Though it occurred exactly 50 years ago this month, civil and labor rights icon César Chávez’s historic, 25-day fast rededicating the farm worker movement to justice and non-violent resistance still has important lessons and reminders for us. It was a demonstration that nearly killed him, and the fast’s genesis, much like our reality today, was rooted in turbulence.
By 1968, members of the Agricultural Workers Organizing and the National Farm Workers Association were nearly three years into a strike, and a number of them, “especially some young men, were impatient,” noted the United Farm Workers (UFW). “There was no hope of victory any time soon.” They were angry, and some began talking about violently retaliating against growers. But, “Cesar believed exactly the opposite”:
Following the example of Gandhi, Cesar announced in February 1968, he was fasting to rededicate the movement to nonviolence. He went without food for 25 days, only drinking water. It was an act of penitence for those who advocated violence and a way of taking responsibility as leader of his movement.
The fast divided the UFW staff. Some didn’t understand why Cesar was doing it. Others worried about his health. But the farm workers understood. A Catholic mass was said daily near where Cesar was fasting in a tiny windowless room of an adobe-walled gas station at the Forty Acres, the UFW headquarters outside Delano. Hundreds, then thousands, came.
In 25 days, Cesar lost 35 pounds. His doctors said his life was in danger.
But the fast worked. All talk of violence stopped. Dr. King wrote Cesar, expressing admiration and solidarity. The fast ended during a mass in Delano with thousands.
On that final day, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy joined a weakened Chávez to help him break bread, calling him "one of the heroic figures of our time." Kennedy would be assassinated just months later. “For 100 years before Cesar Chavez, farm workers tried, and failed, to organize a union,” the UFW continued. “Every strike was crushed. Every union was defeated.” Those 25 days changed everything
After the fast, the workers continued their boycott and a reinvigorated movement remained relentless in their pursuit, believing that “if consumers in communities throughout North America knew about the suffering of field laborers—and saw the grape strikers struggling nonviolently—they would respond.” They did. “The boycott connected middle-class families in big cities with poor farm worker families in the California vineyards. Millions stopped eating grapes.”
”By 1970,” UFW continues, “the grape boycott was a complete success. Table grape growers at long last signed their first union contracts, granting workers better pay, benefits, and protections.” Victory happened, and victories continued. Later, when asked about the key to organizing movements for change, Chávez replied, quite simply, “first you talk to one person, then you talk to another, then you talk to another.” And, you keep going.
Today, we see Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients and Parkland shooting survivors following in these footsteps, not just sharing their stories in their own communities, but talking and marching nationally in order to win hearts and minds. And not in vain, because the vast majority of Americans agree that undocumented immigrant youth should stay and that we need gun violence legislation. Today, it’s Congress that remains standing in the way, but these youth aren’t giving up. If they can’t change Congress’ mind, they’re set on changing Congress.
We also need a Congress that will get us closer to Chávez’s goal. Today, the César Chávez Foundation notes, “his name is synonymous with the struggle for justice by American farm workers and dignity for the nation's poor.” UFW, which Chávez cofounded with Dolores Huerta, another civil and labor rights leader, has championed legislative and regulatory reforms for farm workers, ensuring important protections that make their backbreaking work safer.
But too many remain vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. Immigrant hands have long fed America, but America’s leaders refuse to put the estimated 1.7 million farm workers who do not have documentation onto a path to legalization. And in the current administration’s anti-immigrant, mass deportation agenda, they’re more vulnerable than ever. This is something that should matter to all of us, because it affects all of us regardless of immigration status.
“Some farm workers are already starting to leave the country for fear of being deported,” noted a report last year. “But, if farmers lost all access to undocumented workers it could cause agricultural output to plunge by $30 billion to $60 billion and it could force food prices higher by 5 percent to 7 percent, according to a study by the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF).” According to that study, “deporting millions of undocumented immigrants would create job losses not seen since the Great Recession.”
Of course, it’s not just about the costs of things at the market, though that is important to working families and our economy. As Chávez once said, "the fight is never about grapes or lettuce. It is always about people." In an era when the administration is taking steps to strip immigrants and their families of their protections, rights, dignity, and humanity, the acts of civil rights leaders like Chávez should serve as reminders to us. Like his fast, the arch of justice is fraught by struggle, tears, and uncertainty, but victory is possible. Victories happen.
During a recent César Chávez Day commemoration at Fresno State University, Julie Chávez Rodriguez, Chávez’s granddaughter, repeated a portion of one of his most famous quotes: "Once social change begins it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. I've seen the future, and the future is ours.” ¡Si, se puede!