The Neglected Legend of Dolores Huerta

Transcription

1 The Neglected Legend of Dolores Huerta Dolores Huerta, a largely unsung hero in the fight for farmworkers rights, is the subject of the new movie, Dolores, that recounts her life as a feminist and union organizer, reports Dennis J Bernstein and Miguel Gavilan Molina. By Dennis J Bernstein and Miguel Gavilan Molina Peter Bratt s new film Dolores, about the life and times of United Farm Workers Co-Founder Dolores Huerta, shows the work of a woman who was way ahead of her time and whose work is right on time for the struggles that working people and all common folks are facing in the age of Donald Trump. The filmmaker reminds us in a synopsis of the film, Dolores Huerta is among the most important, yet least known, activists in American history. An equal partner in co-founding the first farm workers unions with Cesar Chavez. Dolores tirelessly led the fight for racial and labor justice alongside Chavez, becoming one of the most defiant feminists of the twentieth century and she continues the fight to this day, at 87. I interviewed Dolores Huerta and filmmaker-director Peter Bratt on September 5. Joining me for the Flashpoints Radio interview was the show s Senior Producer, Miguel Gavilan Molina, an old friend of Huerta, who learned about the United Farm Workers as a child farm worker in the fields of toil. The film is currently showing in selected theaters across the country. Dennis Bernstein: Dolores Huerta, [ ] I know you want to be out at that rally today [Sept. 5] protesting. We have just seen that President Trump has rescinded DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals], a terrible decision that hurts these kids and their families in so many different ways. On the same day we hear that some Dreamers were actually killed trying to save people in Houston, a city with roughly 600,000 undocumented people who don t know whether to seek shelter or hide from the people who are supposed to provide that shelter. DH: What they are saying is that they are going to shoot it over to Congress, in an interesting ploy. Jeff Sessions said that Obama had overextended his authority and had not gone to Congress to get the necessary authority. But actually, throughout history, presidents have made decisions about immigration without going to Congress. In the next election, every single Congressperson in the House of

2 Representatives has to run for office and because of actions like the recent pardoning of Arpaio, many Latinos are going to be organizing to take out Republicans. So maybe they are going to try to buy favors with the Dreamers. DB: Sessions talks about the rule of law but here is a man who has literally made a career of trying to prevent people from voting. DH: Well, if we all get involved we can take a lot of these Republicans out. We have to build our own wall, a wall of resistance. We have to get justice not only for the Dreamers but for the entire undocumented community. DB: Amidst all of this, there was a victory in Arizona when a federal judge decided that the ethnic studies program there was a successful, important program that the kids in Tucson deserved to have. The racists there used you as an excuse for cancelling the program. DH: I think we have to introduce ethnic studies programs into our kindergartens. People are not aware of the contributions to this country made by people of color. Unless we erase the ignorance and the bigotry and the misogyny and the homophobia, we are going to continue to be a country in distress. Children of color are made to feel like second-class citizens while white children feel this sense of entitlement because they have been taught that their ancestors did it all. DB: They accuse you of hating white people. DH: We don t hate anybody. We are a movement of love and justice and we are trying to reach those with hatred in their hearts so that they can join us in making a better world. DB: Miguel, how did you first meet Dolores? Miguel Gavilan Molina: Marching. When I was twelve years old, my tio and a couple of his compadres drove down in 1966 to Delano. I didn t know what was going on but I saw that red flag and I saw hundreds of brown Mexicans and no one was looking at the ground! Nobody was beat down from the weight of being poor, of being out there in the fields of misery. I learned that, first of all, we were human beings, not just farm animals with no rights. I remember working in the fields and running, whenever airplanes flew over. But after that day, we didn t do that anymore. And then every time I heard that Dolores was going to be in the area, I brought our car club to the marches to Sacramento, to San Francisco, to San Jose. Dolores was the grandmother of the Chicano movement, she empowered all of us.

3 She gave a voice to Chicanismo and also empowered la mujer. My mother was empowered by seeing, for the first time, a brown woman, a Mexicana, speaking for all of us. DB: Did you think of yourself as a woman out there fighting? Was it daunting? Did people try to stop you? DH: Fred Ross, Sr., who organized Cesar [Chavez] and myself, taught us that if you can talk to a few people at a time, you are reminding them that they have power to change things in their lives. When you bring them together at house meetings, they look at each other and say, hey, we do have that power. DB: In the movie, Cesar Chavez was asked why he chose you to work with him and his answer was faith, drive, skills, knowledge and willingness to sacrifice. What was it that drove you? DH: When people understand that this political world is their world also, they realize that they can participate in that world, can make changes that affect them and their family. DB: How could you be a mother, an organizer, an activist, a writer of legislation, all at the same time? DH: You find out what kind of help you need. Like Fred Ross would tell us all the time, you don t have to have all of the answers because along the journey the answers will come to you. MGM: Going back to the battle for ethnic studies in Arizona, you made a statement that brought the situation to a national level. You said, Our existence is our resistance. DH: I was lucky to be born in the state of New Mexico. My grandfather would tell me the stories about how they took that land from Mexico and how they were treated because they were Hispanics. People want to build a wall? Let s use the 1848 map. MGM: One of the things covered in the film, which really put the Chicano movement on a national scale, was the grape boycott. It brought awareness to Mexican-Americans as the cultivators and harvesters of the food that feeds the nation, but it also revealed corporate conspiracy with military forces to use violence against a peaceful, nonviolent movement. We know that there were legendary arguments between you and Cesar Chavez, particularly when the union began complaining that they were breaking the strike by using workers brought directly from Mexico. On the one hand, Cesar didn t

