Sam Kushner, “Long Road to Delano”

Long Road To Delano Sam Kushner INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS New York © 1975 International Publishers Co., Inc. First Edition Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Kushner, Sam, 1914 Long road to Delano 1. Trade-unions—Agricultural laborers—California— History. 2. United Farm Workers—History 3. Agricultural laborers—California—History I. Title HD6515.A292U58 331.88’13’09794 74-30123 ISBN 0-7178-0423-2 ISBN 0-7178-0424-0pbk. Contents Foreword v Preface xi 1. A Century of Strife and Servitude Begins 3 2. The Racist Ingredient 23 3. First Major Radical Challenge 39 4. Communist Organizing 55 5. Past as Prelude 81 6. The Bracero Era 95 7. Setting for Delano 115 8. Delano 127 9. Labor Faces a Challenge and a Dilemma 147 10. El Triunfo 171 11. Diversions and Deaths 197 Epilogue 222 Acknowledgements American Melodrama: The Presidential Campaign of 1968 by Lewis Chester et al, 1969, Viking Pres, Delano by John Gregory Dunne, 1971, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc; Factories in the Field: the story of the Migratory Farm Labor in California by Carey McWilliams, new edition 1971, Peregrine Smith, Inc; Forty Acres by Mark Day, 1971, Praeger Publishers; Merchants of Labor: The Mexican Bracero Story by Ernesto Galarza, 1966, by permission of McNally & Loftin, Publishers; Sol Si Puedes by Peter Mathiessen, 1970, Random House; So Shall Ye Reap by Joan London and Henry Anderson, © 1971, with permission o fThoomas Y. Crowell Company, Inc., Publishers; Spiders in the House and Workers in the Field by Ernesto Galarza, 1970, University of Notre Dame Press; Time of Our Lives: the Story of My Father and Myself by Orrick Jones, 1973, Octagon Books, Farrar, Straus & Gitroux, Inc. Foreword In this book, Sam Kushner has outlined the century-long struggle of farm laborers to organize themselves for a better life. Kushner’s writing combines a deep personal commitment to social justice with thorough-going journalistic skill and an historian’s grasp of the many forces at work in California farm labor history. The author of this book, who has distinguished himself as the farm labor reporter for the People’s World, has covered the nine year struggle of the United Farm Worker’s Union with more depth and accuracy than any other journalist on the scene, gaining the reputation of an expert through his intimate knowledge of the strike, its protagonists and its broad historical significance. Long Road to Delano is the story of the endless battle waged by farm workers, activists, radicals and communists to organize the field workers into a powerful union. The book both describes as well as evaluates the historical process wherein many men have been broken, but which has nevertheless resulted in some clear cut victories for the nation’s most neglected group of workers. In digging up many forgotten facts, and more importantly, analyzing and scrutinizing them, Kushner has made a valuable contribution to the understanding of the united Farm Workers’ strike begun under the leadership of Cesar Chavez in 1965.He shows the historical roots, both of the farm workers’ clash with the power of the U.S. agribusiness as well as the back door agreements and the raiding tactics of the leadership of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. He tells us why it is important that the Chavez- led union be victorious and what is at stake for organized labor and for all liberation movements, including those of women, Chicanos, Blacks, Native Americans and other oppressed groups. In addition, he also analyzes aspects of the historical process of liberation among Mexicans and Chicanos in their efforts to resist racist oppression, in their fight against the use of the border and immigration policies as a weapon of division and oppression, and in their struggle for cultural independence. All of these struggles have been deeply related to their fight for a union in the fields. Luisa Moreno, one of the great Chicana leaders of former years, often described the willingness to sacrifice and die for a just cause as “being in the highest and noblest traditions of the Mexican people.” In this volume the author correctly singles out this dedication in the perennial use, among Mexican working people, of the revolutionary symbols—the black eagle, the red and black flags, the rejection of the international border, and the sacred reverence for Mexico’s revolutionary figures—Zapata, Villa and the Virgin of Guadalupe. Quoting Dr. Juan Gomez-Quinones of the University of California, Los Angeles, he reflects the deeper implication of the farm workers’ struggle for those who are struggling for nationals liberation and socialism in this country. Long Road to Delano emphasizes another significant historical point, all too often neglected by labor historians—the role of the Chicano and Mexican people in the building and