The community hosted and fed us a great home made meal after the peregrinos entered Dr. Paul Barnes Community Park in the small Sacramento Delta farming town of Walnut Grove late Thursday afternoon. Local farm workers picked fresh corn, cantaloupe and watermelons and brought them to the marchers. We started early this morning after a brief prayer service and enjoyed walking alongside beautiful vistas next to the Sacramento River along orchards in the heart of the delta. We were greeted for lunch at a park in Courtland on the river by folks who came from Thornton to feed us as well as women who provided us with fresh handpicked pears from area orchards and folks from the migrant education center in Courtland.
Among those joining the march today were Monterey County Supervisor Fernando Armenta; Roberto de la Rosa, who is on the board of directors for the Cesar Chavez Foundation, and his wife, Teresa; and Luis Lopez, Carlos Boker and Mo Jourdane, former attorneys and regional directors of the Agricultural Labor Relations Board during the 1970s. (Mo Jourdane is also the author of El Cortito: The Struggle for the Health and Legal Protection of Farm Workers, a book detailing the 1970s campaign he helped lead to finally ban the infamous short-handled hoe and how Cesar Chavez and the farm worker movement helped bring about the abolition of that hated instrument that crippled so many farm workers.)
Today we are ending up at Franklin Elementary School in Franklin, near Elk Grove. On Saturday we begin from there and enter Sacramento, ending up downtown at our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church at 8th and T streets. This was the church where Cesar and the original peregrinos stayed the night before the end of that first historic march to Sacramento on Easter Sunday in 1966. We are inviting everyone to join us on Saturday for 6:30 p.m. Mass at the Guadalupe Church. Then from there we embark upon the final leg of the pilgrimage at 10 a.m. on Sunday to the north steps of the state Capitol.
Members of the Chavez family are also joining us Saturday and Sunday, including Cesar’s son, Paul Chavez, president of the Cesar Chavez Foundation, and some of his children; Cesar’s oldest daughter, Sylvia Delgado and her husband, George; and Becky Chavez, a daughter of Cesar’s late brother, Richard Chavez, and her daughters.
I want to express gratitude to my wife, Sonia, who was able to accompany us the past 11 days of this pilgrimage, marching and assisting with the many logistics associated with the trek.
Arturo S. Rodriguez, President
United Farm Workers of America