Many people have asked why farm workers are joining with the @Mvmnt4BlkLives and other worker and racial justice allies tomorrow. My thoughts on this are complex yet so simple:
As a movement, we’ve learned that righteous protest relies on genuine solidarity.
As a movement, we’ve learned that righteous protest relies on genuine solidarity.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sent a telegram to Cesar Chavez in 1966, early in the 5 yr long Delano grape strike. "Our separate struggles are really one—a struggle for freedom, for dignity, and for humanity.”
read more: bit.ly/2DZWy6j
read more: bit.ly/2DZWy6j
Chavez carefully followed King’s career beginning with the 1955–56 Montgomery bus boycott. Two key UFW strategies were borrowed from King: nonviolence, which both King and Chavez learned from Gandhi, and the boycott, which had never before been used in a major US labor dispute.
The union boycotted California grapes. We learned righteous protests like boycotting — that rely on genuine solidarity among divergent groups of people — can move powerful forces, either corporate or governmental.
Chavez and other UFW organizers embraced a transformational vision of trade unionism that transcended focusing solely on economic gains for union members. They knew we had to work with other communities struggling for change against the slow violence of oppression and poverty.
In the late 60s, Chavez & UFW opposed the Vietnam War despite war support of many labor leaders. As early as mid-70s, Chavez stood with Harvey Milk in unequivocal support of gay rights. ‘How can we demand equality for our own people and tolerate prejudice against anyone else?’
Chavez led the UFW in working with disparate groups from the Black Panther Party in Oakland to Neighbor to Neighbor’s international boycott of Salvadoran coffee that helped end the death squads in El Salvador.
The UFW will continue that tradition - of active solidarity with other oppressed people, on July 20 by participating in the #StrikeForBlackLives along with labor and racial justice organizations such as the Poor People’s Campaign and the @Mvmnt4BlkLives.
j20strikeforblacklives.org
j20strikeforblacklives.org
Most farm workers, living and laboring in remote rural regions, have difficulty engaging in mass urban protests. But the movement in which we now take part stretches beyond city streets to the fields, orchards, and vineyards that feed this country.
Farm workers from CA to WA will strike in solidarity for eight minutes and 46 seconds—how long George Floyd lay dying under a police officer’s knee—to affirm the truth that Black lives matter.
We stand by the simple message that none of us are free until all of us are free.
We stand by the simple message that none of us are free until all of us are free.
MLK reached out to Chavez while he fasted for nonviolence in 1968. “The plight of your people and ours is so grave that we all desperately need the inspiring example and effective leadership you‘ve given.”
Civil rights leaders gave unwavering support to the farmworker movement.
Civil rights leaders gave unwavering support to the farmworker movement.
Cesar Chavez later wrote that Dr. King’s life and death “gives us the best possible opportunity to recall the principles with which our struggle has grown and matured.”
The successors of Cesar Chavez will carry on that struggle on July 20.
Join us.
j20strikeforblacklives.org
The successors of Cesar Chavez will carry on that struggle on July 20.
Join us.
j20strikeforblacklives.org
