The Little Strike That Grew to La Causa

AP GRAPE STRIKERS MARCHING FROM DELANO TO SACRAMENTO PICKETS OUTSIDE MARKET IN BROOKLYN THE LITTLE STRIKE THAT GREW TO LA CAUSA ITEM: At a dinner party in New prominent Mexican-American leader is As the workers and their sympathizers York's Westchester County, the dessert Cesar Estrada Chavez, 42, a onetime march, supermarket chains, middle-class includes grapes. The hostess notices that grape picker who combines a mystical consumers, and even the grape growers her fellow suburbanites fall to with gus mien with peasant earthiness. La causa are choosing sides. Some supermarkets to; the guests from Manhattan unan is Chavez's whole life; for it, he has im are leaving the choice to the shopper. imously abstain. poverished himself and endangered his Others sell only grapes imported from ITEM: At St. Paul's, a fashionable health by fasting. In soft, slow speech, Africa or Israel, and make a point of ad New Hampshire prep school, grapes are he urges his people-nearly 5,000,000 vertising that they do not carry the Cal the only part of the meal invariably of them in the U.S.-to rescue them ifornia product. On Capitol Hill, diners left untouched. selves from society's cellar. As he sees in the House restaurants have not seen ITEM: In San Francisco, a Safeway it, the first step is to win the battle of a grape for months, while the Senate re official observes: "We have customers the grapes. fectory has been using 15 lbs. to 20 who come to the store for no other rea Magnified Movement lbs. a week. When one California Con son than to buy grapes. They'll load up gressman sent large bags of grapes to their car with grapes and nothing else." To enter the public consciousness, a each of his colleagues, many of the re ITEM: In Oakland, a conscience-rid labor conflict must ordinarily threaten cipients returned them. Within a few den housewife explains apologetically the supply of essential goods and ser hours, the corridor outside the Con to her dinner companions: "I really vices, like steel or transportation. Pol- gressman's office was asquish with trod- wanted to have this dessert, and I just de iticians and the public take notice only upon fruit. cided that one little bunch of grapes when there is great impact on the econ Governor Ronald Reagan calls the wouldn't make that much difference." omy, when spectacular bloodshed occurs strike and boycott "immoral" and "at ITEM: In Honolulu, the Young or when well-recognized issues are at tempted blackmaiL" Senator George Americans for Freedom organizes an stake. The grape strike seems to meet Murphy, like Reagan an old Hollywood ."emergency grape lift" by jet from the none of these criteria. Americans could union man-turned-conservative, terms mainland, inviting "all of those starved easily live without the table grape if the movement "dishonest." The Nixon for the sight of a California grape to they had to, and even that minor sac Administration has seemed ambivalent, come to the airport." rifice has been unnecessary. The dis putting forward legislati.on that would pute has been relatively free of vio ostensibly give farm workers organi HY all the excitement about this lence. Neither great numbers of men zation rights but would also limit their W smooth, sweet and innocent fruit? nor billions of dollars are involved. The use of strikes and boycotts. The Pen The answer is that the table grape, welfare of agricultural workers has rare tagon has substantially increased its Vitis vinifera, has become the symbol ly captured U.S. attention in the past, grape orders for mess-hall tables, a move of the four-year-old strike of California's but the grape strike-Ia huelga-and that Chavez and his followers countered predominantly Mexican-American farm the boycott accompanying it have clear last week by preparing a lawsuit to pre workers. For more than a year now, ly engaged a large part of the nation. vent such purchases on the ground that table grapes have been the object of a na The issue has divided husband and grapes are the subject of a labor dis tional boycott that has won the sym wife, inspired countless heated argu pute. Some auto-bumper stickers read: pathy and support of many Americans ments at social occasions and engendered NIXON EATS GRAPES. The growers' an -and the ire of many others. The strike public controversy from coast to coast. swering slogan: EAT CALIFORNIA GRAPES, is widely known as la causa, which has As if on a holy crusade, the strikers THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT. come to represent not only a protest stage marches that resemble religious pil Edward and Ethel Kennedy, following against working conditions among Cal grimages, bearing aloft their own