Cesar Chavez Celebration in the Mission Saturday
"César Chávez," 1969 by Manuel Acosta
By Jacob Simas, New America Media
Although the Cesar Chavez federal holiday has already come and gone, the Bay Area is honoring the iconic co-founder of the United Farm Workers with a celebration Saturday in San Francisco.
Bay Area activism and political culture played a significant — and often overlooked — role in Chavez’s early development as an organizer.
That history is the focus of a recent article published by San Jose bilingual newspaper La Oferta. The author, Patty Cruz Lopez, notes that Chavez, who was born in Arizona and moved to California to work the agricultural fields with his parents, “came upon his calling” as a political organizer only after he was married and living with his wife on the east side of San Jose, in a neighborhood then known as “Sal Si Puedes” (“Leave if You Can”) – an unrelated yet ironic foreshadowing of the phrase later made nationally famous by the United Farm Workers, “Si se puede!” (“Yes, we can!”)
Chavez moved to San Jose in the early 1950s, not long after returning from a stint in the U.S. Navy (which Chavez, in the classic documentary film by Rick Tejada-Flores, "The Fight in the Fields," described as “the two worst years of my life.”) It was in the South Bay that a local activist, Fred Ross, recruited Chavez, then 25, into the ranks of the Community Service Organization, where the future labor leader cut his teeth organizing voter registration drives.
Chavez never looked back.
By 1958, he had risen to become the CSO’s national director. It was also through the CSO, in Oakland in 1956, that Chavez met fellow organizer Dolores Huerta, forging a relationship that would change the direction of his future and arguably that of the entire U.S. labor movement. Firmly committed to a mission of fighting for the rights of farm workers through union organizing, the two eventually left the CSO to found a new organization, the National Farm Workers Association, a precursor to the UFW.
While the fight may have been in the fields in places like Delano and Coachella, the political philosophies behind the struggle were formulated, to some extent, right here in the Bay Area.
The Cesar E. Chavez Holiday Parade and Festival began with a parade Saturday morning starting at Dolores Park. The street fair is taking place Saturday afternoon until 6 p.m. on 24th Street between Treat Avenue and Bryant Street in the Mission District.
Source: The Bay Citizen (http://s.tt/12f1X)
Bay Area activism and political culture played a significant — and often overlooked — role in Chavez’s early development as an organizer.
That history is the focus of a recent article published by San Jose bilingual newspaper La Oferta. The author, Patty Cruz Lopez, notes that Chavez, who was born in Arizona and moved to California to work the agricultural fields with his parents, “came upon his calling” as a political organizer only after he was married and living with his wife on the east side of San Jose, in a neighborhood then known as “Sal Si Puedes” (“Leave if You Can”) – an unrelated yet ironic foreshadowing of the phrase later made nationally famous by the United Farm Workers, “Si se puede!” (“Yes, we can!”)
Chavez moved to San Jose in the early 1950s, not long after returning from a stint in the U.S. Navy (which Chavez, in the classic documentary film by Rick Tejada-Flores, "The Fight in the Fields," described as “the two worst years of my life.”) It was in the South Bay that a local activist, Fred Ross, recruited Chavez, then 25, into the ranks of the Community Service Organization, where the future labor leader cut his teeth organizing voter registration drives.
Chavez never looked back.
By 1958, he had risen to become the CSO’s national director. It was also through the CSO, in Oakland in 1956, that Chavez met fellow organizer Dolores Huerta, forging a relationship that would change the direction of his future and arguably that of the entire U.S. labor movement. Firmly committed to a mission of fighting for the rights of farm workers through union organizing, the two eventually left the CSO to found a new organization, the National Farm Workers Association, a precursor to the UFW.
While the fight may have been in the fields in places like Delano and Coachella, the political philosophies behind the struggle were formulated, to some extent, right here in the Bay Area.
The Cesar E. Chavez Holiday Parade and Festival began with a parade Saturday morning starting at Dolores Park. The street fair is taking place Saturday afternoon until 6 p.m. on 24th Street between Treat Avenue and Bryant Street in the Mission District.
Source: The Bay Citizen (http://s.tt/12f1X)