Cesar Chavez, Farm Labor in California, and Strategic Racism

 Cesar Chavez, the UFW, and Strategic Racism.

Cesar Chavez and the author, Duane Campbell,  1972

 On March 31, 2022,  Eleven  states will hold holidays celebrating  labor and Latino Leader Cesar Chavez. 

Let us be clear.  Chavez was religious, but he was not a saint. Neither were the growers, their  Teamster collaborators, nor corporate agribusiness saints.  Celebrations should not be about hero worship or uncritical praise, nor  should we ignore the present oppression of farm workers in the U.S.  

What they did  accomplish along with Philip Vera Cruz ,  Marshall Ganz, LeRoy Chatfield, Gil Padilla, Eliseo Medina and  hundreds of others was to   organize in California the first successful farm worker union against overwhelming odds. 

Each of the prior attempts to organize a  farm worker union  had been  destroyed by racism and corporate power.Chavez, Huerta, Philip Vera Cruz, and the  others deliberately created a multiracial union; Mexican,  Mexican American, Filipino, African-American, Dominican, Puerto Rican and Arab workers, among others, have been part of the UFW.  This cross racial organizing  was necessary in order to combat the  prior divisions and exploitations of workers based upon race and language. Dividing the workers on racial and  language lines, as well as immigration status  always left the corporations the winners.

 

The violent  assaults  on the farmworkers and UFW from 1960- 1980  along with the current reconquest of power in the fields  by corporate agriculture are examples of strategic racism, that is a system of racial oppression created and enforced because it benefits the over class- in this case corporate agriculture and farm owners.  Strategic racism as described by Ian Haney López  in Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism & Wrecked the Middle Class ( 2014) is the development and implementation of  racial practices because they benefit a group or a class. 

 

Chávez chose to build a union that incorporated the strategies of social movements and community organizing.  They allied the union   with churches, students,  and organized labor.  The successful creation of the UFW changed the nature of labor organizing  in the Southwest  and contributed significantly to the growth  of Latino politics in the U.S.

 

The UFW and Chavez and Huerta have always had severe critics from the Right and  from corporate agriculture. Dolores Huerta  has  been  banned from the history text books in Texas and Arizona as too radical. Both also have critics from the left.  

 

Miriam Pawel in The Union of Their Dreams: Power, Hope, and Struggle in Cesar Chavez’s Farm Worker Movement(2009)  uses individualist, personality driven reporting to assert  that Chavez himself organized “Witch hunts” to expel union staff who disagreed with his leadership.  See Steve Early’s essay  non Talking Union. http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/a-union-of-their-dreams-becomes-a-nightmarehas-ufw-history-been-replayed-in-seiu/  

What the left critics allege, 

Frank Bardacke’s Trampling Out the Vintage: Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers. (2011), Verso. is the view of a well- informed observer  who  worked in the lettuce fields near Salinas as is Lettuce Wars: Ten Years of  Work and Struggle in the Fields of California (2012) by Bruce Neuberger.  These books, along with Pawell’s have been reviewed in prior posts on Talking Union.  See review here. http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/its-a-long-way-from-delano-to-watsonville-a-review/

These books argue  a peculiar point of view:   they  strongly and persistently imply that the  current  problems of exploitation of workers  in farm labor was caused by the destructive behavior of  Cesar Chavez,  his instability, and his ego  - not by corporate agriculture; not by the racist state in rural California

On the other hand Cesar Chavez was  given the U.S. Presidential  Medal of Freedom posthumously  in 1994, and Dolores Huerta ( A DSA Honorary Chair) was given the Medal of Freedom in 2012.   Teaching materials and videos have been made recording their work.  Schools, scholarships, foundations,  organizing institutes and political organizations  have been named after them.  Few  labor or Latino leaders  have achieved such positive recognition.   

I, for one, wonder why these authors and some  other left writers  see the major problem as the growth of  what they see as a legend and myths about Cesar Chavez ( and recognition of the UFW) rather than the major problem being the role of corporate agriculture, exploitation and racism.

