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Chavez
Based His Life on Sharing and Frugality Cesar Chavez was not an ordinary man. He organized the first truly effective union for farm workers, but what was more significant was that he set an example of a way of life based on sharing and frugality. He went against the grain by living simply despite his fame. His union dramatically lifted the wages of farm workers and improved their conditions — successes nowhere else attained. Yet Chavez to the end continued to seek more than traditional trade union goals. What he wanted was a form of human empowerment that would make possible a truly good life based on cooperative forms of ownership. He talked to me often of the real limitations of collective bargaining and liberal politics as they are practiced now. The first time I met Cesar Chavez was in 1966, when he visited my father's house in Los Angeles. Everyone else had on suits and ties; Chavez wore simple work clothes. I noticed how small he was and how quiet and unassuming. I sensed a person totally different from the others in the room. This was a campaign year when Ronald Reagan was running against my father. The people who came and went in that house were persons of power and ambition. Chavez seemed different. You knew he was representing a cause much greater than himself. I saw Chavez again on a farm worker march to Calexico and then when I sought his union's endorsement for my gubernatorial campaign in 1974. My first visit to La Paz, his rural headquarters east of Bakersfield, is still vivid in my mind. The place was totally off the beaten path, yet there were hundreds of people around — mostly young and with infectious vitality and enthusiasm. It was clear that the United Farm Workers was a movement. Nuns were typing in the outer office, herb tea was served along with vegetarian food in the common dining room, young volunteers went about their work with a sense of mission. Frankly, I was drawn to it. The critics kept repeating that Chavez had to form a real union that knew how to get along with management and service collective bargaining contracts. True enough, but from my point of view, the UFW was on the forefront of working for genuine social change — not merely its illusion — and that required precisely the dedication and sacrifice which Chavez inspired. My real work with Chavez began shortly after my election as governor when we met in my home in Los Angeles to talk about a proposed farm labor bill. Chavez pulled up to my Laurel Canyon house in an old car with a German shepherd dog named Huelga — Spanish for strike. We talked for several hours about whether the proposed state law or any labor law could actually help farm workers. Chavez repeatedly said that his boycott was a much better organizing tool because the law would always be corrupted by the powerful economic interests that control politics. I argued with him and said that a law would be his best protection. He finally agreed but remained skeptical. A few months later, the historic California Agricultural Labor Relations Act was passed in special session. Hundreds of elections were then conducted, most of which the UFW on in competition with the Teamsters. Yet, by the next year the growers succeeded in blocking all funding for the act and proved Chavez correct that a mere law could not overcome the bitter opposition and incredible political power of agribusiness. During the last few months Chavez and I met twice — once in La Paz and once in my house in San Francisco. When we met in La Paz, we attended Mass and then ate breakfast in the cafeteria-style dining room. While we were eating, he remarked that he had a hard time getting some of his own family to eat together in the big dining room. This was something he felt strongly. For Chavez, some form of common life was the most natural way for human beings to live. In our last conversations, Chavez made very clear that he believed that some type of producer cooperative was the next step for working people because individuals had to have ownership and a real stake in what they did. He told me that it was his goal to get land and develop a cooperative. Cesar Chavez was a man who transcended the opinions and passing certitudes of the day. He had an overwhelming sense that modern life was disordered and that human beings were being cut off from the soil and a harmonious balance of friendship and nature. He recoiled from the pervasive waste and poisoning that we call our affluent modern life. Cesar Chavez ended his life as he began it, close to those who toil with their hands. In a mechanical age full of plastic and loneliness, he stood against the crowd: unbossed, undoctored and unbought. He kept the faith to the end. We won't find another like him. I will miss him.
Former California Gov. Jerry Brown, a longtime friend and associate of Cesar Chavez, wrote this article for the The Examiner. |
