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> > By Jeffrey W. Rubin > > > The Union of Their Dreams: Power, > Hope, and Struggle in Cesar Chavez's Farm Worker > Movement by Miriam Pawel Bloomsbury Press, 2009, 384 pp., $28 > > clip -- > > In 1978, just after I graduated from college, I worked at a migrant health > clinic in California's San Joaquin Valley and saw what 1960s activism had > achieved. Farmworkers received health services at government-funded rural > health clinics, regardless of citizenship status or ability to pay, and the > landmark Agricultural Labor Relations Act, achieved through a decade of > struggle on the part of the United Farm Workers (UFW) movement, promised > access to union representation for those who harvested the country's fruits > and vegetables. > > I lived down the road from the UFW headquarters, a mountain retreat center > known as La Paz, and the director of the union's new school for organizers > hired me to teach English there. Between classes, I passed Cesar Chavez as > he strolled from office to lunch, and at celebrations I watched Dolores > Huerta fly across the dance floor, projecting the allure and pleasure that > accompanies immersion in a struggle for social justice. I also learned that > social movements are sometimes not what they seem. > > The graduation for the three English classes at the UFW school was a > momentous event. Families arrived in their Sunday best from across central > and southern California for a formal ceremony and communal lunch. The high > point of the ceremony was a slideshow put together by the most advanced > class, setting out in English the students' experiences and hopes for the > future. At the end of the show, photos of Cesar Chavez, La Paz, and a farm > worker in the fields came onscreen with a voiceover saying, "The Union is > not Cesar Chavez, the Union is not La Paz, the Union is the farmworkers." > > In the bright sun, families strolled from the school building to the dining > room, congratulating the graduates and helping themselves heartily to the > cafeteria-style buffet. Soon after lunch began, however, Huerta stood up to > denounce an act of treason. "There are traitors here who want to destroy > Cesar," she said with characteristic fierceness. These covert enemies, > Huerta explained, had inserted the words "The Union is not Cesar Chavez" in > the slideshow as part of an effort to usurp the leader's authority, and they > needed to be named and expelled from the movement. > > Huerta demanded that the teachers identify the authors of the subversive > phrase. The teacher of the advanced class refused, as did the rest of us. > The meal ended quickly and awkwardly, the families dispersed, and the > teachers from all three classes were ushered to a small table in a backroom > office. Confronted there by Huerta, Richard Chavez, and Cesar Chavez > himself, we were accused of being part of a subversive plot, railed at, > called "chicken shit" by Cesar, and thrown out of La Paz and the union. > > I went home distraught and scared. I understood that I had been part of a > purge, but I didn't understand why the purge had happened or what it meant. > And like the protagonists in Miriam Pawel's groundbreaking and deeply moving > The Union of Their Dreams, I did not speak of these events to anyone for > more than a decade and never aired them publicly. > > Thirty years later, Pawel's meticulously documented book portrays the rise > of the UFW and the mix of passion, solidarity, and organizing genius that > enabled it to take on the largest agricultural enterprises in the country. > And The Union of Their Dreams clears up the mystery carried inside everyone > who worked for the movement through the late 1970s and early 1980s, from > lawyers and ministers to farm workers and volunteers. What happened to make > such a successful and inspiring victory for social justice end in bitter, > drawn-out defeat? Pawel's nuanced analysis brings with it a sad truth most > people don't know: only a tiny percentage of California's farmworkers are > unionized today, and the pay and working conditions in most of California's > fields are as bad as they were in the 1960s, before the landmark struggle > that captured the national imagination. Today workers live in cars, shacks, > and rundown barracks, and the UFW can neither organize farmworkers nor win > union elections effectively. > > full -- http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=2452 > > > > ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
