Word: chavez
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...radical lawyers interviewed by James received their original inspiration from the Southern civil rights crusades, the Cesar Chavez-type labor movement, or community work. Many are graduates of top law schools, like Harvard, Yale and Columbia...
...them carried the blackeagle flags of the United Farm Workers Union, others a banner portraying the Virgin Mary. They sang hymns in honor of the man whose body lay in the coffin. He was Juan de la Cruz, 60, who had been among the first to join Cesar Chavez's campaign to organize the farm workers of California. While picketing at a vineyard south of Delano, De la Cruz had been shot down by rifle fire from a passing car. Now, at the grave-site in the small farming town of Arvin, Chavez told the strikers...
With the death of De la Cruz, and another striker killed only two days earlier in an altercation with police outside a barroom, violence returned to the vineyards of the San Joaquin Valley as Chavez struggled to save the union that he had welded together in the late 1960s. Three years ago, Chavez seemed victorious. He had signed contracts with 150 vineyards-most of the major ones in the U.S.-and had begun to organize workers in other fields, such as lettuce and strawberries. The grape producers were still bitter, and eager to rid themselves of Chavez...
...U.F.W. called a strike last April, but the Teamsters only intensified their own recruitment efforts. Today, Chavez's union has only twelve contracts; its membership has shrunk from 40,000 to 6,500. By court order, police kept pickets 100 ft. apart, and when the pickets disobeyed, 3,000 of them, including 76 Roman Catholic priests and nuns, were swept off to jail. Now the union has run out of money, including a $1.6 million strike fund provided...
Another Boycott. At the heart of Chavez's weakness is a changed public attitude toward him and his crusade for the Chicano farm workers. In the late 1960s, la causa not only won the sup port of most Mexican Americans, but it also became a favorite issue among believers in good works. Urged on by national figures like Senator Robert F. Kennedy, conscience-troubled housewives across the country boycotted grapes - and pressured growers into negotiating contracts with the U.F.W. But now, the public seems to have grown tired of causes. Today, few housewives even know that Chavez has called...