4 want Mexican workers. DH: Actually, that is not true. From day one, the United Farm Workers has always been the largest organization of undocumented workers. In 1963, when the Bracero Program ended, they legalized tens of thousands of the Mexican braceros without the help of Congress, by the way. Cesar and I set to work legalizing as many of these workers as we could, going with our typewriters out in the fields. When we passed the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, we made sure that undocumented workers were covered by the law and all union benefits were made available to the undocumented. Then we passed the Amnesty Bill, which gave two million farm workers their residency. MGM: Out in the fields you witnessed police violence. You yourself were the victim of police violence during an action in San Francisco in Would you say that today brown lives matter? DH: Of course they do. In Bakersfield, California, where we are organizing at the moment, they have the highest rate of police killings in the country. We re fighting the school district in Kern County and the school-to-prison pipeline. We just reached a settlement with the Kern County school district which forces them to change their policies and procedures. The way we work is we organize the parents, we organize the people, so that they can do it for themselves. DB: I think one of the untold stories of the United Farm Workers is that you were on the cutting edge of the environmental movement, highlighting how chemistry was hurting both the farm workers and the consumers of food. But that battle continues. We are still doing stories about spraying [pesticides] near schools where the kids of farm workers are trying to learn. Peter Bratt: And it is not just the farmworkers. There is Flint, Michigan, where a mostly African-American population was being poisoned by the water. There is Standing Rock, where oil is being piped through a poor and indigenous community. DH: We have to put all the issues of environmental poisoning under the Department of Health and Human Services. Take it out of the EPA, take it out of Agriculture. In Bakersfield recently the farmers were being poisoned by a chemical that Trump just took off the restricted list. DB: Peter Bratt, why did you decide to make this film? You have been working on it for five years. PB: I wish I could take the credit for making this film, but it was really my brother Carlos Santana. He had the foresight and the wisdom to see the necessity of Dolores story. There is an urgency today and a lot we can take from her work

5 over the last seven decades. As we were crisscrossing the country, digging through archives, the Black Lives Matter struggle had already started. I was looking at footage and thinking, my God, this was Black Lives Matter thirty years ago! DB: What were some of the epiphanies you had making the film? PB: Just the fact that Dolores lived at the intersection of racial justice, feminism, and environmental justice. Today we talk of intersectionality, of bringing movements together. But people like Cesar and Dolores, Angela Davis and Martin Luther King, they lived it, it grew out of necessity. DB: Dolores, I want to talk to you about Robert Kennedy. He makes two significant appearances in the film. One was when he appeared at the hunger strike and the second when he was assassinated in Los Angeles. Can you talk about Kennedy s contribution to the work you were doing at that time? DH: Over the years he was a great supporter. He helped us raise money for our clinics in Delano. We were working on his campaign and we had a lot of hope that we were going to have someone out there fighting for us. The last thing he said before he was killed was that we have a responsibility to our fellow citizens. June of next year will be fifty years since he was assassinated. We have no choice but to go forward. We don t have the luxury of cynicism or disengagement. There are too many people out there depending on us. DB: You founded the Dolores Huerta Foundation in part to further the ability of women to be a part of the struggle. DH: Right now we are active in nine different communities, in seven different school districts, trying to make sure that state funds are spent the way they were supposed to be spent, for low-income people, for second-language people. Many of the people we have organized are now sitting on school boards, water boards, city councils. MGM: Peter, the film that first brought you national acclaim was Follow Me Home, which was about the story of Native Americans. You followed this up with a movie that focused on Chicanismo, La Mission. And now you ve made Dolores. I know, Peter, how difficult it is for a Latin American film director to get any kind of support from the industry. What was the biggest obstacle you came up against? PB: Films like this are not financed in Hollywood. With La Mission, it took us four years just to raise the money. With Follow Me Home, we actually had to do self-distribution, we hand-carried that film across the country. It is tough as an independent filmmaker but if you also choose as your subject matter Latinos

6 or Chicanos, it is even tougher. You have to love your subject, it has to have deep meaning for you, because it consumes your life and the lives of those around you. MGM: I d like to ask you, Dolores, how has the border affected you and your personal life? DH: We know that hundreds of people have died because of the wall. After all, crossing a border is not a crime. You are not hurting anybody when you cross a border without documents. They have turned it into a crime by deporting people. It is just part of the whole incarceration movement. These people contribute so much to our society, why do we make them into criminals? It is political. Tom DeLay once said that the reason they don t want to legalize these people is because they vote for the Democrats. DB: Today [Sept. 5] it was announced that the DACA program has been rescinded. We are already seeing protests across the country. MGM: As Carlos Santana said a few years ago, concerning this issue of immigration, we are all Mexicans. Here in California, everybody is coming together, they are saying, We are all DACA students. It is making clear that this movement is not just a Mexican thing, it is a human rights issue. It is a question of racial justice. DH: We have to remind people about SB-54 [the California Values Act], to send an to the governor s office asking him to sign this into law. Sheriffs are putting a lot of pressure on Governor [Jerry] Brown to water down the bill. MGM: Well, there is a problem with that, Dolores, and that is that one of the strongest unions here in California, the Correctional Officers and Police Union, has been putting a lot of pressure on Brown. I am not very comfortable with Jerry. It took a lot of pressure last year to get him to sign some of those bills. DB: Let s talk about the Foundation and your mission to inspire young women to get engaged. Talk about some of the women you have already worked with and how you plan to make sure that the work continues. DH: Basically, we create leadership in the communities and the majority of them turn out to be women who are actually doing the work out there. It is a no-fail way to create leadership that Fred Ross, Sr. taught us. The only problem is that people don t quite understand that this takes time. It takes time for the leaders to emerge. We go into communities and give them the

7 tools to form organizations. One woman with very limited English, together with her husband, got a bond issue passed to build a new gymnasium at their middle school. Then she got elected to the school board and got the principal fired for wanting to end the breakfast program. Later she found out that the person they had hired to manage the water district was guilty of embezzlement so she got rid of him. These people are hotel workers, construction workers, farm workers, but they get elected to these boards and start doing the work of governing for the people. In addition, we support voting efforts and civic engagement. We have an LGBT project because we know that there is a lot of discrimination, especially against transgender youth and adults. We also have a health program, to get people to exercise and eat more nutritious foods. The reason we can take on so many projects is that we build a base of a hundred or so people and then they all form different committees and take on the issues. DB: It is incredibly frustrating if you are a woman and you have worked so hard on a project and just when it is about to see the light of day some man walks in and takes the credit. DH: As Coretta Scott King said, we will never have peace in the world until women take power. If you see a board and there are no women on that board, they are going to make poor decisions. We saw that with these senators who were trying to repeal the healthcare bill. There were two Republican women who said there was no way they could vote for that. And who did the media give credit to? John McCain. DB: It takes courage to get up and speak in front of people. DH: One of the things we tell all our people is that they are going to have to speak in front of school boards, city councils. We have them practice and write down notes about what they are going to say, and that is how they eventually overcome their fears. DB: A poetry teacher of mine once wrote, What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open. Indeed, that is the case with our guest today, Dolores Huerta. Dennis J Bernstein is a host of Flashpoints on the Pacifica radio network and the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom. You can access the audio archives at

