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

Then they came for the trade unionists

 On this day, it behooves us to remember the words of Martin Niemoller. "First they came for the communists," he wrote, "and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me." I am a trade unionist, and Wednesday in Wisconsin, they came for me. They came for you. They came for every working person in America, and their intent could not be more clear.
William Rivers Pitt

May Day : International Unions Statement

CFA, Obama, and Prop.1 A

New view of school reform and NCLB

July 15, 2008
New Vision for Schools Proposes Broad Role

By SAM DILLON
Randi Weingarten, the New Yorker who is rising to become president of the American Federation of Teachers, says she wants to replace President Bush’s focus on standardized testing with a vision of public schools as community centers that help poor students succeed by offering not only solid classroom lessons but also medical and other services.

Ms. Weingarten, 50, was elected Monday to the presidency of the national teachers union at the union’s annual convention. In a speech minutes later to the delegates gathered in Chicago, Ms. Weingarten criticized the No Child Left Behind law, President Bush’s signature domestic initiative, as “too badly broken to be fixed,” and outlined “a new vision of schools for the 21st century.”

“Can you imagine a federal law that promoted community schools — schools that serve the neediest children by bringing together under one roof all the services and activities they and their families need?” Ms. Weingarten asked in the speech.

“Imagine schools that are open all day and offer after-school and evening recreational activities and homework assistance,” she said. “And suppose the schools included child care and dental, medical and counseling clinics.”

By laying out that expansive vision of government’s role in the public schools, Ms. Weingarten waded into a fierce debate among Democrats seeking to influence the educational program of Senator Barack Obama, their party’s presumptive presidential nominee. In an interview last week, she said the ideas in the speech amounted to “what I’d like to see in a new federal education law.”

In her 10 years of service as president of the United Federation of Teachers, which represents New York City teachers, Ms. Weingarten has defended teachers’ economic interests, raising her members’ salaries by 43 percent in the last five years. But she has also proved willing to accommodate the city’s ideas on improving schools. She has embraced charter schools, and last year — even as teachers unions elsewhere were opposing performance pay plans — negotiated an arrangement in New York that gives bonuses to teachers in schools whose poor children show broad gains in test scores.

With her move to the presidency of the national union, with 1.4 million members, Ms. Weingarten gains a broader platform from which to influence the nation’s education debates. Although the federation is smaller than the country’s other teachers union, the National Education Association, with its 3.2 million members, A.F.T. presidents have had an equal or larger political profile because presidential tenures in the bigger union are restricted by term limits.

Two previous presidents of the United Federation of Teachers, Albert Shanker and Sandra Feldman, also rose to lead the A.F.T.

“My sense is that Randi Weingarten is continuing Al Shanker’s tradition, clearly standing up for the interests of teachers but also trying to engage in thoughtful education reform that will be good for students,” said Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation whose biography of Mr. Shanker, “Tough Liberal,” was published this year.

On Sunday, Mr. Obama spoke to the convention by satellite feed from California, and he mixed criticism of the No Child law with praise for teachers’ contributions and an exhortation to Americans to meet the nation’s responsibility to educate all children. He quoted a young Chicago teacher as telling him that she had been annoyed by a tendency “to explain away the shortcomings and failures of our education system by saying, ‘These kids can’t learn.’ ”

“These children are our children,” Mr. Obama said. “It’s time we understood that their education is our responsibility.

“I am running for president to guarantee that all of our children have the best possible chance in life,” he said, “and I am tired of hearing you, the teachers who work so hard, blamed for our problems.”

Convention delegates gave Mr. Obama a standing ovation.

Ms. Weingarten takes national office with robust support of the rank and file. “The last eight years of the Republican presidency have really been a threat to the middle class and to public education,” said William Gallagher, a high school social studies teacher in Philadelphia for 33 years. Ms. Weingarten, he said, would “work hard to make sure the new president, whoever he is, puts education on the forefront of issues in this country.”

In Ms. Weingarten’s speech, she praised the ideas of a group of Democrats led by Tom Payzant, the former schools superintendent in Boston, who have argued that schools alone cannot close achievement gaps rooted in larger economic inequalities, and that “broader, bolder” measures are needed, like publicly financed early childhood education and health services for the poor.

Another group, headed by the Rev. Al Sharpton and Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein of New York, issued a manifesto last month urging the nation to redouble its efforts to close the achievement gap separating poor students from affluent ones and blaming “teachers’ contracts” for keeping ineffective teachers in classrooms.

Ms. Weingarten said the nation needs a new vision for schools “that truly commits America to closing the achievement gap once and for all.”

“Imagine if schools had the educational resources we have long advocated, like quality pre-K, smaller classes, up-to-date materials and technology and a nurturing atmosphere, so no child feels anonymous,” she said.

Ms. Weingarten, whose mother was a teacher in Nyack, N.Y., is a lawyer who was union counsel during the 1980s and 1990s. In the last decade, Ms. Weingarten taught high school history for six years in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn.

In the interview, she said: “We all have to work tenaciously to eliminate the achievement gap and to turn around low-performing schools. But the folks who believe that this can all be done on teachers’ shoulders, which is what No Child tries to do, are doing a huge disservice to America.”


Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
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Remembering Cesar Chavez

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. 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 31,2007 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
See lesson plans below.

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)

Sacramento March. 10 Am. South Side Park.

California Education Code 37220

On March 31 or on the day determined by the governing board, public schools and educational institutions throughout the state may include exercises, funded through existing resources, commemorating
and directing attention to the history of the farm labor movement in the United States and particularly the role therein of Cesar Chavez.
The State Board of Education shall adopt a model curriculum guide to be available for use by public schools for exercises related to Cesar Chavez Day.


37220.6. (a) There is hereby created the Cesar Chavez Day of Service and Learning program to promote service to the communities of California in honor of the life and work of Cesar Chavez. The program shall be administered by the Governor's Office on Service and
Volunteerism, in collaboration with the California Conservation Corps.


Lessons; k-3. Sample lessons here.

http://chavez.cde.ca.gov/ModelCurriculum/Teachers/Lessons_K-3.aspx

http://chavez.cde.ca.gov/ModelCurriculum/Teachers/Lessons_4-6.aspx


www.cesarchavezfoundation.org