When writers take this view,  they then  need to explain why and how the parallel decline of the Teamsters, the ILGWU, the Auto Workers , the Steelworkers, the IAM, and other unions  occurred during this  same era.   Compare the period of decline of 1977-1986 in the UFW to the complex battles of  the Reuther Brothers to gain control and to keep control of the  United Auto Workers, including the UAW’s relationship with the AFL-CIO . (1949-1970).  The UAW went from 1.5 million members in 1979 to 390,000 in 2010, and the United Steelworkers and other unions  suffered similar declines. 

It doesn’t require a theory of emotional instability and personal interventions  to explain that the smaller, less established, less well funded  union – the UFW-  suffered dramatic  declines  from racial oppression and the brutal assault on the union  in the fields of  Texas, Arizona and California.

The above critics under play the role of the corporate assault on unions, and in particular the assault on a union led by  Mexican American leaders. This was, after all,  the era when  Ronald Reagan came to power in California along with the organization of the forces that came to be called neo-liberalism.  It was also a time of  consolidation of racial power in agriculture.  

Marshall Ganz, who was a leader in the union and a participant in the internal struggles, tells a more complex and more complete story in his book, Why David Sometimes Wins. (2009) See  the review in Talking Union http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/why-david-sometimes-wins-marshall-ganz/

This isn’t to say that Chavez, Huerta and many on the UFW Executive Board  did not have shortcomings.  They did.  Ganz describes  several of these in his  book and in interviews he participated in for the new book, From the Jaws of Victory by   Matt  Garcia (2012).  Ganz provide some well researched and insightful observations on the dynamics of a union trying to transition from a movement to a union- or to something else.   This analysis is helpful to organizers trying to build unions. 

There were conflicts and internal contradictions.  Not many movements last for even ten years let alone thirty.    In addition to the assault from corporate agriculture, the Republican Party, Ronald Reagan, neoliberalism and racism, the UFW was confronted  with internal union struggles for democracy,  an intra union assault by the Teamsters,  and with the tumultuous and disruptive  politics on the left in the 60’s and 70’s. 

In my opinion, Bardacke, Pawell, and Neuberger under analyze the nature of the racial state and  the interaction of racial and economic oppression in the fields.  And, these critics significantly  failed  to see the they dynamics of  the struggle for  Chicano/Mexican American self determination within the UFW. 

The role of racism, and the individual reactions to systemic structural racial oppression are complex and  vary in part based upon the differences in experiences of the participants.  As the Chicano movement argued at its core- the experiences of U.S. born and reared  Mexican Americans and Chicanos were different than the experiences and the perceptions of racism of Mexican immigrants, both documented and undocumented.   There are a diversity of racisms and a diversity in the manner in which workers   learn to respond  to oppression.  Chicanos and Mexican Americans grew up, were educated, and worked in an internal colony.  Their schools, their unions, and their political experiences were structured along racial  lines.  They learned colonized structures.  The authors do not sufficiently  acknowledge the struggle of the UFW and the Chicano Movement in breaking this colonial legacy. 

Marshall Ganz in Why David Sometimes Wins,  does a better job of describing the internal dynamics of UFW organizing- after all he was there.  He describes  some of the racial fault lines of  farm worker organizing.  Ganz was the director of organizing  for the UFW in Salinas and a long time member of the UFW executive board.

Chavez knew well some of  the failings of unions  in the 1960’s, including  the problems of a growing internal bureaucracy, but the UFW in the 1980’s  was not able to create a viable  democratic union movement.  Marshall Ganz argues that Chavez deconstructed the organizational strength of the UFW in the 1979 -1981 period in an effort to keep personal control of the union.  (Ganz, p. 247 ) 

The critics  who blame individuals for the union’s decline  also miss the important rise of Latino politics in the Southwest today.   Chavez and the UFW played  a significant role by training  generations of future leaders as organizers as is well described  in Randy Shaw’s, Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW, and the Struggle for Justice in the 21^st. Century.   The UFW was a  place  where hundreds learned organizing skills, politics, discipline, and how to work in multi racial  movement politics – skills needed by many on the left.   Today hundreds of union and community leaders, particularly in California are veterans, trained in for the long distance struggle of  the UFW. 