8 Farm Workers Resist Trump s Policies President Trump is touting his aggressive approach toward removing undocumented workers from the U.S. as one of his first-100-days achievements, but resistance is growing, too, reports Dennis J Bernstein. By Dennis J Bernstein President Trump s promised purge of undocumented people from the United States is facing resistance from the United Farm Workers (UFW) and other groups in California that reject this rollback of civil rights and workers rights. On March 31, the birthday of the late founder of the UFW, Cesar Chavez, the union kicked off a month-long series of activities to fight back against Trump s anti-immigrant policies, which many analysts believe is designed to make life so miserable and difficult in the U.S. that people begin to self-deport in in large numbers. I spoke to Arturo Rodriguez, President of the United Farm Workers, on March 31 about Cesar Chavez s contributions to the Farm Labor Movement and the effects of ICE raids on communities in California and around the country. Dennis Bernstein: We know that there s a great deal of work ahead of you. We are in the age of Trump. And this possesses interesting and multiple challenges. And I know that the farmworkers are up for that and there are many plans being made. But I really would like to take a moment for you to remind us about Cesar Chavez. Tell us about who the man was, and the significance of the work, because obviously it s going to continue to resonate. And we re going to talk about that in a moment. But, please let s remember him, for the moment. Arturo Rodriguez: Cesar Chavez, he was like anyone else, he was determined, he devoted his whole life towards working on behalf of the poorest of the poor of the farmworkers. He, himself, his family, they all were a part of the migrant farmworkers stream throughout the state of California, and other areas as well, the state of Oregon, and so forth. He realized at a very young age that he did not want to continue to see people mistreated, and abused, and exploited, and have to go through what his family did, and what his mom and dad did, and his brothers and sisters. So he made a decision early on in his life that someday he wanted to tackle that, and to do the best that he could do and make a contribution towards bettering the life and the respect and dignity for the women and the men that harvest our fruits and vegetables, Dennis.

9 DB: And so, here it is, 2017, Trump is clearly he is like the classical white supremacist. Not only is he that in theory, but [ ] when it comes to imposing the kind of policies that reflect his racism, he hasn t wasted any time. So, could you just talk a little bit about what s been happening in the trenches with the United Farm Workers? How you all have been acting, preparing, planning, and fighting back? AR: Well, Dennis, it s a very good question, and we re extremely disappointed, in terms of what the Trump administration has done, and the decisions that they ve been making, and the way that they call out immigrants in this country and make them feel like they re not here to make a contribution, which is just the opposite. We would not be the nation we are today without the hard work, and the sacrifice, and the contribution that immigrant workers make to our nation. And so, we have been, along with all of our sister organizations, the Cesar Chavez Foundation, the UFW Foundation and other organizations, have been doing everything we can to, first of all, ensure and educate workers, farmworkers, throughout various states, what their rights are as immigrants, what their opportunities are, how they can defend themselves. And we ve set up a special organization, the UFW Foundation, which has a number of offices throughout the state of California, right now, and Arizona, to go out and to be available, to have representatives that are certified by the federal government, in order to deal with issues around immigration. And we ve been working with networks of attorneys throughout all the various rural communities, to ensure that, in the event that farmworkers are picked up, or anyone, any immigrant is picked up in the rural communities, that they can immediately contact us, and we can get in touch with attorneys to be able to assist them. And to provide them the guidance that they need, and the reassurance. And get in touch with their families and help them go through the process. And, hopefully, avoid them being sent across the border. And so, that s been a major part of our work these last few months. But, in addition to that, we know, at the same time we need to bring people together, Dennis. And, we need to continue to demonstrate to the federal government, to demonstrate to the Trump administration, that we are continuing the fight, to make sure that farmworkers, that immigrants are protected in this nation. And so, we decided to celebrate the anniversary of Cesar Chavez s birthday with a series of events. And we re [ ] coordinating activities in seven different states: Florida, Texas, Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington, and Nevada. To get people engaged, to get people participating, and making sure that, again, everybody is aware what their rights are, but demonstrate the unity that exists with us.

10 And we re bringing together our sisters and brothers from the Muslim community, and many of the other immigrant communities, so that we can all act united, especially throughout these rural communities which, oftentimes, they re not taken into account because of all the activities that take place in our urban centers. But it s very, very important for us to do that. [ ] We want to send a strong message to Donald Trump that we are here to stay. That we make a contribution to America, and that s why we came here to begin with, as immigrants, as farmworkers, to be able to ensure that we have a viable agricultural industry that continues to dominate the world in the production of fruits and vegetables, throughout our nation, and throughout our state. DB: Now, it s really important that we come to you to make sure we keep a human face on this story. And we know in your position as head, President of the United Farm Workers a lot of stories are coming through your desk. And can you just share a couple of stories that can help the people who aren t experiencing this understand how dangerous it feels now? And the kinds of pressures it s sort of this pressure, it s this policy of brutalize them so much, hit them so hard, come at them from so many different directions, that they will, as they like to say self deport. You want to just keep that human face on it, for a moment? AR: Sure, of course, Dennis. I think about, right now, in terms of what happened in McFarland, California, it s about three weeks ago now. Where workers were going to work, early in the morning, and they noticed that there was a car that was parked along the side. And it wasn t marked. And the next thing they know that they were being stopped and it turned out to be ICE agents. And there was four individuals there in the car. And, as a result, the ICE agents asked them all for their papers, and whether they had legal status here in the country or not. And immediately, obviously the workers no matter how much you try to share with them the importance of not saying anything, it s a difficult situation when somebody approaches you with a gun, and you don t know exactly what to do. And you feel the intimidation and the coercion, and a sense of fear there. And so, they were very honest and upfront with the ICE agents. And, as a result of that, before we knew it, within 24 hours, two of them had already been deported to Nogales, Mexico. And so we never got a chance to really help those individuals, but we were successful in helping two other folks. And we ve set up in Kern County, the third largest agricultural county in the United States today. And that s where Bakersfield is at, Dennis, and McFarland, and Delano, and many of the other rural communities are, and Lamont and so

