title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: Baltimore's defensive line was anchored by Pro Bowl defensive end Haloti Ngata, who compiled 51 tackles and 5 sacks, along with defensive tackle Arthur Jones (47 tackles, 4.5 sacks). The Ravens also had an excellent set of linebackers, such as Paul Kruger, Dannell Ellerbe, Jameel McClain, Terrell Suggs, and Ray Lewis. Kruger led the team in sacks with 9, while Ellerbe added 92 tackles and 4.5 sacks. McClain had 79 tackles. Suggs, a ten-year veteran and five-time Pro Bowl selection, who had missed the first half of the regular season with a partially torn Achilles tendon, made a speedy recovery and was key in the Ravens' win over the Broncos in the divisional round of the playoffs with 2 sacks on Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning. Lewis, a 17-year veteran and 13-time Pro Bowl selection, had missed most of the season with an arm injury, but still managed to rack up 57 tackles in just 6 games. Then shortly before returning for the playoffs, he announced his plans to retire after the postseason, and promptly went on to amass 44 tackles in Baltimore's four playoff games.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: The Ravens secondary featured Pro Bowl safety Ed Reed, the NFL's all-time leader in interception return yardage. Reed had another statistically successful season in 2012, recording 58 tackles and 4 interceptions. Cornerback Cary Williams was also a big contributor with 4 interceptions and 75 tackles.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: The team dedicated their 2012 season to former owner and founder Art Modell, who died on September 6, 2012, four days before the first regular season game.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: The 49ers had recently emerged as a dominant team after nearly a decade of ineptitude. During the 1980s and 1990s, they had been one of the NFL top contenders, playing in ten conference championship games and winning five Super Bowls. But after a strong 2002 season, San Francisco went into a dismal slump in which they failed to make the playoffs for eight consecutive seasons. Following the end of the 2010 season, the 49ers hired Jim Harbaugh as their head coach. Harbaugh, who played 14 years in the NFL, joined the team after an impressive 12–1 season as the coach of Stanford, and in his first season with San Francisco he managed to turn their fortunes around, aided by breakout seasons from quarterback Alex Smith and receiver Michael Crabtree.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: Smith entered the 2012 season as the starting quarterback, but missed two starts mid-season after suffering a concussion, and second-year backup Colin Kaepernick successfully filled in. A quarterback controversy then began because Smith was ranked third in the NFL in passer rating (104.1), led the league in completion percentage (70%), and had been 19–5–1 as a starter under Harbaugh, while Kaepernick was considered more dynamic with his scrambling ability and arm strength. After Smith was fully recovered, Harbaugh chose Kaepernick as the starter for the 8–2–1 49ers, but also stated that the assignment was week-to-week and not necessarily permanent. Kaepernick ended up being the starter for the rest of the season and led the team to an 11–4–1 record, throwing for 1,814 yards and 10 touchdowns, with just 3 interceptions and a 98.4 passer rating, while also rushing for 415 yards and 5 touchdowns.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: San Francisco's top receiver was Crabtree, who caught 85 passes for a career-high 1,105 yards and 9 touchdowns. Other key contributors to the passing game included tight end Vernon Davis (41 receptions for 538 yards and 5 touchdowns) along with offseason acquired receivers Mario Manningham and Randy Moss. Manningham had been signed away from the defending Super Bowl champion New York Giants, while Moss, the NFL's second all-time leader in receiving yards, had been signed out of retirement after missing the previous season. The 49ers' backfield featured Pro Bowl running back Frank Gore, who rushed for 1,214 yards and 8 touchdowns, while also catching 28 passes for 234 yards and another score. The team also had a strong offensive line with two Pro Bowl linemen, left tackle Joe Staley and left guard Mike Iupati.