Workers rights the focus of Chavez march

Protests mix with celebration as throng weaves through downtown

Nearly 70 students who participated in a Cesar Chavez Day march and shut down traffic on Front Street between Ash and A streets to protest budget cuts and higher student fees, among other things. (John Gibbins)

— The location was San Diego and the spirit was mostly celebratory but the specter of anti-union actions elsewhere, especially Wisconsin, loomed over the fourth annual Cesar Chavez Day March on Thursday.

As many as 1,000 people, representing 20 labor unions as well as students and faculty from City College, rallied at the downtown campus at 10 a.m., according to the event’s organizer, the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council.

Spokesman Evan McLaughlin said the theme this year was “We are one,” but it was the Wisconsin campaign against collective bargaining that kept cropping up in speeches by labor leaders. Last year’s theme was local jobs for local workers, said McLaughlin.

Recent attacks on labor and looming budget cuts left a “fear of the unknown” among the participants, said Greg Duenas, a participant and staff member of the American Federation of Teachers. He said the mood was “at once both fearful and proud. We were there to celebrate the life of Caesar Chavez who dedicated his whole life to workers.”

Around noon time, as is now traditional, the participants set off from the intersection of Park Boulevard and A Street on a 4.5 mile march through the city. There were seven themed stops during the march. On Broadway, for example, marchers paused in front of Wells Fargo and Bank of America buildings to highlight the “Wall Street-fueled foreclosure crisis.”

At Chesapeake Fish Company & Harbor House Restaurant and the Manchester Grand Hyatt hotel the marchers shouted slogans of solidarity with labor unions embroiled in disputes there. They shouted slogans like “What’s disgusting/ Union busting!” and “Union power on the rise / Now’s the time to organize!”

The marchers headed up North Harbor Drive before circling back to the campus along West Ash and B streets.

About 70 marchers sat down across Front Street requiring police to briefly block the street to traffic between A and Ash.