11 forth. And so, we re working there with a network of attorneys, and they have a group of about twenty attorneys that are there helping and assisting anybody that needs legal help. And they re going out and doing these information sessions across the county, to really remind people, in terms of what s happening. But, again, that was an incident that just recently happened. We have another situation in Delano, California, where a worker was taking his daughter to school one morning and, again, an ICE agent stopped him on the way and asked him for his papers and so, immediately, he had to call someone to pick up his daughter, because they were going to take him in. And as a result, again, we had to step in and assist that particular worker in regards to the situation he was confronted with there, with the ICE agents. DB: How old was his daughter? AR: She was in the elementary school, so about nine, ten, at that age. DB: There s an experience, right? AR: It s a very, very scary situation. And we constantly hear people telling us, Look, we don t want to go out. We re fearful about going any place other [than] work. And so, folks are making other arrangements, for their children to be picked up from school, or from babysitters. They re not going shopping like they used to anymore. There are a lot of things that they are staying away from, Dennis, because of the fact that there s that fear there right now that exists. And, the life in these communities, especially in these rural areas where farmworkers live and work at, it s just completely different from what it used to be, prior to the Donald Trump administration. DB: Now, in terms of the formal actions, what is the California Legislature doing? I know there s a number of actions happening, in terms of legal representation for undocumented folks, all kinds of things around standing up against any kind of registry. Have you weighed-in on some of this stuff? Do you think there needs to be expanded legal support for the workers that you represent, and for the undocumented folks who are facing this head on, now? AR: [California] Senate President Kevin de Leon, and so many of the other, good Latino legislators, and others as well, are very empathetic as to what is happening out here to immigrants. They re fighting hard. They re trying to do everything they can, within their power, within the state of California. As we all know, though, the unfortunate thing is that immigration is a federal issue, and so we can t do anything to really deal with the core issue, and that s bringing about immigration reform. But, certainly there s a lot of efforts being made to enhance the amount of legal representation that s available for

12 immigrants in the event they re picked up by ICE agents. And, as you well know, Dennis, there s a big fight against the federal government, against the Trump administration, regarding their action on sanctuary cities. And there s at least discussion in terms of, why don t we make the State of California a sanctuary state because of the large number of immigrants that are here, both in our rural and urban communities. And the importance they are for the economy of this state, especially within the agricultural industry, and the retail industry, the hotel industry, construction, yard maintenance, and things of that nature. So we re definitely working alongside legislators in any way we possibly can to bring testimony and bring, like you said, a living face to what s happening out there to folks. And trying to ensure that people really do understand the importance of this. This is just not something we can, kind of, sweep under the rug, or something we can ignore because it impacts the lives of people that are very, very important to our society. DB: And, will Trump s policies, in terms of trade, and the border and his quest to hire American, is that already beginning to reverberate? How do you see that? AR: Oh, definitely. I mean, there s no doubt. The workers that go back to Mexico, for whatever reason, for family reasons, or whatever. They re not coming back anymore, those workers that work in agriculture. And so, we see definitely that in the agricultural market that, because of that, growers are finally being forced to deal with some of the issues that they should have dealt with a long time ago. And that s it. They re having to raise wages, they re having to provide some better opportunities for workers, in regards to the working conditions or regards to hours of work, or their wage rates, and things of that nature. I think, yes, it is having an impact. And it s having a very negative impact on the flow of immigrants here into the United States, which are definitely needed for our agricultural industry. That just no longer is occurring, Dennis. And I think it s very much of a tragedy for the American consumer because we ve found, time and again, no matter what we do, that very few Americans, if any, actually want to go to work in the fields, in the agricultural fields, and be a part of that. And they re not professionals at it, they re not skilled at it, and they re not willing to tolerate the difficult conditions and make the necessary sacrifices, and so forth. DB: Alright, well we really want to thank you, Arturo Rodriguez, for taking the time out, again, to speak with us, and celebrate Cesar Chavez s life, his birthday. We miss him, it s been 24 years since his passing, but I know that the United Farm Workers, as we talked about, is not going to forget about it. And

13 people can go to the United Farm Workers web site [ ] to follow all these activities, to get involved. AR: I do want to mention one story. This is happening in an urban community, right in your audience s area, your listenership s area, in San Jose. And there is a family there that, I won t mention the names of them cause I don t want to embarrass them, but it was so great to go on our apps today and look at, and see one of the stories on Facebook actually, that s being shared by a family that has their children making sandwiches to take out to the farmworkers there in the field. And what a way to celebrate the day of Cesar Chavez, for children to be doing something like that. And I thought if we could just communicate that to children throughout the state, what a blessing that would be for farmworkers obviously because they re getting food. But also it brings to light the importance, the role the farmworker plays in our society. And I just thought that was such a heartwarming story. That the parents of the three children, cause I know the family, and they do this on their own. And they re not looking for recognition, they re not looking to be recognized in any particular way. But this is the way that they re bringing up their children, so that their children really understand the contribution that farmworkers make to our society. And that today is the day that we celebrate Cesar Chavez s birthday, it s a day to celebrate the work that farmworkers do in this state, in California, and throughout the country. And so, we want to really thank the family that really has that practice, and I just think it s such a great example, for what all of us could be doing with our children on this day. DB: And it s poignant, of course, because we have heard too many stories of farmworkers who pick the foods that make the table so beautiful and appealing, and can t even afford to buy them. So there s a lot to think about there. Again, we thank you, Arturo Rodriguez, President of the United Farm Workers, for being with us on this celebration, this birthday of Cesar Chavez, March 31st. Thanks for being with us. Be careful. We ll talk to you soon. AR: Thank you very much. We appreciate the opportunity to be with you all and thank you for all the good work that you all do in terms of educating and informing your listeners and readers.. We very much appreciate it. Si se puede, and happy Cesar Chavez day. Dennis J Bernstein is a host of Flashpoints on the Pacifica radio network and the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom. You can access the audio archives at

