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cesar chavez
Silence Is Not Solidarity
If we are serious about building a world where women have equal power—economic, political, and personal—then we have to be serious about accountability within our own ranks
May 06, 2026
In the span of a month, two stories have laid bare an uncomfortable truth about progressive politics: Too many people will protect powerful men at the expense of the women they harm, whether to protect a movement, a party, or because they’ve been conditioned to believe this is how power works.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) announced his resignation from Congress last Month after multiple women came forward with allegations of sexual harassment and assault. March’s revelation by Dolores Huerta that iconic labor leader Cesar Chavez sexually abused girls and women for decades is still reverberating through communities that revered him. In both cases, the pattern is the same: Whisper networks carried warnings for years, but survivors who came forward were silenced or discredited for the sake of the “greater good.”
Why? Because Swalwell was seen as a rising Democratic star, a useful weapon against President Donald Trump. Because Chavez was a civil rights icon whose legacy anchored an entire movement. Because people convinced themselves that exposing the truth would do more damage than burying it.
They were wrong. Silence doesn’t protect movements, it protects oppressors. It tells every woman who has been harassed, groped, or assaulted by a powerful man on “our side” that her pain is an acceptable cost of doing business.
Letting people in power abuse women is never acceptable, regardless of party, regardless of legacy, regardless of how inconvenient the timing might feel.
We have seen this calculation before—the quiet bargain where accountability is sacrificed on the altar of political convenience. It never works. The truth always surfaces. And when it does, the cover-up inflicts its own damage, compounding the harm to survivors and eroding the moral authority these movements depend on.
Consider the moment we’re in. We have a president who was found liable by a jury for sexually abusing a woman, and accused by at least 28 others, and has faced no meaningful consequences for it. A president who has made clear, through word and policy, that he believes powerful men can do whatever they want. His administration is rolling back decades of progress on combatting sexual harassment and assault in workplaces and schools; gutting protections against discrimination; and dismantling the legal infrastructure women depend on for safe, equitable workplaces. The Supreme Court, made up of one-third of Trump appointees, is the first since the 1950s to rule against women and people of color in a majority of civil rights cases.
This is the landscape women are navigating right now. And into this landscape, we are supposed to accept that the men or other abusers on “our side” get a pass? No.
If we are serious about building a world where women have equal power—economic, political, and personal—then we have to be serious about accountability within our own ranks. Not because it’s easy, but because the alternative is corrosive. Every time we look the other way, we tell the next generation that a woman’s safety matters less than a man’s career. We weaken the very movements we claim to be protecting.
The women who came forward about Swalwell, including content creators who had no institutional backing, no legal team—just their own platforms and conviction—showed extraordinary courage. So did the survivors who finally broke decades of silence about Chavez. They did what the political establishment was unwilling to do. They chose the truth.
The lesson here is not that our movements are broken. It’s that they are only as strong as our willingness to hold everyone in them accountable. Letting people in power abuse women is never acceptable, regardless of party, regardless of legacy, regardless of how inconvenient the timing might feel.
We are in a fight for women’s futures in this country. That fight requires moral clarity. It requires us to stop treating accountability as a threat and start treating it as the foundation. Good things, lasting things, come from doing what is right, even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.
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No, #MeToo Isn’t Over
Even in Trump’s America, where lawlessness can feel like the norm, survivors are here, demanding that individuals and institutions treat sexual violence with the seriousness it deserves.
Apr 22, 2026
After serious allegations of sexual misconduct, Democratic California Rep. Eric Swalwell and Texas Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales resigned from Congress on the same day. That same week, convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein went on trial for the third time in New York; the University of California, Berkeley removed the name of accused sexual abuser Cesar Chavez from its student center; and a federal judge dismissed a defamation lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump regarding his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
These consequences for powerful men credibly accused of sexual assault have people asking: Is the #MeToo movement back?
As a co-founder of the TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund, which was launched in 2018 to provide legal funding and media assistance to support survivors of workplace sexual harassment and related retaliation, I can confirm: Even in Trump’s America, where lawlessness can feel like the norm, survivors are here, demanding that individuals and institutions treat sexual violence with the seriousness it deserves.
When #MeToo first went viral, it felt like the Earth shook. Women worldwide responded to bombshell New York Times reports by sharing their experiences of sexual harassment and abuse. Quickly, it became clear that Weinstein was the tip of a massive iceberg. Allegations soon spread from Matt Lauer to Roger Ailes and beyond. But while big household names were capturing the public’s attention, something else was happening: People across the country were ready to take their abusers to court.
We have seen consequences for powerful men over the last weeks that go to show that powerful movements don’t end, they echo.
That’s why, three months after #MeToo went viral, the National Women’s Law Center joined with other advocates to create the TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund, which helps survivors, no matter where they work, find justice. Over the last eight years, we have found a great deal of justice.
Since its founding, we have helped more than 12,000 people get the legal assistance they needed to hold their perpetrators accountable. From McDonald’s workers who were survivors of rampant sexual harassment by their bosses, to a female truck driver in Arizona who was sexually assaulted by her co-worker on the side of the road, the TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund has fought for justice and accountability—and won.
In the years since we launched the fund, the #MeToo hashtag may have stopped trending (in part because people are less likely to use hashtags altogether), but the movement is still here, doing the work. In fact, 27 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws aimed at strengthening protections against workplace harassment. And we are not done.
We also can’t discount the immense cultural change that #MeToo’s created. For instance, Cheyenne Hunt, a Democratic creator and activist, used social media to draw attention to her story about abuse from Swalwell. She may not have used the #MeToo hashtag in her initial posts, but her courageous work follows the same playbook thousands of other survivors used to hold their perpetrators accountable. And the public was ready to respond, after nearly a decade of being grounded in Tarana Burke’s MeToo framework.
Yet we have seen from across the political divide people questioning whether the movement was successful, as evidenced by the alleged serial abuser now sitting in the Oval Office, who once said, “Grab ‘em by the pussy.” But these are the wrong questions to consider. Better ones might be: What would it take for women to feel safe in the places they work and learn? What support do survivors need? What is the cost of refusing to provide that support—the cost to survivors and to all of us, as women’s careers and contributions and opportunities are short-circuited by sexual violence?
What has happened in comment sections and court rooms has helped assure that this movement lives on in our laws and culture. Try as some might to roll back this progress—and some, particularly the president, are trying mighty hard—this reckoning will never simply be put back in the bottle.
That said, the latest examples make clear that this country still has miles to go. And given who is in the White House, the threat to survivor justice is as stark as it’s ever been. The Trump administration has spent the last year undermining survivor protections—in just over a year, it has refused to enforce harassment protections for transgender workers, blocked funding for domestic and sexual assault organizations, and weakened protections for victims of sexual harassment in schools.
But that is not evidence that this movement has failed; rather, it goes to show what many of us in the movement already knew: that there is always more work to do.
That work is, of course, made harder by people who think women’s bodies are theirs to possess, and that power means being immune to consequences. Still, we have seen consequences for powerful men over the last weeks that go to show that powerful movements don’t end, they echo. No matter how powerful you think you are, no one is above accountability.
So for anyone who thinks the #MeToo movement is over, I challenge you to look into the faces of the brave women whose stories are demanding and shaping change: Lonna Drewes. Ally Sammarco. Annika Albrecht. Regina Ann Santos-Aviles. Jessica Mann. Ana Murguia. Debra Rojas. Dolores Huerta. Annie Farmer. Virginia Giuffre. Survivors everywhere continue to speak truth—and because they do, #MeToo is as loud as it has ever been.
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'One Person Cannot Tear Our Movement Down,' Farmworkers Say of César Chávez Revelations
"The labor movement was organized not only to protect workers' paychecks and benefits, but also to ensure they are safe from any form of harassment, inappropriate conduct, or assault."
Mar 21, 2026
"Our collective power is what defines us and is our movement, and one person cannot tear our movement down," Alianza Nacional De Campesinas said in the wake of The New York Times reporting Wednesday on multiple sexual abuse allegations against late Mexican-American labor leader César Chávez.