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: On special teams, punter Andy Lee led the NFL in net yards per punt (43.2) and ranked 5th in gross yards per punt (48.1). He planted 36 punts inside the 20-yard line with just 5 touchbacks. Kicker David Akers had a relatively bad year overall, converting only 69 percent of his field goal attempts, but in the week 1 contest against the Green Bay Packers tied the NFL record for the longest field goal with a successful 63-yard attempt. Receiver Ted Ginn Jr. returned 32 punts for 326 yards and 11 kickoffs for 253.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: The 49ers' strongest unit was their defense, which ranked 2nd in fewest points allowed per game (17.1) and sent 6 of their 11 starters to the Pro Bowl. Pro Bowl defensive end Justin Smith led the line with 66 tackles and 3 sacks. Behind him, all four of the team's starting linebackers—Aldon Smith, NaVorro Bowman, Patrick Willis and Ahmad Brooks—were named to the 2012 All-Pro Team, and all but Brooks made the Pro Bowl. Aldon Smith set a franchise record with 19.5 sacks, more than the rest of the team had combined. Willis ranked second on the team with 120 tackles and picked off two passes, while Bowman's 149 tackles were second most in the NFL. The 49ers secondary featured Pro Bowl safeties Dashon Goldson and Donte Whitner.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: Baltimore finished the season as the AFC North champion and the number 4 seed in the AFC. The Ravens began their playoff run at home against the number 5 seed Indianapolis Colts in the Wild-Card round in what would turn out to be Ray Lewis's final career home game. They defeated the Colts 24–9, with Flacco throwing for 288 yards and two touchdowns, while their defense held the Colts to just 9 points, 13 below their regular season average.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: In the divisional round, the Ravens would face the top-seeded Denver Broncos, who came into the game with an 11-game winning streak. Baltimore fell behind late in the game, but with less than a minute left on the clock, Flacco's 70-yard touchdown pass to Jacoby Jones sent it into overtime, a play that is known as the Mile High Miracle. An interception by Corey Graham from Peyton Manning late in the first overtime period set up Tucker's 47-yard field goal to win the game 1:42 into double overtime.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: Finally, Baltimore advanced to the Super Bowl by overcoming a 13-7 halftime deficit and then beating the second-seeded New England Patriots in the AFC Championship Game 28–13, avenging the Ravens' loss against New England in the 2011 AFC Championship Game, forcing three turnovers total, intercepting two of Tom Brady's passes, and keeping the Patriots scoreless in the second half. By winning the game, the Ravens handed Brady his first (and only) AFC Championship Game loss at home.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: As the NFC West champion and the number 2 seed in the NFC, San Francisco earned a first-round bye. The 49ers started their playoff run against the number 3 seed Green Bay Packers in the divisional round. Jim Harbaugh's decision to start Kaepernick for the playoffs came into immediate question when he threw an interception that was returned for a touchdown by Sam Shields on their opening drive, but this turned out to be the only miscue he would make for the rest of the game, as well as the only interception he would throw until the Super Bowl. By the end of the game, Kaepernick racked up 444 total yards (more than the entire Packers team), including 181 rushing yards, the NFL single game record for rushing yards by a quarterback, as the 49ers went on to win easily, 45–31.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: They then faced the top-seeded Atlanta Falcons in the NFC Championship Game, where they quickly fell behind 17–0 in the first half. No team in NFC Championship Game history had ever overcome a deficit that large, but the 49ers proved up to the challenge, cutting the score to 24–21 going into the final quarter. Late in the game, their comeback hopes suffered a setback when Crabtree lost a fumble on the 1-yard line as he was going in for the leading score. However, their defense forced a punt, and Ted Ginn Jr.'s 20-yard return set up a touchdown run by Gore. The defense then held firm, forcing a turnover on downs at their 10-yard line to secure the victory.