Download or read book Farmers and Farm Workers Movements written by Patrick H. Mooney and published by Macmillan Reference USA. This book was released on 1995 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The section on farm worker movements looks mainly at the agribusiness economy of California, beginning with farm worker mobilization in the depression era and the emergence of such prominent unions as the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union and the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America. The authors extensively examine the United Farm Workers (UFW) activism that began in 1965 under the late Cesar Chavez and culminated in 1975 with the passage of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act. The achievements of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee in Ohio and Michigan during the 1980s and early 1990s is also compared with the relative failures of the UFW during that same time period, and the authors pay particular attention to the "control issues" that have been crucial among farm worker demands.
Download or read book The Farm Labor Movement in the Midwest written by W. K. Barger and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-07-22 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) was founded by Baldemar Velásquez in 1967 to challenge the poverty and powerlessness that confronted migrant farmworkers in the Midwest. This study documents FLOC's development through its first quarter century and analyzes its effectiveness as a social reform movement. Barger and Reza describe FLOC's founding as a sister organization of the United Farm Workers (UFW). They devote particular attention to FLOC's eight-year struggle (1978-1986) with the Campbell Soup company that led to three-way contracts for improved working conditions between FLOC, Campbell Soup, and Campbell's tomato and cucumber growers in Ohio and Michigan. This contract significantly changed the structure of agribusiness and instituted key reforms in American farm labor. The authors also address the processes of social change involved in FLOC actions. Their findings are based on extensive research among farmworkers, growers, and representatives of agribusiness, as well as personal involvement with FLOC leaders and supporters.
Download or read book The Fight in the Fields written by Susan Ferriss and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1997 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the fight of the United Farm Workers Union.
Download or read book Finding Latinx written by Paola Ramos and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2020-10-20 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Latinos across the United States are redefining identities, pushing boundaries, and awakening politically in powerful and surprising ways. Many—Afrolatino, indigenous, Muslim, queer and undocumented, living in large cities and small towns—are voices who have been chronically overlooked in how the diverse population of almost sixty million Latinos in the U.S. has been represented. No longer. In this empowering cross-country travelogue, journalist and activist Paola Ramos embarks on a journey to find the communities of people defining the controversial term, “Latinx.” She introduces us to the indigenous Oaxacans who rebuilt the main street in a post-industrial town in upstate New York, the “Las Poderosas” who fight for reproductive rights in Texas, the musicians in Milwaukee whose beats reassure others of their belonging, as well as drag queens, environmental activists, farmworkers, and the migrants detained at our border. Drawing on intensive field research as well as her own personal story, Ramos chronicles how “Latinx” has given rise to a sense of collectivity and solidarity among Latinos unseen in this country for decades. A vital and inspiring work of reportage, Finding Latinx calls on all of us to expand our understanding of what it means to be Latino and what it means to be American. The first step towards change, writes Ramos, is for us to recognize who we are.
Download or read book Freedom Farmers written by Monica M. White and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In May 1967, internationally renowned activist Fannie Lou Hamer purchased forty acres of land in the Mississippi Delta, launching the Freedom Farms Cooperative (FFC). A community-based rural and economic development project, FFC would grow to over 600 acres, offering a means for local sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and domestic workers to pursue community wellness, self-reliance, and political resistance. Life on the cooperative farm presented an alternative to the second wave of northern migration by African Americans--an opportunity to stay in the South, live off the land, and create a healthy community based upon building an alternative food system as a cooperative and collective effort. Freedom Farmers expands the historical narrative of the black freedom struggle to embrace the work, roles, and contributions of southern Black farmers and the organizations they formed. Whereas existing scholarship generally views agriculture as a site of oppression and exploitation of black people, this book reveals agriculture as a site of resistance and provides a historical foundation that adds meaning and context to current conversations around the resurgence of food justice/sovereignty movements in urban spaces like Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, New York City, and New Orleans.
