The legacy of Cesar Chavez and the economic crisis of 2011

Cesar Chavez and Duane Campbell,1972

 César Chávez:

By  Duane E. Campbell

On March 31, 2011, California and ten  other states will celebrate the life and work of labor organizer Cesar Chavez.  State workers will have the day off.  Ironically, however, farm workers will not.  It is interesting that these states take a day off to recognize the contributions of a labor leader while cutting vital services for poor people.   Meanwhile the spirit of Cesar Chavez lives on in the struggle for union rights and justice in the fields of California, Ohio, and Florida as well as  in the struggles for union rights and workers dignity in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania.  What can we learn from the creation of the UFW that is useful today?

 Along with Dolores Huerta, Philip Vera Cruz, and others, César created the United Farm Workers  (UFW) the first successful union of farm workers in  U.S. history.  There had been more than ten prior attempts to build a farm workers union.

            Each of the prior attempts to organize farm worker unions were destroyed by racism and corporate power. Chávez chose to build a union that incorporated the strategies of social movements and community organizing  and allied itself  with the churches, students,  and organized labor.  The successful creation of the UFW changed the nature of labor organizing  in the Southwest  and contributed significantly to the growth  of Latino politics in the U.S. The UFW has shown unions that immigrants can  and must be organized.   

        César Chavez, Dolores Huerta,  Philip Vera Cruz, and others deliberately created a multiracial organization, Mexican immigrants,  Mexican American, Filipino, African-American, Dominican, Puerto Rican and Arab workers, among others, have been part of the UFW.  This cross racial organizing  was necessary in order to combat the  prior divisions and exploitations of workers based upon race and language. Dividing the workers on racial, language lines and immigration status  always left the corporations the winners.

            In the 60's Chávez became the pre-eminent civil rights leader for the Mexican and Chicano workers, helping with local union struggles throughout the nation.  He worked tirelessly to make people aware of the struggles of farm workers for better pay and safer working conditions. It is a testament to Cesar Chavez's skills and courage that the UFW even survived. Workers were  fired, beaten, threatened and even killed in pursuit of union benefits . Non union  farm workers today  continue to live on  sub-poverty wages while producing the abundant crops in the richest valley, in the richest state in the richest nation in the world. 

             In response to corporate power, Cesar developed new strategies, such as the boycott, based upon  his personal   commitment to  non-violence in the tradition of Ghandi and  Martin Luther King Jr.  César  Chavez died in his sleep on April 23, 1993 near Yuma, Arizona.

           

The organizing of the UFW by Chavez, Huerta, Vera Cruz and others was a milestone in union organizing.  So, where are we today?

The UFW is down from its peak of 80,000 potential members to less than 15,000.  Farm labor is largely no longer unionized. Similar declines have occurred in many other industries.  The once mighty United Auto Workers have been reduced from 1,500,000 member to less than 350,000 as corporations moved their production over seas and their  plants to non union states.  Working families suffer in an economy where unions are weak.

        The nation  including California continues to  suffer a severe recession and lack of jobs.  Twenty Six million  are unemployed and under employed. This crisis was created by finance capital and banking, mostly on Wall Street ,ie. Chase Banks, Bank of America, AIG, and others.   Finance capital received a $ 2 trillion bailout from the federal government.   Capital stole the future of many young people and, with the Republican victories in the November elections, launched a new assault on organized labor.

The  current economic decline has had a devastating impact on the  budgets- of 42  states as well as cities, school districts, and other public services.    Revenues have continued to plunge and  legislatures  made  a series of deep cuts to virtually all of the state's programs, including education, police protection, and the university systems. In Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana ( among others) Republican governors and legislators have sought to limit the right of workers to build their own unions.

This fiscal crisis in the state and the assault on unions  did not fall from the sky; it resulted from the Great Recession and the looting of our economy by Wall Street and Corporate America.  The current  budget cuts will only lengthen and deepen the recession.  Some politicians claim that we can’t afford union wages, pensions,  public education and good universities.  However, there is plenty of money  if we go where the money is; the rich who have gamed the system and accumulated vast wealth in the last three decades.

      While  working people  are loosing their jobs in budget cuts, major corporations continue to use the rigged tax code to avoid paying any federal taxes at all.  Last year GE, ExxonMobil, Citibank, and Bank of America paid no taxes while the government made certain they made great profits.

            What can we apply from the creation of the UFW to the current struggles for union rights during this recession ?  Solidarity works.  Workers need to cooperate and stick together. You get worker solidarity by asking for it.  The first step to winning a battle, is to get into the fight.

             Today Mexican, Mexican American, Chicano,  and Puerto Rican union leadership is common  in our major cities and in several  industries.  U.S. labor has differing perspectives on immigration and these positions reflect who they are organizing.

             For myself  and others, the UFW was a school for organizing.  Hundreds of activists in labor and community organizations owe their skills to UFW training and experience.    Along with improved working conditions, salaries, and benefits,  training this cadre of organizers remains a major legacy of the UFW.

            César taught us that all organizations have problems, that all organizations are imperfect. But, if you wait for the perfect organization, nothing gets done. Building popular organizations builds people's power, and democracy.

In creating the UFW Chavez organized thousands into a union  and inspired millions.    The organizing effort  changed the Southwest and changed  organized labor.

            The movement led by Cesar  created a union and reduced the oppression of farm workers.  Many people,  descendents of earlier generations of farm workers, learned to take a stand for justice.  We learned to not accept poor jobs, poor pay,  unsafe working conditions as natural or inevitable.  Rather, these are social creations which can be changed through organizing for economic and political power.  Dolores Huerta continues her important education and  training of young organizers through her foundation http://www.doloreshuerta.org/

                        Today, under the leadership of UFW president Arturo Rodriguez, over 15,000 farm workers enjoy benefits on the job. They are incorporated into California's educational, health and civic communities- and they too will suffer from the state imposed budget cuts.

