Cesar Chavez

"Our separate struggles are really one. A struggle for freedom, for dignity, and for humanity. ... You and your valiant fellow workers have demonstrated your commitment to righting grievous wrongs forced upon exploited people. We are together with you in spirit and determination that our dreams for a better tomorrow will be realized."

"Forty years ago, here in the United States, there were true activist visionaries and mass movements to enact those visions...There was a César Chávez and a viable farm workers' movement, propped up by the agit-prop of a teatro para un movimiento campesino."

"Many years ago, when I was merely a vegetarian, I met the great Cesar Chavez, and he said to me: "If you are interested in preventing animal suffering, the first thing you should give up is eggs and milk, because the animals who produce those foods lead the most unhappy lives. You would do better to eat meat and stop eating eggs and dairy products." I was shocked, since I had no intention of eating meat but had never thought of giving up eggs or dairy products. But when I looked into it I realized he was right, and now, years later, after I have studied the matter up close, I know for certain that he was completely correct about the cruel treatment of the animals raised for such products. The advantages of a vegan diet are enormous for our health, for the environment, for the animals themselves."

"The reality is that many businesses, large and small, have long used undocumented workers to pad their bottom lines. Just consider the agricultural workforce. In California alone-where the $45 billion-a-year agricultural sector supplies more than half the produce consumed in the United States-between 40 and 50 percent of the workforce is made up of undocumented workers. No wonder California has been the site of some of the most important immigrant labor struggles, brought to the consciousness of many Americans in the 1960s and 1970s by the great United Farm Workers leader, Cesar Chavez. That struggle continues today."

"Whether one views the Chicano Student Movement as a political quest or as a nationalist struggle, one cannot subsume its identity under the rubric of "Me, too." Although there were a few connections to African-American civil rights groups, with SNCC veterans Betita Martínez and María Varela bringing their organizing skills and experiences to the Southwest, the Chicano Movement was very much its own entity with its own genesis. However, in U.S. history textbooks, Mexicans are typically relegated to the end of the book and pictured as either followers of Cesar Chávez or student activists emulating African Americans. It was not that they wanted a piece of the "American pie," they wanted the freedom to bake their own pan dulce."

"Activists like Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta were also fighting in the 1960s and '70s for Latinx families to have safer environments. Their activism shouldn't have been considered separate from the Earth Day movement, but it was. Not only did their work contribute to the overall movement, but their efforts helped lead to the ban on the use of harmful pesticides that impacted farmworker safety and increased awareness of environmental justice within the Latinx community. However, because of racism, xenophobia (fear of immigrants), and classism, these activists were excluded."

"And what about César Chávez in California? What's the history of the campesino and what is he fighting for? These are our people too. And in Texas our brothers and sisters have a struggle. Just what is this all about? What is happening to our people? We feel what is happening, let's learn about it and let's start speaking up. Let's talk to each other and let's not be afraid to be heard."

"Abnormal rates of cancer for farmworkers in California aroused the Chicano community. Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers fasted for thirty-five days in 1988 to call attention to these conditions."

"The name of Cesar Chavez is an important name in the history of American social movements. He was one of the leaders of a new movement among Latino farmworkers in the West-a particularly charismatic and effective leader."

"It is true that nationwide Black protest really did overshadow Latino protest in the 1960s, so that giving less attention to the latter is appropriate. But the absence of information about protest by other peoples of color is too extreme to be explained away on this basis...A more helpful explanation related to the media-might be that no leaders with the vast, multifaceted, international stature of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X emerged among Latinos (or Asians and Indians). César Chávez came closest."

"When César died in his sleep at the age of 66 on April 22, 1993, most people in the United States were unaware that his life had set an unsurpassed example of persistent struggle for human rights, day after day, week after week, year after year. Most people would not understand, for example, why César Chávez was compared to Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. by more than one speaker at the April 29 funeral, including Rep. Ron Dellums, who said: "César stands with the giants of this planet as an advocate of nonviolence as a way to challenge the powerful." Most people shamefully underestimated a heroic figure in the twentieth-century struggle for social justice, and an extraordinary labor leader."

"As we marched on April 29 through flat, dusty farmland and past almond orchards, we were walking with Chávez' strengths. We walked with someone who fought for 40 years to gain labor rights and human rights for the most disenfranchised and impoverished workers in the United States. Under his leadership, they ceased to be faceless immigrants whom the dominant society dismissed as subhuman, disposable. Never again would the public be so unaware of farmworker poverty and exploitation."

"César Chávez (pronounced "CHA-vez") died long after the height of the farmworker cause, like the entire Chicano movement, had been forced to spend much energy defending its small gains of the 1960s."