Forty-seven years ago today, Robert F. Kennedy went to Delano, California to help Cesar Chavez break his first and most famous lengthy fast. Speculation was rampant about whether the junior senator from New York would enter the Democratic presidential primary, a contest where, at the moment, President Lyndon Johnson faced a challenge from the left from Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy. On […]
Tomorrow, March 10, is the anniversary of the day that Cesar Chavez broke his first and most famous fast, in 1968. That ceremony produced what may be the most iconic photo of Chavez from that era, breaking his 25-day fast with Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. (More on RFK and Chavez tomorrow, but here’s a link to a post […]
Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” is the source of many famous quotes and aphorisms, including the paraphrase of a line from Polonius that we have come to know as the saying, “clothes make the man.” Cesar Chavez, who left school after 8th grade, had likely not discovered Shakespeare when the 25-year-old discovered his lifelong passion: community organizing. But he instinctively […]
Since I’m heading to New York soon (two great events – March 31 at the 92nd St Y and April 1 at the new Book Culture on Columbus Ave), today’s #chaveztrivia is about the New York City “Boycott House.” As a native New Yorker and a baby boomer, I’m well aware that most New Yorkers of a certain […]
Labor Day falls this year on the anniversary of a truly historic labor victory. Forty-eight years ago today, workers gathered in a hall in Delano, California, nervously awaiting the results of the first election in the fields: The fight to represent farmworkers who picked grapes at giant DiGiorgio Company. It was an election, Cesar Chavez later said, that […]
The weeks following publication of a book are crammed with conversations about the book – what it says, how you wrote it, why you wrote it, what people think. And those conversations about “The Crusades of Cesar Chavez” have been intense and wonderful. But among the most enjoyable parts of the just-having-published-a-book-time for me are […]
“Crusades of Cesar Chavez” has gone on the road, to Texas and soon on to Arizona, and I’ll have more news about some great encounters in another post soon. In the meantime, I wanted to quickly post links to two terrific conversations about the book and Chavez that have been preserved as audio podcasts. […]
An Op-Ed piece I wrote that was published in the Los Angeles Times today, comparing the drama of the real events in the early years of the Delano grape strike to the way they are portrayed in the movie. One of the stories is about the arrest of Helen Chavez. Here is the real Helen Chavez on […]
It’s been a whirlwind first week! I’ve done about 25 interviews with local and national print, radio and television media — in studio, skype podcasts, and phone interviews. The conversations have been thoughtful and thought-provoking, touching on issues including immigration, movement-building, and of course, details of Chavez’s life. I’ve also written a couple of pieces, […]
Carlos Almaraz was a brilliant artist whose short life intersected at significant moments with Cesar Chavez and the farm worker movement. In one of his last stories for the Los Angeles Times, Reed Johnson (whose terrific cultural reporting will be sorely missed as he moves to the Wall Street Journal’s Brazil bureau) wrote on March […]