14 The Saga of Cesar Chavez Exclusive: The teaming up of United Farm Workers founder Cesar Chavez and Sen. Robert Kennedy marked an important moment in the fight for the rights of Latinos in America, a time in history brought to life by a film biography of Chavez, says James DiEugenio. By James DiEugenio In 1996, with great fanfare and under the influence of political adviser Dick Morris President Bill Clinton signed the largest welfare reform bill of the last 35 years. It was so harsh toward recipients that many speculated that not even Ronald Reagan would have signed it. But Clinton, as a titular Democrat, had the cover to do so. Many commented at the time that this act demonstrated that the Arkansas governor s association with the centrist Democratic Leadership Council was not just cosmetic. Upon signing the bill, Clinton utilized the words of the late Robert Kennedy, quoting the liberal icon as saying that work is what the United States is all about; we need work as individuals and as citizens, as a society and as a people. When Rory Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy s youngest daughter, heard this invocation of her father s name to support a law that would hurt the poorest and most disadvantaged people in America, she immediately called Peter Edelman, who had been a legislative assistant to Kennedy when he was a senator. Edelman, who was working for Clinton as assistant secretary for Health and Human Services, resigned in protest against the new law. A year later, the Harvardeducated lawyer wrote a blistering essay about the reform bill and Clinton s role in it. Five years later, Edelman explained that not only was the bill a bad one but he was outraged at Clinton s use of his former boss name in signing it. Edelman wrote, President Clinton hijacked RFK s words and twisted them totally. By signing the bill, Clinton signaled acquiescence in the conservative premise that welfare is the problem, the source of a culture of irresponsible behavior, while RFK envisioned a large American investment to guarantee that people actually could get decent jobs. Kennedy wanted both protections for children and outreach to those who could not find jobs. In other words, he wanted to do something big about ending poverty. (See the introduction to Edelman s book, Searching for America s Heart.) RFK and Justice

15 Perhaps nothing illustrates the difference between the Democratic Party now and then than Edelman s role in getting Sen. Kennedy to Delano, California, in It s a story Bill Clinton probably knew about, but to my knowledge never mentioned in public. Kennedy had been serving on a subcommittee of the Senate Labor Committee that dealt with the plight of migrant workers. That is, people largely from either Asia or Central America who worked the huge fruit and vegetable farms in California and other southern states for the large agribusiness owners. Prior to 1965, these workers had no real labor rights. Because of a strong agribusiness lobbying effort, the minimum wage law did not apply to them. Neither did child labor laws or collective bargaining statutes. The national media had only once noticed their plight in late 1960, when Edward R. Murrow broadcast his famous CBS documentary Harvest of Shame. Edelman and labor leader Walter Reuther convinced Kennedy that his presence was needed at congressional hearings being held in March 1966 in Delano. There was a strike going on led by a Mexican-American activist named Cesar Chavez. Kennedy s presence there would give Chavez s movement some media attention and bolster the spirits of his followers. Labor representative Paul Schrade told me that he and Reuther had already been to Delano and met Chavez, who suggested that Kennedy attend the hearings. Schrade said he called Jack Conway, who was Reuther s liaison to Kennedy s office, and connected with Edelman, who joined with Conway in convincing Kennedy to attend the hearings by making the argument that These people need you! (Arthur Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and his Times, p. 825) Though reluctant, Kennedy finally relented. But even on the plane ride out, he still wondered why he was going. But, if anything, Edelman underestimated the attention and aid RFK was about to bestow on Chavez and the farm workers. Both the local sheriff and the district attorney were there to testify. As Kennedy either knew, or was about to learn, both men were in the pocket of the wealthy landowners. With cameras running and reporters in attendance, a famous colloquy took place between Kennedy, who had served as Attorney General of the United States, and Sheriff Leroy Galyen of Kern County. Galyen: If I have reason to believe that a riot is going to be started because somebody tells me that there s going to be trouble if you don t stop them, then it s my duty to stop them. Kennedy: So then you go out and arrest them?

16 Galyen: Yes, absolutely. Kennedy: Who told you they re going to riot? Galyen: The men right out in the fields that they were talking to says, If you don t get them out of here, we re going to cut their hearts out. So rather then let them get cut, you remove the cause. Kennedy: This is an interesting concept. Someone makes a report about someone getting out of order and you go in and arrest them when they haven t done anything wrong. How can you go in and arrest somebody and they haven t violated the law. Galyen: They re ready to violate the law, in other words. At this point, Kennedy cracked up and laughter enveloped the proceedings. Kennedy: Could I suggest in the interim period of time the lunch period that the sheriff and the district attorney please read the Constitution of the United States. When the hearing was over, Kennedy met Chavez outside and told him that he supported the strike. The senator then joined Chavez on the picket line. Chavez felt protective of Kennedy, wondering if he wasn t going too far too fast. For instance, when a reporter asked RFK if the Huelga (the strike) may be communist inspired, Kennedy instantly replied with: No, they are not communists. They re struggling for their rights. (ibid, p. 826) What RFK Brought As Dolores Huerta, another United Farm Workers founder, noted, Robert didn t come to us and tell us what was good for us. He came to us and asked two questions: What do you want? And, how can I help? That s why we loved him. And as Chavez later said about RFK s appearance there, He immediately asked very pointed questions of the growers; he had a way of disintegrating their arguments by picking at very simple questions. So he really helped us turned it completely around. (ibid) As Edelman later said about Kennedy s flight into Delano, Something had touched a nerve in him. Always, after that, we helped Cesar Chavez in whatever way we could. (ibid, p. 827) As Kennedy saw it, Cesar Chavez was doing for Hispanics what Martin Luther King Jr. was doing for black Americans, giving them new convictions of pride and solidarity. (ibid) Kennedy called on labor leaders to help Chavez organize the migrants. It was the

