The end of a march

April 9, 2023

One of the optional challenges this month is daily study — commit to spending a half hour or hour a day studying a topic of your choice. I’m working through Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa by Jacques Levy (1975), which was written after six years of personal interviews with Chavez, his family and colleagues. It heartens me to read about the early days of the farm worker’s union, as I struggle to unionize voters.

In 1966, Chavez and the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) concluded a 300-mile march from Delano, California (where the union was based) to Sacramento. The issue was the low wages workers were being paid in the grape fields, and the previous fall, multiple unions of farm workers had agreed to strike, including Chavez’s young NFWA. During the grape harvest, workers were paid $1.25 per hour and $.10 for each box of grapes they packed. They demanded a contract with the union and a fifteen cent increase in both their hourly wage and the piece rate.

The first target of their strike was Schenley Industries, one of the largest growers in Delano. The company brought in outside workers from all over, who broke the picket lines and completed the harvest. In early 1966, discussion turned to other ways to generate pressure on the grower to sign a contract with the union.

Many of the union’s members were Catholic, and the idea of a pilgrimage resonated with them. There were discussions about marching to the company’s national headquarters in New York, or to the border of Mexico, where many replacement workers came from. But the state capital, Sacramento, was chosen to symbolize the hypocrisy of the California Fair Trade Act. Farm workers were not entitled to a minimum wage, but once the grapes they picked were turned into wine, the law guaranteed Schenley a minimum sale price.

The twenty-five day march, Chavez thought, “was an excellent way of training ourselves to endure the long, long struggle…. it was quite a penance, because there was an awful lot of suffering involved.” Chavez’s right ankle quickly became swollen, the mass of blisters on his left foot broke and bled. He marched as much as he could, rode in the car when he couldn’t, but refused to take painkillers out of respect for the march’s penitential nature. I’m reminded of how Gandhi had walked barefoot on his own journey through Noakhali, as penance for the blood which had been spilled.

Just before the procession reached Sacramento, Schenley signed a preliminary agreement with Chavez and the National Farm Workers Association, earning them an immediate thirty-five cent raise. On Easter Sunday, 1966, the march concluded successfully, with a limping Chavez supporting his weight on a cane. Ten thousand people celebrated in unity on the steps of the state capitol, and the pilgrimage solidified the support of the Catholic Church for the farmworker’s cause.

How far would you walk to achieve a personal or political goal?