. The true act of courage, the strongest act of virility, is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a nonviolent struggle for justice. Being a man is suffering for others. God help us to be men (Chávez as cited in Stavans, 2010, p. 84).
AFTER THE FAST THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES
Chávez applied the principles of Gandhi’s salt boycott and followed Dr. King’s bus boycott.
For the first time in US history, farmworkers decided to use a boycott in a major labor dispute.
The boycott changed the scene from the battle of the fields to the cities.
In the cities the farmworkers could ask for help from the American people, whom Chávez called "our court of last resort“ (Levy et al., 1975).
The Delano grape strike and boycott 1965-1970
The boycott connected middle-class families in the big cities with the families of poor farmers in California's vineyards.
Millions stopped eating grapes. At dinners across the country, parents gave children a simple and powerful lesson in social justice.
By 1970, the grape boycott was a complete success.
Table grape growers finally signed their first union contracts.
These contracts gave the workers better wages, benefits and protections (Rodriguez, 2011).
Another face of césar chávez
“While we are used to seeing him fasting and marching, here Cesar Chavez takes up another kind of movement, dancing, which reminds us of the utopian, world-changing arc of the farm workers' movement” (Marez, 2013).
PROPOSITION 14 - 1976
According to Green (2011), and Garcia (2012):
The UFW wanted its right to organize and join unions through secret elections written into law as a permanent proposition.
They continued with Proposition 14, after a convention of 1200 delegates in early September 1976 in Fresno.
This proposition states that the law should encourage workers' rights to organize.
The proposition was defeated by a 2-1 margin, a devastating political defeat and a public relations disaster for Cesar Chavez and his farmworker movement.
UFW NON-VIOLENCE 1973 - Susan Due Pearcy
AFTER THE DEFEAT OF PROPOSITION 14
Chatfield (n.d.) writes that:
Cesar Chavez felt threatened by the loss of Proposition 14 and feared for the life of his movement.
In 1977, Chavez began experimenting with the use of the group meeting game developed by Delancey Street and Synanon.
Chavez believed that he would promote honest communication to promote the cause of agricultural workers.
For most, the game abruptly ended their desire to continue the movement, sowing confusion among some movement volunteers and creating a negative sequel and resentment for others.
The post-Proposition 14 campaign was a self-inflicted turning point in the history of the movement.
STOP THE RED COACH
In 1978, the César Chávez and the UFW started a boycott on Red Coach lettuce, owned by parent company Bruce Church (Stavans, 2010).
The conflict began because Bruce Church did not want to raise the minimum hourly pay for workers and did not want to give them benefits. Bruce Church did not hire union workers.
"Stop the Red Coach" was the UFW slogan being publicized in 11 states.
Ten grocery chains stopped carrying Red Coach lettuce because of the boycott (Garcia, 2012).
STOP THE RED COACH
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52XQ8_ndA7s
KTLA News: “United Farm Workers pickets Red Coach lettuce”
The death of césar chávez
César Chávez, the founder and president of UFW, AFL-CIO was in Yuma helping UFW attorneys.
They were defending the union against a lawsuit brought by Bruce Church, Inc.
Church wanted farm workers to pay millions in dollars in damages from the UFW boycott of its lettuce during the eighties (Pawel, 2014).
César Chávez died in his sleep on April 23, 1993.
He died near Yuma, Arizona, where he had been born more than 66 years before.
His body was flown in a chartered plane to Bakersfield, where Helen Chavez and her children waited on the tarmac (Pawel, 2014).
Church eventually lost the case and signed a UFW contract in May 1996.
The funeral
According to Stavans (2010), and Pawel (2014), Chávez left two instructions:
He wanted the service at Forty Acres (UFW headquarters), and for his brother Richard to make him a pine coffin.
Mourners carried ten thousand white gladiolas, Helen’s favorite flower, an echo of the ten thousand roses distributed at Gandhi’s funeral.