17 beginning of a friendship that lasted for more than two years until Bobby Kennedy s assassination in Los Angeles after winning the California primary on June 6, When Kennedy was shot at the Ambassador Hotel, Kennedy had Dolores Huerta on the podium with him. He had thanked her and Chavez for mobilizing the voters in Central California. Chavez then served as an honorary pallbearer at Kennedy s funeral service. The humorous scene between Galyen and RFK is depicted in the film Cesar Chavez: History is Made One Step at a Time, which was released last year in theaters but which got so little media push and publicity that I didn t see it. But Patricia Barron, a Mexican-AMerican friend of mine, advised me to get it on Netflix or from Red Box. Jim, it s at least as good as Selma and she was right. I actually think it s better than Selma, but lacked an Oprah Winfrey/Brad Pitt producing team to promote it. Both movies focus on an iconic leader representing an oppressed group of Americans, with Selma centered on Dr. King. And as Kennedy noted, Chavez was probably the closest role model that the Hispanic community has in comparison to King. Chavez did face a David-and-Goliath struggle that, in some ways, was comparable to King s accomplishments. King s opponent was the system of racial segregation that replaced slavery across the South after the Civil War and the failure of Reconstruction. Segregation was ingrained in nearly every aspect of Southern life and culture and was enforced by both law and violence. The Lords of Agribusiness Chavez s opponents were the omnipotent lords of California agribusiness, which was the largest industry in the state. They dominated the area from north of Santa Barbara to approximately south of San Jose. When one drives that stretch of the Golden State Freeway, one can see that the huge expanse is largely made up of agricultural fields. The owners of the fields felt their profits relied upon maintaining the pose of being farmers, but they were really running a large industry. Privately they did not refer to themselves as farmers, but rather as ranchers, growers or agribusiness men. (See Chapter 1 of So Shall Ye Reap, by Joan London and Henry Anderson) There was good reason for that. In 1970, the average farm size in California was over 700 acres; twice the national average. The average sales price for a farm was over $300,000; five times the national average. The top 2.5 percent of the

18 industry accounted for the employment of 60 percent of the migrant labor force. As authors London and Anderson point out, this type of wealth allowed the growers to employ a phalanx of lawyers, PR men, and state and federal lobbyists all of it in the cause of preserving and disguising their dominance over their cheap and plentiful workforce. With this kind of power at their disposal, the growers took advantage of laws that allowed them to claim the government subsidies that sought to sustain average farmers. For example, irrigation water was delivered to them at a fourth of what it should have cost because they took advantage of a subsidy that was reserved for farms of 160 acres or less in size. As London and Anderson revealed, the growers rigged the system to achieve this by making trusts of their properties and partly holding their land in title to their wives, sisters, daughters, sons, nephews and any other relatives they could find. They also intervened with the state government in Sacramento to make their industry exempt from unemployment insurance and benefited further because only a very small minority of the farm workers were signed up for Social Security. Thus, there were very few records of these farm workers who really were transients. For 30 years, until 1967, agricultural workers also were excluded from the milestone Fair Labor Standards Act, meaning they were not subject to minimum wage laws or overtime regulations. Almost all of them worked on a piecework scale based on how much fruit or how many vegetables they picked. Both Sacramento and Washington excluded agribusiness from the Wagner Act of 1935, which was perhaps the most far-reaching of New Deal legislation governing worker/employee relations. Without its application, the growers did not have to recognize collective bargaining efforts and were free to terrorize organizers who also faced the fact that local law authorities that were on the growers side. Seeking Out Labor In addition to all of this, the growers went looking for minority groups at home and abroad who they could exploit sometimes as distant as the Far East but, after the Mexican Revolution, there was a steady stream from the south both available and exploitable. This was made legal by the bracero program, a diplomatic agreement with Mexico permitting the importation of temporary manual labor into the U.S. By 1945, because of claims of a labor shortage brought on by World War II, there were 50,000 braceros in the California fields. As London and Anderson note, the growers were so powerful that they were allowed

19 to exempt their workers from Selective Service and use prisoners of war in their fields. After Ronald Reagan s election as California governor in 1967, he showed his appreciation for the growers huge campaign donations by letting them use prison convicts for work, until the state Supreme Court overturned the order. What existed closely resembled a feudal system, down to the workers living in properties sometimes owned and monitored by the landowners. It was, as one scribe wrote, a condition of semi-voluntary servitude. But politicians like Reagan had no qualms about preserving it. He appointed growers like Alan Grant to the California Farm Bureau Federation, the UC Board of Regents, and the State Board of Agriculture. From his lofty perch, Grant saw no problem with the system as it was and no need for unionism in agriculture. As he famously said, My Filipino boys can come to my back door any time they have a problem and discuss it with me. As with Dr. King, there was a history of organizing attempts for Chavez to look back on. After violence broke out in 1913, two organizers were jailed. And six years later, the Criminal Syndicalism Act was passed in California, essentially making union organizing a criminal act. During the Great Depression, some strikes were led by communists, so agribusiness later used red-baiting and violent tactics to crush strikes. Under the Criminal Syndicalism Act, several strike leaders were arrested, two were killed, and over 20 were wounded violent tactics that persisted until 1939, condoned by local authorities and hailed by the local press barons. This anti-unionism was endorsed by Richard Nixon, who was elected to Congress from California in 1947 and was making his reputation as a red-baiter. In 1950, during a strike in the Delano area, the giant DiGiorgio ranch hired strikebreakers, a practice that Nixon endorsed, signing a document asserting that farm workers had been properly excluded from labor laws. It would be harmful to the pubic interest and to all responsible labor unions to legislate otherwise, Nixon stated, a position that became known as the Nixon Doctrine and helped turn that strike around in favor of the growers. The strike was called off later in 1950 after court orders limited picketing, boycotting and the importation of assistance from other unions. One of the young men on the picket line nearby was Cesar Chavez. Escaping Violence Chavez s grandparents came to America to escape the violence of the Mexican Revolution. Cesar was born in Arizona in His family moved to California in