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: This was the first Super Bowl since Super Bowl XXXVII ten years prior that did not feature the New England Patriots, Indianapolis Colts, or the Pittsburgh Steelers as the AFC representatives, and the only Super Bowl between 2003 and 2019 not to feature Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger or Peyton Manning. Baltimore defeated the Colts and Patriots during the playoffs while the Steelers failed to make the playoffs. By contrast, the NFC had a different member go to the Super Bowl almost every year during that same span, with the New York Giants (who won Super Bowls XLII and XLVI) being the only NFC team to make two appearances during that span. With the 49ers making their first Super Bowl appearance since Super Bowl XXIX, this left the Dallas Cowboys (last appeared in Super Bowl XXX), Detroit Lions (never appeared in a Super Bowl), Minnesota Vikings (last appeared in Super Bowl XI) and Washington Redskins (last appeared in Super Bowl XXVI) as the only NFC teams not to play in a Super Bowl since 1998, with only the Vikings (on three occasions) even advancing to the NFC Championship Game.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: This was the sixth time in seven seasons in which one of the participants advanced to the Super Bowl after not having a first-round bye in the Wild Card playoffs, and was the last time to occur under the twelve team playoff structure.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: The 49ers attempted to follow the 2012 World Series championship victory of Major League Baseball's San Francisco Giants. The last time a metropolitan area won the World Series and Super Bowl in the same season was when the Boston Red Sox won the 2004 World Series followed by the Patriots winning Super Bowl XXXIX (and the Patriots won Super Bowl XXXVIII earlier in 2004).


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: As the 49ers – who were attempting to join the New York Giants and Green Bay Packers as the only teams to win a Super Bowl in three decades – were the designated home team in the annual rotation between AFC and NFC teams, San Francisco elected to wear their red jerseys, which they wore in Super Bowls XIX, XXIII, and XXIX (wearing an alternate throwback red jersey with three-dimensional numerals in XXIX), and gold pants (worn in their first four Super Bowl appearances) for the first time since Super Bowl XXIV (having worn white pants in XXIX along with the aforementioned throwback jerseys). The Ravens wore white jerseys as they did in Super Bowl XXXV, but with black-colored pants this time instead of white. Due to the Ravens having their Art Modell memorial patch on the left side of their jerseys, the team wore their Super Bowl XLVII patch on the right side.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: Much of the pregame media hype centered around the Harbaugh brothers, and how their father Jack, a former college football head coach, raised them. On January 24, Jack, along with his wife Jackie and daughter Joani, conducted a media conference call, answering questions about John and Jim. Jackie jokingly asked if the game could end in a tie, before stating that the family was staying neutral but remain excited that both John and Jim brought their respective teams to the Super Bowl. The Harbaugh brothers then conducted a joint press conference on the Friday before the game, which is unusual for opposing Super Bowl coaches, but it was done because of the historic nature of the game.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: The game was carried by CBS in the United States, with Jim Nantz calling play-by-play and Phil Simms as color analyst. For the second consecutive year, a webcast was provided; this time on CBSSports.com. A special episode of "Elementary" would be the lead-out program of this Super Bowl. The network's owned and operated stations in Baltimore and San Francisco, WJZ-TV (originally an ABC affiliate) and KPIX-TV respectively, were for many years owned by Westinghouse Broadcasting, which merged with CBS in 1995. Thus, this became the first CBS-aired Super Bowl to involve two former Westinghouse markets since the merger. Additionally, this Super Bowl gave CBS the distinction of televising both of the Ravens' appearances (and victories) so far (after Super Bowl XXXV in 2001).


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: The game was later featured as one of the "NFL's Greatest Games" under the title "Change of Momentum".