      Thousands of new immigrants , many indigenous people from Mexico, harvest the crops.  Since NAFTA the exploitation of farm labor has increased.  Only a small portion are in unions. These  new generations of immigrants and migrant labor hardly know Chavez’ name nor his contributions.  Yet, in other regions  immigrants are being organized into unions such as Justice for Janitors, by activists who learned their organizing skills working with the UFW.  Latino political leaders often made their first commitments on a UFW picket line. Latino politics is changing the nation and impacts the creation of unions.

            The generation that created the UFW is passing. A new generation of political activists,  have emerged since the Chavez generations.  In the 2006 massive immigrant rights movements,  several new organizing efforts and leaders  emerged.   The organizing of these demonstrations was significantly assisted by persons trained within the UFW.  A new, significant Latino  union and political base has been created that is reshaping U.S. politics.

Chavez' legacy to popular struggles, to  Chicano/Mexicano self determination and to unions for the immigrant workers is beyond measure.  The union taught us how to organize for power and for justice. My generation created a movement for social justice.  Now, it is up to the next  generation to build upon that history.   Individually we are significantly at the mercy of the corporate state.  With union solidarity we can stand together and resist.  

 Chavez  is present in all of our work.  You can find our more about this remarkable leader at www.ufw.org , http://www.chavezfoundation.org/

and, http://www.farmworkermovement.org/ 

            Good books on Chavez and the UFW include:

Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW, and the Struggle for Justice in the 21^st. Century,  Randy Shaw. (2008)

Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker  Movement,  Marshall Ganz. (2009)

Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants.

David Bacon. 2008.

Duane Campbell is a Professor (emeritus)  of Bilingual/Multicultural Education at Calif. State University-Sacramento and the author of Choosing Democracy; a practical guide to multicultural education.  2010.

Also see: https://sites.google.com/site/democracyandeducationorg/chicano-mexican-american-digital-history-project

Things you can do.

We Are One rallies.  Around the nation.  April 4.

http://www.we-r-1.org/

National Teach In against austerity, union busting, and budget cuts.  April 5.

 www.fightbackteachin.org

California.  Take Class Action- Demand Quality Education.  Statewide demonstrations on CSU campuses.  April 13.  http://www.calfac.org/april-13-class-action

And. Actions also planned around week of April 13 at U. of California, Calif. Community Colleges and in many states including Connecticut, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania & Vermont


Teachers can get a video of Viva La Causa, the Story of Cesar Chavez free for use in classrooms  from Teaching Tolerance. www.TeachingTolerance.org

An exciting time for former UFW volunteers!

1. Randy Shaw started the ball rolling with his  "Beyond The Fields: Cesar Chavez, The UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century" (2008).  Randy writes: Cesar Chavez always expected the spirit of 'si se puede!' to live on in future generations. Continuing the struggle for justice in the twenty-first century is the best testament to his and the UFW's legacy."

2. Miriam Pawell rolled out: "The Union of Their Dreams: Power, Hope, and Struggle in Cesar Chavez's Farm Worker Movement". (2009)  Miriam states that - to date - most of what has been written about Cesar Chavez is hagiography and the purpose of her book is to provide a reevaluation of Chavez's legacy, and then for the next 200 pages she trashes his leadership abilities.

3. Not to be outdone, writer Richard Rodriguez takes up Pawel's theme with an article in the Wilson Quarterly (2010) stating that Cesar Chavez is a "loser" and characterizes him as a "bully" - and that he spoke like a Mexican.

4. Rising to the occasion, Jeffrey Rubin, professor of history at Boston University, writes in the Christian Science Monitor (March 31,2010) that Cesar Chavez and Hugo Chavez "are more alike than they are different . . . and as journalist Miriam Pawel makes clear, the cause of the UFW demise was Cesar Chavez himself. The charisma and brilliance that enabled Chavez to rally supporters across the US, from students to ministers to suburban housewives, also led him to ignore the on-the-ground needs of running a union and throw out anyone who opposed his top-down authority."  (Wow!!)

  

Marshall Ganz: "Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization, and Strategy In the California Farm Worker Movement" (2009)

Marshall writes: "I am blessed to have had the opportunity to participate in the farm worker movment, to contribute to its development, and now to be possessed of the energy, time, and support to revisit it from a fresh perspective.

Just as my experience as an organizer in Mississippi had given me new eyes through which to see the farm worker world in which I had grown up, so my experience as a scholar gave me new eyes to see the farm worker world in which I worked for 16 years. . .

My (farm worker) experience has equipped me with a deep understanding of the context in which events unfolded, direct information as to what took place, and access to important research resources.

It has infused my work with a deep desire to understand not only what happened, but also why things happened as they did, and thus equip others to learn from this experience.

One lesson I learned is that things don't have to be the way they are, but they don't change themselves. Challenging the status quo takes commitment, courage, imagination, and, above all, dedication to learning." 

5. After a two-year pitched battle with city officials,  Dallas community activists finally convinced the Dallas City Council to approve the naming of a major street "Cesar Chavez Boulevard".  (February 2010)

6. After a three-year rancorous campaign, Portland community activists finally convinced the Portland City Council to name a major street "Cesar Chavez Boulevard". (February 2010)

7. On March 24, LeRoy Chatfield delivered a public tribute to Helen Chavez, wife of Cesar Chavez,  to an audience of more than 600 community leaders, activists, and students in San Diego, CA.  (-  at 7:30 AM !! )

8. President Barack Obama proclaims March 31, 2010 as "Cesar Chavez Day" and "calls upon all Americans to observe this day with appropriate service, community, and education programs to honor Cesar Chavez's enduring legacy."

I leave you with this thought: it has been 17 years since the death of Cesar Chavez, can you think of any other US public figure who has generated this amount of activity, debate, loyalty, reverence and name- calling 17 years after their passing?

LeRoy Chatfield. Farmworker Movement Documentation Project,

Callison of CPR continues his narrow view of Cesar Chavez and the UFW

Jeffery Callison, of the local talk show Insight, once again promoted the book by Miriam Pawell on Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers.  This is the celebration of the Cesar Chavez holiday.  I responded to this book in Jan.