The Current Situation – Strategic Racism 

 The movement led by Cesar Chavez , Dolores Huerta  and others  created a union and reduced the oppression of farm workers for a time.   Workers learned to not accept poor jobs, poor pay,  unsafe working conditions as natural or inevitable.  Then the corporations and the Right Wing forces adapted their strategies of oppression.  

            

The assault on the UFW and the current reconquest of power in the fields are examples of strategic racism, that is a system of racial oppression created and enforced because it benefits the over class- in this case corporate agriculture and farm owners.  The current renewed oppression is a product  of strategic racism including  a complex structure of institutions and individuals from police and sheriffs, to immigration authorities and anti immigrant activists, and elected officials and their support networks.  These groups foster and promote inter racial conflict, job competition, and anti union organizing,  as strategies  to keep wages and benefits low and to promote their continuing white supremacy in rural California. 

 As the union was weakened by the Right Wing corporate assault, the conditions in the fields returned almost to their prior level of exploitation.  The Agricultural Labor Relations Act had it budget cut  by 30 % for years under Governor Deukmejian in 1982- 1986 along with other assaults on the law.   Now, thousands of new immigrants harvest the crops and only a small percent are protected by  union contracts.  Over 200,000 indigenous workers, mostly from Mexico, harvest the crops in the Southwest.  They are Mixtec, Zapotec, Triqui and more.  They do have a few health, safety and wage protection by California labor laws,  along with the right to  farm worker collective bargaining elections and binding arbitration  established significantly by the political activity of the current UFW – more than farm workers have in any other state.  For a record of this period see David Bacon’s,  The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration (2013). 

 

Duane Campbell is a professor emeritus of bilingual multicultural education at California State University Sacramento, a union activist, and former chair of Sacramento DSA.  He was a volunteer for the UFW from 1972- 1977. He is the Director of the Mexican American Digital History project. www.MexicanAmericanDigitalHistory.org

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

            

            

 

Third ACT Sacramento -Defending Democracy

 

Third Act – Sacramento 

I recently got into an argument with an older relative over whose generation – hers or mine – should shoulder the monumental task of mitigating climate change. Her activist days are over, she said; now it’s up to her nieces, nephews and grandkids to save the planet. I couldn’t disagree more. This relative is well into retirement and has time for advocacy work that I don’t, financial capital that I don’t, and, importantly, generational responsibility for polluting the planet and leaving young folks like me to deal with the mess. But one spirited and hopeful group of older people in Sacramento agrees with me – and they’re doing everything in their power to slow climate change. 

 

Launched last month, Sacramento’s Third Act working group already has 28 members showing up to monthly virtual meetings. OPINION Third Act is a national organization cofounded by the author and environmentalist Bill McKibben and activist Vanessa Arcara, with celebrity supporters including Jane Fonda and Bette Midler. The group’s philosophy is that baby boomers have the time, money, experience and know-how to fight climate change. Boomers control 70% of the nation’s wealth; are 50% more likely to vote than those aged 18 to 29; and spend an average of five hours a day watching TV.

 

 “This is a way to mobilize my generation, most of whom in Sacramento are sitting watching TV or listening to the radio, feeling powerless and wondering what they can do,” said Pat Ferris, a facilitator of the Sacramento working group. “This fabulous group has the power to get us engaged – to have some fun and feel like we have some agency.” 