styl the late Robert Kennedy's example, have ifornia grape pickers but the wider as ized black Aztec eagle on a red field embraced Cesar Chavez as a brother. pirations of the nation's Mexican-Amer along with images of the Virgin of Gua The so-called Beautiful People, from ican minority as well. La causa's mag dalupe, patroness of Mexicans and par Peter, Paul and Mary to the Ford sis netic champion and the country's most ticularly of those who work the soil. ters, Anne Uzielli and Charlotte Ni- 16 TIME, JULY -4, 1969 archos, are helping to raise funds for zation, Cesar began to act on Alinsky's ganize farm workers. Ineffective efforts the strikers. That support is one of the precept that concerted action is the only to found agricultural unions date back few issues that find Chicago Mayor Rich means through which the poor can gain to the turn of the century. But only in ard Daley, iconoclastic Writer Gloria political and economic power. Chavez, Hawaii, where Harry Bridges' tough Steinem, and liberal Senators Jacob Ja a Roman Catholic, has delved deeply longshoremen's union used its muscle vits and George McGovern in total into the papal social encyclicals, es to win the first farm-labor contract for agreement. Ralph Abernathy lends black pecially Rerum Novarum and Quadra sugar-cane workers in 1945, did union help to what is becoming the Brown gesimo Anno. ':' "What Cesar wanted to ization take hold. Agriculture is outside Power movement. reform was the way he was treated as the jurisdiction of the National Labor The fact that it is a movement has a man," recalls his brother Richard. Relations Board, which has provided magnified la huelga far beyond its eco "We always talked about change, but federal ground rules for industrial work nomic and geographic confines. At stake how could we go about it?" Cesar Cha ers' unions since 1935; on a national are not only the interests of 384,100 ag vez went about it by working with the level, there is no similar mechanism ricultural workers in California but po c.s.O. among Mexican Americans for for farm workers. In May the Nixon Ad tentially those of more than 4,000,000 ten years. Then, in 1962, he left to ministration proposed an independent in the U.S. Such workers have never form a farm workers' union. Farm Labor Relations Board, but won collective bargaining rights, par The conditions under which farm la chances for passage of such a law this tially because they have not been high borers toil have improved somewhat year are small. Without NLRB protection, ly motivated to organize and partially since the squalid Depression era so well and with farm labor normally transient because their often itinerant lives have evoked by John Steinbeck in The Grapes and seasonal, the difficulties of orga made them difficult to weld into a group of Wrath and In Dubious Battle; yet nizing are enormous. that would have the clout of an in field work remains one of the most un dustrial union. By trying to organize pleasant of human occupations. It de Rose Grafts and Table Grapes the grape pickers, Chavez hopes to in mands long hours of back-breaking Undeterred by these obstacles, Chavez spire militancy among all farm laborers. labor, often in choking dust amid in took his $1,200 in savings and started Because most of the grape pickers are sects and under a flaming sun. The har the National Farm Workers' Association Mexican Americans, he also believes vest-time wage for grape pickers av seven years ago, setting up its head that he is fighting a battle on behalf of erages $1.65 an hour, plus a 25¢ bonus quarters in the San Joaquin Valley ag the entire Mexican-American commu for each box picked, while the current ricultural town of Delano. He clicked nity, which as a group constitutes the na federal minimum wage is $1.60. off 300,000 miles in a battered 1953 tion's second biggest deprived minority. Despite this, the seasonal and spo Mercury station wagon, crisscrossing the radic nature of the work keeps total in San Joaquin and talking to more than Unlettered and Unshod come far below the poverty level. Av 50,000 workers in the first six months. Like the blacks, Mexican Americans, erage family income is less than $1,600 His money was soon gone, but he found who are known as Chicanos, are a var a year. There is no job security, and people who were willing to give him ied and diverse people. Only recently fringe benefits are few. If they are mi food. The N.F.W.A. had its first formal have they emerged from a stereotype: grants, the workers must frequently live meeting in Fresno in September 1962; the lazy, placid peasant lost in a cen in fetid shacks without light or plumb 287 people showed up.

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