"As a farmworker women's organization, many of us have experienced or witnessed the sexual abuse and silence women endure in many aspects of our lives," the group continued, adding that "we are deeply troubled and devastated" to learn about the reporting, and "we stand with Dolores Huerta, Ana Murguía, and Debra Rojas, who have bravely shared their painful stories."
Huerta, cofounded with Chávez a group that went on to become the labor union United Farm Workers (UFW). In her comments to the Times and a separate statement, the 95-year-old described two separate encounters with Chávez that led to pregnancies: "The first time I was manipulated and pressured into having sex with him... The second time I was forced, against my will, and in an environment where I felt trapped."
Murguía told the Times that Chávez molested her for four years, beginning when she was 13. Rojas said she was 12 when Chávez first groped her breasts in the same office where abused Murguía. When Rojas was 15, the newspaper reported, "he arranged to have her stay at a motel during a weekslong march through California, she said, and had sexual intercourse with her—rape, under state law, because she was not old enough to consent."
The reporting has sparked a wave of responses from labor groups, elected officials, and others who have expressed support for survivors and stressed, as Guardian US columnist Moira Donegan wrote Friday, that "the rightness of the movement for the dignity of workers, for the rights and respect of Latinos, and for a future in which there is more freedom and possibility for poor people... cannot be tarnished by Chávez's behavior."
UFW Foundation said this week that "as a women-led organization that exists to empower communities, the allegations about abusive behavior by César Chávez go against everything that we stand for."
Describing the alleged abuse as "shocking, indefensible and something we are taking seriously," the UFW Foundation also announced that it "has cancelled all César Chávez Day activities this month."
California lawmakers are planning to rename César Chávez Day, a state holiday celebrated on March 31, Farmworkers Day. Artists and officials have begun removing plaques, murals, and other memorials.
American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations president Liz Shuler and secretary-treasurer Fred Redmond said Wednesday that in light of "these horrific, disturbing allegations," the AFL-CIO "will not participate or endorse any upcoming activities for César Chávez Day."
"The AFL-CIO will always stand in solidarity with farmworkers who have fought for and won critical rights over generations through collective action, resilience, and extraordinary determination—a history that cannot be erased by the horrific actions of one person." said the pair. "The labor movement was organized not only to protect workers' paychecks and benefits, but also to ensure they are safe from any form of harassment, inappropriate conduct, or assault. Our commitment to safety and justice for farmworkers, immigrant workers, and all in our workplaces will never waver."
Advocacy and labor leaders also emphasized the importance of ensuring movements are save for their members. GreenLatinos founding president and CEO Mark Magaña told the survivors that "we stand with you and take this opportunity to recommit to our work supporting the farmworker community who toil in dangerous conditions, including extended exposure to extreme heat and deadly pesticides, while women farmworkers also continue to suffer from disturbingly high rates of sexual assault."
"To our community, the movement for justice and dignity for farmworkers is much bigger than one person," Magaña continued. "At a time when our communities are under serious attack, GreenLatinos remains committed to that movement. ¡Sí, Se Puede!"
Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong: Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, said that "Dolores Huerta, Ana Murguía, and Debra Rojas are showing us what real courage looks like. For decades, they kept secret the sexual abuse they experienced because of the power César Chávez held and his legacy within the labor and civil rights movements."
"That kind of silence doesn't just come from one person, it comes from systems and people in power who make women feel like speaking out will cost too much or threaten the very movement they helped build," Simpson argued. "We stand with Dolores Huerta, Ana Murguía, Debra Rojas, and all survivors. We're committed to building movements where no one has to carry harm or abuse in silence just to keep the work going. Our movements are bigger than one person, they belong to the people who build and sustain them. We have a responsibility to protect each other so everyone can be safe within them. That means choosing people over power and legacy, and creating spaces where safety, care, accountability, and dignity are the foundation of the work."
The revelations about Chávez come as President Donald Trump's administration pursues its mass deportation agenda and amid a fight for justice for survivors of Trump's former friend, convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Members in Congress continue to call out the US Department of Justice for the Epstein files it has withheld or heavily redacted.
US Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) said that the reports on Chávez "are shocking and disappointing about a leader that I for many years had looked up to, like so many Latinos growing up in the US. But as I have said many times this year—no one, no matter how powerful, is above accountability, especially when it comes to abusing young women."
"The farmworkers' movement has always been bigger than any one man," declared Gallego, who represents the state where Chávez was born. "It belongs to the thousands of hardworking people who have spent decades on the front lines fighting for the dignity of agricultural workers. We have to keep that fight going, especially now, when our community is under constant attack."
Gallego also recognized "the incredible bravery of the women who came forward," as did Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), who asserted that "there must be zero tolerance for abuse, exploitation, and the silencing of victims, no matter who is involved."
"Confronting painful truths and ensuring accountability is essential to honoring the very values the greater farmworker movement stands for—values rooted in dignity and justice for all," added Padilla.
Democratic Women's Caucus Chair Teresa Leger Fernández (D-NM) said that "the farmworker and civil rights movement was built by countless people—especially women and families who sacrificed everything for a better future. That history is bigger than any one person. Honoring that legacy means facing painful truths and continuing the work for justice with honesty and humanity."
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus said that "while it's heartbreaking when leaders are exposed as flawed beyond absolution, a just society has a duty to hold abusers accountable without exception."
"A movement stands on its values, not the misconduct of an individual.The strength of a movement is defined by its constituency, by its achievements and, yes, by its willingness to hold its leaders accountable," the CHC said. "We will always support the farmworkers who feed this nation, enrich our culture, and elevate our values. We commend the UFW's courage in standing by its constituency."
"We stand committed to work toward renaming streets, post offices, vessels, and holidays that bear Chávez’s name to instead honor our community and the farmworkers whose struggle defined the movement," the caucus added, noting that this March 31, it will "recognize and honor farmworkers and their arduous, essential work, and reaffirm our unequivocal commitment to survivor."
The US National Domestic Violence Hotline can be reached at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), by texting "START" to 88788, or through chat at thehotline.org. It offers 24/7, free, and confidential support. DomesticShelters.org has a list of global and national resources.
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A May Day Letter to My Student Deportee
How the Berkeley Federation of Teachers and the wider community fought back against immigration injustice and won.
May 01, 2025
Dear “Cesar,”
This May Day, as I march with my union, the Berkeley Federation of Teachers, I will thank them for their role in making Berkeley Unified a sanctuary school district and Berkeley, a sanctuary city, but above all, I would like to thank you.
It’s been over 18 years since your last day in our second grade class—a heartbreaking Valentine’s Day in 2007—just before your family succumbed to a deportation order forcing you to leave the country, despite your U.S. citizenship.
This year, convicted felon and twice-impeached President Donald Trump’s Valentine’s Day present was to threaten all public schools and universities to desist in teaching about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) or lose funding. He also issued executive orders illegally revoking visas, work permits, and even facilitating the arrest and detention of immigrants and their allies.
ICE tried to banish the family of one 7-year-old citizen, and the union and community came together in a powerful fist of defiance, protecting hundreds and inspiring other cities that followed our example.
Do you remember the now-censored “DEI” book about Cesar Chavez that I read to your class, Harvesting Hope by Kathleen Krull? She told the story of how the huge Chavez family lost their farm to the depression and drought that scourged Arizona in 1937. Some of you cried when you learned that the Chavez family was forced to trade their productive 80-acre finca for the life of migrant farm workers, developing lesions, blisters, knotted backs, and burning eyes and lungs.
But I reassured you: “No hay mal que por bien no venga.—There is nothing so bad that good can’t come of it.” Were it not for the Cesar family’s displacement, he might not have co-founded the United Farm Workers, a union that has saved countless farm workers’ lives, improved working conditions, and inspired multitudes internationally. Similarly, your family’s suffering gave birth to change and hope in the city you were forced to abandon and beyond.
For years I’ve waited until you were old enough to understand my recounting of the resistance leading to the safeguards you inspired. After you left, your classmates and I would tear up looking at your name on your mailbox and your empty seat. I fought against tears every time we said the Rosa Parks Pledge: “to make this world a better place for ALL people to enjoy freedom,” because ALL didn’t include you.
Your mother wrote from Mexico that you had transformed from my cheerful, round-cheeked model student into a sullen malnourished child who refused to do his school work or eat. I could not stop crying.
