Cesar Chavez
Cesar Chavez
Cesar Chavezwas an American labor leader and civil rights activist who, with Dolores Huerta, co-founded the National Farm Workers Associationin 1962. Originally a Mexican American farm worker, Chavez became the best known Latino American civil rights activist, and was strongly promoted by the American labor movement, which was eager to enroll Hispanic members. His public-relations approach to unionism and aggressive but nonviolent tactics made the farm workers' struggle a moral cause with nationwide support. By the late 1970s, his tactics...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCivil Rights Leader
Date of Birth31 March 1927
CityYuma, AZ
CountryUnited States of America
Non-violence exacts a very high price from one who practices it. But once you are able to meet that demand then you can do most things.
Being of service is not enough. You must become a servant of the people. When you do, you can demand their commitment in return.
...the workers aren't going to stop struggling. They're going to struggle to have a union and they have the right to have it. The police repression and the grower indifference to the workers' demands for recognition cannot go unheard so we're going to keep on struggling until we get that recognition.
What is at stake is human dignity. If a man is not accorded respect he cannot respect himself and if he does not respect himself, he cannot demand it.
There's no turning back...We will win. We are winning because ours is a revolution of mind and heart...
. . . when the farm workers strike and their strike is successful, the employers go to Mexico and have unlimited, unrestricted use of illegal alien strikebreakers to break the strike. And, for over 30 years, the Immigration and Naturalization Service has looked the other way and assisted in the strikebreaking. I do not remember one single instance in 30 years where the Immigration Service has removed strikebreakers. . . .The employers use professional smugglers to recruit and transport human contraband across the Mexican border for the specific act of strikebreaking . . .
I am an organizer, not a union leader. A good organizer has to work hard and long. There are no shortcuts. You just keep talking to people, working with them, sharing, exchanging and they come along.
We are organizers at heart. Most of us in the movement take great pride in being able to put things together.
We're going to pray a lot and picket a lot.
I've always maintained that it isn't the form that's going to make the difference. It isn't the rule or the procedure or the ideology, but it's human beings that will make it.
Talk is cheap...It is the way we organize and use our lives everyday that tells what we believe in.
Until the chance for political participation is there, we who are poor will continue to attack the soft part of the American system - its economic structure. We will build power through boycotts, strikes, new union - whatever techniques we can develop. These attacks on the status quo will come, not because we hate, but because we know America can construct a humane society for all its citizens - and that if it does not, there will chaos.
Imagine the National Guard being called against a group of peaceful people. How far can we get; how disgraceful can it become? It's the most disgraceful, the most wicked thing I've seen in all my years of organizing farm labor.
We must understand that the highest form of freedom carries with it the greatest measure of discipline.