Photo: myself and Cesar Chavez. 1972.
 Here it is.

Why David Sometimes Wins: Ganz

Posted this review is in part a response to the responses below by Miriam Pawel about her book. After attending her presentation and listening to her, I remain concerned about the narrative she presents.  We need more informed discussion. She notes some Chicano scholars who wrote testimonials for her book jacket.  I hope that they were well informed on the UFW.  Marshall Ganz certainly is.
Particularly disturbing were her selective use of quotes, her claim that the ALRB is a great law, and other out of context statements.

Why David Sometimes Wins; Leadership, Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement.  Marshall Ganz.  2009.  Oxford University Press.

To most people, even to union activists, the struggle to create the United Farm Workers Union (now part of the Change to Win Federation) is a tale from long ago and far away. Even to those of us who participated in these events, the memories of the great battles of the 60’s and 70’s are passing in importance. Now, along comes the just published book, Why David Sometimes Wins, to offer new insights into some of the complex history of building this particular social movement.

      Marshall Ganz retells  the important story of the creation of the first successful farm workers union for important analysis. The author was Director of Organizing for the United Farm Workers and served in a variety of positions including Executive Board Member between 1973 and 1982; his writing is that of a well-informed insider of one of the critical battles in union and Chicano history. The questions considered are important and relevant to union building, movement building and the interaction of the two today. 

In the first chapter Ganz develops a sophisticated theses that the early victories of the union that became the UFW was successful primarily due to three major causal factors: the diversity of their leadership (including the diversity of their ties to different networks), the great motivation of the early leaders, and their creative decision making in developing and adapting strategies or what he calls “strategic capacity”.  The chapter is adapted from his Harvard thesis on the same subject.  

Ganz is particularly good on strategy.  He says, 

“Strategy is how we turn what we have into what we need to get what we want. Strategy is intentional – a pathway that we shape by making a series of choices about how to use resources in the present to achieve goals in the future. ..Why do we have to strategize?  In our world of competition and cooperation, achieving our goals usually requires power. To act on our interests successfully we must mobilize and deploy our own political, economic, or cultural resources  to influence the interests of others who hold the resources we need. .. Strategy is a verb- something you do, not something you have." P.8.  

In chapters 3-7, the heart of the book ,  the author looks at the three major attempts to organize farm workers in the period of 1962- 1972 to understand why one strategy was successful, while others, often better funded, failed. 

Although Ganz was active in the UFW by the time of the 1966 March on Sacramento, the record is not solely retrospective or personal report. He undertook significant research to understand efforts in prior decades to organize farm workers . His recording of the role of The Migrant Ministry and of Chris Hartmire provides important examples and supports the thesis that diversity of leadership was a critical element in achieving victory. There is more to this story including the role of numerous Catholic priests, brothers, sisters, and ex-religious in developing the union.  Many of these are listed in Randy Shaw’s Beyond the Fields; Cesar Chavez, the UFW, and  the Struggle for Justice in the 21^st Century (2008). These two books complement each other well; Ganz has focused on the early years, 1964-1982, while Shaw focuses much of his writing on the later contributions of ex UFW organizers working in the 90’s and later. 

            The early history is vital and supports Ganz’s theses. The last chapter “Epilogue”, is certainly the most controversial. Here Ganz uses his prior arguments to explain the decline of the U.F.W. after 1982. The chapter is a painful read; the story has been told before, but seldom from an insider perspective. Former Vice President Philip Vera Cruz had raised some of these issues in his own biography, but not in the sustained, strategic way that Ganz presents the forces at work and the events. 

              As Ganz describes it, “Chavez now introduced the national Executive Board to his new organizational model and, specifically to the Synanon game.”

In the Spring of 1978, Chavez required 200 staffers to travel as much as five hours to attend weekly sessions.  As Ganz tells it the UFW leadership turned into a “community of unpaid cadres, loyal to a single leader, governed by groupthink rituals, and enjoying the apparent efficiency of unquestioning obedience.” Ganz continues, “It’s unclear how Chavez hoped to reconcile Dederich’s vision (Synanon) with that of a democratically accountable union organized to represent workers—especially when the UFW thrived on diversity, contentiousness and creativity. In fact, he could not.”(p. 244) Interested readers can develop their own conclusions on the issues raised if you are willing to do the reading on the causes of decline by going to the excellent and fascinating Farmworker Movement Documentation project. http://www.farmworkermovement.us/ Here   key organizers  and participants like Ganz and  Leroy Chatfield  as well as  hundreds of former UFW  volunteers have told their  own stories  of these turbulent decades as  they remember them. 

 Unfortunately the story of the decline of the UFW  is told  more  as a narrative without  much of the structural analysis that provides the strength of the earlier part of the book.  And, although Ganz may be correct in his assertions about the destructive role of the Synanon Game, the purges  of the 1978-1982 era  fail  to explain a whole series of earlier cases when experienced organizers left or were asked to leave including Tony Orendain, Jim Drake and others.  Personalized decision-making in the union  was not a new development. It occurred while author Ganz himself was on the board. The period from 1977 until 1982 when Ganz left the board was itself a time of internal conflict, dissent, and mayhem even before the Game was introduced. 

            Ganz criticizes the AWOC, the Teamsters, and the late UFW for depending on outside funding rather than the dues of the membership.  He argues that depending upon dues and members in the early years  made the UFW ultimately democratic.  The later UFW became a very profitable series of organizations and fundraisers, with less than 25 % of the budget coming from farm workers themselves and it became less democratic. Miriam Pawel of the Los Angeles Times described some  of the problems of  outside fundraising in the name of farm workers in detail in a series of reports in Jan and Feb. of 2006. The union’s response is on their web site at http:UFW.org.

            This difference on fundraising is important.  Is it better to get $40,000 from your members than to get $4,000,000 from supporters that is used to help your members? Ganz argues that the $4 million is ultimately corrupting since it distracts you from building your organization, whether a union or nonprofit. 