Inspired by the ironic letters of my parents’ close friend Blacklist-breaking screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, I wrote an Open Letter to an Immigration Judge:
Dear Honorable Immigration Judge,
…how can I go on teaching about equal rights and freedom of speech and all the things our Constitution is supposed to defend, and that the very name of our school is supposed to represent, when the father of my students is deported simply because his skin is darker? Both my Latine and white students are U.S. citizens. So how do I explain to the class that one has the right to a family in the United States and the other citizen does not?
The letter went viral. A community faith organization called BOCA helped my student teacher and me organize an informational event April 26 with cafeteria tables full of lawyers offering free advice. Rosa Parks’ families pressured the superintendent and police to protect immigrant students. With BOCA’s assistance, as a BFT union representative, I wrote and presented a resolution to the BFT executive board to make BUSD a sanctuary district and it passed overwhelmingly.
Meanwhile your classmates heroically transformed their grief into actions by writing their own “Without You” poems based on Los Panchos’ “Sin Ti” song and read them on an Univision TV special about you.
Next, my spouse and I pulled the best elements of sanctuary ordinances around the country together into a local ordinance and presented it to Berkeley’s Peace and Justice Commission. It won unanimous support and was recommended to the City Council. On May 22, 2007 we organized a rally outside city hall in favor of our beefed up sanctuary ordinance. Aided by the BFT, many of BFT’s Spanish two-way immersion teachers, KPFA host Larry Bensky, LeConte’s principal, and the Berkeley community, the rally reverberated through the City Council chambers. Berkeley Resolution City of Refuge 63711-N.S. was adopted that night (5-22-07) giving a previously symbolic resolution the teeth of law. Berkeley’s spark of an example ignited other cities that adopted similar ordinances throughout the nation. Months later, BFT president Cathy Campbell got our School Board to adopt our sanctuary District resolution as board policy.
Over the years, this work has only gained strength.This January 21, Berkeley School Board Member Jen Corn submitted an even stronger resolution to the City Council reaffirming Berkeley’s status as a sanctuary city and it passed overwhelmingly again. And in February, teachers, principals, office workers, and support staff received a two hour training on how to safeguard the rights of our immigrant students. This whole sequence of events began when you, “Cesar,” my polite, photogenic, straight-A, bilingual 7-year-old student, became the poster child of a renewed movement to protect immigrant rights in Berkeley.
So today, as Donald Trump outdoes predecessors in figuratively defiling our Statue of Liberty, Mother of Exiles, thanks to you,“Cesar,” so many more of us are able to defend her call for our “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” ICE tried to banish the family of one 7-year-old citizen, and the union and community came together in a powerful fist of defiance, protecting hundreds and inspiring other cities that followed our example. Fear feeds tyranny, but you and our union showed us how community and courage can construct democracy. And no matter what challenges we may face now, there is no going back.
As Cesar Chavez (1927-1993) said,
Once social change begins it cannot be reversed.
One cannot make illiterate those who have learned to read.
One cannot uneducate those who have learned to think.
One cannot humiliate those who feel pride.
One cannot oppress those who are no longer are afraid.
Thank you, to our Rosa Parks’ Cesar Chavez.
Love,
Maestra Margot
My student’s name has been changed to protect his privacy. He responded with a very moving note of gratitude, giving me permission to publish this letter.
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'Sign the Bill!': United Farm Workers Press Newsom on California Union Measure
"We will let Gov. Newsom know our desire and courage to stand up for what is right for farmworkers and the labor movement," said labor and civil rights icon Dolores Huerta.
Aug 29, 2022
Up against both the imminent close of California's two-year state legislative session and opposition from Gavin Newsom, Golden State farmworkers and their supporters on Monday implored the Democratic governor to sign a bill that would make it easier for agricultural laborers to vote in union elections.
"A.B. 2183 would give farmworkers the ability to make decisions at home, on their own, and on their own time."
In a 26-10 vote on Monday, California state senators approved A.B. 2183, a United Farm Workers (UFW) bill the union says will safeguard against supervisor intimidation during union elections.
The measure now goes back to the state Assembly. If passed before the end of the current legislative session--which expires at midnight Wednesday--the bill faces stiff opposition from Newsom, who, according to a spokesperson, "cannot support an untested mail-in election process that lacks critical provisions to protect the integrity of the election and is predicated on an assumption that government cannot effectively enforce laws."
Newsom vetoed a similar bill last year. The California Chamber of Commerce, as well as dozens of agriculture industry groups, also oppose A.B. 2183.
However, UFW president Teresa Romero--who last week finished leading a 335-mile march for A.B. 2183 through California's scorching Central Valley to the state Capitol in Sacramento--said Friday that "protection for farmworkers is key."
"They are mostly undocumented, family members work at the same farm, and the moment that they start saying that they want a union or asking for their rights, they are fired," she told KXTV at the completion of the 24-day march last week. "That cannot continue to happen."
Backers of the bill rallied and staged around-the-clock vigils in cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Fresno, and Sacramento, where demonstrators chanted, "Sign the bill" during a large gathering at the end of the march.
Assemblymember Mark Stone (D-29), who co-authored the bill, explained to KXTV that "A.B. 2183 would give farmworkers the ability to make decisions at home, on their own, and on their own time."
"Farmworkers typically vote on a grower's site, under the watchful eyes and influence of that grower or the labor contractor," he added, "so there's a real question of whether that vote is their own, absent of coercion or pressure."
Labor and civil rights leader Dolores Huerta, who co-founded UFW with Cesar Chavez half a century ago, addressed the crowd at the end of the march Friday.
"Today we march in support of this important bill. We will let Gov. Newsom know our desire and courage to stand up for what is right for farmworkers and the labor movement," the 92-year-old said, according to People's World. "Let me say this: March today, but go back to your communities and march to get out the vote."
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Cesar Chavez's Legacy
Chavez became a national hero, a symbol of courage and fortitude, for leading a nonviolent revolution to organize farmworkers
Mar 31, 2019
Many people thought Cesar Chavez was crazy to think he could build a union among migrant farmworkers. Since the early 1900s, unions had been trying and failing to organize California's unskilled agricultural workers. Whether the workers were Anglos, Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, or Mexican Americans, these efforts met the same fate. The organizing drives met fierce opposition and always flopped, vulnerable to growers' violent tactics and to competition from a seemingly endless supply of other migrant workers desperate for work. So when Chavez left his job as a community organizer in San Jose in 1962 and moved to rural Delano to try, once again, to bring a union to California's lettuce and grape fields, even his closest friends figured he was delusional.
Within a decade, however, the United Farm Workers (UFW) union had collective bargaining agreements with most of California's major growers. Pay, working conditions, and housing for migrant workers improved significantly. Millions of Americans boycotted lettuce and grapes to put economic pressure on the growers to sign a contract with the union. A young governor named Jerry Brown signed a bill giving California's farmworkers the right to unionize--something they lacked (and still lack) under federal labor laws.
Chavez - whose birthday, March 31, 1927, is an official holiday in California and a federal commemorative holiday -- became a national hero, a symbol of courage and fortitude, for leading a nonviolent revolution to organize farmworkers. His work fomented enormous pride and solidarity among Hispanics in California and across the nation. To those who ever doubted that Chavez could build an effective union among America's poorest and most vulnerable workers, in the face of a large, powerful, and conservative agribusiness industry, he responded, "Si se puede," "Yes, we can."
"Chavez experienced the daily humiliations of being a brown-skinned migrant worker: physical punishment from an Anglo teacher when he unthinkingly began speaking Spanish in class, police harassment, segregated seating at the local movie theater, denial of service at restaurants."
When Chavez was growing up, his family owned a small farm in Arizona, but they lost it to foreclosure when he was eleven years old. The sight of the Anglo grower, who bought the land at auction, bulldozing the family's farmhouse, trees, and crops left an indelible impression on the young Cesar. That early memory would later fuel a determination to help Mexican American farmworkers gain power and respect. "If I had stayed there," Chavez later said about his family's farm, "possibility I would have been a grower. God writes in exceedingly crooked lines."
Instead, the Chavez family joined the roughly 300,000 migrant workers who followed the crops to California every year. The family often slept by the side of the road, moving from farm to farm, from harvest to harvest, living in overcrowded migrant camps. Cesar attended thirty-eight different schools until he finally gave up after finishing the eighth grade.
