We Are Power by Todd Hasak-Lowy

Author:Todd Hasak-Lowy [Hasak-Lowy, Todd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2022-04-01T20:00:00+00:00

Chavez convened this general meeting to get approval to call a strike. But the boisterous crowd’s chant, which reached all the way up to the packed balcony on the second floor, of “Huelga, huelga, huelga!”—“Strike, strike, strike!”—made it clear that the coming vote was just a formality.

Still, Chavez worried that this strike was premature.

That year’s grape harvest, which began south of Delano in the Coachella Valley, brought conflict. Growers, claiming they needed extra workers in order to pick all their grapes before they rotted on the vine, convinced the government to reinstate the bracero program, which had been outlawed in 1964. Braceros were temporary guest workers brought in from Mexico. By using them, the already powerful growers could lower wages and punish local workers who caused trouble, simply by not hiring them. It was another unfair feature of an unjust system, and its end had been celebrated by domestic farmworkers everywhere.

But now the braceros were returning. Even worse, the Coachella growers paid these guest workers fifteen cents more an hour than the Filipino American workers in the valley normally received. So those workers went on strike, and ten days later their pay was raised. By early September, the grape harvest had moved north, reaching Delano, where the growers were offering domestic laborers a measly two-thirds of the braceros’ hourly wage. The Filipino workers, many of whom had migrated from Coachella to Delano along with the harvest, went on strike in nine vineyards. And this time they and their leader, Larry Itliong, were asking Chavez and the NFWA to join them.

Chavez knew they had no choice. If the NFWA didn’t join the strike, they’d be hanging their fellow Filipino workers out to dry and helping the greedy growers in the process. Everyone in the church agreed and the vote to strike was unanimous. But this wasn’t just another decision; it would be the pivotal moment in the NFWA’s short history. Chavez was far from certain they were up for it. “Oh God,” he would recall thinking some months later, “we’re not ready for a strike.”

Since the founding convention almost three years earlier, Chavez and his team had continued registering and recruiting. They founded a much-loved newspaper, El Malcriado (the Unruly One), which gave farmworkers a voice, told their stories, and kept them informed, strengthening their group identity much like the eagle had before. With each new recruit, the NFWA was increasing a force that, one day, could confront the growers head-on.

But Chavez worried that it was too soon for the NFWA to move from organizing to action. They had over a thousand members, but fewer than 20 percent of those were actually paying dues. To execute a successful strike, the farmworkers’ only hope was having not just greater numbers, but dedicated, devoted, well-organized numbers, an army of farmworkers ready and able to sacrifice for their side.

Despite his doubts, Chavez prepared his troops for the battle ahead. He knew it wasn’t enough to inspire them to join the next stage of this

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