The next day, Chávez was buried in a private ceremony at La Paz, next to the graves of his beloved dogs, Boycott and Huelga.
In 1994 he posthumously receives the Medal of Freedom.
More than 40,000 people attended Chavez's funeral on April 29, 1993. The casket was carried through Arizona farmland. MIKE NELSON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES.
https://www.scpr.org/news/2016/08/12/63556/cesar-chavez-the-life-behind-a-legacy-of-farm-labo
César chávez’s legacy
Chávez became a national hero, a symbol of courage and fortitude, for leading a nonviolent revolution to organize farmworkers.
Chávez’s birthday (3/31/1927) is a holiday in California and a federal commemorative holiday.
His legacy is immortalized in the fight for economic and social justice, and his spirit lives on in the vibrancy of rural America.
Chavez himself has become a symbol for all those Davids who attack Goliath and embrace the motto, ¡sí se puede! [Yes, it can be done!]
Picture taken from a mural in East L.A. (personal collection)
references
Alarcon, E. (2003). Cesar Chavez: A legacy for peace, justice and non-violence. People's World.
Barrera, J. B. (2009). Review of the book César Chávez, the catholic bishops, and the farmworkers’ struggle for social justice. Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 113(2), 287–288. https://doi.org/10.1353/swh.2009.0089
Chatfield, L. (n.d.). Turning Point. Farmworker Movement Documentation Project. Libraries.ucsd.edu. (2012). Retrieved 2 July 2020, from https://libraries.ucsd.edu/farmworkermovement/50th- anniversary documentation-project-1962-1993/ leroy-chatfield /.
references
Cowie, J. (2014). From the jaws of victory: The triumph and tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the farm worker movement. Labor Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, 11(2), 117–119. https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-2411092
Garcia, M. (2012). From the Jaws of Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker Movement. Ukraine: University of California Press.
references
Green, G. N. (2011). Review of the book The union of their dreams: Power, hope, and struggle in Cesar Chavez's farm worker movement. Southwestern Historical Quarterly 114(3), 349- 350. doi:10.1353/swh.2011.0005.
KTLA News. (1979). "United Farm Workers pickets Red Coach lettuce". Retrieved 2 July 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52XQ8_ndA7s.
León, L. (2007). Cesar Chavez in American religious politics: Mapping the new global
spiritual line. American Quarterly, 59(3), 857-881.
Levy, J. E., & Chavez, C. (1975). Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa. Norton.
references
Marez, C. (2013). Cesar Chavez’s Video Collection. New Media, Special Issue of American Literature. https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-2370203
Maya, G. (2019). Cesar Chavez and the ethics of exemplarity. Journal of Religious Ethics, 47(3), 601– 625. https://doi.org/10.1111/jore.12280
Pawel, M. (2014). The Crusades of Cesar Chavez. Bloomsbury.
Pearcy, S.D. (1973). UFW Nonviolence (poster). Retrieved 2 July 2020, from https://libraries.ucsd.edu/farmworkermovement/gallery/displayimage.php?album=2&pid=85#top_display _ media
Pearcy, S.D. (1977). Si se puede. Boycott Lettuce and grapes (poster). Retrieved 2 July 2020, from https://libraries.ucsd.edu/farmworkermovement/gallery/displayimage.php?album=2&pid=85#topdisplay media
.
rEFERENCES
Quiroz, A. (2007). César Chávez, the catholic bishops, and the farmworkers’ struggle for social justice. The Western Historical Quarterly, 38(4), 528. https://doi.org/10.2307/25443629
Radio, S. (2016). Cesar Chavez: The life behind a legacy of farm labor rights. Southern California Public Radio. Retrieved 2 July 2020, from https://www.scpr.org/news/2016/08/12/63556/cesar-chavez-the-life-behind-a-legacy-of-farm-labo/
Rodriguez, A. (2011). Why Cesar Chavez led a movement as well as a union. Questia.
Stavans, I. (2010). César Chávez. Greenwood
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