Chavez experienced the daily humiliations of being a brown-skinned migrant worker: physical punishment from an Anglo teacher when he unthinkingly began speaking Spanish in class, police harassment, segregated seating at the local movie theater, denial of service at restaurants. These compounded the abuse Chavez and other migrants faced in the fields, where growers had dictatorial control and where workers toiled in the broiling sun for meager wages, living in shacks and lacking toilet facilities.
Chavez spent two years in the navy during World War II. Returning home, he married, moved to San Jose's Mexican barrio, and took whatever jobs he could find in the nearby fields or in a lumberyard.
His life changed when he met Father Donald McDonnell, a local priest who introduced him to the writings of Francis of Assisi and Mohandas Gandhi and discussed nonviolence as a strategy for change, and Fred Ross, a community organizer and colleague of Saul Alinsky. Ross recruited Chavez to the Community Service Organization (CSO), which helped Mexican Americans in urban barrios deal with immigration and tax problems, taught them how to organize against police brutality and discrimination, and ran voter registration drives. Chavez quickly became a leader, and in 1952 Ross hired the twenty-five-year-old as an organizer. Chavez was a successful organizer and eventually became the CSO's statewide director.
In 1962 after the CSO turned down his request to organize farmworkers, he resigned and returned to Delano. For the next three years, he crisscrossed the state, talking to farmworkers under the auspices of his new organization, the National Farmworkers Association. Many of them dismissed Chavez's ideas, saying that the growers were too powerful and that anyone caught talking about a union would immediately be fired. But drawing on his CSO experience, Chavez recruited workers by helping them with their legal, housing, and other problems.
A crucial turning point occurred in 1965. A small group of Filipino farmworkers, affiliated with the American Federation of Labor's struggling Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, went on strike when the Delano grape growers cut pay rates during the harvest. Chavez persuaded his own union's members to support the strike. Soon the two groups merged into what became the United Farm Workers union.
The plight of America's migrant farmworkers had entered public consciousness right after Thanksgiving in 1960, when TV journalist Edward R. Murrow broadcast a documentary, Harvest of Shame, on CBS. For the next decade, Chavez used a two-pronged approach to build the UFW. Because food is perishable and needs to be harvested quickly, the union used strikes to disrupt the harvest and put pressure on the growers. But Chavez recognized that growers could rely on an almost limitless supply of migrant workers--including new arrivals from Mexico under the Bracero Program--who were recruited as strikebreakers. So the second strategy was to win the support of the general public, asking them to boycott grapes, wine, and lettuce until specific growers agreed to a contract.
Chavez called on allies in the labor movement, among religious congregations, and on college campuses to help with the national boycotts by picketing outside grocery stores and educating consumers. The UFW sent farmworkers - many of whom had never been outside California -- to cities across the country to help organize the boycotts. At its height, over 13 million Americans supported the grape boycott. Many Americans had their first activist experiences picketing in front of grocery stores to support the boycott of grapes and lettuce.
In the fields, on picket lines, and in meetings, UFW members faced violence from growers and their hired thugs. Another threat came from the Teamsters union, which had signed friendly "sweetheart" contracts with growers to represent the workers without the consent of the workers themselves--a maneuver that enriched Teamsters officials.
To keep their plight in the public eye and to raise the farmworkers' morale during these difficult times, Chavez used marches, civil disobedience, and prayer vigils to transform each strike into a protest movement. The grape strike became a cause celebre among liberals and gained enormous media attention.
Chavez attracted a loyal cadre of organizers, lawyers, and others, who were paid less-than-poverty wages, as was Chavez and his close colleague and UFW cofounder, Dolores Huerta. Humble and self-effacing, Chavez became the UFW's public face and the country's most famous Mexican American. In 1969 Time magazine put him on its cover.
"To keep their plight in the public eye and to raise the farmworkers' morale during these difficult times, Chavez used marches, civil disobedience, and prayer vigils to transform each strike into a protest movement."
One of Chavez's key insights was that the union had to stake out the moral high ground--as the civil rights movement had done--in order to win public support. The backing of key clergy, including Catholic bishops and priests, was critical to its image. At one point, when a court prevented the union from picketing during a strike, the union held a religious vigil instead.
Maintaining a nonviolent approach was also central to winning public support. As local police and Teamster thugs resorted to physical violence against union members, some of them understandably wanted to strike back. Chavez was deeply influenced by Gandhian thought. When it appeared that union members might respond to violence with violence, Chavez sought to restore calm and discipline by engaging in a hunger strike, risking his health in the process. Chavez's fasts drew media attention that helped strengthen public sympathy for the strike and for the boycott.
Chavez and the UFW also gained attention was by attracting the support of high-profile politicians. The UFW's most important political ally was Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York. In 1966 United Auto Workers president Walter Reuther, who had joined Chavez on picket lines and donated money to the UFW, asked Kennedy to visit Chavez. After meeting Chavez, observing the conditions in which farmworkers toiled, and recognizing the spirit of the organizing effort, Kennedy became a close ally of Chavez and the UFW. He arranged to hold a Senate hearing about farmworkers' conditions in Delano. When the local sheriff told Kennedy that his deputies arrested strikers who looked "ready to violate the law," Kennedy shot back, "May I suggest that during the luncheon, the sheriff and the district attorney read the Constitution of the United States?"
Kennedy made several other pilgrimages to visit Chavez--each time bolstering the union's image. The UFW repaid the favor. In 1968, when Kennedy announced he was running for president as an antiwar candidate against the incumbent, Lyndon B. Johnson, the union endorsed him, registered Mexican American voters, and helped secure a Kennedy victory in the California Democratic primary. UFW cofounder Dolores Huerta was at Kennedy's side when he was assassinated the night of his California victory.
Another key political ally was California's governor, Jerry Brown. As a young Catholic seminarian, Brown had supported the UFW boycott. Once in office, Brown engineered passage of the nation's first law giving farmworkers collective bargaining rights and protection from unfair labor practices. The California Agricultural Labor Relations Act (1975) led to an overwhelming series of UFW election victories and contracts with growers.
By the late 1970s the UFW had close to 50,000 members (about one-quarter of the state's farmworkers) and contracts with most of the major table grape and lettuce growers. Pay and working conditions had significantly improved. Growers were required to stop spraying the fields with toxic pesticides that endangered workers' health. The Teamsters, under pressure from public opinion and other unions, withdrew from competing with the UFW. Migrant workers became eligible for medical insurance, employer-paid pensions, unemployment insurance, and other benefits. They had a grievance procedure to challenge employer abuses. Moreover, the threat of unionization led growers to improve agricultural wages for nonunion workers.
But within a few years the UFW had spiraled into chaos. This was partly due to the election of Republican George Deukmejian, who defeated Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley to become California's governor in 1982. Deukmejian had close ties to growers and he failed to implement the new labor law. That failure made it harder for the UFW to win new elections and made it easier for growers to decertify the union.
Equally important was Chavez's own weaknesses as a leader. He was not a good administrator, failed to delegate authority, and was suspicious of people who disagreed with him. Key staffers left. The union put fewer resources into organizing workers in the fields, especially the increasing number of Central American immigrants who were joining the ranks of America's farmworkers in the 1980s. Growers did not renew contracts and wages and conditions worsened.
By the time of Chavez's death in 1993, membership in the UFW had declined to just a few thousand. Today, less than 10,000 of the nation's approximately three million farmworkers are unionized. In California, the agricultural industry's is flourishing, but its profits and prosperity are not shared with its workers, many of whom are now undocumented and fearful of organizing.
Last year, Sen. Kamala Harris of California and Representative Raul Grijalva of Arizona sponsored the Fairness for Farm Workers Act, which would amend federal labor laws to remove the discriminatory denial of overtime pay to agricultural workers as well as end most exclusions from the minimum wage still applicable to some farmworkers. The bill is unlikely to pass unless Democrats control both houses of Congress as well as the White House.
Despite this, conditions for farmworkers - in terms of pay, housing, and exposure to dangerous chemicals -- are better than they were before Chavez and Huerta became their organizing efforts.