20 1938 and first lived out of their car, then under a tent. As he later related, sometimes they would eat wild mustard seeds just to stay alive. His family then worked as migrant farm laborers under the influence of local contractors. They would move up and down the state following plant harvests. Chavez dropped out of school at age 14 in the eighth grade and became a fulltime worker in the fields. In his early 20s, he married Helen Fabela and in 1949 they had the first of their eight children. With a young family, he decided to leave the shifting tides of the migrant worker stream and moved to San Jose. In season, he harvested delicacies like apricots. In the offseason, he worked in lumberyards. His father, Librado, had been active in union organizing and favored eventual affiliation with the CIO rather than the AFL. The CIO was Walter Reuther s union. Young Cesar would sit in on these discussions and learn as he went. He was also stung by the whip of racism. In his teens, he remembered being removed from a movie theater for violating segregated seating rules. But the single event that probably changed Chavez s life the most was the night a priest named Father McDonnell knocked on the door of his home. Fathers Donald McDonnell and Thomas McCullough were famous in the area as the priests to the poor. The two divided up the central part of the state and visited, by their own estimate, about a thousand farm labor camps. Very early they realized that the growers would never divide up their farms and sell them to the workers, so the only way to achieve any justice or dignity for the migrants was through a union. In 1952, Fred Ross visited the Stockton area from an agency called the CSO, or Community Service Organization, an offshoot of Saul Alinsky s Industrial Areas Foundation. The group s idea was to recognize central issues and then build local alliances finding common approaches to address the issues. Alinsky hired Ross to organize Mexican-Americans in the Los Angeles area, and after considerable success Ross shifted north to San Jose. The knock on the Chavez door was part of a Ross/McDonnell cellular approach, called the house meeting. In a three-week period, Ross and McDonnell would visit several houses each night. At the end of the three weeks, they would then have a larger meeting at one of the bigger homes to include all the people they talked to who were interested in the cause identified by the CSO. They would elect temporary officers and send the people out to knock on more doors, leading eventually to a local chapter of the CSO. The night that Ross met Chavez, Ross reportedly wrote in his journal, I think I found the guy I m looking for.

21 Ross ended up hiring Chavez to work for the CSO at $35 per week. In 1953, he became a statewide organizer, working from northern California, south to Oxnard. Chavez and Huerta, whom Ross also recruited, built the state CSO into a coalition of 22 chapters in California and Arizona, concentrating on getting farm workers state disability insurance and signing up as many as they could for Social Security benefits. These developments meant the growers had to keep files and records on their workers. Expanding the Fight The next target for Ross, Chavez and Huerta was to end the bracero program, which they finally did at the end of But there was a problem Chavez had with the CSO, which would not commit to an all-out push to organize and unionize the farm workers of California. Chavez resigned and took his life savings of $900 out of the bank. He moved to Delano, explaining that My brother lived there, and I knew that at least we wouldn t starve. Chavez started organizing the local farm workers, calling his new agency the Farm Workers Association. He deliberately avoided the word union, which he knew was offensive to the growers. He also borrowed money from a friend to open up a credit union and offered those who joined preferential rates on insurance. By 1964, he had enough workers paying dues that he could devote all his energies to building the union. In 1965, Chavez went on the offensive. He called a rent strike against the Tulare Housing Authority. He then called two strikes against small growers. He won and the strikers were rehired. But the greatest conflict of Chavez s career, the one Bobby Kennedy enlisted in was the massive farm workers strike from 1965 to 1970, which expanded into first a national boycott, and then an international one. Diego Luna s film begins near the end of that boycott. Chavez (played by Miguel Pena) is in a radio station in Europe trying to expand the scope of the boycott to England. He begins talking about how he started out, and the film flashes

22 back to the beginning of his career as an organizer for CSO near San Jose. Chavez arranges a house meeting so he can question some of the workers in the area. The narrative then jumps to his dispute with CSO over a focus on union building for farm workers, and we witness his family move from San Jose to Delano. We see his early struggles to get the farm workers union going. For example, a visit from the local sheriff, who is surely meant to suggest Galyen. But the picture really picks up momentum with the beginnings of the five-year strike and boycott, which, ironically, was not started by Chavez. It was actually begun by Larry Itliong, the leader of Filipino workers. Itliong chose to have his followers go on strike because the grape growers in Delano would not pay comparable wages as the growers in the Coachella Valley. The film depicts this moment of crisis very strongly: we see the forces of the growers standing outside the worker s barracks in the middle of the night, demanding, with a loud speaker, that they return to work or be evicted. The workers refused, and many were evicted. Itliong then wrote to Chavez. From past experience, Itliong knew the growers in Delano would try to recruit strikebreakers from the Hispanic ranks and asked Chavez to support the walkout by not having the Mexican-Americans replace his men in the fields. A United Front This was a portentous moment for Chavez because his efforts were relatively new, and the union he was leading was not fully formed. But he saw that what Itliong was asking him to do was to stand up for all farm workers everywhere, whether they be Asian-Americans or Mexican-Americans. Chavez argued for backing Itliong and carried the day in the Union Hall. Although the dynamics behind the Filipino walkout are skimped, the scene with Chavez leading the argument in the hall is vividly depicted in the film. On Sept. 16, 1965, Chavez and his workers joined the Filipino picket line. For all intents and purposes, this was the beginning of the five-year strike, called La Huelga. When the boycott was added, Chavez called it La Causa. Realizing that the stakes had been raised by the alliance of Chavez and Itliong, the growers started revving up their battery of weapons. First they used the legal venue, going to court to get injunctions against picketing. They cited the criminal syndicalism laws to disallow Chavez from speaking to his followers on a bullhorn. The local courts were so rigged that they even forbade the strikers to use the word Huelga. The growers knew these perverse decisions would be reversed

