About 25 years ago, when I was a rather unstable and impressionable young man just embarking on a career as a professional troublemaker, I worked for an organization named Ohio Citizen Action. It was built on the premise that you could walk the streets, knock on doors and convince perfect strangers to contribute money and/or time to whatever cause or issue you were pitching. We called it canvassing.

There were many canvassing organizations in the Midwest, and every year their canvassers gathered by the hundreds at regional conferences to build skills in workshops, listen to motivational speakers, network with fellow travelers, drink too much, dance like fiends and succumb to impossible love affairs with like-minded idealists—the usual stuff people do at conferences.

One year, César Chávez was a keynote speaker. I’d never seen anyone quite like him, even though we worked in the same business—the business of organizing. For one thing, there were no Latinos in my homogenous, exurban Ohio community, other than my high school Spanish teacher. Moreover, Chávez spoke from a perspective—and with the authority—of someone who had raised himself up, along with thousands of compañeros, from poverty to power. I couldn’t even imagine the conditions he faced as a farmworker or the political repression that countered his efforts.

His speech was moving and insightful, and at the end he crystallized the power of canvassing with an anecdote from his experience as a founder and leader of the United Farm Workers. He recounted a conversation he’d had with an eager young muchacho who approached him in awe one day and asked, “How did you do it, César? How’d you make the United Farm Workers?” Chávez answered matter-of-factly: “Well, you knock on one door, you talk to one person, and then you move on.”

Not satisfied, the boy pressed him further. “No, I mean how did you make this huge movement, with the boycotts and famous people and political power?” Chávez deadpanned, “Well, you knock on one door …” The rest was submerged in collective laughter as hundreds of young canvassers in the audience recognized themselves in the boy, along with the fundamental truth of Chávez’s fable.

That story was a riff on a theme that Chávez repeated countless times—the notion that you don’t have to (nor can you) snap your fingers and change things overnight in order to make a difference in the world. You need only set things in motion, reach people one at a time, start small and never stop pushing—and sooner or later profound changes will result from sheer momentum. “Once social change begins,” he said, “it cannot be reversed.”

The Tucson City Council added to that momentum last week by unanimously adopting a new holiday for city workers in honor of Chávez, coinciding with the Monday nearest to his March 31 birthday, starting next year. The council also urged people to make it a day of service to their community, as is often the case with the holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr.

Congratulations to Councilwoman Regina Romero and the César E. Chávez Holiday Coalition for striking this chord of remembrance and call to action here in Arizona, the state in which Chávez was born. But this holiday could easily be called “Dolores Huerta and César Chávez Day,” because she stood with him at the beginning and still stands strong today, 20 years after his death.

Huerta came to Tucson for a luncheon the day the Council took action. She said it was the first luncheon anyone had ever thrown for her, which is kind of hard to believe, considering her lifetime of service to the cause of justice for workers and all people. She noted that Chávez’s mother once worked as a maid for the University of Arizona president, and now there is a building on campus named for her son. Change is most easily recognized across generations, but most often created day by day.

Tucson’s César Chávez Day is a stand-in for Dolores Huerta, for the young boy who struggled to grasp Chavez’s organizing ethic, for all of the Chicano activists who fought on the front lines for justice in Tucson decades ago, and for everyone else who has ever banded with others to put the poor and powerless on a path to equality and dignity.

There’s no need to wait until next year to observe César Chávez’s birthday. On Saturday, March 29, a march and rally in Tucson will celebrate his life and legacy. It starts at 9 a.m. at Pueblo High School and ends at Rudy Garcia Park. Put your feet in the streets—la lucha sigue!

This article appears in Mar 13-19, 2014.

6 replies on “Serraglio”

  1. The life of Cesar Chavez is one that should be studied by all those who want to learn about affecting change and the pitfalls of hero worship. As someone who spent many, many hours on the picket line for the UFW, I know an appreciate the positive value that the movement had on many people. But after all the praise (and the free day off for city workers) is done, a few troubling questions remain that need to be addressed. Namely:

    1. Why is there not a single farmworker anywhere currently working under a UFW contract, when at the height of the union they had thousands of members?
    2. Why is the UFW now run by Chavez family members who substantially profit off of his image, but do virtually nothing to organize the workers in the field?
    3. What role did the cult Synanaon have on Chavez when he joined it and made others in the union play the “game” — a type of psychological torment that drove many away from the union.
    4. Why do some of the unions founders who spent many years of their life in support of the UFW believe that Chavez destroyed democratic decision making within the organization?
    5. Is Dolores Huerta still a member of the UFW? And how does she help unify people for a good cause when she came to Tucson and declared that all Republicans hate latinos? Is that something that Chavez would have ever said?

    Finally, the move by councilmember Romero to push through the holiday at a time when the city is in massive debt and piggybacking this move on top of her disastrous attempt to sell off 114 acres of the green public space of El Rio Golf Course should be seen as nothing more than a diversion. “Squirrel !” as the talking dog would say.

    Chavez needs to honored for his victories and studied for his faults. Giving city workers another paid holiday does absolutely nothing to help a single farmworker in the world. It is another feel good attempt to distract us.

  4. I add this comment only as an outside observer. I’m sure Mr. Chavez has made some positive changes for the workers he represented. He did some good while on the earth and should be celebrated for it. I hope no political influences come from his work, past, present and future. the nature of his work stands on its own. Now for my contribution: for over three years I taught elementary school in Yuma comprising about 85% or more of Mexican children, most US, some carted daily from across the border. I loved that job. The kids called me a Spanish name, translated, ” Grandpa.” Altho not on the curriculum, occasionally, I would teach them about Chavez. NONE knew who he was. Not one in nearly four years recognized the man, his history, his contribution. One young man thought he was a boxer. When I explained fully who, what, when, where and how great he was, they were stunned that he was born in Yuma, right were they lived, and died in Tucson. That he rose to great heights in the world, moved mountains. It was important for them to shoot for the stars, that Chavez could do it, they could do. That their parents had not told them of Caesar, I did.

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