While the UFW has fallen on hard times, other groups have had some success mobilizing farmworkers, even if they aren't union members. The most successful is the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which has organized Florida's tomato pickers. With the support of consumers - including college students and faith-based groups - it has pressured employers and corporate buyers of tomatoes (including Walmart, Taco Bell and Trader Joe's) to join its Fair Food Program that requires growers to improve farmworkers' pay and condition.
In 1994, President Bill Clinton posthumously awarded Chavez the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2008, Barack Obama adopted the UFW's chant - "yes, we can" - as his campaign slogan.
Chavez's long-term impact is not simply improved condition for farmworkers and the upsurge of pride and political action by Latinos, most of whom are not farmworkers. The UFW served as an incubator of movements, and activists on a wide variety of issues have embraced its strategies. In the 1960s and 1970s, the UFW trained thousands of organizers and activists--boycott volunteers as well as paid staff. Many became key activists in the labor, immigrant rights, antiwar, consumer, women's rights, and environmental movements. They, in turn, trained tens of thousands of young activists who are in the forefront of today's progressives movements. Their work to make America a more humane society is Chavez's most important legacy.
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The Year That Changed Everything: A Personal Memory of 1968
No other year has left such vivid memories for me, though it may be that this year, 2018, will be even more decisive for the future of America
Oct 04, 2018
Fifty years have passed since the one that changed everything for my generation, the crucial turning point when the promise of the 1960s turned to a defeat and despair that still weighs on our thoughts of what might have been. It was a roller coaster year of emotional highs and lows, when unlikely dreams suddenly seemed possible, only to be dashed time and again. It marked the end of my political innocence, born in the magic of John Kennedy's Camelot. No other year has left such vivid memories for me, though it may be that this year, 2018, will be even more decisive for the future of America.
The year began with great hopes that the seemingly endless war in Vietnam might end soon. An anti-war Democrat, the cerebral Minnesota senator Eugene McCarthy, had challenged President Johnson in the upcoming presidential primary election. Soft-spoken and anything but radical, he impressed on us the necessity of cutting long hair and beards and putting on white shirts and ties to go "Clean for Gene" when we knocked on doors to get out the vote. Given little chance at first, his popularity was suddenly enhanced by developments across the Pacific.
In early February, during the Vietnamese New Year's celebration, National Liberation Front (the Americans called them "Viet Cong") troops attacked throughout South Vietnam, capturing the famed "Citadel" in Hue and other prominent posts formerly thought impregnable. Although their casualties in the so-called "Tet Offensive" were enormous, the Vietnamese struck fear into American troops and their supporters back home. President Johnson had claimed we were winning the war and our enemies would soon be on their knees. There was a "light at the end of the tunnel," he said. Just be a bit more patient and we'd all see it.
But the light at the end of the tunnel turned out to be the headlights of an onrushing train. If the enemy was indeed mortally wounded, it could not have mounted so many attacks in so many places at once, often with the inside help of South Vietnamese Army soldiers thought loyal to the U.S. The American response was to inflict horrible casualties on combatants and non-combatants alike. Since it was often impossible to know which Vietnamese were loyal to us and which were not, it was deemed necessary to kill everyone who might be suspect, destroying whole villages to "save" them. Napalm, a terrifying jellied gasoline that cooked people alive, was dropped indiscriminately.
Shocking photographs surfaced, of young girls running naked from a wall of flames, of suspected traitors being summarily assassinated without investigation of their supposed disloyalty; in one case, in lurid, living color, crimson gushed like a fountain from the head of a man shot at point-blank range. These images, and the Tet Offensive, shocked many otherwise placid Americans and led to a shift in public opinion. Then too, the coffins continued to return home in large numbers, carrying the bodies of sons and husbands, fresh-faced children barely out of their teens, if that.
An anti-war activist, I was 21 then and about to vote in my first election. I began door-belling for McCarthy shortly after Tet, in Superior, Wisconsin, an industrial port city, while I was attending Wisconsin State University there. While most pollsters expected McCarthy to be trounced by Johnson in the first primary election in New Hampshire on March 14, he ran a close race trailing the President by only seven percentage points. Might he have a chance? Opportunistically or otherwise, another critic of the war, New York senator Robert Kennedy, then entered the race. Now, the leading living scion of one of America's most beloved political families was also hammering Johnson from the campaign trail.
With the Wisconsin primary scheduled for early April, I traveled to Madison in late March to meet with other McCarthy organizers. While things were looking up, we had no idea of what to expect on the evening of March 31, when we gathered in the student union at the University of Wisconsin to watch a "special announcement" from the president. First, Johnson declared a moratorium on bombing attacks on North Vietnam; the anti-war pressure was getting to him. Then, we sat in stunned silence while Johnson announced his withdrawal from the race. "I shall not seek, nor will I accept my party's nomination for President of the United States," he said, looking haggard and defeated.
It seemed unreal. Johnson had surrendered; the war would end. I think now of LBJ as the lead victim in a Greek tragedy. But for his hubris in persisting to escalate the Vietnam War, Johnson might have entered the history books as one of America's greatest presidents, carried there by his commitment to civil rights and the elimination of poverty. Instead, he died reviled and almost forgotten. Even then, I felt a bit sorry for him. But that night we dashed by the hundreds into the streets cheering, singing and dancing. No more would the anti-war protestors be chanting "Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" It was bitterly cold in the snowy streets of Madison that night, but none of us noticed. We celebrated with pitchers of beer and drove back to Superior with headaches the next day, happy to have them.
Memphis and its aftermath
On April 2, I voted in my first election ever. With Johnson still on the ballot, McCarthy won an overwhelming victory in the Wisconsin primary. Now, the contest would be between him and Kennedy, and I would have been happy with either of them. But my euphoria was short-lived. Only two days later, civil rights leader Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, where he'd gone to support striking sanitary workers. Some inner cities exploded in anger. In Indianapolis, Bobby Kennedy braved an angry crowd to urge the non-violence that King had espoused. The next morning a hushed pall hovered over the university student union in Superior. Several of the black students were fighting back tears; knowing the anger they must be feeling. Feared they might hold all whites responsible for the slaying. Shockingly, I also overheard several fraternity boys at one table suggesting that King had gotten what was coming to him. Their dialogue was peppered with the N word and references to "good riddance."
I found it hard to concentrate on schoolwork the rest of that semester. But despite the King tragedy, my overall mood remained hopeful. Students were beginning to exercise power in American universities, carrying out sit-down strikes at prestigious academic institutions like Columbia. Women and gays were protesting discrimination. In France, the students were joining factory workers in a general strike, and in Communist Czechoslovakia, they were deeply engaged in a reform process called "Prague Spring," which promised "Socialism with a human face." Polls began showing that a majority of voters opposed the war, and the victory of either McCarthy or Kennedy seemed almost inevitable.
In May, McCarthy soundly defeated Kennedy in the Oregon primary. But by that time, my allegiance had shifted to Bobby. I was appalled when McCarthy, after his victory in solidly white, middle-class Oregon, suggested that only the ignorant and uneducated supported his rival. It struck me as a putdown of the poor, and racist as well. I was impressed by Kennedy's compassion for the poverty-stricken miners of Appalachia, the Hispanic farm workers of California and their charismatic leader, Cesar Chavez, inner-city African-Americans and the hidden poor on Indian reservations. While McCarthy was eloquent about the fiasco in Vietnam, Kennedy offered more hope of uniting the war protestors with union members, minorities and the poor.
When school ended, I hitchhiked home to visit my family in San Francisco. I arrived in California just as its Presidential primary election was ending on June 5. The last person who gave me a ride told me Kennedy was leading in the exit polls and dropped me off at a campsite near Donner Lake, barely over the border from Nevada. The next morning, the first driver to give me a ride was surprised that I hadn't heard the news. "They killed Kennedy," he said. "Shot him in LA last night just as he was about to claim victory."
During the next week I could barely contain my grief. I watched the news footage of Kennedy on the floor of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, bleeding to death. The reports suggested a lone gunman, Sirhan Sirhan, but I suspected that someone or something must have been behind him. With his big victory in California, Kennedy would surely have sailed to the Democratic nomination and almost certainly defeated his Republican opponent.
