Students stay home, farmworkers march for Cesar Chavez on his day
LOS ANGELES (AP) – California and several other states honored Cesar Chavez by closing schools and state offices Friday, the 90th anniversary of the birth of a man who went from a grape and cotton picker to an enduring hero for laborers, Latinos and justice seekers of all kinds.
Farmworkers in four states also plan to march today and Sunday in honor of Chavez, who died in 1993, and in protest of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.
Here’s a look at Chavez, his legend and his legacy:
Farmworkers were crucial to agribusiness in California, which grows nearly half the nation’s fruits, nuts and vegetables, but pay was poor and conditions often miserable.
There were no toilets in the fields for workers, who weeded fields with short-handled hoes that forced them to bend over for hours at a time.
Bosses frequently ignored the health and wages of their workers, many of whom were Spanish-speakers in the country temporarily or illegally and had little political or legal clout to prevent abuses.
There had been protests and small strikes, but the UFW, with Chavez as its figurehead, helped organize the farmworkers on a large scale and turn their cause into a movement.
The UFW staged nonviolent strikes, boycotts and protests that garnered immense publicity and had a significant effect in California.
A five-year strike that began in 1965 targeted grape growers in the central California town of Delano. Workers demanded pay equal to the federal minimum wage. The fight was marked by a nationwide consumer boycott of non-union grapes, a 350-mile march by grape pickers to the state Capitol and a 25-day fast by Chavez.
In the end, the union reached agreements with growers that covered thousands of workers.
In 1970, nearly 10,000 workers went on strike after lettuce growers and other farmers in the Salinas Valley signed deals with the Teamsters that granted that union – instead of the UFW – the right to organize agricultural workers. It was the largest farmworker strike in U.S. history.
What followed was a boycott that doubled the price of lettuce and a brutal battle with the Teamsters with protests, mass arrests and violence. UFW picketers were beaten and shot, one was killed and a UFW field office was firebombed.
Eventually, the Teamsters signed a deal with the UFW and bowed out of field organizing.
In 1975, the UFW launched a 110-mile march from San Francisco to a winery in Modesto, with more than 15,000 people eventually taking part.