Download or read book Strike written by Larry Dane Brimner and published by Astra Publishing House. This book was released on 2022-09-06 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Discover the important history of California’s migrant workers and their strike for fair wages during the Delano grape strike in the 1960’s *Learn about Latino civil rights activist César Chávez and Filipino-American labor organizer Larry Itliong *From Sibert award-winning author Larry Dane Brimner Here is the gripping story of the Grape Strike that stirred a nation, as well as the rise of Latino civil rights activist César Chávez and the United Farm Workers of America. In the 1960’s, while the United States was at war and racial tensions were boiling over, Filipino-American workers were demanding fair wages and decent living conditions in California’s vineyards. When the workers walked off the fields in September 1965, the great Delano grape strike began. Did the signing of labor contracts with growers in 1970 mean an end to the problems of the American field laborers, or was it a short-lived truce? This nonfiction book for young readers follows the five-year long strike and also provides details about César Chávez and the United Farm Workers. Award-winning author Larry Dane Brimner’s riveting text, complemented by black-and-white archival photographs and the words of workers, organizers, and growers, tells the powerful history.
Download or read book The New American Farmer written by Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-11-12 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of Latino/a immigrant farmers as they transition from farmworkers to farm owners that offers a new perspective on racial inequity and sustainable farming. Although the majority of farms in the United States have US-born owners who identify as white, a growing number of new farmers are immigrants, many of them from Mexico, who originally came to the United States looking for work in agriculture. In The New American Farmer, Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern explores the experiences of Latino/a immigrant farmers as they transition from farmworkers to farm owners, offering a new perspective on racial inequity and sustainable farming. She finds that many of these new farmers rely on farming practices from their home countries—including growing multiple crops simultaneously, using integrated pest management, maintaining small-scale production, and employing family labor—most of which are considered alternative farming techniques in the United States. Drawing on extensive interviews with farmers and organizers, Minkoff-Zern describes the social, economic, and political barriers immigrant farmers must overcome, from navigating USDA bureaucracy to racialized exclusion from opportunities. She discusses, among other topics, the history of discrimination against farm laborers in the United States; the invisibility of Latino/a farmers to government and universities; new farmers' sense of agrarian and racial identity; and the future of the agrarian class system. Minkoff-Zern argues that immigrant farmers, with their knowledge and experience of alternative farming practices, are—despite a range of challenges—actively and substantially contributing to the movement for an ecological and sustainable food system. Scholars and food activists should take notice.
Download or read book Trampling Out the Vintage written by Frank Bardacke and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2012-10-09 with total page 857 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In its heyday, the United Farm Workers was an embodiment of its slogan “Yes, we can”—in the form “¡Sí, Se Puede!”—winning many labor victories, securing collective bargaining rights for farm workers, and becoming a major voice for the Latino community. Today, it is a mere shadow of its former self. Trampling Out the Vintage is the authoritative and award-winning account of the rise and fall of the United Farm Workers and its most famous and controversial leader, Cesar Chavez. Based interviews conducted over many years—with farm workers, organizers, and the opponents and friends of the UFW—the book tells a story of collective action and empowerment rich in evocative detail and stirring human interest. Beginning with the influence of the ideas of Saul Alinsky and Catholic Social Action at the union’s founding, through the UFW’s thrilling triumphs in the California fields, the drama concludes with the debilitating internal struggles that effectively crippled the union. A vivid rendering of farm work and the world of the farm worker, Trampling Out the Vintage is a dramatic reappraisal of the political trajectory of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers and an essential re-evaluation of their most tumultuous years. Winner of the 2012 Hillman Prize in Book Journalism.
