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Cesar Chavez Day: United Farm Workers Co-Founder Dolores Huerta Reflects on the Life and Legacy of the Legendary Labor Activist

Cesar Estrada Chavez, legendary labor activist, civil rights leader, and founder of the first successful farm workers union would have been 81 years old today. Events are planned across the country to honor his life and legacy. Thousands marched in his memory over the weekend and nine states recognize March 31st as an official holiday. We speak with Dolores Huerta.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/31/cesar_chavez_day_united_farm_workers



Cesar Estrada Chavez, legendary labor activist, civil rights leader, and founder of the first successful farm workers union would have been 81 years old today. Events are planned across the country to honor his life and legacy. Thousands marched in his memory over the weekend and nine states recognize March 31st as an official holiday.

The man who led the nation-wide non-violent struggle for the rights and dignity of farm workers was born in Yuma, Arizona in 1927 and his family became migrant farm laborers after the Great Depression. He began his life as a community organizer in 1952 with the Community Service Organization, a Latino civil rights group. Ten years later Chavez founded the National Farm Workers Association, which would later become the United Farm Workers of America. He led the union for the next three decades and the strikes and boycotts he organized helped realize several victories, including the 1975 California Agricultural Labor Relations Act to protect farm workers.

This year also marks the 40th anniversary of Chavezʼs 25-day water-only fast in Delano, California at the height of the five-year grape strike and boycott. It ended in March 1968, just a few weeks before the assassination of one of his heroes, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Chavez was fasting to recommit the farm-workers movement to non-violence.

In a moment Iʼll be joined by longtime labor activist Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association with Chavez in 1962. But first I want to play a clip of Cesar Chavez speaking at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco in November 1984, a few months after he had launched the third and longest grape boycott.