 

. Many Third Act members are not new to activism. They may have protested the Vietnam War or participated in the civil rights or women’s rights movement. Third Act, a group specifically for folks over the age of 60, recognizes that just as the social movements of the ’60s and ’70s were led by younger generations, so is the current climate movement. The group believes its role is to support youth climate organizations such as the Sunrise Movement and Fridays for Future. “It’s not fair to ask the young to save the world themselves, nor is it possible,” McKibben and Third Act lead adviser Akaya Windwood wrote in a 2021 Los Angeles Times op-ed. “We emerge into our latter years with talents, wisdom and often with the money to put them to use. Our children and grandchildren should help focus us on the fact that if we don’t act now, we may leave the world a worse place than we found it.” 

 

THIRD ACT SACRAMENTO Sacramento facilitators Ferris and Laurie Litman have wholeheartedly committed the third acts of their own lives – post-retirement – to climate activism. Both worry about the futures their children and grandchildren will face. Litman says the fact that young people have inherited a planet polluted by older generations is “an intergenerational injustice.” “This is the most important thing people my age can be doing,” Litman said. “We overconsumed. We’ve taken a lot, and now we’re leaving a depauperate future for our kids.” $2 for 2 months Subscribe for unlimited access to our website, app, eEdition and more CLAIM OFFER Third Act member Anne Stausboll, who formerly chaired Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg’s Commission on Climate Change, said that instead of resorting to climate “doomerism,” Third Act members choose to hope that our climate future is not yet set in stone. “Everything is infused with optimism and hope, and we need hope to move forward,” Stausboll said. BANKING PLEDGE Don’t think, however, that Third Act members lack a plan. Their meetings are not therapy sessions; they are devoted to strategy. For example, Third Act’s national group launched a calculated, ingenious banking pledge that uses the enormous capital of its members to maximize their impact. Four of the nation’s biggest banks – Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America – have loaned the fossil fuel industry a trillion dollars since the 2015 Paris Climate Accords were signed. If the financial services industry were a nation, it would be the fifth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases. To pressure the big banks to divest from the industries killing our planet and population, Third Act is calling on everyone to sign one of two pledges: Current Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America customers can sign one stating that if their bank does not stop lending money to the fossil fuel industry by Dec. 31, 2022, they will pull their money out. People who do not bank with any of the four can pledge that they will never become customers so long as they continue to loan money to polluters. If everyone who signs the first pledge pulls their money from the banks at the same time, the impact could be enormous.

 

 “Individual action is important, but it’s not enough,” Ferris said. “When we’re up against fossil-fuel-funded politicians and corporations, we need to take collective action.” Sacramento’s working group also wants to focus on advocacy at the local level, serving as a watchdog for the city’s budget committees and joining forces with other activists. 

 

DEFENDING DEMOCRACY In addition to climate change mitigation, Third Act has a second colossal goal: Protecting and defending America’s democracy. The group is focused on fighting voter suppression, strengthening voting rights, and increasing voter participation. The two goals, climate and voter advocacy, go hand in hand. “We need to stabilize our democracy and our climate,” Litman said. “We need both – we can’t do one without the other.” Sacramento’s Third Act working group is still in its early days, but as it grows, so does excitement about the future. The group meets virtually on the third Monday of each month at 6 p.m. and anyone who lives in or around the Sacramento region is encouraged to get involved by emailing thirdactsac@gmail.com. Fighting a planetary crisis on a personal scale can feel futile. But people of every generation must do everything in our power to ensure a livable future.

 

Read more at: https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/article259152778.html#storylink=cpy

Ted Cruz, Cultural Warriors and Dr. Martin Luther King

  

 

 

Ted Cruz Invokes Dr. King, and Scholars See a Familiar Distortion

In the confirmation hearings of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the senator cited the famous “I Have a Dream” speech to suggest King would have opposed race-conscious policies.

Ted Cruz,  Republican cultural warriors, misquote and distort the Martin Luther King Jr legacy in their campaign against “Critical Race Theory.”

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/23/arts/ted-cruz-mlk-critical-race-theory-supreme-court.html

 

Economics and Inequality - Piketty

  

 

The world’s foremost economist talks about wealth, inequality, and ideology. A video introduction. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5Zb9Iu2wI0&t=1s

 

Nobody comes out of the womb a socialist, and Thomas Piketty, like the rest of us, was not born a socialist.  Socialists are made through life experiences, and the experiences that create socialists are unique to each of us even if there may be some common themes. 

