Amid all the big, dramatic news dominating the world today, observing Cesar Chavez’s birthday March 31 is a reminder of the power of simple, grass-roots organizing and years of persistent plugging away for justice.
We live in times when a government can be overthrown in a matter of weeks by a Twitter-organized popular uprising. It’s a little hard to imagine the decades-long dedication with which Chavez and his followers worked to change the mistreatment, physical danger and scandalously low wages endured by farm workers in this country.
Though conditions are still far from ideal in U.S. agriculture, there’s been immense improvement. And the fight continues to be fought with the tactics developed by Chavez and what is now known as the United Farm Workers Union. For instance, grass roots-organized boycotts were responsible for the recent victories by Florida tomato workers in getting higher price guarantees from major restaurant companies, bringing up wages a crucial few cents per bushel.
The grape and lettuce boycotts of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s led by Chavez were a core part of many Catholics’ introduction to the concept of practicing everyday social justice through their grocery purchases. Today such consciousness is played out in parishes around the country that ban plastic water bottles or that use and sell products like Catholic Relief Services’ Fair Trade coffee and chocolate.
