The Crusades of Cesar Chavez

by Miriam Pawel

  The union announced a recall campaign to oust Williams from office. Just as the Giumarra court hearing had mobilized supporters during the Delano fast, the recall campaign took advantage of the enthusiastic response to the fast and put people to work. They needed to collect more than a hundred thousand signatures to qualify the recall initiative for the ballot. Eager volunteers like Washburn were sent out each day with petitions. At the evening mass, Drake delivered a progress report and pep talk on the campaign. The recall campaign helped rejuvenate a dispirited Democratic coalition in Arizona. “All have been crushed so many times by the [Sen. Barry] Goldwater machine that they had all but given up hope,” Hartmire wrote from Phoenix to boycotters around the country. “The most common phrase was, ‘No se puede,’ ‘It can’t be done.’ But they have caught the fire5 of the farm worker movement.”

  “Si, se puede!” Huerta threw back at the naysayers. The union gathered more than enough signatures. The Republican attorney general disqualified the recall petition, a move later overturned in court. The farmworkers adopted Huerta’s phrase, and by the end of the fast a giant si se puede banner hung across the Santa Rita Center. La causa had a new slogan.

  Chavez had more trouble with this fast than in 1968. He had eaten his last meal a few hours before arriving in Phoenix and felt unprepared. He attributed some of his pain to the unfamiliar water in Phoenix and the extreme heat. He became quite sick, his blood pressure dropped, and on the nineteenth day he was hospitalized. His physician, Jerome Lackner, reported that Chavez’s vitamin levels had dropped sharply and his heart muscle showed weakening. “As someone who has taken care of him . . . to look at his cardiogram today and yesterday brings tears to my eyes,”6 Lackner said. “We want him to terminate the fast.”

  Chavez held out a few more days; he had planned to break the fast at a memorial mass to mark the anniversary of the death of Robert Kennedy. LeRoy Chatfield took charge of the event, each detail carefully planned, from the placement of microphones to the seating arrangement for the dignitaries. Crowds poured in when the doors of the Phoenix Convention Center opened at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, June 4. Mariachis played. Yaqui Indians performed a special dance for Chavez, and Joan Baez sang. She sat next to Chavez, the two dressed in matching white Nehru-collar shirts made of manta, a coarse cotton fabric. Helen sat on Cesar’s other side.

  Joseph Kennedy began his speech in broken Spanish, as his father had done in Delano in 1968, and spoke of that historic trip. “He went to Delano7 because he believed that what the farmworkers were doing was right,” Kennedy said. “He went to Delano because he believed that nonviolence was right. He went to Delano because he believed that Cesar Chavez was right.”

  Hartmire read Chavez’s statement in English, and Gutierrez read it in Spanish: “I am weak in my body but I feel very strong in my spirits . . . The fast was meant as a call to sacrifice for justice and as a reminder of how much suffering there is among farmworkers.”

  Hartmire, who had long ago turned his ministry into an adjunct of the union, now played an increasingly important role for Chavez on the national stage. At Chavez’s instigation, Hartmire had transformed the California Migrant Ministry into a nationwide, ecumenical group of religious supporters. Chavez did not want religious support for farmworkers to be diffused among multiple causes, and he wanted to head off potential competition. Hartmire convened a planning session to launch the new group, and Chavez attended to reinforce the goal: support for his union, and his union only.

  In Hartmire, Chavez had a most willing disciple, one who employed skillful rhetoric to maneuver religious leaders into line as they founded the National Farm Worker Ministry (NFWM). “I hope that there will be one national farm workers union under the leadership of Cesar Chavez that will continue to give leadership to the whole country on what it means to serve the poor effectively,” Hartmire wrote. In making his pitch for the new group to support only Chavez, Hartmire compared the challenge that the UFW offered supporters with the challenge that Jesus posed to his disciples—to join in their complete dedication to helping farmworkers. At Chavez’s request, Hartmire also proposed that the UFW have veto power over any future endeavors of the religious group. Even with Hartmire’s clout and Chavez’s personal appeal, the mission statement drew some skepticism and heated debate. They prevailed on a 14–5 vote,8 with 8 abstentions.

