Viva La Causa, Viva Cesar Chavez

by Zarah Patriana

Published March 30, 2009 @ 01:40PM PT

[portrait by Robert Shetterly]

Growing up in California, you really get to learn, see and feel the importance of the work of farm worker, civil rights activist and labor leader Cesar Chavez. In school, we were told about the story of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers and the work and fighting done for California farm workers and farm workers across the United States.

During his life, Cesar Chavez organized campaigns and boycotts that were felt throughout the country. From his calls to boycott grapes to lettuce, Chavez was able to mobilize people -- activists, ordinary people to celebrities -- to join the cause to fight for economic and social justice. By the 1980s, Chavez and the United Farm Workers were able to achieve major victories for thousands of farm workers who were finally able to organize into unions, negotiate for higher wages, get family health coverage and pension benefits. Issues of child labor were also fought, women's complaints of sexual harassment were heard and campaigns against pesticide were brought to victory.

Cesar Chavez's fight to bring the struggle of the small farmer and the underrepresented worker in general is one that lies closely to the heart of the Fair Trade, labor and food justice movements. The G20 protests in London over the weekend are in the same spirit of what Chavez fought for throughout his life. Putting people first and giving power to the underrepresented are as important today as it was in the days of Chavez -- but now it is desperately needed on a local and global level. People continue to struggle in the face of poverty, people continue to be exploited and people continue to profit off the hard work of others. But now, in the face of crisis and on Cesar Chavez Day, we should look back at his words and continue to fight for justice and see that our needs are heard and met. The exploitative system has brought about this crisis and its time for the people to take back the power.

We have suffered unnumbered ills and crimes in the name of the Law of the Land. Our men, women and children have suffered not only the basic brutality of stoop labor, and the most obvious injustices of the system; they have also suffered the desperation of knowing that the system caters to the greed of callous men and not to our needs. Now we will suffer for the purpose of ending the poverty, the misery, and the injustice, with the hope that our children will not be exploited as we have been. They have imposed hungers on us, and now we hunger for justice.

There's no turning back...We will win. We are winning because ours is a revolution of mind and heart. [Cesar Chavez]

World leaders? Are you listening?

[photo: Cathy Murphy, former staff worker for United Farm Workers]