development of the labor movement in the Midwestern and southwestern states. Workers of all minority groups have suffered from the racist character of our American society in terms of meager wages and subhuman working conditions. But for Mexican workers, their struggles in the fields and factories have been an attempt to redress the conquest in 1835 of Texas and in 1848 of the rest of the Southwest. In these pages Kushner carefully compares the early attempts at farm labor organization with the more recent and successful accomplishments of the United Farm Workers. Chavez’s technique, the author writes, is to organize the workers first, then strike later, as opposed to the former strategy of striking and trying to build a union at the same time. The latter strategy often ended in failure, though, as was mentioned earlier, these first attempts provided stepping stones for subsequent victories. Anyone familiar with labor history will recall the comparisons that William Z. Foster used to make about the differences in 1919 steel strike and the 1937 campaign that proved victorious for the United Steelworkers Organizing Committee of the CIO. Few significant developments escape the author’s attention. For example, he tells of Cesar Chavez insisting, at the first convention of the UFWA, held in Fresno, California in 1973, that all races, nationalities and sexes be represented on the union’s national executive board. The author also tells of another tradition adopted by the UFWA, the general strike, originally inspired by the Wobblies and recently immortalized by the Delano strike song, Juelga en General. The UFWA has been able, in Kushner’s words, to make breakthroughs in areas where other farm unions have fallen short. Chief among these have been the widespread public support of the grape and lettuce boycotts and the winning over of important segments of Protestant, Catholic and Jewish religious leadership. The veteran labor reporter writes of the shady history of the Teamsters’ Union leadership in making undemocratic moves in efforts to destroy the UFWA’s popularity among farm workers. He also documents the shoddy track record of the conservative and racist leadership of some of the national and international AFL unions. Kushner does this without imputing their corruption to the rank and file membership of either the Teamsters or the AFL-CIO unions. An important chapter of Long Road to Delano is dedicated to the important role of Communist party members in organizing farm workers in California. The courageous efforts of these people have been passed over in most books dealing with farm labor history. It is here that Sam Kushner breaks new ground again—yet he tells the story clearly and simply without creating false heroes or heroines and beating drums. I, for one, am glad that at least one chapter of the book was devoted to those organizers and their crucial role in the saga of farm labor. Seven out of eleven chapters are devoted to the 90 years prior to the 1965 strike in Delano. Those were action-filled periods, and Long Road to Delano has captured the events in an exciting and human style. This book offers what many of us have been searching for—a well researched, insightful, and readable history of the farm labor movement. Hopefully, this study will encourage other students and writers to uncover even more chapters that have been passed over by historians, past and present. Sam Kushner was himself on the scene when the great events of the Delano grape strike took place. He chronicles this in the last four chapters of this book. As Dolores Huerta, vice-president of the United Farm Wrorkers Union, told the People’s World banquet on October 14, 1973, “. Brother Sam has done what Cesar Chavez has accomplished— spreading the whole idea of brotherhood, and this means getting people together even though we may be different in terms of our ideologies and practices. It makes me feel good when I know that we have hundreds of farm workers and other people throughout the country that are saying, ‘I am working every single day of my life—and it is a daily grind— to make change.’ “Sam Kushner symbolizes this to me, because I know he often found it very difficult to write because of the discrimination he faced from a lot of people—especially when he covered the strike in the beginning. But that did not stop him—he found a way to make friends with everyone. We not only respect Sam as a journalist. We respect him because he has shown us how friends should treat each other. And when Sam was sick a few years back, and we thought we were going to lose him, we felt very sad. Were it not for him, a lot of people would not be working together to help our union.” Dolores Huerta could have said the same thing about Sam Kushner’s relationship with the whole Chicano movement and other movements he has covered as a journalist.

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