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: A feed designed for areas less familiar with American football was produced by NFL Network, with Bob Papa (the regular-season voice of the New York Giants) calling play-by-play and Joe Theismann as color analyst. The NFL claimed that their feed would go to 180 countries.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: According to CBS, the price of a 30-second advertisement hit a record high US $4,000,000. General Motors announced it would not advertise on the game, citing the advertising costs.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: Adbowl had a special theme this year for the Super Bowl, called "Catbowl 2013", which pitted the best commercials by votes with cat videos to see which one is more popular.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: The advertisers for Super Bowl XLVII included Mercedes-Benz, Gildan, Samsung, BlackBerry, Kraft Foods, Subway, Taco Bell, Procter & Gamble, Best Buy, Coca-Cola, Sodastream, PepsiCo (including entries in the Doritos Crash the Super Bowl contest), Axe, Audi, Kia Motors, Ford Motor Company, Wonderful Pistachios, GoDaddy, and perpetual Super Bowl advertiser Anheuser-Busch. Ram Trucks and the Future Farmers of America ran a two-minute commercial based on the Paul Harvey speech "So God Made a Farmer." Movie studios Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios and Walt Disney Studios paying for movie trailers to be aired during the Super Bowl. With Paramount paying for "Star Trek Into Darkness" and "World War Z", Universal paying for the debut trailer for "Fast & Furious 6" that followed "Monsters vs. Aliens"' footsteps and Disney paying for "Iron Man 3", "The Lone Ranger" and "Oz the Great and Powerful".


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: In the United States, the game was carried nationwide over the Dial Global radio network, with Kevin Harlan as play-by-play announcer, Boomer Esiason as color analyst, and James Lofton and Mark Malone as sideline reporters. Univision Radio broadcast the game in Spanish.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: Each team's flagship station also carried the game: WIYY and WBAL broadcast the game in Baltimore, with Gerry Sandusky on play-by-play and Stan White and Qadry Ismail on color commentary. In San Francisco, the game was broadcast on KSAN-FM and KNBR, with Ted Robinson on play-by-play, Eric Davis on color commentary, and Rod Brooks reporting from the sidelines. Both WBAL and KNBR are clear-channel stations, which allowed the local commentaries to be heard throughout the Eastern and Western United States, respectively. Per contractual rules, the rest of the stations in the 49ers' and Ravens' radio networks carried the Dial Global feed.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: Sirius XM Radio and NFL Audio Pass carried the local, Dial Global, and select international audio feeds.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: On January 18, 2013, the league announced that Alicia Keys would sing the national anthem. Keys stated that she would not perform the song traditionally and instead would perform it as if it were "a brand new song."


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: Singer Jennifer Hudson and a chorus of several students from Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, performed "America the Beautiful" as a tribute to the 26 students and staff murdered at the school the previous year.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: The coin toss ceremony featured the recent inductees to the Pro Football Hall of Fame: Larry Allen, Cris Carter, Curley Culp, Warren Sapp, Bill Parcells, Jonathan Ogden, and Dave Robinson.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: On October 16, 2012, Beyoncé was chosen as the headline performer for the Super Bowl halftime show, with a reunited Destiny's Child also appearing as part of the show.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: Despite initial reports that mentioned that Beyoncé's husband, Jay Z, was a potential collaborator on the show, he did not make an appearance.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: San Francisco was hurt by penalties and turnovers early in the game as the Ravens built a 21–6 first-half lead. On their first play of the opening drive, tight end Vernon Davis's 20-yard reception was called back by an illegal formation penalty. The team ended up punting after three more plays, and Jacoby Jones returned the ball 17 yards to the Ravens' 49-yard line. Baltimore then drove 51 yards, scoring on Joe Flacco's 13-yard touchdown pass to receiver Anquan Boldin. Flacco had previously thrown a third-down incompletion, but an offsides penalty against linebacker Ahmad Brooks gave him a second chance.