San Antonio OXIMS

The Texas Observer SEPT. 2, 1966 A Journal of Free Voices A Window to The South 25c On Being a Labor Organizer Eugene Nelson Austin views with former braceros and wetbacks, leaflet attacking a scab labor contractor First I'd like to say that I believe every- and someone told me that Cesar Chavez, bringing strikebreakers to a small vineyard one is basically selfish, so this piece won't director of the National Farm Workers As- we were striking. We distributed the leaf- deal with the moral aspects of the decision sociation, knew some people who could give let all over the neighborhood where the to become a labor organizer. me good stories. I went to him and im- scabs were recruited, and it worked. A When I was in my teens and first heard mediately he impressed me as the most month later the big Delano grape strike about unions and labor organizers it all humane man I had ever met. He offered me began and I became one of four picket seemed to me a drab and unromantic and a job as editor of a union newspaper he captains, in charge of a group of roving unexciting business. Later, after I had hoped to start publishing. I told him that pickets that swept through the vineyards worked at various low-paying jobs and when I finished my book I might take him looking for scabs, trying to persuade them learned some of the facts of life, I dis- up on it. By the time I finished my book to leave the fields and join us. Often we covered that there were other things much he had hired someone else, a brilliant fel- were successful. It was a great thrill when less exciting: working all day for such low low named Bill Esher who has made the the strikebreakers decided to come over to wages that you couldn't even afford to take N.F.W.A. paper, El Malcriado, a resounding our side and came streaming out of the a girl to a dance or a movie, eat adequate- success. Because of my poor employment fields to join us. It was the most exciting ly, or buy new clothes when you were record — working a year to save money, period of my life, working from dawn to beginning to look ragged. On the other then going to Mexico for a year to write, dusk on the picket line, writing and dis- hand, there is the negative and often fatal etc.—I couldn't get a "respectable" job. I tributing leaflets in the evenings, working kind of excitement that extremely low tried to get a job as a social worker but was and talking with many warm and wonder- wages and poverty sometimes make neces- turned down. The only other job open to ful workers, Mexicans, Filipinos, Negroes, sary: violent revolution. I feel certain that me at the time was working for Cesar at Anglos, and with the many ministers, the greatest single deterrent to that sort $30 a week. Also it seemed like fascinating priests, students, and civil rights workers of excitement in the United States has work and would give me a chance to use my who came to help the farm workers in their been the American labor movement, which Spanish, and it seemed to me it would be struggle for justice. I discovered the labor has attained decent and just wages for at satisfying to help the poor, so rather than movement wasn't so drab after all. As most least part of the American work force. look further for work, I took the job. That people know by now, the Delano strike I -came to the labor movement somewhat was a year ago. resulted in a great breakthrough for farm late in life, at the age of 35. Since I was My first assignment was sweeping the workers when the giant Schenley Corpora- 15 I have wanted to be a writer. I told my- floor of the union headquarters in Delano, tion signed a contract granting its 450 self that after I had succeeded as a writer, California. Later the same day I wrote a (Continued on Page 3) I would use some of my leisure time to study and try to help solve the social and economic problems of the world. I never have made enough money as a writer to buy that much leisure, but I got involved in social and economic problems and the labor movement anyway, and now I realize that my original approach was wrong. I should have devoted part of my time to trying to help solve the world's problems all along; anyone who doesn't isn't pulling his share of the load. After working in the labor movement and thus helping the poor, I have come to believe that most people are happiest when they are living partly for themselves and partly for others. Also, I discovered that performing some extra- valuable service such as working in the labor movement is good therapy; when you help others solve their problems your own tend to disappear. The way I got into the labor movement is this: I was compiling a book of inter- Eugene Nelson, the leader of the farm workers' strike in Starr County and coordi- nator of the farm workers' march to Aus- Al Ransom, San Antonio tin, wrote this for the Observer during a Rev. James Navarro, Father Antonio Gonzales, few quiet periods while he was in Austin raising funds. and Eugene Nelson head the March to Austin money where its mouth is. Already the Texas AFL-CIO has backed the strike and Welcome to AU tin march with $15,000 in cash and $15,000 in food and clothing, and thousands of Texans The Valley farm workers who are walk- his arrogance in power are clues, he'll hide. have made personal contributions and ing 490 miles from Rio Grande City to If he thinks it over well, reflects on Texas have marched along a part of the way with Austin have walked step by step from history and the political realities of the these pilgrims for the right. Without a obscurity and exploitation into Texas his- United States, he will change course and union they will be helpless and exploited tory. Their strike struck at the black in- appear and join the fight for $1.25. Failing again as they have always been before. difference of this country to the poverty of that he will surely join Allan Shivers in Let the planners of the Labor Day climax the men, women, and children who raise the dust-bin filled with Texas governors here be sure they turn the enthusiasms its foodstuffs, who do the hard work in who served the corporations and were and energies that will be gathered here the fields under the sun. Striking, they justly forgotten. Sept. 5 into durable, well-organized sup- called over the intervening states to Cesar "Actions," said a banner the marchers port for the farm workers' strike through Chavez and the striking grape pickers, spread across the street in the Floresville the fall and winter ahead and for the mini- "We're with you." Marching now north square, "speak louder than words." The mum wage battle however long it must be from the border to the Capitol, they repre- marchers challenge the state to put its fought. ❑ sent not only the farm workers of these days and places but the farm workers old and dead and gone, beyond anything we can do now to make amends to them. They seek, not only for themselves but for all Juldright Texans, a minimum wage law of $1.25— not much to ask, less than it ought to be— The administration has proposed a small the world. Simply because we are engaged and they want to speak together through demonstration cities program to reclaim in a war, many people beat their breasts unions that they, too, may be reckoned into the ghettoes and make the cities more and proclaim the guilt of the United the calculations of the powerful. livable. Sen. Robert Kennedy calls the pro- States. Come to Austin Labor Day to join them gram a drop in the bucket. Sen. John If we did not spend any money On arma- in petitioning the governor for a redress of Tower of Texas successfully cut the pro- ments, we can bet that the communist grievances that are not theirs alone, but are gram's outlay, led Republican opposition materialists would have taken over the ours, too, all of us who care about the poor. to it, and voted against it. During the world by now. I speak with shame The governor may greet them or he may debate Sen. William Fuibright and Tower about the way we have treated the Ameri- not. If his absence and silence when they became involved in an engrossing exchange, can Negro—but even those people are visited his home town, Floresville, is a here excerpted from the Congressional better off—and I think they would admit it clue, he'll hide. If his anti-union record and Record. —than are the people of the Soviet Union. Fuibright. In that connection [shootings The 'United States of America is not which have recently occurred], I have never sick. I think it is despicable that we seen such an outbreak of such barbarous should hear someone stand on the floor of shootings as the one in Austin, Texas, at the Senate and call the United States sick.

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