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    cesar chavez

    Students stage a walkout to protest ICE.

    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.

    Margot Pepper
    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.

    Keep ReadingShow Less
    Opinion
    immigrant rights
    United Farm Workers

    '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.

    Brett Wilkins
    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."

    Keep ReadingShow Less
    News
    rights & justice
    Cesar Chavez's Legacy

    Cesar Chavez's Legacy

    Chavez became a national hero, a symbol of courage and fortitude, for leading a nonviolent revolution to organize farmworkers

    Peter Dreier
    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.

    Keep ReadingShow Less
    Opinion

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