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: San Francisco responded on their next possession, moving the ball 62 yards in a 12-play drive, with quarterback Colin Kaepernick completing a 19-yard pass to Michael Crabtree and a 24-yarder to Davis. David Akers finished the drive with a 36-yard field goal to cut the score to 7–3. Baltimore responded with a drive to the 49ers' 37-yard line, featuring a 30-yard catch by Boldin, but came up empty after Flacco was sacked on third down for a 5-yard loss by defensive tackle Ray McDonald, pushing the Ravens out of field goal range.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: Five plays into the 49ers' next drive, linebacker Courtney Upshaw forced a fumble from running back LaMichael James, and Baltimore's Arthur Jones recovered it on the Ravens' 25-yard line. Baltimore drove 75 yards on 10 plays, 52 of those came from a 23-yard and a 14-yard pass to tight end Ed Dickson, the second followed by a 15-yard facemask penalty on Donte Whitner. Dennis Pitta caught a 1-yard touchdown catch on the final play of the drive and the extra point made the score 14–3.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: On the first play of the next drive, Ed Reed intercepted a pass by Kaepernick and returned the ball 6 yards to the 49ers' 38-yard line. This was the first interception thrown by San Francisco in any of their six Super Bowl appearances. Unnecessary roughness charges were called after the play on players from both teams so the charges offset. Baltimore reached the red zone on their next drive, but was unable to score. Following a one-yard run by Bernard Pierce and two incomplete passes, rookie kicker Justin Tucker was tackled 1 yard short of a first down while running the ball on a fake field goal play.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: San Francisco was forced to a three-and-out on the drive. Jones muffed the punt, but recovered the ball and returned it 11 yards to the Ravens' 44-yard line. Two plays later, Jones made a falling catch deep down the field, then got back up and eluded two 49ers defensive backs en route to a 56-yard touchdown reception, making the score 21–3 with less than two minutes to go in the first half. On the second play of San Francisco's next drive, tight end Delanie Walker caught a 14-yard pass from Kaepernick, which was extended by a 15-yard roughing the passer penalty against Haloti Ngata. After an incomplete first down attempt, Walker received another 28-yard pass, putting San Francisco on the Baltimore 17-yard line. San Francisco reached the 9-yard line, but were unable to convert on three plays. On the last play of the half, Akers kicked his second field goal to cut their deficit to 21–6.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: On the second-half kickoff, Jacoby Jones fielded the kick and promptly returned it 108 yards for the longest play in Super Bowl history. It broke the previous 104-yard record for the longest kickoff return in the playoffs (set by Trindon Holliday of the Denver Broncos in the divisional playoff game earlier that year against Baltimore), and it tied an NFL record already held by Jones and shared with Ellis Hobbs and Randall Cobb for the longest kickoff return. With the extra point, Baltimore was now leading 28–6.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: Shortly into the 49ers' next drive, a power outage caused the lights to go out in half of the stadium, stopping play for 34 minutes. The outage was caused by equipment failure at the stadium.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: After play resumed, both teams punted once. Then San Francisco drove 80 yards, with Kaepernick rushing for 15 yards and completing an 18-yard pass to Davis before finishing the drive with a pass to Crabtree, who broke through two potential Ravens tacklers on the way to a 31-yard touchdown reception. Then Baltimore was forced to punt from their own 9-yard line following Brooks' 8-yard sack of Flacco on third down, and Ted Ginn Jr. returned the ball 32 yards to the 20 before being shoved out of bounds by punter Sam Koch. Kaepernick completed a 14-yard pass to Davis on the next play, and Gore followed it up with a 6-yard touchdown run, cutting the score to 28–20.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: On the second play of the fourth quarter, Baltimore committed their first turnover when defensive back Tarell Brown forced and recovered a fumble from Ray Rice on the Ravens' 25-yard line. Three plays later, Akers missed (went wide left) on a 39-yard field goal attempt, but Baltimore's Chykie Brown was penalized for running into the kicker, and Akers' second attempt was good from 34 yards, trimming the lead to 28–23.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: The Ravens responded on their ensuing possession, moving the ball 77 yards and advancing to the San Francisco 1-yard line, with Boldin catching two passes for 39 yards. But they were unable to reach the end zone and settled for Tucker's 19-yard field goal to put them back up by 8 points, 31–23. San Francisco stormed back, scoring in just five plays. Following a 32-yard reception by Randy Moss and a 21-yard burst by Gore, Kaepernick took the ball across the goal line on a 15-yard run, the longest touchdown run by a quarterback in Super Bowl history. However, the ensuing two-point conversion failed, so the 49ers were unable to break the deficit, still trailing at 31–29.