In 2014, Piketty published an 800-page book, Capital in the 21st Century. Despite its length and the fact that it was written by an economist, the book became a global best seller. It contained many ideas and proposals that socialists support, but Piketty did not define himself as a socialist.

Now he does. And his socialism is not dissimilar to that of many DSA members: it is opposed to hierarchies of domination based on gender, race, ethnicity, etc. It is a socialism that compels us to “change the economic system” by reducing inequalities and providing equal access to “education, employment and property, including a minimum inheritance for all, regardless of their origins” (p. 25). 

I think what made Piketty (and myself) a socialist is a long-time concern with inequality, especially wealth inequality and how to counter the overwhelming global power and planetary destructiveness of this concentration of wealth.  Let me be clear: Piketty does argue that wealth is less concentrated than perhaps it was in the “gilded age” of the late nineteenth century. But I believe – and I think he would agree – that the global concentration of wealth in the hands of no more than 2,500 people, a group – dare we say a global ruling class – that collectively holds more wealth than the global underclass of 4.6 billion, poses an existential challenge to humanity, and one that socialists must take on if we can have any hopes of “changing] the economic system.”  

https://www.dsausa.org/democratic-left/review-thomas-pikettys-time-for-socialism-dispatches-from-a-world-on-fire/

Bill Barclay.

Piketty in a video describes what he sees as the major ideological discussions of our time. 

In this interview he discusses what he thinks of the writing of Karl Marx.

https://www.dsausa.org/democratic-left/piketty/

 

 

 

 

Sanders on Ukraine and Globalism

 

There must be no ambiguity in acknowledging that what the whole world is seeing from Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is nothing less than a blatant violation of international law and human decency.

This war, in which a large powerful nation invades a smaller neighbor, has already killed thousands of innocent people, including many children. A large number of cities throughout the country are being leveled by long-range Russian missiles while others are under siege as people are running low on food, water and much-needed medical supplies. In the first week of the war alone, more than a million refugees crossed borders into neighboring countries. Some estimates now put the number of refugees at more than 3 million while many more have been displaced from their homes within Ukraine. 

This has been a humanitarian disaster for the people of Ukraine, but it is much more than that. The Russian invasion threatens global energy and food supplies, is contributing to greater economic instability and the rising prices we see everywhere. And oh, by the way, this is all happening at a time when the world is already struggling with a global pandemic that has killed millions and the devastating impacts of climate change which threaten the very existence of the planet.

That is the bad news. And it cannot be sugar-coated. It is very bad.

But, in the midst of all this horror, there is some reason for optimism.

All across the world, people are waking up to the fact that there is a global struggle taking place between autocracy and democracy, between oligarchy and an economy that works for all, between authoritarianism and the right of people to freely express their views. There is also the beginnings of a new progressive global order that recognizes every person on this planet shares a common humanity and that all of us, no matter where we live or the language we speak, want our children to grow up healthy, have a good education, and live in peace.

We not only see this vision from people in the allied countries who are defending Ukraine and are speaking out against Putin's war, but from people within Russia as well. 

It is extraordinary that in the autocracy that is Russia today, many thousands of incredibly courageous people have been out on the streets demanding an end to the war and speaking out against Vladimir Putin, knowing that it’s illegal to do so and that they will likely be arrested and punished. Putin recently referred to them as "traitors," a frightening term coming from a dictator. 

Here in America, rising gas prices are waking people up to something we have long known, and that is that moving quickly to renewable energy is not just an environmental issue. It is a matter of national security.

Yes. Our reliance on fossil fuels will continue to mean more drought, more crop failures, scarcer drinking water, rising seas, extreme weather events, climate refugees, and more disease. In fact, climate change threatens the very wellbeing of the entire planet. But equally important, we must break our dependence on fossil fuel not only to save the planet, but to end the hold that billionaire dictators like Putin and the autocrats in the Middle East have over the entire global economy. This is a profound national security issue. 

