Today, March 31, is Cesar Chavez Day. The day, celebrating the birth and life of the great U.S. farmworker labor leader. In 1962, Cesar Chavez co-founded the United Farm Workers, alongside Dolores Huerta. 

The organization would go on to wage strikes and boycotts, winning tremendous victories for workers picking the crops in the fields of California and elsewhere in the United States. In 1969, he was featured on the cover of Time Magazine. In 1970, Chavez and the UFW won higher wages for grape pickers, after a 5-year-long California grape strike.

Chavez’s legacy lives on.

But that legacy is also complicated. Cesar Chavez and the UFW fought for immigration reform, but also fought undocumented immigration (and pushed for deportations), under the pretext that undocumented migrants were used to drive down wages and break UFW strikes. 

This is our special Cesar Chavez Day bonus episode of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

Below are the links mentioned in the close of this episode:

United Farm Workers of America website: https://ufw.org/
Coalition of Immokalee Workers: https://ciw-online.org/
2014 Cesar Chavez Biopic: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1621046/
Footage of United Farm Workers grape strike https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azbxTAGgs2E

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting, and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.

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