Posted on March 27, 2015
WE SHOULD HAVE A NATIONAL HOLIDAY HONORING CESAR CHAVEZ
By Bao Bui, Lowndes County High School, Valdosta, GA
We are fortunate to live in a modern era with enough supplies and food. The farm workers dedicate their time and lives to supply us with these basic needs. Actually, about five decades ago, they endured terrible job conditions. Thanks to Cesar Chavez, migrant farm workers’ living standards have been improved. In one of his many well-known quotes, he proclaims, “We demand to be treated like the men we are! We are not slaves and we are not animals.” His ability to give farm workers a voice to change the world, as well as improve farm laborers’ lives, makes him the perfect candidate to be honored in a national holiday of the United States.
Cesar Chavez was born in 1927 in Yuma, Arizona. When he was a child, as the Great Depression ruined the United States economy, his family lost their farm and business. As a result. they were mandatory to move to the California as migrant farm workers to survive. His father received the deed to 40 acres of land, but the agreement was run-on; he lost his land. Due to that experience, Cesar learned a lesson about injustice that he would never forget. When he finished eighth grade, he decided to drop out and became a full-time farm worker so as to support his family. During this time, he witnessed how unjustly farm workers were being treated. In fact, they worked in very long hours, had very few bathrooms and little clean water to drink.
Until 1952, he quit working in the fields and established Community Service Organization, a Latino civil rights group in order to object to racial and economic prejudice. Later, Chavez co-founded the National Farm Workers Association with Dolores Huerta in 1962. Afterwards, he started to design a flag with black and red colors, and an eagle. He desired to give the farm workers courage with their own powerful symbol. Cesar made reference to the flag by stating, “A symbol is an important thing. That is why we chose an Aztec eagle. It gives pride . . . When people see it, they know it means dignity.” Later, this union joined with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee in the first strike against grape growers in California. Indeed, the growers neglected laws on working conditions that they had no toilets in the fields and were required to pay about two dollars to live in shacks without plumbing or electricity.
In 1972, the two unions combined and were renamed the United Farm Workers. Chavez focused national attention on farmers by having a 340 mile march from Delano to Sacramento. He made citizens of California, Texas, Arizona and Florida aware of farm workers’ struggles for better pay and safer working conditions. Finally, through a nonviolent strategy by implementing nonviolent resistance just as Martin Luther King, Jr., had endorsed, Chavez and his union won triumphs for the workers. The growers accepted the contracts with the union and recognized the importance and dignity of the farmers. Eventually, in thirty years seeking for farm workers’ respect, he succeeded and passed away peacefully in 1993.
In conclusion, looking back all of his accomplishments, it is enough to prove that Cesar Chavez deserves to be honored in a national day due to his influences in seeking and giving farm workers’ dignity back . He brought attention to the migrant farmers through different challenges with nonviolent means. Chavez’s successor, United Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez, thanked Chavez on behalf of the United Farm Workers and said, “Every day in California and in other states where farm workers are organizing, Cesar Chavez lives in their hearts. Cesar lives wherever Americans’ he inspired work nonviolently for social change.” Consequently, as the hero of our nation’s labor leader and civil rights activist, it is no doubt that he has set an example to younger generations to look up to the natural rights of people, especially farm workers who feed us with groceries.