Sisters and brothers, we have long said that we are in the midst of a global struggle with nothing less than the future of the planet at stake.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made that more clear than ever. 

It is a global struggle between those who believe in democracy and the rule of law versus those who believe government exists to rob the people they purport to serve in order to make the billionaire rulers even richer. 

It is a struggle between those who believe information should be open and accessible to all versus those who believe the flow of information should be controlled by the government and a small number of oligarchs.

It is a struggle between those who believe we should choose peace and international cooperation versus those who support xenophobia and massive amounts of military spending. 

It is a struggle between a progressive movement that mobilizes behind a shared vision of prosperity, security and dignity for all people, against one that defends massive global income and wealth inequality. 

And, in the midst of these difficult times, our job going forward is to build upon this global awakening and do everything we can to oppose all of the forces, whether unaccountable government power or unaccountable corporate power, who try to divide us up and set us against each other in order to advance their own power and financial gain.

We know that those forces have long worked together across borders.

We must do the same.

In solidarity,

Bernie Sanders

The End of Globalism ?

The End of Globalism: The world economic and financial system will never be the same.ts

Biggest Oil Giants profits,

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/03/15/biggest-oil-giants-made-eye-popping-205-billion-profits-2021-report

WILL UKRAINE WRITE THE ALT-RIGHT’S EPITAPH?

Most of the leaders of the alt-right are scrambling to distance themselves from Vladimir Putin. It might be too late.

By John Feffer | March 16, 2022

 

https://fpif.org/will-ukraine-write-the-alt-rights-epitaph/

Poor People's Campaign Planning

Announcement

PPC co-chairs to join the Western Region Convening Sunday Mar. 13, 3pm | RSVP This Sunday, California PPC is hosting an online Western Region Convening to officially launch our mobilization campaign: the Mass Poor People’s & Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington D.C. and to the Polls. We’re excited to announce that Rev. Barber and Rev. Theoharis will be speaking, along with national PPC policy director Shailly Gupta Barnes, local testifiers and advocates and leaders from throughout the western states. In addition to hearing the speakers, we’ll sing, chant and make art together. Please join us to learn more and get inspired to carry out the work ahead.

Upcoming meetings

Jubilee Policy Platform study group Today! Mar. 10, 12pm | RSVP Hosted by the California Policy and Political Education Working Group, this monthly meeting focuses on the Jubilee Platform: a document that the campaign uses to put forward a policy agenda that addresses the interlocking injustices. The study group gathers to discuss what the document means to our work at the state and local level.This month we’ll be discussing PART V. PROVIDE FOR THE COMMON DEFENSE: REPRIORITIZING OUR RESOURCES; 1. End the culture of war. The meeting will be closed captioned.   Speaker training working group: Beyond Vietnam Tuesdays, 3:30pm RSVP Come join us each week to practice or even just hear Dr. King’s words spoken. The Speaker Training Working Group is offering practice sessions for those who are participating or thinking of participating as readers for the April 4 Beyond Vietnam events. Come join us at 3:30pm any Tuesday in March.

 

How Blackrock-Vanguard dominate the World.

How Blackrock and Vanguard dominate the economies.

https://portside.org/2022-03-08/how-blackrock-vanguard-and-ubs-are-screwing-world

 

Moral policy = Good economics: Lifting up poor and working-class people—and our whole economy

Moral policy = Good economics: Lifting up poor and working-class people—and our whole economy: This article is a collaboration between the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival—a moral movement rooted in the legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that is organizing around the needs and demands of the 140 million in 45 states—and the Economic Policy Institute (EPI)—an independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that uses economic research and analysis to understand and improve the economic conditions of workers and their families. In this article, we evaluate the public policies that shaped the preexisting conditions of the pandemic, policies that were by no means accidental or morally neutral, and lay out the policies that we need to counter and reverse the status quo, including the heightened suffering from the pandemic.