23 on appeal, but they thought they could outlast the farm workers. If it would have been anyone besides Chavez and Itliong, that may have been the case. But as the film carefully notes, Chavez had hired a capable attorney to beat back these ridiculous rulings, a man named Jerry Cohen, who got Chavez, his wife, and Huerta out of jail. The film next depicts the beginning of the boycott. Chavez started small, deciding to attempt to boycott just one winery. But he realized that he would need allies to spread the word. So, he had his followers perform outreach to sympathetic leftist groups like students and civil rights advocates. In another good scene, the film shows the effectiveness of this boycott and how it began to split the ranks of the growers. Julian Sands plays the director of the boycotted company, with John Malkovich as the representative of the growers association. Malkovich asks Sands not to give in, but as Sands makes clear, he really did not have a choice. The boycott was hurting sales too much. (Malkovich also executive produced the film.) Mixing black-and-white newsreel film with a reenactment, the picture next depicts the appearance of Sen. Robert Kennedy at the Delano hearing. Luna found an actor named Jack Holmes who has a strong natural resemblance to Bobby Kennedy. However, the film underplays this remarkable moment by not showing the bonding that took place afterwards between the two men. But Luna does show the climactic event that took place after Kennedy left. Borrowing a page from Gandhi and King, Chavez organized a 245-mile walk from Delano to Sacramento. Luna s depiction of this event briefly includes the skits that playwright Luis Valdez would prepare for the protesters to watch at night. These were almost always satiric in nature and meant to caricature the arrogance and insensitivity of the growers. The main intent of the march was to get California Gov. Pat Brown to push a bill through the legislature that would give agriculture workers the right to organize. That bill eventually did pass, but it was later under the governorship of Pat Brown s son Jerry. The 23-Day Fast No film about Chavez would be complete without his 23-day fast over the escalating violence used by the growers to harass his followers. Chavez was also disturbed by the failure of the farm workers to refrain from retaliation. Chavez only drank water during this period and although Chavez did attract much attention to his efforts many thought he had endangered his health. Finally, Bobby Kennedy arrived to convince Chavez to stop and take Holy Communion with

24 him. The film does a nice job in playing off the Holmes/Kennedy scenes with the newsreels of Ronald Reagan attacking both Chavez and his union. After Kennedy leaves, we watch as Reagan attacks the grape boycott as immoral, and he accuses Chavez of using threats and intimidation tactics against the grape growers. Luna and his scriptwriters do an even better job with the assassination of Robert Kennedy. We watch as Chavez pulls his car over to hear a radio bulletin about Kennedy s assassination. Luna then cuts to Kennedy s requiem at St. Patrick s Cathedral. The director is careful to include a shot of presidential candidate Richard Nixon in attendance. This will strike the theme that, with RFK dead, Chavez lost a key ally in the political world. The growers increased their violent tactics. And, with Nixon in the White House, they thought they had a solution to the national boycott because Nixon facilitated agreements that allowed them to ship their grapes to Europe to be sold. But Chavez was planning for this maneuver. Because of the expanded exposure of his work in the mass media, a Time Magazine cover for instance, he had become something of a celebrity. So, the film picks up where it began: with Cesar speaking on the radio in England, promoting the boycott abroad. He also made alliances with unions there to not handle U.S. grapes. And in what is probably the highlight of the film, Luna shows Chavez and his new English friends dumping unshipped grapes into the Thames River, a reverse Boston Tea Party. The film crosscuts this with a montage of Malkovich on his empty ranch: one with no workers, abandoned tractors, and unmoved grapes spoiling in crates. Being checkmated abroad was the last straw for the growers. In July 1970, many of these agribusinesses decided it was time to recognize the United Farm Workers, even if it meant signing contracts with Chavez. The film ends with that historic signing. The Chavez/Kennedy/Itliong struggle was truly a case of the underdog winning out through sheer determination and courage. The deck was completely stacked against their cause, but with help from good people like RFK, Reuther and Pat Brown, Cesar Chavez did make a difference and achieved what no one had done before him. There have been surprisingly few films made about Chavez, even though his life was full of both epic and personal drama. I only know of two documentaries: Viva LaCausa and The Fight in the Fields. The latter PBS documentary goes beyond the time limits of Luna s film and confronts some of the problems the UFW had later.

25 After all, it was not easy to maintain what Chavez achieved with Ronald Reagan in the White House and George Deukmejian in the governor s mansion in Sacramento. Luna has made a good film, one with a strong underlying message. Chavez was not handsome and photogenic like JFK was. He was not anywhere near the speaker that King was. And he did not have the wonder drug of charisma, as did Malcolm X. That Chavez achieved what he did with so few natural gifts was a great testament to what an ordinary man can do when touched with the right moment and the right inspiration. James DiEugenio is a researcher and writer on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and other mysteries of that era. His most recent book is Reclaiming Parkland. Recalling a Proud American Moment United Farm Workers founder Cesar Chavez, with quiet dignity and nonviolent tactics, rallied millions of Americans behind the cause of oppressed farm workers in the 1960s, a remarkable moment recalled in a new movie by Diego Luna, interviewed by Dennis J Bernstein. By Dennis J Bernstein Cesar Chavez, founder of the United Farm Workers and the subject of a new movie, was an unlikely leader of a movement that not only unionized one of the most oppressed segments of American labor but galvanized much of the United States behind the justice of their nonviolent cause. Chavez, who died in 1993 at the age of 66, was a person known for listening to others, not for loud exhortations. And, he infused the movement with a quiet dignity that won support from a broad cross-section of Americans who supported the farm workers with a boycott of grapes that forced growers to recognize the

26 union. Now, Chavez s struggle is the focus of a new movie, Cesar Chavez: History Is Made One Step at a Time, which itself represented a struggle for writerdirector Diego Luna who has spent the last four years raising the money to make the picture. Luna, who is also an actor (starring in Alfonso Cuarón s 2001 film Y Tu Mamá También ), has had no shortage of roles being offered to him, but he considered the making of Cesar Chavez a work of love and commitment. It s important we don t forget this is part of American history, he told Dennis J Bernstein in an interview for the Flashp[oints show on Pacifica Radio. The film opened in theaters on Friday. DL: I am happy to be to talk about the film. It is a feature film which talks about ten years in the life this man and everyone around the movement. It s about the amazing message they sent in this country in the 1960s, how they created the first union for farm workers in this country, and the grape boycott they did to connect with consumers in America. DB: I would like to ask you about the multiple struggles to make the film. DL: At the beginning, everyone was very supportive and the film business was shocked that there was no film about Cesar Chavez. When we tried looking for the financing, that s when we started to find trouble. Not many wanted this film to be made, or to participate as financiers. We went back to Mexico and started raising money there. We got together a good 70 percent of the financing, and then we found the right partners on this side of the border. We had to go the other way around. It was a paradox. We had to go to Mexico to tell the story of an American hero. DB: This film that you spent four years on, what was at the core for you? Why did you decide to take this on, and what do you want the American people to come away with from this film? DL: First of all, people need to learn about who Cesar was. You would be surprised at how little is known about the life of Cesar. I ve been asking and