Kennedy's funeral seemed surreal. Even Tom Hayden, the SDS radical, was a pallbearer. He had come to trust Bobby, despite the latter's wealth and establishment connections. Kennedy's brother Edward eulogized him simply as a man who "saw wrong and tried to right it, saw pain and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it."
While at home for a month, I read constantly--the literature of the New Left. A growing body of New Left analysis, including C. Wright Mills' The Power Elite and G. William Domhoff's Who Rules America? argued that our democracy was largely an illusion. A "military-industrial complex" of interlocking boards of directors containing the same elite players, dominated our politics as a "ruling class." Eisenhower had warned of its dangerous influence in his farewell presidential address. Other books documented the power of this elite over foreign policy, describing how the CIA had overthrown Arbenz in Guatemala, Mossadegh in Iran, and other elected leaders, to protect the profits of American corporations.
At the same time, most of these writers acknowledged that Soviet "socialism" was certainly no better, and probably even worse, than the corporate capitalism they challenged at home. Their hopes were buoyed by the July publication of Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov's samizdat, On Progress, Peaceful Co-existence and Intellectual Freedom. A powerful critic of Stalinism in Russia, Sakharov suggested a middle way between Communist dictatorships and capitalist inequality. It seemed to be emerging in places like Sweden and Czechoslovakia.
Beginning of the end
Back in Superior, my friends and I watched troubling news on television, when on August 21, Soviet tanks crushed the democratic uprising in Prague. A few days later, the Democratic Convention began in Chicago. While Hubert Humphrey's nomination was a foregone conclusion with Kennedy gone from the race, Eugene McCarthy still had considerable support for a floor fight. I watched with pride as Don Peterson, a Wisconsin businessman I'd worked with on the McCarthy campaign, nominated the brilliant African-American leader Julian Bond as a Vice Presidential candidate. But Humphrey and his chosen running mate, Ed Muskie, were anointed as the nominees by the Party's conservative establishment, who controlled most of the delegates.
Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, an old-liner, ran the convention with an iron fist. Protestors gathered outside, some of them "Yippies" (for "Youth International Party") who had nominated a pig for President. But there were many others who still believed in the system and had worked hard for McCarthy or Kennedy. They shouted their opposition to the undemocratic nature of the convention. Like Bull Connor in the streets of Birmingham, Alabama, Daley sent his police to gas and club them--an investigative committee later called the action "a police riot."
On the convention floor, Peterson and Connecticut Senator Abraham Ribicoff rose to report that the police were beating people up outside. Mayor Daley audibly shouted a Jewish slur at Ribicoff. Reporters covering the convention were roughed up by Daley's police. The battle inside and out stretched into the night. When it was over, I felt a slow realization that the times we thought were changing would change glacially if at all.
The Fall of our discontent
That fall, my friends and I continued to organize vigils and protests. Richard Nixon, the Republican nominee for President, promised a "secret plan" to end the war while condemning antiwar protestors in the name of what he termed "the silent majority." Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic candidate, was a mixed bag at best, in the thinking of my friends and myself. We admired his earlier stand for civil rights, dating back to 1948. He was also a strong advocate of anti-poverty measures. But he'd stuck with Johnson on the war. I made up my mind to vote for a third-party candidate, the comedian Dick Gregory. But considering the alternative of a Nixon presidency, I still hoped Humphrey would prevail. He didn't; in November, Hubert Humphrey lost by a whisker to Nixon.
Salvador and Luz
At the end of the month, I was invited to attend an event called the Hemispheric Conference Against the War in Vietnam being held in the Canadian city of Montreal. A group of us from Superior joined another from our twin city of Duluth, Minnesota, for a long bus ride to the conference. It was held in a cavernous auditorium with perhaps a thousand people in attendance. Speakers included well-known American radicals such as the Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver. Their rhetoric was loudly anti-American and pro-socialist. The war in Vietnam was described as an imperial venture fought for oil and other resources. The most revered of the speakers was a man I'd never heard of until then. An elderly and elegant gentleman wearing a fine wool sweater and dark-rimmed glasses, he spoke in Spanish, with translation. His speech was strongly-worded, but thoughtful and not merely rhetorical. I was able to shake his hand later and tell him I appreciated it.
His name was Salvador Allende, and he was, at that time, a senator in the Chilean government and the leader of its Socialist Party. Two years later, he would be elected president of Chile, thus setting off a three-year American effort to destabilize his government. He died in the bloody military coup that overthrew him on September 11, 1973. I will always consider it an honor to have met him.
But what I remember most from the conference was the small, sad-eyed young woman from Mexico that I also met there. She had short dark hair and big eyes that seemed to be searching for something far away. In broken and halting English, she told me a story. Her name was Luz, which means "light" in Spanish, but her story was decidedly dark.
Two months earlier, on the night of October 2, she and other Mexican university students had gathered in a great open space called the Plaza of the Three Cultures near the center of Mexico City. They had marched there from several universities to protest the upcoming Olympic Games, which had displaced hundreds of poor Mexico City residents from their homes. Their protest was completely peaceful, but the response of the police and guardsmen sent by the government to control them was not. Snipers fired randomly into the crowd, killing hundreds of students and bystanders. With the size of the crowd, it was difficult to flee. Some of her friends were killed; she watched their blood darken the stones in the plaza before finally escaping the violence.
She was fighting hard to hold back tears as she told me her horrifying tale. I found her inexpressibly lovely and wanted only to tell her things would be all right. She had come to the conference with several other student leaders from the Olympic protest. I told her I had watched the games on television and she brightened when I mentioned the black-gloved protest by two of the United States' finest sprinters, Tommie Smith and Jon Carlos, as they received their medals on the podium while the Star-Spangled Banner blared behind them, a protest similar to Colin Kaepernick's half a century later. Luz, too, had watched it. It was her only positive memory of the games.
I never saw Luz again after that night. On the long bus trip back to Wisconsin, I couldn't get her out of my mind and a song came to me. I wrote it down as soon as I got back home, and later sang it for my friends in the little coffeehouse on campus.
SONG FOR LUZ, 1968
From the bridges of Prague
To the boulevards of Paris
To the dusty streets of Mexico,
And all across my country from Boston to Berkeley
There's a feeling of change in the winds that blow.
There's a generation looking for a new beginning
And a glimmer of hope in the rising sun
And our sparkling eyes and songs prophesize
That a whole new way of life has begun.
And you in your city and I in mine
Are adding our bodies to the protest line
And dreaming of a time when all humankind will be free.
Oh, but in between, so many troubles you've seen.
So many bombs...so many bullets...so many shattered dreams...
In the Three Cultures Plaza you gathered to meet.
They met you, but with snipers, and left your friends all dead in the street.
"Now don't disturb the Olympics," the imperial orders came,
"Anybody who protests will receive still more of the same,
We'll stop your life's flicker and we'll even erase your name."
They released the doves to fly. You watched them in the sky
And you wanted to try to catch what they symbolize.
But your dove couldn't sing. She had blood on her broken wing
And you started to cry, but now dry out your eyes.
For maybe tomorrow you'll wake up and find
The long years of sorrow were worth all the pain
For all of your struggles have been left behind
Though memories remain, it wasn't in vain.
And because of you, and what you've been through,
The ones who are born then will sing in the rain.
I wanted to believe the words of the song were true, but I really didn't feel that way. A month later, a year that began with great hope, ended with little. The New Left would splinter and descend into violence as Nixon escalated the war. Forty years would pass before I would experience again the hope I had before August of 1968, before we would dance in the streets again, as so many did when Obama was elected. Suddenly it was possible to believe again, but the forces of hate and greed did not go quietly into that magic night. They have come back with a vengeance and a cruelty that makes Nixon seem benign by comparison.
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The Year of Living Nonviolently
We must take to the streets in public, nonviolent, transformative action.
Feb 24, 2018
Once, late at night, shortly before he died, Cesar Chavez tired to explain nonviolence to me.
"Active nonviolence requires taking to the streets," he said adamantly. "That's where it happens. That's how it's practiced."
"Tell everyone from now on, if they want to practice nonviolence, they have to take public action, public action, public action!"
Each time he said the words, "public action," he slapped the back of his right hand on the palm of his left hand, to emphasize his message.