Download or read book The Union of Their Dreams written by Miriam Pawel and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-10-06 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named one of the Best Books of 2009 by the San Francisco Chronicle A Los Angeles Times Notable Book
Download or read book Campesino a Campesino written by Eric Holt-Giménez and published by Food First Books. This book was released on 2006 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Campesino a Campesino tells the inspiring story of a true grassroots movement: poor peasant farmers teaching one another how to protect their environment while still earning a living. The first book in English about the farmer-led sustainable agriculture movement in Latin America, Campesino a Campesino includes lots of first-person stories and commentary from the farmer-teachers, mixing personal accounts with detailed analysis of the political, socioeconomic, and ecological factors that galvanized the movement. Campesino farmer leading a farmer to farmer training session in Mexico by Eric Holt-GimenezMany years ago, author Eric Holt-Gim�nez was a volunteer trying to teach sustainable agriculture techniques in the dusty highlands of central Mexico, with little success. Near the end of his tenure, he invited a group of visiting Guatemalan farmers to teach a course in his village. What he saw was like nothing he had known. The Guatemalans used parables, stories, and humor to present agricultural improvement to their Mexican compadres as a logical outcome of clear thinking and compassion; love of farming, of family, of nature, and of community. Rather than try to convince the Mexicans of their innovations, they insisted they experiment new things on a small scale first to see how well they worked. And they saw themselves as students, respecting the Mexicans' deep, lifelong knowledge of their own particular land and climate. All they asked in return was that the Mexicans turn around and share their new knowledge with others--which they did. CAC campo3_photo by Food FirstThis exchange was typical of a grassroots movement called Campesino a Campesino, or Farmer to Farmer, which has grown up in southern Mexico and war-torn Central America over the last three decades. In the book Campesino a Campesino, Holt-Gim�nez writes the first history of the movement, describing the social, political, economic, and environmental circumstances that shape it. The voices and stories of dozens of farmers in the movement are captured, bringing to vivid life this hopeful story of peasant farmers helping one another to farm sustainably, protecting their land, their environment, and their families' future.
Download or read book From the Jaws of Victory written by Matt García and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Jaws of Victory:The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker Movement is the most comprehensive history ever written on the meteoric rise and precipitous decline of the United Farm Workers, the most successful farm labor union in United States history. Based on little-known sources and one-of-a-kind oral histories with many veterans of the farm worker movement, this book revises much of what we know about the UFW. Matt Garcia’s gripping account of the expansion of the union’s grape boycott reveals how the boycott, which UFW leader Cesar Chavez initially resisted, became the defining feature of the movement and drove the growers to sign labor contracts in 1970. Garcia vividly relates how, as the union expanded and the boycott spread across the United States, Canada, and Europe, Chavez found it more difficult to organize workers and fend off rival unions. Ultimately, the union was a victim of its own success and Chavez’s growing instability. From the Jaws of Victory delves deeply into Chavez’s attitudes and beliefs, and how they changed over time. Garcia also presents in-depth studies of other leaders in the UFW, including Gilbert Padilla, Marshall Ganz, Dolores Huerta, and Jerry Cohen. He introduces figures such as the co-coordinator of the boycott, Jerry Brown; the undisputed leader of the international boycott, Elaine Elinson; and Harry Kubo, the Japanese American farmer who led a successful campaign against the UFW in the mid-1970s.
Download or read book So Shall Ye Reap written by Joan London and published by New York : Crowell. This book was released on 1970 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the farm labor movement from its roots in the nineteenth century to the conclusion of the graps strike.
Download or read book Dubious Alliance written by John Earl Haynes and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1984 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dubious Alliance was first published in 1984. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The formation of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party of Minnesota took place in a context of intense factional struggle that lasted from the death of Governor Floyd B. Olson in 1936 to the election of Hubert Humphrey to the U.S. Senate in 1948. Dubious Alliance, the first full account of this critical chapter in the state's political history, has wider significance not only because many of the leading figures in the story have played a role in national politics, but also because it deals with issues—chief among them, the origins of Cold War liberalism— that matter far beyond the boundaries of a single state. John Haynes follows the struggle from its inception to the postwar battle within the new DFL between Popular Front adherents and anti-Communist liberals led by Minneapolis Mayor Hubert Humphrey. He makes clear that the struggle with the Popular Front was the formative political experience of Humphrey's generation; those who fought with him, and who became active in national politics—Orville Freeman, Eugene McCarthy, Walter Mondale, Donald Fraser—did not seriously question Cold War foreign policy till well into the Vietnam era. Thorough and dispassionate, this book will help today's readers better understand the DFL's birth and the struggle that surrounded it—complex events long obscured by Cold War fears and political myth-making. John Earl Haynes is a historian by training—he earned his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota—and also a specialist in tax policy. He was an adviser to Governor Wendell Anderson and later served as a congressional aide to Anderson and to Representative Martin Sabo. Haynes is now Director of Tax and Credit Analysis for the state of Minnesota.
