December, 2004
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UFW DOCUMENTATION PROJECT ONLINE DISCUSSION December 2004 and January 2005 Kathy Lynch Murguia, 12/1/04 RE: Closure Kathy Murguia 1965-1983 As we move to the final days of the Listserve, I am bringing closure to a huge chunk of my life. I don't know about anyone else, but I do reflect back with varied emotions and interpretations of events. It began so simple and it ended up being so complicated. What was public became personal . Thoughts became projected into possibilities and threats. What was personal became public in that it became a test of loyalty. The lines became blurred; boundaries confused. We all participated in this blurring of reality. We hurt each other in our misunderstandings. I had hoped we were headed somewhere...I did believe the farmworkers needed a union. El Movimiento was a beginning. It came as a result of what Cesar called "viva swells". It was the structure that became problematic, and its tolerance for criticism and its ability to resolve internal conflict that became lost in a fog of meaning. Doug you are right. As one that was there at the beginning. I would venture to say we lost the willingness to talk to each other. Yes Abby, the Game facilitated this level of honesty. Mary, I do wish we could time travel into the next decade and be renewed. Marshall, in this interregnum will Cesar's and our dreams survive? What lessons have we learned? I would name one. Responsibility rests within. We invest in history and we have the obligation/ duty to defend what we know to be our experience; to find our voice and to speak, trusting our words, directing these words to those who need to hear what we have to say. I believe CC would subscribe to this. I recently attended a Peace Conference in Berkeley. The only one I connected with was Rabbi Michael Lerner. The Tikkum Community with the notion of a politics of meaning resonate with the core values that Mary McCartney speaks of. They transcend our history and our experience in the farmworker movement. They rermain relevant to the call for economic justice. empowerment, integrity and most importantly compassion for others. We will come together as we continue to water our roots with remembrance and words of truth. Fran Ryan, 12/1/04 RE: Post Party Purge Dear Doug et al, I remember going to a party in L.A. in perhaps 1967 (maybe earlier). There was lots of revolutionary talk; Dolores and Donna Haber were there along with others I don't remember. The communist "national anthem", the "Internacional" was sung along with Huelga songs. I think Luis Valdez was there. I was a very minimal participant as I was very tired and went to sleep by midnight as they talked on for hours into the night. Very soon after that some of those people "disappeared" from the ranks of the farm worker volunteers and the "gossip" was that they had been asked to leave because they were thought to be too "radical" for the needs of the the farm worker movement and that Dolores was the one who had come to that conclusion. It was generally concluded that it was not a good idea to appear too friendly with Sam Kushner so that one's primary loyalty to the farm worker struggle would not be questioned. Thanks to all the huelgistas who have shared here and especially to LeRoy for setting it up. I do want to say that whatever we non-farmworkers did as volunteers needs to be kept in perspective as: 1. what we were choosing to do. 2. No matter how difficult, it was something we had the option to leave (and go back to or on to another existence) and 3. Our work derived it's soul from the fact that we were connected to the meaningfulness of the farm worker struggle. I have felt uncomfortable sometimes as I read comments that have a hint of putting us on a pedestal we don't belong on. It reminds me of my work years ago as a Peace Corps Volunteer: we volunteers received so much more than we ever gave. Given that, it is clear that the various "armies" of volunteers over the years definitely helped shape what was accomplished. The many struggles are not over! ARRIBA !! Fran Ryan Delano, Pórtland, New Cork 1967-68 Hugh “Hawkeye” Tague, 12/1/04 RE: Goonos y Goonas I was never full-time in Security, but I was always assigned to this task whenever Cesar came through . My high school "education" had prepared me well . SITTING DUCK: Cesar was at a reception put on by a supporter whose husband was a produce distributor in Cleveland. I had met her before, and she seemed interested in me,. So did a lot of other people because, to say the least, I didn't fit into the "categories" that we humans like to put each other in. My security assignment was to put myself between the windows and Cesar at all times. I took this job very seriously. Trouble was that the hostess had too much to drink and she ignored Cesar and was getting grabby with me. This situation was even more uncomfortable because her husband (who, very well may have been mobbed-up) was just across the room. We went to a bunch of other towns and cities in Ohio during that tour. There was a guy who we saw at 3-4 didn't places. We got nervous about this, but discovered that he was simple a "groupie." We stayed with Cesar at the home of Richard Celeste who was a state senator at the time . His wife was really cool. She was from Denmark and her name was Dagmar. She even picketed stores with Anita Meyerson on the West Side. Celeste was keeping Cesar up all night and everybody was tired as hell. I told him to knock it off and go to bed. They laughed about it, but went to bed soon after. Years later,I heard that Governor Richard Celeste pardoned a bunch of women who were doing time for killing their physically abusive husbands/boyfiends. I figured that was really Dagmar's doing. VEGANS SHOULD NOT BE IN CHARGE OF THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE: I was working in a factory in Philly when Cesar came to some college . I was asked to be on guard duty. Cesar was in this professor's room and 3 of us were to keep everybody from walking through the area. This big guy came up and this little Quaker who was a guard asked him to go elsewhere and he keep going. I grabbed him by the arm and pushed him against the wall. Then he was open to hearing why we asked him to move. This Quaker gave me a hard time about it. Non-violence -is our-strength, etc. I said that we had a job to do and the hit-man or nut that might be after Cesar didn't know anything about non- violence. I told him to go back to the academic retreat center that he came from. By the way, the Goo_nas generally made the best guards because they tried harder. Hawkeye Donna Haber Kornberg, 12/1/04 (1) RE: volunteers I have been quite dismayed to read in recent emails, phrases such as: "volunteers overstaying their welcome" "there was a time that those Volunteers were supposed to step away and they just didn't get it" 2 During my relatively short experience, there were many different types of "volunteers" -- which I take to mean non-farm workers, although there were in reality many farm worker volunteers. There were students, from all races, including Chicanos, representatives of various religions, and others who wanted to help. Take the Teatro, for example. Luis Valdez, a student volunteer, initiated the Teatro, and started it with other volunteers like Augie Lira, an ex-farm worker and Kerry Ohta, a volunteer from the Bay Area. I, a student volunteer, joined later, as did Felipe, a farm worker, who moved in and out of the Teatro (he had children and a wife who wanted him to earn some money to support them). There were also Kathy and her boyfriend ????, religious volunteers, and others, Chicanos, whose names I do not remember, who had been drifting around the movement, and who may have done farm work at one time in their lives, but were not farm workers when they joined us. This heterogeneity was typical of all sections of the then-NFWA, and, so far as I can make out, continued to be so after I was sacked in 1968. Which of us 'outstayed our welcome' and should have known to 'step away?' All the volunteers? The non-Chicano volunteers? The volunteers who had never done farm work?" The volunteers who had done some farm work but were then students? It is my view -- and I would welcome comments on this -- that without the volunteers there would never have been a movement, strikes, a boycott, contracts, etc. If all volunteers had 'stepped away' at any given time, the whole organization would have collapsed immediately, as volunteers staffed all its services. Of course, in principle, workers should run their own unions, but in most traditional unions, this means deciding policies and hiring people to implement them. One cannot work in an industry at the same time as administering a union. After leaving the farm workers, I worked for a more traditional union for many years, negotiating on behalf of workers in industries in which I had never worked.