            This issue is alive today.  Major organizations such as Move On or People for the American Way and other email based organizations and others are potent fund raising machines.  They have relatively few staff and active organizers or members.  This fund raising approach to “organizing” is now a  dominant form  of political work outside of labor. It is well worth analyzing if this form is always less productive than the labor/community organizing model described in all of its turbulence by Ganz. 

            If you build a union based upon members interests, participation and members funds, you create an organization at times capable of defending members interests.  If you build a volunteer organization based upon direct mail to passive contributors and now based upon internet fundraising, you have a very small nucleus of activists, a very limited view of internal democracy,  and a large e mail list and a web site.  As described in Why David Sometimes Wins, the union building grass roots model can be turned into a primarily fund raising model.  But, these two are different.

            In my classes with Mexican American, Chicano and immigrant students, the story of the growth and decline of the United Farm Workers is a story of long ago, of past glory.  The students have not experienced the great gains from organizing of a prior generation.  Their contact with organized labor is distant. 

The farm worker population itself has changed.  Older Mexican workers have been replaced by younger Zapotec, Mixtec, and other indigenous immigrants . The current generation of workers knows little of the gains of the prior years; the UFW holds few contracts, workers’ wages have again fallen, and the conditions in the fields are only scantly improved. ( For more on the diversity of immigration  within the farm labor communities see Manuel Barajas, The Xaripu Community Across Borders; Labor, Community and Family. 2009.  University of Notre Dame Press)            

Ganz does students of labor history  a favor by describing the important and dynamic nature of the original organizing, the early role of the Teamsters and AWOC, and the choices which workers and organizers faced.  In many cases there is an “official” story as well as the views of many participants in the struggles.  There are also inevitably differences between the newly accepted view offered by Ganz and the complexity and the dynamics of the actual events including the development of the Chavez legend. 

            Even with a careful and excellent researcher like Ganz, writers on events and social movements develop a frame to explain their experiences. The frame is in part determined by when the writer entered the movement, their experiences, and when and why they left the movement; Why David Sometimes Wins is no exception.  A writer who entered the movement from an organized labor perspective would have a different view than Ganz on some issues (and they do).  At the same time, Ganz has provided excellent research and a careful analysis of how a small, struggling labor union/ movement learned to do battle on two or three fronts at the same time and to succeed. 

            I hope that in a future book, Ganz uses the same skills of structural analysis to examine the period from 1975- 1985 as he used to develop his thesis in Why David Sometimes Wins.  These events were not only the reverse of the major theses from the founding years; they each have their own history. 

            The Ganz book is a valuable contribution to understanding the dynamics of building a movement and a union.  He contributes to describing how organizing social movements differs from organizing unions; and he offers important thinking on what organizers from each tradition have to offer those from the other tradition. With Why David Sometimes Wins, each tradition can begin to comprehend not only the enemy but their potential allies from a union perspective.  Ganz comments on but has not yet developed the ideas of how does a movement or a union develop and become staff driven and bureaucratized, certainly a vital issue for our times.  Distinct from the characteristics and flaws of a particular leader, how do movement based unions become institutionalized – or decline.  Are there some Iron Laws of bureaucracy for unions and organizations that grow out of social movements? 

            This important book is well worth a careful read and ongoing discussions.

Duane Campbell.

Professor. (Emeritus). Bilingual/Multicultural Education. Calif. State Univ.-Sacramento.  Author, Choosing Democracy: a practical guide to multicultural education. 4^th. ed. 2010. 

Chair. Sacramento DSA.  

Why David Sometimes Wins: Ganz

Posted this review is in part a response to the responses below by Miriam Pawel about her book. After attending her presentation and listening to her, I remain concerned about the narrative she presents.  We need more informed discussion. She notes some Chicano scholars who wrote testimonials for her book jacket.  I hope that they were well informed on the UFW.  Marshall Ganz certainly is.
Particularly disturbing were her selective use of quotes, her claim that the ALRB is a great law, and other out of context statements.

Why David Sometimes Wins; Leadership, Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement.  Marshall Ganz.  2009.  Oxford University Press.

To most people, even to union activists, the struggle to create the United Farm Workers Union (now part of the Change to Win Federation) is a tale from long ago and far away. Even to those of us who participated in these events, the memories of the great battles of the 60’s and 70’s are passing in importance. Now, along comes the just published book, Why David Sometimes Wins, to offer new insights into some of the complex history of building this particular social movement.

      Marshall Ganz retells  the important story of the creation of the first successful farm workers union for important analysis. The author was Director of Organizing for the United Farm Workers and served in a variety of positions including Executive Board Member between 1973 and 1982; his writing is that of a well-informed insider of one of the critical battles in union and Chicano history. The questions considered are important and relevant to union building, movement building and the interaction of the two today.

In the first chapter Ganz develops a sophisticated theses that the early victories of the union that became the UFW was successful primarily due to three major causal factors: the diversity of their leadership (including the diversity of their ties to different networks), the great motivation of the early leaders, and their creative decision making in developing and adapting strategies or what he calls “strategic capacity”.  The chapter is adapted from his Harvard thesis on the same subject.  

Ganz is particularly good on strategy.  He says,

“Strategy is how we turn what we have into what we need to get what we want. Strategy is intentional – a pathway that we shape by making a series of choices about how to use resources in the present to achieve goals in the future. ..Why do we have to strategize?  In our world of competition and cooperation, achieving our goals usually requires power. To act on our interests successfully we must mobilize and deploy our own political, economic, or cultural resources  to influence the interests of others who hold the resources we need. .. Strategy is a verb- something you do, not something you have." P.8. 

In chapters 3-7, the heart of the book ,  the author looks at the three major attempts to organize farm workers in the period of 1962- 1972 to understand why one strategy was successful, while others, often better funded, failed.