Download or read book The Crusades of Cesar Chavez written by Miriam Pawel and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-03-25 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist Winner of the California Book Award A searching portrait of an iconic figure long shrouded in myth by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of an acclaimed history of Chavez's movement. Cesar Chavez founded a labor union, launched a movement, and inspired a generation. He rose from migrant worker to national icon, becoming one of the great charismatic leaders of the 20th century. Two decades after his death, Chavez remains the most significant Latino leader in US history. Yet his life story has been told only in hagiography-until now. In the first comprehensive biography of Chavez, Miriam Pawel offers a searching yet empathetic portrayal. Chavez emerges here as a visionary figure with tragic flaws; a brilliant strategist who sometimes stumbled; and a canny, streetwise organizer whose pragmatism was often at odds with his elusive, soaring dreams. He was an experimental thinker with eclectic passions-an avid, self-educated historian and a disciple of Gandhian non-violent protest. Drawing on thousands of documents and scores of interviews, this superbly written life deepens our understanding of one of Chavez's most salient qualities: his profound humanity. Pawel traces Chavez's remarkable career as he conceived strategies that empowered the poor and vanquished California's powerful agriculture industry, and his later shift from inspirational leadership to a cult of personality, with tragic consequences for the union he had built. The Crusades of Cesar Chavez reveals how this most unlikely American hero ignited one of the great social movements of our time.
Download or read book Sal Si Puedes Escape If You Can written by Peter Matthiessen and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2014-03-31 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the summer of 1968 Peter Matthiessen met Cesar Chavez for the first time. They were the same age: forty-one. Matthiessen lived in New York City, while Chavez lived in the Central Valley farm town of Delano, where the grape strike was unfolding. This book is Matthiessen’s panoramic yet finely detailed account of the three years he spent working and traveling with Chavez, including to Sal Si Puedes, the San Jose barrio where Chavez began his organizing. Matthiessen provides a candid look into the many sides of this enigmatic and charismatic leader who lived by the laws of nonviolence. Sal Si Puedes is less reportage than living history. In its pages a whole era comes alive: the Chicano, Black Power, and antiwar movements; the browning of the labor movement; Chavez’s fasts; the nationwide boycott of California grapes. When Chavez died in 1993, tens of thousands gathered at his funeral. It was a clear sign of how beloved he was and how important his life had been. A new foreword by Marc Grossman considers the significance of Chavez’s legacy for our time. As well as serving as an indispensable guide to the 1960s, this book rejuvenates the extraordinary vitality of Chavez’s life and spirit, giving his message a renewed and much-needed urgency.
Download or read book Grounds for Dreaming written by Lori A. Flores and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-05 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Known as “The Salad Bowl of the World,” California’s Salinas Valley became an agricultural empire due to the toil of diverse farmworkers, including Latinos. A sweeping critical history of how Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants organized for their rights in the decades leading up to the seminal strikes led by Cesar Chavez, this important work also looks closely at how different groups of Mexicans—U.S. born, bracero, and undocumented—confronted and interacted with one another during this period. An incisive study of labor, migration, race, gender, citizenship, and class, Lori Flores’s first book offers crucial insights for today’s ever-growing U.S. Latino demographic, the farmworker rights movement, and future immigration policy.
Download or read book Colonial Migrants at the Heart of Empire written by Ismael García-Colón and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2020-02-18 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Colonial Migrants at the Heart of Empire is the first in-depth look at the experiences of Puerto Rican migrant workers in continental U.S. agriculture in the twentieth century. The Farm Labor Program, established by the government of Puerto Rico in 1947, placed hundreds of thousands of migrant workers on U.S. farms and fostered the emergence of many stateside Puerto Rican communities. Ismael García-Colón investigates the origins and development of this program and uncovers the unique challenges faced by its participants. A labor history and an ethnography, Colonial Migrants evokes the violence, fieldwork, food, lodging, surveillance, and coercion that these workers experienced on farms and conveys their hopes and struggles to overcome poverty. Island farmworkers encountered a unique form of prejudice and racism arising from their dual status as both U.S. citizens and as “foreign others,” and their experiences were further shaped by evolving immigration policies. Despite these challenges, many Puerto Rican farmworkers ultimately chose to settle in rural U.S. communities, contributing to the production of food and the Latinization of the U.S. farm labor force.
