The fight for human rights is never done alone . It ’s carry by a multitude of visionaries , bear on by regular army of truster and engage in a variety of ways . Through , for a few examples , the tranquil and peaceful dignity of Mahatma Gandhi . The soaring eloquence of Martin Luther King Jr. The fervor ofSusan B. Anthony . The overconfidence of Malcom X. The unbending reasonableness of Nelson Mandela . The persistence of young Greta Thunberg .
Among those icon honest-to-god and new , past and present , a special place is reserve for Cesar Estrada Chavez , whose humility and resolute feeling People’s Republican Army Causamade him a poor boy to one thousand thousand .
" Why were they drawn to him ? " asks Marc Grossman , Chavez ’s speechwriter and personal aide for theCesar Chavez Foundation . " Because he had great faith in them . He had faith they could do great thing . "
Who Was Cesar Chavez?
Chavez is perhaps well cognize as an Americanunionbuilder during the furious sixties and a persistent advocate for the rights of abused farmworkers . But the way in which he dribble out his work , and the people he reached with his message of Leslie Townes Hope , made him so much more .
He was a devout Catholic who believed in the goodness of his fellow mankind and the powerfulness ofnonviolent electric resistance . He was friends with Bobby Kennedy . He exchanged wire with King .
And to this day , Cesar Chavez remains a darling of America ’s counterculture , a voiced - spoken , sly - smiling , immoveable physical object standing in the path of the land ’s plentiful and potent .
The child of Mexican American parents , Chavez was turn out in 1927 in Yuma , Arizona , into the back - bust up life of a migrant farm sept in the Southwest United States . He and many others usually worked 10- to 12 - 60 minutes days , often bent over a short - handled hoe — el cortito — for payoff that would hardly keep them alive . He estimated that he attended 65 different school as a kid . He never got past eighth grade .
Chavez enlisted in the U.S. Navy after the end of World War II , before it was integrate , but soon returned to California , where he start a folk of his own . By the early fifties , he was enclose to organizers in theCommunity Services Organization , and by the late ' 50s he had become its national president .
By the early 1960s , Chavez already was in full dispute with the moneyed raiser who saw him and his swell group of follower as a terror to their financial well - being . He travel the fields of California , signing up worker to unite his fledglingNational Farm Workers Association(NFWA ) , later to become theUnited Farm Workers .
And soon , bolster by his opinion inLa Causa , Chavez would transform the biography of thousands .
Fighting the Good Fight
Though Chavez miss a full , schematic educational activity , he was a rapacious referee . He followedGandhiand King and took from them example of nonviolence . He also read the whole caboodle of union personal organiser likeEugene V. Debs . His impression in the worker , and their worth , press him . And their belief in him sustained his work .
" You recognise , many people , for a hundred years before Cesar Chavez , tried and failed to organize farmworkers . People who had a lot more resource and money and had a much better education , tried and failed . For a hundred years , " Grossman suppose . " And he come after , I reckon , because he was one of them . It was not an donnish avocation for him . "
Chavez endure government investigations and death threats from the rich and powerful . He often move with two fierce - look German sheepherder — Boycott andHuelga(Strike ) — who became both friends to Chavez and deterrents to those who might like him hurt . ( They also were an inspiration . He credited his hotdog with his decision to become avegan , and he became an animal right hand militant later in his spirit . )
As he did in the fields as a untested gentleman’s gentleman , Chavez put in long , hard time of day organizing proletarian , traveling from townspeople to townsfolk , tug for better wages , insurance policy and improved working conditions . He employ the threats of boycotts and strikes — and , in fact , run beyond bare threats — to attempt to ameliorate the lives of those he represented .
In 1965 , Chavez and the NFWA conjoin forcefulness with a group of Philippine grapevine workers in theDelano ( California ) grape strike . It lasted five years and included a boycott of board grape vine that spread throughout the nation . Chavez insisted — with an needlelike sentience of the violence that roiled the country that decade — that the objection rest nonviolent . But as it wear on , many worker grew impatient .
To focalize hitter on stay on strong without using violence , and to show those throughout the country their resolution , Chavez went on a 25 - day fast . Thousands teem into the petite windowless room near Delano to see him during his fast . He lost 35 pounds ( 15 kilograms ) .
King sent atelegram , which tell in part :
Bobby Kennedy was there as Chavez finally broke the fast , calling him , " one of the heroic figures of our metre . "
In a instruction , Chavez say , " To be a serviceman is to suffer for others . God help us to be men . "
It took some more meter , but in 1970 , grape growers signed their first contracts with the union that put up workers well pay and benefits .
Beyond the Union Battle
Chavez stepped outside matrimony activism , too . He came out powerfully against the Vietnam War in the sixties and in the ' seventy was combat-ready in the struggle forgay right .
The Delano tight was not the only one that Chavez would undertake over his tenacious vocation . He went for 36 days without food in 1988 to resist the threat that pesticides posed to farm workers and their child . ( He was , in effect , an early environmental activist , too . )
Chavez continue to work and organize for the UFW throughout his life . He was in Arizona in 1993 , helping to defend the conjugation in a lawsuit , when he died , peacefully , at the home of a longtime friend . He was 66 .
Some 45,000 citizenry attended his funeral in Delano , California . He is now forget in Keene , California , where he lived and labour for the last fourth part - century of his life and where theCesar E. Chavez National Monumentis now located .
Throughout his aliveness , Chavez fought for farmworkers . But he amount to realize — or , perhaps , he know it all along — that the fight was larger than that between proletarian and employers . " And that meant tackle the dilemma in the community , " Grossman says . " It had to be more than wages , hours and workings conditions . It had to be more than money for your own the great unwashed . "
In 1984 , in a cautiously craftedspeech in front of the Commonwealth Clubin San Francisco ( his first time speaking from a handwriting ) , Chavez laid out his vision . Buoyed at the time by impending demographic modification that prognosticate to tone Hispanic political power , Chavez sounded less like a spousal relationship organizer than a full - blown polite rights ikon . An excerption :
His Lasting Legacy
Today , the University of California - Berkeley has a scholarly person midpoint diagnose after Chavez . High schools , elementary school day , streets and parks wear his name . So does aNavy ship . In 2003 , the U.S. Postal Serviceissued a stampwith his alikeness . President Barack Obama christened the national monument in 2012 where Chavez is now bury .
More , the thousands of people who clump to run into him , the jillion more who knew of him or have learn about him , retain to hold on his work and his dreams . Grossman cite a couple of examples off the top of his brain : a untested instructor ’s auxiliary in California who now is a school day district overseer . A young legal assistant who now is a superscript motor hotel judge in the state .
" He saw the great good of help oneself citizenry fulfill their dream . And some of them were dreams that many of them did n’t even screw they had , " says Grossman . " He really ingrain hope and confidence in the great unwashed who never had them before . "