Although Ganz was active in the UFW by the time of the 1966 March on Sacramento, the record is not solely retrospective or personal report. He undertook significant research to understand efforts in prior decades to organize farm workers . His recording of the role of The Migrant Ministry and of Chris Hartmire provides important examples and supports the thesis that diversity of leadership was a critical element in achieving victory. There is more to this story including the role of numerous Catholic priests, brothers, sisters, and ex-religious in developing the union.  Many of these are listed in Randy Shaw’s Beyond the Fields; Cesar Chavez, the UFW, and  the Struggle for Justice in the 21^st Century (2008). These two books complement each other well; Ganz has focused on the early years, 1964-1982, while Shaw focuses much of his writing on the later contributions of ex UFW organizers working in the 90’s and later.

            The early history is vital and supports Ganz’s theses. The last chapter “Epilogue”, is certainly the most controversial. Here Ganz uses his prior arguments to explain the decline of the U.F.W. after 1982. The chapter is a painful read; the story has been told before, but seldom from an insider perspective. Former Vice President Philip Vera Cruz had raised some of these issues in his own biography, but not in the sustained, strategic way that Ganz presents the forces at work and the events.

              As Ganz describes it, “Chavez now introduced the national Executive Board to his new organizational model and, specifically to the Synanon game.”

In the Spring of 1978, Chavez required 200 staffers to travel as much as five hours to attend weekly sessions.  As Ganz tells it the UFW leadership  turned into a “community of unpaid cadres, loyal to a single leader, governed by groupthink rituals, and enjoying the apparent efficiency of unquestioning obedience.” Ganz continues, “It’s unclear how Chavez hoped to reconcile Dederich’s vision (Synanon) with that of a democratically accountable union organized to represent workers—especially when the UFW thrived on diversity, contentiousness and creativity. In fact, he could not.”(p. 244) Interested readers can develop their own conclusions on the issues raised if you are willing to do the reading on the causes of decline by going to the excellent and fascinating Farmworker Movement Documentation project. http://www.farmworkermovement.us/ Here   key organizers  and participants like Ganz and  Leroy Chatfield  as well as  hundreds of former UFW  volunteers have told their  own stories  of these turbulent decades as  they remember them.

 Unfortunately the story of the decline of the UFW  is told  more  as a narrative without  much of the structural analysis that provides the strength of the earlier part of the book.  And, although Ganz may be correct in his assertions about the destructive role of the Synanon Game, the purges  of the 1978-1982 era  fail  to explain a whole series of earlier cases when experienced organizers left or were asked to leave including Tony Orendain, Jim Drake and others.  Personalized decision-making in the union  was not a new development. It occurred while author Ganz himself was on the board. The period from 1977 until 1982 when Ganz left the board was itself a time of internal conflict, dissent, and mayhem even before the Game was introduced.

            Ganz criticizes the AWOC, the Teamsters, and the late UFW for depending on outside funding rather than the dues of the membership.  He argues that depending upon dues and members in the early years  made the UFW ultimately democratic.  The later UFW became a very profitable series of organizations and fundraisers, with less than 25 % of the budget coming from farm workers themselves and it became less democratic. Miriam Pawel of the Los Angeles Times described some  of the problems of  outside fundraising in the name of farm workers in detail in a series of reports in Jan and Feb. of 2006. The union’s response is on their web site at http:UFW.org.

            This difference on fundraising is important.  Is it better to get $40,000 from your members than to get $4,000,000 from supporters that is used to help your members? Ganz argues that the $4 million is ultimately corrupting since it distracts you from building your organization, whether a union or nonprofit.

            This issue is alive today.  Major organizations such as Move On or People for the American Way and other email based organizations and others are potent fund raising machines.  They have relatively few staff and active organizers or members.  This fund raising approach to “organizing” is now a  dominant form  of political work outside of labor. It is well worth analyzing if this form is always less productive than the labor/community organizing model described in all of its turbulence by Ganz.

            If you build a union based upon members interests, participation and members funds, you create an organization at times capable of defending members interests.  If you build a volunteer organization based upon direct mail to passive contributors and now based upon internet fundraising, you have a very small nucleus of activists, a very limited view of internal democracy,  and a large e mail list and a web site.  As described in Why David Sometimes Wins, the union building grass roots model can be turned into a primarily fund raising model.  But, these two are different.

            In my classes with Mexican American, Chicano and immigrant students, the story of the growth and decline of the United Farm Workers is a story of long ago, of past glory.  The students have not experienced the great gains from organizing of a prior generation.  Their contact with organized labor is distant.

The farm worker population itself has changed.  Older Mexican workers have been replaced by younger Zapotec, Mixtec, and other indigenous immigrants . The current generation of workers knows little of the gains of the prior years; the UFW holds few contracts, workers’ wages have again fallen, and the conditions in the fields are only scantly improved. ( For more on the diversity of immigration  within the farm labor communities see  Manuel Barajas, The Xaripu Community Across Borders; Labor, Community and Family. 2009.  University of Notre Dame Press)           

Ganz does students of labor history  a favor by describing the important and dynamic nature of the original organizing, the early role of the Teamsters and AWOC, and the choices which workers and organizers faced.  In many cases there is an “official” story as well as the views of many participants in the struggles.  There are also inevitably differences between the newly accepted view offered by Ganz and the complexity and the dynamics of the actual events including the development of the Chavez legend.

            Even with a careful and excellent researcher like Ganz, writers on events and social movements develop a frame to explain their experiences.  The frame is in part determined by when the writer entered the movement, their experiences, and when and why they left the movement; Why David Sometimes Wins is no exception.  A writer who entered the movement from an organized labor perspective would have a different view than Ganz on some issues (and they do).  At the same time, Ganz has provided excellent research and a careful analysis of how a small, struggling labor union/ movement learned to do battle on two or three fronts at the same time and to succeed.

            I hope that in a future book, Ganz uses the same skills of structural analysis to examine the period from 1975- 1985 as he used to develop his thesis in Why David Sometimes Wins.  These events were not only the reverse of the major theses from the founding years; they each have their own history.

