Cesar Chavez-founded UFW backs Kerry, citin ‘shared vision’ of helping Latinos ‘achieve the decent life America promises’

United Farm Workers President Arturo S. Rodriguez issued the following statement from the union’s headquarters in Keene, Calif. near Bakersfield after the Cesar Chavez-founded UFW endorsed Sen. John F. Kerry for President:
 
More than three and a half decades after Cesar Chavez embraced Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign, the United Farm Workers proudly supports Senator John Kerry for President because he shares our vision of helping Latinos and all people achieve the decent life America promises those who work hard for a living.
 
Farm workers are among the hardest-working, tax-paying workers in our country. They perform some of the hardest and most important labor in our nation: feeding America and much of the world. Senator Kerry shares our commitment to raising the minimum wage, providing affordable health care for everyone and offering our children the best quality public education.
 
We trust Senator Kerry because of his long history with us, from participating in the grape boycott during the mid-1970s to supporting the right of California strawberry workers to organize in the late 1990s.
 
Most recently, we have worked with Senator Kerry on bipartisan legislation dealing fairly with the immigration dilemma facing immigrant workers, their families and employers—the AgJobs bill, S. 1645, that John Kerry co-sponsors along with 50 other U.S. senators from both parties. It is far more meaningful than the empty rhetoric of the immigration plan President Bush proposed in January.
 
Senator Kerry represents the hope that Latinos and other Americans can once again have a government that truly acts on behalf of working people.
 
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(For background on the AgJobs bill, S. 1645, visit the UFW’s web site at http://www.ufw.org
and click on “Stop Bush’s immigration plan! Support the UFW’s bipartisan reform bill.”)