Photo courtesy of US News & World Reports magazine photograph collection, Library of Congress, LC-U9-32963- 20 [P&P]
When I think of Cesar Chavez and his work with Dolores Huerta to organize farmworkers, I think of the fasts that were so widely reported when I was young. At that time I also learned about the reasons for the fasts and other nonviolent tactics associated with Cesar Chavez's broader legacy. While Chavez may have been organizing farmworkers across California to collectively bargain for better pay and safer working conditions, he was ultimately fighting for human dignity.
As a result, Chavez has inspired millions of activists for decades, as well as massive worker mobilizations such as the Immigrant Worker Freedom Ride. I point to the Immigrant Worker Freedom Ride because that effort was inspired by the Freedom Riders of the 1960s, and because these efforts and actions were also about human dignity.
I grew up in the South, the child of parents who were directly involved in the work of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Congress of Racial Equality, and the Scholarship, Education and Defense Fund for Racial Equality to organize the Freedom Rides and fight for civil rights. They taught me a great deal about activists' paths toward human dignity. I learned that the roads that civil rights and labor activists traveled together before me were vast, selfless, and often fatal—and that building connections and coming together over broad human rights issues can yield incredible influence and inspire change in a society.
Today our world, country, and society are faced with long-standing gross inequities across demographics and geographies, inequities that are only being exacerbated by the climate crisis. Many of us have taken this moment for granted and ignored the connections. But we all have an opportunity to change and grow. We must recognize that this moment is not unlike the paths that past labor, civil rights, and environmental justice activists have traveled.
So as we celebrate Cesar Chavez Day and National Farmworker Awareness Week, I challenge you to connect the fight for human dignity to your efforts in advocating for bold policies that we know can make this world a better place.
Join me in taking the #SiSePuedePledge, created by the United Farm Workers. The pledge asks us to continue Chavez’s legacy by supporting farm workers' struggles for safe, dignified working conditions and a pathway to citizenship. Farm workers show up for us rain or shine; it’s time we show up for them.