            The Ganz book is a valuable contribution to understanding the dynamics of building a movement and a union.  He contributes to describing how organizing social movements differs from organizing unions; and he offers important thinking on what organizers from each tradition have to offer those from the other tradition. With Why David Sometimes Wins, each tradition can begin to comprehend not only the enemy but their potential allies from a union perspective.  Ganz comments on but has not yet developed the ideas of how does a movement or a union develop and become staff driven and bureaucratized, certainly a vital issue for our times.  Distinct from the characteristics and flaws of a particular leader, how do movement based unions become institutionalized – or decline.  Are there some Iron Laws of bureaucracy for unions and organizations that grow out of social movements?

            This important book is well worth a careful read and ongoing discussions.

Duane Campbell.

Professor. (Emeritus). Bilingual/Multicultural Education. Calif. State Univ.-Sacramento.  Author, Choosing Democracy: a practical guide to multicultural education. 4^th. ed. 2010.

Chair. Sacramento DSA. 

           

Cesar Chavez Lives on the struggle of working people

César Chávez: "Presente"
By Duane E. Campbell

The spirit of Cesar Chavez lives on in the struggle for union rights and justice in the fields of California. Along with Dolores Huerta, Philip Vera Cruz, and others, César created the United Farm Workers (UFW) the first successful union of farm workers in U.S. history. There had been more than ten prior attempts to build a farm workers union.
The United Cannery and Packinghouse Workers (UCAPAWA) organized in the 1930's, the National Farm Workers Union (NFW) led by Ernesto Galarza tried to organize Farm workers in the 40's and 50's. In 1959, the AFL-CIO tried to organize again with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC). AWOC continued the prior efforts of Ernesto Galarza and the NFW in struggling against "braceros" or guest workers, contract workers imported from Mexico, for breaking strikes. A renewed "guest worker" bill is presently before Congress.
Each of the prior attempts to organize farm worker unions were destroyed by racism and corporate power. Chávez chose to build a union that incorporated the strategies of social movements and community organizing and allied itself with the churches, students, and organized labor. The successful creation of the UFW changed the nature of labor organizing in the Southwest and contributed significantly to the birth of Latino politics in the U.S.
Today, under the leadership of UFW president Arturo Rodriguez, over 28,000 farm workers enjoy benefits on the job. They are incorporated into California's educational, health and civic communities. The UFW has shown the AFL-CIO that immigrants can and must be organized.
César Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Philip Vera Cruz, and others deliberately created a multiracial organization, Mexican, Mexican American, Filipino, African-American, Dominican, Puerto Rican and Arab workers, among others, have been part of the UFW. This cross racial organizing was necessary in order to combat the prior divisions and exploitations of workers based upon race and language. Dividing the workers on racial and language lines always left the corporations the winners.
In the 60's Chávez became the pre-eminent civil rights leader for the Mexican and Chicano workers, helping with local union struggles throughout the nation. He worked tirelessly to make people aware of the struggles of farm workers for better pay and safer working conditions. It is a testament to Cesar Chavez's skills and courage that the UFW even survived. They were opposed by major interests in corporate agriculture including the Bruce Church and Gallo Corporations as well as the leadership of the Republican Party then led by Ronald Reagan. Workers were fired, beaten, threatened and even killed in pursuit of union benefits . Non union farm workers today continue to live on sub-poverty wages while producing the abundant crops in the richest valley, in the richest state in the richest nation in the world.
In response to corporate power, Cesar developed new strategies, such as the boycott, based upon his personal commitment to non-violence in the tradition of Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. César Chavez died in his sleep on April 23, 1993 near Yuma, Arizona.
Today Mexican, Mexican American and Puerto Rican union leadership is common in our major cities and in several industries. For myself and others, the UFW was a school for organizing. Hundreds of activists in labor and community organizations owe their skills to UFW training and experience. Along with improved working conditions, salaries, and benefits, training this cadre of organizers remains a major legacy of the UFW.
César taught us that all organizations have problems, that all organizations are imperfect. But, if you wait for the perfect organization, nothing gets done. Building popular organizations builds people's power, and democracy.
In creating the UFW Chavez organized thousands into a union and inspired millions. Children in school study his life. Many curriculum packages stress his emphasis on service to others. The service side of Cesar’s work was certainly inspiring.
The organizing side changed the Southwest and organized labor. In a 1988 campaign and fast Cesar focused attention on the many dangerous problems of pesticides used in the fields. Artists have captured his image in hundreds of ways. Schools, parks, and highways have been named for him. Establishing Cesar Chavez holiday in California and other states has increased knowledge of his contributions.
The movement led by Cesar created a union and reduced the oppression of farm workers. Many people, descendents of earlier generations of farm workers, learned to take a stand for justice. We learned to not accept poor jobs, poor pay, unsafe working conditions as natural or inevitable. Rather, these are social creations which can be changed through organizing for economic and political power. Dolores Huerta continues her important education and organizing work throughout the nation.
Now, thousands of new immigrants harvest the crops and only a small percent are in unions. The new generations of immigrants and migrant labor hardly know Chavez’ name nor his contributions. Yet, in other regions immigrants are being organized into unions such as Justice for Janitors, by activists who learned their organizing skills working with the UFW. And, Latino political leaders often made their first commitments on a UFW picket line.
The generation that created the UFW is passing. A new generation of political activists, mostly within the Democratic Party, have emerged since the Chavez generations. In the 2006 massive immigrant rights movements, several new organizing practices emerged. The organizing of these demonstrations was significantly assisted by persons trained within the UFW. A new, significant Latino union and political base has been created.
Chavez' legacy to popular struggles, to Chicano/Mexicano self determination and to unions for the immigrant workers is beyond measure. The union taught us how to organize for power and for justice. He is present in all of our work. I plan to march on March March 28,2009 in memory of Cesar Chavez' contributions to building a more democratic society for working people. You can find our more about this remarkable leader at www.ufw.org And, www.cesarchavezfoundation.org
And, http://www.farmworkermovement.org/ Duane Campbell is a Professor of Bilingual/Multicultural Education at Calif. State University-Sacramento and the author of Choosing Democracy; a practical guide to multicultural education. 4th. edition. (Allyn and Bacon,2010.