I got the point.
Active nonviolence is not passivity. It's not sitting around at conferences or listening to the bad news or spending our time on Facebook. It's organized public action in the streets for justice, disarmament, and creation.
This year, as the madness of violence deepens, and the culture of violence threatens creation itself, the only antidote is active, nonviolent public action for social and global transformation.
In my experience, Cesar was right, it's the number one task before us, but it's devilishly hard to organize and animate.
In the wake of the horrific Parkland, Florida school shootings, some students and parents are showing us how to do it. They've taken to the streets, spoken out for gun control and given us hope by taking nonviolent public action. They model for us the need to take to the streets if we want positive social change. We don't know how such organized nonviolent action can catch fire, grow organically, and become contagious, but that's the goal and it will only occur when we organize people to stand up publicly, actively for justice, disarmament and creation.
Nonviolent public action has to become the new normal for us all so that it becomes an ordinary part of our regular lives, until our vision of a new culture of nonviolence becomes contagious, a transformation of power occurs, and justice and disarmament start to occur.
Jim Lawson, the Civil Rights leader, teaches that active nonviolence is a methodology for protest and social transformation. We claim our power, wield it in the streets, and force the issue into the news so that the leaders, in the end, follow us ordinary people to meet our demands for justice and disarmament and a shift in power occurs. That's the hope of the New Poor People's Campaign and its culminating events in Washington, D.C. this June.
In September, from the 15th to the 23rd, Campaign Nonviolence will organize our fifth national week of nonviolence, with over 2000 marches and demonstrations across the USA in every step connecting the dots against war, racism, nuclear weapons, poverty and environmental destruction, and for a new culture of nonviolence and justice.
We're also calling for a national march on Saturday morning, September 22nd, from the Dr. King statue in Washington, D.C., in a spirit of silent prayer and Kingian nonviolence to the White House for a rally, demonstration and nonviolent direct action. See: www.campaignnonviolence.org
Gandhi said that every nonviolence movement also needs a "constructive program" for a new culture of nonviolence, so we've organized our "Nonviolent Cities" project where activists and church people begin to envision their local city in the future as a community of nonviolence, and ask what we can do now to help make that vision of our community as a more nonviolent city come true. Some fifty cities, from St. Paul to Cincinnati, are pursuing this strategy, and I hope this idea will spread and catch fire, too.
This week, I leave on a three-month, fifty city national speaking tour talking about Dr. King's vision of active nonviolence, and my new book, They Will Inherit the Earth: Peace and Nonviolence in a Time of Climate Change, and how our practice of nonviolence, and our organic and organized movements of nonviolence will lead us toward a new solidarity with suffering humanity and Mother Earth, and if we want it, a new culture of nonviolence.
We never know what will be the spark, the tipping point, the key moment in our grassroots movements of nonviolence that will become contagious, but every one of us can be Rosa Parks, or like the Black Lives Matter activists or the Florida students who have taken to the streets, the ones who make the difference.
Everyone can make a difference, and we need not wait until the next catastrophe to get involved or up the level of our organizing for justice, disarmament and creation.
As we mark the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. King's killing and the Poor People's Campaign, I hope we can deepen our active nonviolence, make this our "year of living nonviolently," and organize and take new public action for justice and peace.
We may discover how much power we already have, and what kind of dramatic transformation is possible, but we'll never know unless we take to the streets in public, nonviolent, transformative action.
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What Lifetime Experiences of Sexual Abuse and Violence Have Taught Me
Support ourselves and others, speak up and organize for change
Jan 24, 2018
West Germany, 1958 -- I am three years old. My mother tells me never to take candy from a stranger. But strangers with candy have not been a problem.
1959 -- I sit under our table and play between the feet of women - friends and relatives. They talk about war and rape; name women who were raped during the war and in the chaos afterwards. I always knew the meaning of rape.
My mild-mannered mother hates her father, who I never met, and she never reconciles with him after being sent to live with her uncle's family at the age of 12, or was it 14? He abused her mother and I suspect Mutti was not untouched.
As a child I read stories, I watch movies about war and Holocaust. So much killing, so much rape. I am terrified. When will they come for me? When will I be called to help a neighbor? Will I survive? And if I do, what will be left of me?
I rehearse scenarios. What to do when I am in a concentration camp ... when the Vikings and Mongols come back? I learn to fight. I fight with boys. I take Judo classes. I train to be perfect at running, hiding, climbing, being still, swimming, diving, conniving. Hiding under water is such an important skill. A reed can be used as a straw. I am angry. (Even now, I am still angry.)
1960s -- I am scared of our neighbor whose two daughters are my friends. I avoid being near him. One time I throw up in his car. I am sorry, but I'm also gleeful because I'm getting back at him for driving too fast. Later I learn that he embezzled from the Red Cross and from "two old ladies," whoever they are. I also hear later from village gossip that his youngest daughter, a heroin addict, "ran off to the city." The eldest daughter tells me that her sister was sexually abused by their father. I am not surprised.
1968 -- I am 13 and the cat calls are coming in my direction now. My heart beats fast. I feel threatened and embarrassed. The accepted norm. No one helps. I avoid construction sites, find long alternative routes. I wish I was a boy.
1969 -- I have a doctor's appointment and am late for class. As I enter, I apologize. My male teacher asks loudly: "And what did the doctor do?" My school mates giggle. My knees wobble. We all know he's referring to sex. I want to leave my body.
1968 to 1978 -- Many of us hitchhike. How else would we get around? I try to be safe. I never accept a ride with 2 men in a car. I always know how to open the door. I do not accept rides from guys who set off flutters in my gut. "Thank you, but I am not going there," I say instead of getting in.
1970 -- Coming from school, two miles from home, the truck driver veers off onto a dirt road. With a forceful voice I tell him to stop the truck and let me out. He keeps going until the highway is far behind. I imagine what he's planning. He stops in a place near the forest and grabs for me. Fury rises. I twist and my right fist smashes into his pudgy face. My left opens the door. I jump, run into a field. Run, run, run. I never tell.
1971 -- I work at a large department store to earn money for a student trip to Ireland. The store manager frequently stops at my station in the men's sweater department. We chat and I feel special; he's a mature man in his 40s. One day he asks me to step outside. I do. I am curious. He tells me he adores me and wants to have sex. The child within me wants to giggle at the idea, but my emerging adult self is angry. Imagining him touching me makes me feel yucky. I say "no." I see fury in his face and he yells: "Those stupid Irish! How can you go to a fucking country like that?" I yell back: "You know nothing about Ireland! How can you put them down?" I go back inside. It never enters my mind that I could be fired.
1971 -- My father is dying. The pastor grabs and kisses me in his office. He smiles lovingly as he offers his hand. Let's do more, he means. A door separates us from his wife and eight children eating lunch. I am flabbergasted and shaken, beet red and angry. I open the door and another door and leave with what I hope is some dignity. I never teach Sunday school again. I never go to church again. I tell my mother and ask her to talk to the pastor. She does not. She does not speak against powerful men. He comes to our house to be with my dad, who never needed or wanted a pastor. I know he is looking for me. My mother offers him cake, as is the convention. I climb a tree and only come down after he leaves. I feel so betrayed.
1972 -- Now my dad has died. I am stoic, show few emotions. Waiting for French class to start I sit on a high window sill. My legs hang down and I dream. I hear commotion. The teacher has arrived. I am ready to jump down, but the teacher grabs my right leg, circles my ankle with his fingers and laughs: "just wanted to see if my fingers fit." I am speechless and furious at myself for not finding words and turning red. I don't bother to tell my mother.
1972 -- My mother and I move to Hamburg where we have many relatives. I go to an ice cream parlor. The sole male attendant reaches over the counter and squeezes my breast. "Don't!" I manage to gasp, swatting his hand away. "I will never come back." I leave shaken and humiliated. I tell Tante Anneliese and Mutti about the encounter. Ask them to confront the man. They do not. I ask them never to go to the parlor. They continue to go when in need of a treat. I feel betrayed and furious. Time to consolidate my armor, to be always on alert.