  One prominent supporter reacted with dismay to Chavez’s position. “He made it abundantly clear that what he wants is a national organization of religious leaders who will support UFWOC 1000 per cent with staff and funds and will do so without asking any questions or offering any advice,” Monsignor George Higgins wrote in a confidential memo. “In my judgment, he appealed very crassly to the guilt feeling which so many Protestant social actionists seem to harbor in their souls and even went so far as to threaten them with the enmity of the poor (meaning, in this case, farm workers) if the religious community fails to measure up to his expectations. All in all, I thought it was a miserable performance9 on his part.” Higgins, however, remained a stalwart supporter. There was no alternative.

  Chavez expressed optimism that the union was on the verge of a breakthrough not only in California but across the country. The victory in the grapes had demonstrated the power of si se puede. “The great myth is broken,” Chavez said. “The myth is shattered.10 The farmworkers can win.”

  He noted that the farmworkers’ success inspired others in the budding Chicano movement, although by and large he kept his distance from that movement and its leaders. He condemned the violence endorsed by some Chicano movement leaders, and he showed little interest in some of their goals. “What’s happening now is no big thing to me, this identity,” he said when asked about the Chicano movement. “I’ve lived with it; it’s been my life.”11 As a dark-skinned Mexican, he said, he had no choice: “The darker you are, the more Mexican you have to be. So if you’re dark and poor, you have to be more Mexican.”

  The Arizona fight was only the first in a series of legislative battles for the union. The Farm Bureau, aided by the Nixon administration, introduced bills modeled after the Arizona statute in several key states. Thirteen labor bills12 related to farmworkers had been introduced in Congress. Chavez’s strategy was twofold—to fight off the bad laws, and to use the publicity to gain footholds in other states.

  Drake elaborated in speeches to religious leaders and boycott supporters: “What we’re trying to do is at least stake a claim in certain states where if we don’t get there right away, we know that somebody else is going to do the organizing, and we’re never going to have a national union.” Already, a college student named Baldemar Velasquez had set up the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) and negotiated a handful of contracts in northwest Ohio. Efforts were under way in New York as well.

  So despite the ongoing battles in Salinas, the hundreds of grape contracts, and the melon, citrus, and tomato workers in California clamoring for attention, Chavez spread the union thinner by setting up a token presence in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Texas, and Florida. “There are about eight or ten major states . . . where we have to show we’re doing something,” Drake said. He outlined ambitious plans for recruiting forty organizers in the Midwest, taking aim at the cherry harvest in Michigan, and targeting orange growers in Florida. “There’s no limit13 to where we should organize.”

  When the Oregon state legislature passed an anti-farmworker bill, Chavez dispatched Cohen to persuade the governor to veto the measure. Cohen disregarded advice from liberals who urged him to gently approach Gov. Tom McCall, a moderate Republican. Hardball was more Cohen’s style, and he drew on tactics he had learned from Chavez. Cohen orchestrated a prayer vigil on the Capitol steps and bombarded the governor with letters and calls. “If you work with Cesar for a while you get a pretty realistic view14 of politicians,” Cohen said. “No matter if they’re liberal Republicans or liberal Democrats, if there’s an issue they don’t feel any pressure on, and it’s a little hard for them to make a political d
ecision, they’re going to make the easiest political decision.” McCall vetoed the bill.

  Cohen hoped the union could break through outside California “We are at a crossroads15—could become a national union,” he wrote. But he worried the expansion had come at the expense of organizing in California. In 1972, a year of near-record dues, the union spent $230,000—about half its income—on political campaigns. When Cohen looked for plaintiffs16 in a suit against Bud Antle, he had trouble finding a farmworker because the union had pulled everyone out of Salinas. Fred Ross shared Cohen’s concern, and the lawyer urged Ross to talk to Chavez.