Chavez March Saturday

The annual Cesar Chavez Day march.
A WORKER’S RIGHT TO ORGANIZE!
When: Saturday March 28, 2009
Where: Southside Park 6th and "T" Street @ 10:00 am
Arriving: César Chávez Park @ 11:30 am approximately
Free Rapid Transit. All day bus & Light rail tickets
Come and Celebrate César Chávez’s life and legacy by carrying on the tradition in marching
for struggling families, fair wages, working conditions and workers rights, enactment of both
the Employee Free Choice Act, and the Dream Act, Jobs Now!, Immigration Reform for all,
End the War!, and No to State furloughs & LAYOFFS! Now is the time when we must unite
under the umbrella of solidarity. Join us on March 28th, bring your family, friends, your signs,
banners & posters.
“SÍ SE PUEDE!” – “YES WE CAN!”
“UNITY IN OUR COMMUNITY!”
For More Info: (916) 446-3021 or nadm916@aol.com
SACRAMENTO CHAPTER

Cesar Chavez Day

César Chávez: "Presente"
By Duane E. Campbell

The spirit of Cesar Chavez lives on in the struggle for union rights and justice in the fields of California. Along with Dolores Huerta, Philip Vera Cruz, and others, César created the United Farm Workers (UFW) the first successful union of farm workers in U.S. history. There had been more than ten prior attempts to build a farm workers union.
The United Cannery and Packinghouse Workers (UCAPAWA) organized in the 1930's, the National Farm Workers Union (NFW) led by Ernesto Galarza tried to organize Farm workers in the 40's and 50's. In 1959, the AFL-CIO tried to organize again with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC). AWOC continued the prior efforts of Ernesto Galarza and the NFW in struggling against "braceros" or guest workers, contract workers imported from Mexico, for breaking strikes. A renewed "guest worker" bill is presently before Congress.
Each of the prior attempts to organize farm worker unions were destroyed by racism and corporate power. Chávez chose to build a union that incorporated the strategies of social movements and community organizing and allied itself with the churches, students, and organized labor. The successful creation of the UFW changed the nature of labor organizing in the Southwest and contributed significantly to the birth of Latino politics in the U.S.
Today, under the leadership of UFW president Arturo Rodriguez, over 28,000 farm workers enjoy benefits on the job. They are incorporated into California's educational, health and civic communities. The UFW has shown the AFL-CIO that immigrants can and must be organized.
César Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Philip Vera Cruz, and others deliberately created a multiracial organization, Mexican, Mexican American, Filipino, African-American, Dominican, Puerto Rican and Arab workers, among others, have been part of the UFW. This cross racial organizing was necessary in order to combat the prior divisions and exploitations of workers based upon race and language. Dividing the workers on racial and language lines always left the corporations the winners.
In the 60's Chávez became the pre-eminent civil rights leader for the Mexican and Chicano workers, helping with local union struggles throughout the nation. He worked tirelessly to make people aware of the struggles of farm workers for better pay and safer working conditions. It is a testament to Cesar Chavez's skills and courage that the UFW even survived. They were opposed by major interests in corporate agriculture including the Bruce Church and Gallo Corporations as well as the leadership of the Republican Party then led by Ronald Reagan. Workers were fired, beaten, threatened and even killed in pursuit of union benefits . Non union farm workers today continue to live on sub-poverty wages while producing the abundant crops in the richest valley, in the richest state in the richest nation in the world.
In response to corporate power, Cesar developed new strategies, such as the boycott, based upon his personal commitment to non-violence in the tradition of Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. César Chavez died in his sleep on April 23, 1993 near Yuma, Arizona.
Today Mexican, Mexican American and Puerto Rican union leadership is common in our major cities and in several industries. For myself and others, the UFW was a school for organizing. Hundreds of activists in labor and community organizations owe their skills to UFW training and experience. Along with improved working conditions, salaries, and benefits, training this cadre of organizers remains a major legacy of the UFW.
César taught us that all organizations have problems, that all organizations are imperfect. But, if you wait for the perfect organization, nothing gets done. Building popular organizations builds people's power, and democracy.
In creating the UFW Chavez organized thousands into a union and inspired millions. Children in school study his life. Many curriculum packages stress his emphasis on service to others. The service side of Cesar’s work was certainly inspiring.
The organizing side changed the Southwest and organized labor. In a 1988 campaign and fast Cesar focused attention on the many dangerous problems of pesticides used in the fields. Artists have captured his image in hundreds of ways. Schools, parks, and highways have been named for him. Establishing Cesar Chavez holiday in California and other states has increased knowledge of his contributions.
The movement led by Cesar created a union and reduced the oppression of farm workers. Many people, descendents of earlier generations of farm workers, learned to take a stand for justice. We learned to not accept poor jobs, poor pay, unsafe working conditions as natural or inevitable. Rather, these are social creations which can be changed through organizing for economic and political power. Dolores Huerta continues her important education and organizing work throughout the nation.
Now, thousands of new immigrants harvest the crops and only a small percent are in unions. The new generations of immigrants and migrant labor hardly know Chavez’ name nor his contributions. Yet, in other regions immigrants are being organized into unions such as Justice for Janitors, by activists who learned their organizing skills working with the UFW. And, Latino political leaders often made their first commitments on a UFW picket line.
The generation that created the UFW is passing. A new generation of political activists, mostly within the Democratic Party, have emerged since the Chavez generations. In the 2006 massive immigrant rights movements, several new organizing practices emerged. The organizing of these demonstrations was significantly assisted by persons trained within the UFW. A new, significant Latino union and political base has been created.
Chavez' legacy to popular struggles, to Chicano/Mexicano self determination and to unions for the immigrant workers is beyond measure. The union taught us how to organize for power and for justice. He is present in all of our work. I plan to march on March March 28,2009 in memory of Cesar Chavez' contributions to building a more democratic society for working people. You can find our more about this remarkable leader at www.ufw.org And, www.cesarchavezfoundation.org
And, http://www.farmworkermovement.org/ Duane Campbell is a Professor of Bilingual/Multicultural Education at Calif. State University-Sacramento and the author of Choosing Democracy; a practical guide to multicultural education. 4th. edition. (Allyn and Bacon,2010.

Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement

Cesar Chavez and the Farmworker Movement

1962-1993.
Photos, Music, Essays, Video, Oral history materials, Archives, El Malcriado

At http://www.farmworkermovement.us

Cesar Chavez: Social Change

Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.

Cesar Chavez
Address to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Nov. 9, 1984

Cesar Chavez , a tribute

César Chávez: "Presente"
By Duane E. Campbell

The spirit of Cesar Chavez lives on in the struggle for union rights and justice in the fields of California. Along with Dolores Huerta, Philip Vera Cruz, and others, César created the United Farm Workers (UFW) the first successful union of farm workers in U.S. history. There had been more than ten prior attempts to build a farm workers union.
The United Cannery and Packinghouse Workers (UCAPAWA) organized in the 1930's, the National Farm Workers Union (NFW) led by Ernesto Galarza tried to organize Farm workers in the 40's and 50's. In 1959, the AFL-CIO tried to organize again with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC). AWOC had several weaknesses, including a top down leadership selected by AFL-CIO leaders, not by farm workers, and a strategy of working cooperatively with labor contractors. AWOC continued the prior efforts of Ernesto Galarza and the NFW in struggling against "braceros" or guest workers, contract workers imported from Mexico, from breaking strikes. A renewed "guest worker" bill is presently before Congress.
Each of the prior attempts to organize farm worker unions were destroyed by racism and corporate power. Chávez chose to build a union that incorporated the strategies of social movements and allied itself with the churches, students, and organized labor. The successful creation of the UFW changed the nature of labor organizing in the Southwest and contributed significantly to the birth of Latino politics in the U.S.
Today, under the leadership of UFW president Arturo Rodriguez, over 28,000 farm workers enjoy benefits on the job. They are incorporated into California's educational, health and civic communities. The UFW has shown the AFL-CIO that immigrants can and must be organized. In 2002 we won significant victories in the legislature and numerous elections.
César Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Philip Vera Cruz, and others deliberately created a multiracial organization, Mexican, Mexican American, Filipino, African-American, Dominican, Puerto Rican and Arab workers, among others, have been part of the UFW. This cross racial organizing was necessary in order to combat the prior divisions and exploitations of workers based upon race and language. Dividing the workers on racial and language lines always left the corporations the winners.
In the 60's Chávez became the pre-eminent civil rights leader for the Mexican and Chicano workers, helping with local union struggles throughout the nation. He worked tirelessly to make people aware of the struggles of farm workers for better pay and safer working conditions. It is a testament to Cesar Chavez's skills and courage that the UFW even survived. They were opposed by major interests in corporate agriculture including the Bruce Church and Gallo Corporations as well as the leadership of the Republican Party then led by Ronald Reagan. Workers were fired, beaten, threatened and even killed in pursuit of union benefits . Non union farm workers today continue to live on sub-poverty wages while producing the abundant crops in the richest valley, in the richest state in the richest nation in the world.
In response to corporate power, Cesar developed new strategies, such as the boycott, based upon his personal commitment to non-violence in the tradition of Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. César Chavez died in his sleep on April 23, 1993 near Yuma, Arizona.
Today Mexican, Mexican American and Puerto Rican union leadership is common in our major cities and in several industries. For myself and others, the UFW was a school for organizing. Hundreds of activists in labor and community organizations owe their skills to UFW training and experience. Along with improved working conditions, salaries, and benefits, training this cadre of organizers remains a major legacy of the UFW.
César taught us that all organizations have problems, that all organizations are imperfect. But, if you wait for the perfect organization, nothing gets done. Building popular organizations builds people's power, and democracy.
In creating the UFW Chavez organized thousands into a union and inspired millions. Children in school study his life. Many curriculum packages stress his emphasis on service to others. The service side of Cesar’s work was certainly inspiring.
The organizing side changed the Southwest and organized labor. In a 1988 campaign and fast Cesar focused attention on the many dangerous problems of pesticides used in the fields. Artists have captured his image in hundreds of ways. Schools, parks, and highways have been named for him. Establishing Cesar Chavez holiday in California and other states has increased knowledge of his contributions.
The movement led by Cesar created a union and reduced the oppression of farm workers. Many people, descendents of earlier generations of farm workers, learned to take a stand for justice. We learned to not accept poor jobs, poor pay, unsafe working conditions as natural or inevitable. Rather, these are social creations which can be changed through organizing for economic and political power. Dolores Huerta continues her important education and organizing work throughout the nation.
Now, thousands of new immigrants harvest the crops and only a small percent are in unions. The new generations of immigrants and migrant labor hardly know Chavez’ name nor his contributions. Yet, in other regions immigrants are being organized into unions such as Justice for Janitors, by activists who learned their organizing skills working with the UFW. And, Latino political leaders often made their first commitments on a UFW picket line.
Again, that generation is passing. A new generation of political activists, mostly within the Democratic Party, have emerged since the Chavez generations. (Hispanic Republicans seldom see Chavez as a hero figure). In the 2006 massive immigrant rights movements, several new organizing practices emerged. A new, significant Latino union and political base has been created.
Chavez' legacy to popular struggles, to Chicano/Mexicano self determination and to unions for the immigrant workers is beyond measure. He is present in all of our work. I plan to march on March March 29,2008 in memory of Cesar Chavez' contributions building a more democratic society for working people. You can find our more about this remarkable leader at www.ufw.org
And, www.cesarchavezfoundation.org
Duane Campbell is a Professor of Bilingual/Multicultural Education at Calif. State University-Sacramento and the author of Choosing Democracy; a practical guide to multicultural education. (Merrill/Pren Hall.2004)