1972 -- My girlfriend Ulla and I are attacked by a motorcycle gang. Huge guys put us in a "squeeze" -- surround us tightly so they can feel us up and... There are many people in the area, but they don't notice or are too scared to help. I appeal to the gang leader, his power and pride. "Can you help? Are you able to get your men to back off?" I lock into his eyes while I feel hands all over my body. He orders them to let us go. Ulla and I are rattled and relieved. We escaped! I don't tell anyone.
1972 -- My half-sister and I are best friends. She's a generation older than me. She helps me to explore Hamburg, my new home. She tells me about her new relationship with a man who was in a Soviet WWII POW camp. "He was tortured, sexually tortured by the female warden. He has scars - physical and emotional." I listen whenever she talks about him, but I am too terrified to ask questions. What is sexual torture?
Philadelphia 1974 -- I work for a German volunteer organization and my assignment is with the United Farm Workers Union. I'm helping with the grape boycott organized by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. My coworker at Philly's United Farm Workers office comes back from an organizing assignment. She is disheveled and cries. She was raped. I sit with her. I hold her. What to do? Our director calls the police.
1974 -- One of my regular UFW picket line participants, a white woman with an interracial child, tells me that a white police officer and she have a deal. She has sex with him in his car whenever he wants in exchange for him not beating up her black boyfriend, the father of her child. She tries to avoid the guy, but carries the burden to keep her family safe. I am appalled, furious. The picture of her being regularly raped in the back of a police car never leaves my mind. It is still there.
1975 -- On my way back from a picket line I pass a block where all houses were torn down. I see a man hit a woman. She falls. He kicks her and punches. She gets up, stumbles to get away. I stop my car, get out, wave my arms and yell. "Stop hitting her!" He punches. "STOP" I scream. Both look up. "STOP hitting her!" The man walks away. What else to do? After a while I drive on.
1975 -- I meet an 80-year-old man at a demonstration I organized for the union. I am told he is a veteran Communist and organizer. He tells me about McCarthyism and the Wobblies. I like him. I want to honor and learn from movement elders. He invites me to have dinner in his apartment. We eat. His place looks barren and poor. We sit on his one and only sofa. He tells me his parents died in a fire when he was young. Then he lunges at me, plants a kiss and tries to roll on top. I push him off, my legs and arms creating distance. I am flabbergasted. He is 80! He worked for good causes! I could hurt him but do not. I rush out the door, shaken and deeply disappointed.
1975 -- I move into a collective house in West Philly and join the Movement for a New Society. We have an arrangement that our neighbor can stay with us whenever her husband gets violent. We look out for her. At times she can barely get into the house before he catches up, yells obscenities and kicks at the door. She always goes back.
1976 -- On one of the main streets of my new neighborhood a black man stops me with a friendly "Hi." I say "hi" back. Then: "Hey girl I want to fuck you." "Not interested." I say more kindly than he deserves, but I don't want a fight. "Fuck you, its' because I am black, right? Hey you fucking racist!" I walk on, shaking. What a scam!
1976 -- A Movement for a New Society friend Amy and I hitchhike to Kansas for the national MNS gathering. Our last ride is with a long-haul trucker. Amy sleeps in the booth behind the seats. I spend the night warding him off - his hand and words - while Amy has a peaceful night. "You owe me," he says. "You owe me sex for getting a ride." We make it to Wichita OK. Bleary-eyed, I stumble into the meeting and tell a friend about the harassment. "Don't worry about it," he says. I am furious at his nonchalance.
1977 -- I take a nonviolent self-defense course, we tell stories of survival and victories. I join Women Organized Against Rape, Women Against Abuse, help organize Take Back the Night marches. I cry and rage in peer counseling sessions.
1977 -- I volunteer as a rape crisis counselor. We sit in tiny rooms in one of the only two hospitals equipped to deal with rape, often at night. We wait for survivors to arrive. I don't know what to do with the children. I have no skills or words. For them life will never be really OK again. Some nights the hotline is transferred to our house. The phone wakes me up. "Women Organized Against Rape. Can I help you?"
London, 1978 -- Scott and I run nonviolent direct action training for the Operation Namibia boat crew, in solidarity with the African struggle against imperialism. We sleep at crew members' apartments. My place comes with a drunken, crazy father who camps out in front of my bedroom. The hall is tight and he grabs for my crutch every time I go to the toilet. I push him away. He is not very strong and I know how to deal with drunks. But I can't sleep. I am afraid he might break the locked door and catch me unaware. My co-facilitator Scott is sunny and rested. The son shrugs his shoulders when I tell. "Yes, that's my old man."
Philadelphia, 1979 -- I am waiting for my trolley at the 30th Street train station. On the other side of the track stands a tall man. Something is off. He catches my eyes, opens his coat. He is nude, penis erect. Got cha! I feel invaded, furious. I gasp. When I tell a friend, he says. "I am glad nothing bad happened to you." What?
Street comments in the U.S. echo Germany's: "Hey honey, want some nookie?" "Nice breasts!" "Like a fuck?" "Slut." "Kissy, kiss." "Ooooh! Look at that ass!" "You don't know what you are missing." I am old enough, by now a mother and experienced activist, to talk back. But I keep my distance. Many guys are uncomfortable with eye contact when I say: "Stop." I don't want to be beaten up. It will take many more years for my heart to beat normally when I pass construction sites.
I have not even touched the 1980s. I have 40 more years of stories. In 2018 sexual misconduct is in the news along with the question: why did you not say something? Often, we did, and sometimes it led to change.
I tell my daughters that no matter what, I will always be there for them. When they complain about a slight or insult, I always say: "Want me to come, organize a picket line?"
Anger and disappointment do not rule my life. Just the opposite, I am an optimistic activist. The stories here are real, but only a part of my life. I have a wonderful family, loving friends and joyous communities. Being exposed to sexual abuse and violence are a window into the suffering experienced because of war, race, class, gender or sexual identity. The main lesson is support ourselves and others, speak up and organize for change. The only lingering challenge is that I have a hard time sleeping at hotels, on trains, in cars or in friends' houses. Sometimes I wake at home when the wind blows, trees moan and shutters rattle. My unconscious tells me: be alert.
Author's note: In the above, I only mention a person's race when it is pertinent to the story. The dialogue is often summarized and recalled to the best of my recollection.
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What I'm Thankful For: Food Workers and Anti-Hunger Activists
Happy Thanksgiving to all (except the Walmart board of directors)
Nov 23, 2017
I recently heard someone say that Thanksgiving is our least commercialized national holiday. That seems true.
Thanksgiving isn't about buying and giving gifts. It is about getting together with friends and family (even the ones you don't like), being grateful, and being forgiving.
It is a secular holiday, available to all, regardless of beliefs. You can say a prayer around the Thanksgiving meal if you want, but it isn't obligatory.
If we overlook the Pilgrims/Indians mythology (a prelude to genocide), Thanksgiving is really about the harvest, which could be translated today into recognizing the people who bring us our food -- the farmers, farm workers (thank you United Farm Workers, Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez, and today's Coalition of Immokele Workers), food processing workers (today's counterparts to the meatpacking workers described in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and the cannery workers in John Steinbeck's Cannery Row), grocery workers (thank you United Food and Commercial Workers), and the restaurant workers (thank you UNITE HERE).
Thank you to Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation and Frances Moore Lappe's Food First for reminding us about the conditions under which food gets from farm to table.
Thanksgiving also reminds us (like the Elijah Cup at Passover seders) to think about the millions of Americans, and billions of people around the world, who are hungry. Thank you to all the soup kitchens that feed the hungry and the anti-hunger groups that challenge the root causes of hunger -- inequality, poverty, corporate agribusiness, and the concentration of landownership around the world.
This isn't to ignore the worker exploitation within the turkey and cranberry industries (or the self-promotional Macy's parade in New York), but Thanksgiving just seems more benign than the crass commercialism of profit-seekers around Christmas, Mothers Day, and Valentines Day.
Of course, the day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday, is a commercial nightmare, which is why, for the past decade or so, I've usually spent it at one of the many protest rallies at Walmarts around the country organized by the workers rights group OUR Walmart. They've put that day-of-protest on hold this year, but I hope they renew it soon. I miss the solidarity of standing with labor and community allies protesting the country's largest private employer of miserably-paid workers.
So, Happy Thanksgiving to all (except the Walmart board of directors).
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