Cesar Chavez, Courtesy of the Cesar Chavez Foundation
By: Ruth Calvo
Some places close public offices today, especially in California. Cesar Chavez was born March 31, 1927. He was born into a family of farm laborers, grew up to become an organizer who worked for better conditions and wages for those workers. His tactics were non-violent, such as fasting, boycotts, strikes and pilgrimages.
In a day that sees corporate welfare queens battling against fairness toward workers, it’s a day we need to honor. At one college, Chico State, students are spending a day in service in Chavez’ honor.
On Tuesday, members of the university’s multi-cultural sororities and fraternities set up informational booths on campus to point out the values Chavez promoted, Robinson said.
“We recognize that many people don’t know who he was and what his contribution has been,” he said.
“We’ve put together an awareness campaign and have distributed a poster with the image of Cesar Chavez to our students and the community as well.”
On Tuesday, Robinson’s office e-mailed the campus community a newsletter that included information about Chavez.
It noted that Chavez, who grew up in a family of migrant farm workers, educated himself and in 1962 formed what would become the United Farmworkers of America.
The United Farmworkers managed to create better conditions for the migrant workers that pick our nation’s crops. At one time, they were brought in by traffickers in open trucks, housed in shacks without running water, cooking equipment or indoor toilets, and whole families, including children, picked fruit and vegetables all day without shelter or bathroom facilities, for indecent wages – usually ninety cents per hour plus ten cents for each basket of produce they picked. The children did not go to school and there were no health care arrangements.
The UFW won great improvements by its campaign against these inhumane conditions.
In 1973, the UFW organized a march through the Coachella and Imperial valleys in Central California to the United States-Mexico border to protest growers’ use of illegal immigrants as strikebreakers. The thousands of marchers were joined by the Reverend Ralph Abernathy and U.S. Senator Walter Mondale. In 1970, Chavez was jailed for defying a court injunction against boycotting. While imprisoned, he was visited by Coretta Scott King and Ethel Kennedy.
Through these dramatic moves the UFW won many important benefits for agricultural workers. It brought comprehensive health benefits for farmworkers and their families, rest periods, clean drinking water, sanitary facilities, and even profit sharing and parental leave. The UFW also has pioneered the fight to protect farmworkers against harmful pesticides.
Thanks, Sen. Ralph Yarborough, who marched to Austin with the farmworkers and Cesar Chavez, in their campaign for better conditions. Interestingly, UFW was founded on August 22, which happens to be my birthday, and I had the privilege of working for Senator Yarborough.
¡SÍ SE PUEDE!
(Yes We Can!)
This was a slogan used by Cesar Chavez in his years of struggle for farmworkers.