  “Oh hell, he won’t listen to me,” Ross said.

  “He’ll pretend not to listen to you, but he’ll listen to you,” Cohen responded. “I mean it’ll be in his head, and then in about a week he’ll come up with the idea.”

  The Salinas situation remained a stalemate; the UFW had only a handful of contracts and the Teamsters held the rest. At the request of the AFL-CIO, Chavez had suspended the lettuce boycott to see if a settlement could be negotiated with the growers. After eight months of meetings, Cohen reported, “they agreed to the bulletin board clause,”17 the most minor provision in the contract. Chavez declared an impasse and prepared to relaunch the lettuce boycott, a decision that would bring the farmworkers into conflict with the AFL-CIO.

  AFL-CIO president George Meany felt liable for the actions of the farmworkers as long as their union remained an organizing committee under the federation’s umbrella, rather than an independently chartered union. The rest of the labor federation was covered by the National Labor Relations Act, which barred secondary boycotts. Meany was concerned the AFL-CIO would be accused of violating the law if the farmworkers boycotted supermarket chains.

  Chavez was displeased about the prospect of losing the $10,000-a-month subsidy from the AFL-CIO that came with the organizing committee status. But he needed the boycott, so he made a pragmatic decision and formally requested a charter. “When a guy named Nixon18 came into office, he began to change the labor board,” Chavez explained. “He is going to do anything and everything he can to screw unions. We’re one of their big targets . . . In order to keep boycotting, we have to get a charter to save the AFL-CIO the headache they think they’re going to have.”

  Then a new crisis derailed not only the boycott, but all other plans, and drew Chavez away from his national expansion plans and back to California. The most serious legislative fight came on home turf, where growers qualified an initiative on the November 1972 ballot that would effectively ban the boycott in California and cripple the union. Chavez summoned all the California volunteers to La Paz in late summer to launch the campaign against Proposition 22.

  “The only time we come together is when we’re in trouble,”19 Chavez said as he opened the conference. He told them the union faced a life-or-death fight, and the boycotters responded. Ellen Eggers had just graduated from college and was on her way home to Indiana after a summer internship arranged through the National Farm Worker Ministry. She had heard about Chavez all summer and had recited the details of his life dozens of times as she asked people not to buy lettuce. When she finally visited La Paz and saw him in person, she was starstruck. His speech was rambling, his manner alternately funny and stern, but his presence was utterly compelling. Eggers gave up her plans for graduate school and her boyfriend back home and joined the fight against Prop 22. She cried as she tried to explain to her mother that she would always regret it if she abandoned the union in its time of need.

  “The minute you meet him, you know he’s special,”20 said Margie Coons, a twenty-three-year-old boycotter in Los Angeles, struggling to find words to explain her feelings about Chavez to a reporter. “He’s so patient and forceful at the same time.”

  Chavez tapped Chatfield to run the campaign against Prop 22 and Chatfield recruited Hartmire to help in Los Angeles, where they set up headquarters in the office of the National Farm Worker Ministry. Chatfield’s wife, Bonnie, discovered the opposition had collected signatures for the initiative under false pretenses and in some cases had forged names. Dozens of volunteers scoured the petitions, interviewed signers, and collected affidavits. Chavez and Chatfield appealed to Secretary of State Jerry Brown, son of former governor Pat Brown, to throw the initiative off the ballot. Brown declined, but launched investigations that provided ammunition for the farmworkers’ campaign. More significant, the meetings forged a tie between Chavez and Brown and drew the Democratic politician into a cause with which he would soon become closely identified.

  Chatfield masterminded a brilliant “No on 22” campaign that featured human billboards at key intersections across Los Angeles, along with radio and television ads, newspaper endorsements, and a massive get-out-the-vote campaign. On election eve, exhausted, he sat with Chavez in the Los Angeles campaign headquarters late at night. Both men were nervous.

  “Cesar spoke very softly21 and with a friendly but nervous edge to his voice,” Chatfield wrote.

  He simply explained to me that if we lost the election tomorrow, I would have to take the blame. I couldn’t answer. I was totally silenced by the harsh reality of what he had said. I was completely helpless. My closest friend, almost 9 years now, had just explained the political facts of life to me. I had worked on this “life and death” campaign full time since July, barely had any time to even see Bonnie and the girls unless she was in the office working, working late into the nights on the telephone plotting strategy with my staff directors in other California cities and then worrying half to death about everything because of the stakes involved for Cesar and the union. And now, to top it all off, I had been reduced to a fall guy. I didn’t answer Cesar. I just nodded and gave sort of a shrug of the shoulders.

  Prop 22 lost overwhelmingly, 58 percent to 42 percent. Chavez threw a victory party and heaped praise on Chatfield. Chatfield left the union some months later for a combination of personal and professional reasons. But his departure was clearly influenced by the election eve conversation.

  Only a few years earlier, Chavez had told Jacques Levy there were five people he demanded more from than anyone else because he knew they could take it: Helen and Richard Chavez first, then LeRoy Chatfield, Marion Moses, and Jerry Cohen. By the time Chatfield had his November 6, 1972, conversation, Moses was gone, too. Chavez had quarreled with her over her interest in attending medical school and kicked her out. She left immediately, without saying any goodbyes. Chavez soon made amends, and they stayed in close touch. But her abrupt departure shocked people throughout the union and served as a warning. No one was immune from Chavez’s displeasure.

  His increased profile, the higher stakes, and the competing pressures combined to make Chavez more openly ruthless in his drive to be the one and only farm labor leader. As a national figure, Chavez felt he could not afford to make mistakes.

  Chavez sometimes used a juggling analogy to explain his work:

  When you start organizing, it’s like a guy who starts juggling22 one ball. You start, you have one ball. You go at your own speed. You’re doing your own thing, you know, nobody is after you. After a little while, you got to get two balls, and you start juggling two balls. Your own speed. Because even up to that point, you’ve got everything under control. Then after a little while, more people come in, you’ve got to take three balls. And then four and then five and then six. And pretty soon you can’t deal with it. And the organization breaks because the guy who’s supposed to be leading wants to juggle a lot of balls and he can’t do it. So he’s got to make up his mind he’s going to let some of the balls drop. But even more important, he’s going to multiply himself to have more jugglers to handle all the balls that are coming at him.

  The union had expanded so quickly in so many directions, and Chavez had great difficulty delegating. He struggled with the prospect of passing off to more jugglers. But as his talk with Chatfield showed, if a ball dropped, someone else would take the blame.

  Chapter 22

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sp; Brother Against Brother

  This will create more criticism but we must not be afraid of it. Workers have to handle their own problems—we have to organize, they have to put in their share of sacrifice.

  When the Teamster fight erupted in the vegetable fields and the leadership decamped to Salinas, Richard Chavez was left in Delano to administer the dozens of grape contracts his brother had triumphantly signed.

  Richard’s first job was to get workers to ratify the contract that had already been approved, a formality required under the terms of the agreement. None of the workers had voted for the union. Many were suspicious. Richard needed signed cards from a majority at each ranch. His helpers were a college professor and twenty young interns from Los Angeles sent by Chris Hartmire.

  At first they summoned crews to the hiring hall to sign union cards, but with only two windows the workers had to wait on line for hours. Richard ended up with thousands of cards stacked all over the room and little idea which cards matched what ranch. Richard tried taking his staff into the fields instead. Some of the interns gave cards to the foremen to have the workers sign. Richard had to go back and get them signed all over. At the Giumarra ranch, drunken workers threw beer cans at him. Both sides knew the contracts would be ratified one way or another. But the process did nothing to help the union’s image. A few years later, Richard shuddered at the memory: “It was the most terrible two weeks1 in my whole life.”