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: On the Ravens' ensuing drive, Boldin caught two passes for 22 yards and Rice rushed for 11 yards as the team moved the ball 55 yards and scored on Tucker's 38-yard field goal, making the score 34–29 with 4:19 left in regulation. San Francisco used up two timeouts on their next drive, but managed to move the ball to a first and goal on the Ravens' 7-yard line following a 24-yard catch by Crabtree and a 33-yard run by Gore.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: With four chances to take the lead, San Francisco started out with a 2-yard run by James to the 5-yard line. Then Kaepernick threw two incompletions, bringing up fourth down. On their last chance, Kaepernick tried to throw the ball to Crabtree in the end zone, but it was too far ahead and the pass fell incomplete. Defensive back Jimmy Smith and Crabtree both made contact prior to the ball arriving, but no penalty was called and the 49ers turned the ball over on downs with 1:46 left in the game.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: San Francisco managed to force a three-and-out on the Ravens' next drive, but as they had only one timeout remaining, the Ravens were able to run the clock down to twelve seconds. On fourth down, and after the Ravens then called a timeout of their own, punter Sam Koch fielded the snap in his own end zone. In an effort to kill as much of the twelve remaining seconds on the clock, Koch was instructed not to punt the ball but rather hang on to it and scramble around in the end zone. Koch was able to scramble for eight seconds before giving up an intentional safety by running out of the side of the end zone, leaving just four seconds remaining. On the ensuing free kick, Ginn returned the ball 31 yards, but was tackled at midfield by linebacker Josh Bynes as time expired.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: Play was interrupted for 34 minutes because of a 22-minute partial power outage. The power failed with 13:22 remaining in the third quarter with the Ravens leading 28–6. Emergency generators provided backup lighting. The New Orleans Fire Department rescued people from elevator seven, but other elevators were brought to the ground uneventfully. Attendees used double the usual amount of data for their cell phones. AT&T reported 78 gigabytes (GB) downloaded from 8 to 9 PM, about double from the peak the year before. NFL chief security officer Jeffrey Miller attributed fans' calmness to their preoccupation with their electronics.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: SMG, the Superdome's management company, recently upgraded electrical systems at the facility. In an October 15, 2012 memo, Louisiana officials expressed concern that the equipment bringing electricity into the stadium from utility company Entergy had a "chance of failure". Authorities subsequently spent nearly $1 million on upgrades to the stadium, more than half of that paid to Allstar Electric to upgrade electrical feeder cables.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: Entergy and SMG both said the problem was in interconnection equipment, and SMG hired a third party to investigate. Investigations homed in on a newly installed switchgear. Entergy installed a pair of relays made by Rogers Park's S&C Electric Company of Rogers Park, Chicago to ensure continued power supply in case one supply line failed. One of those relays tripped. Subsequent tests showed one of the relays functioned properly and the other did not. S&C Electric Co. claims the relay's trip setting was too low, but Entergy claims that the two were set identically.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: Electricity usage during the game was on par with a regular New Orleans Saints game. The halftime show was powered by a generator that did not impact the stadium's power.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: CBS-TV viewers were shown the half-lit Superdome interior. The main broadcast booth was off line; sideline reporter Steve Tasker informed the audience that "a click of the lights" had occurred and play had been halted. Ray Lewis later stated in an interview that he believed the blackout was part of a conspiracy, saying "You're a zillion dollar company and your lights go out? No. No way." 49ers CEO Jed York responded to the claim on Twitter in jest, tweeting "There is no conspiracy. I pulled the plug."


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: The teams combined for a Super Bowl-record 312 kickoff return yards. The Ravens scored the same number of points (34) in both of their Super Bowl appearances. Meanwhile, the 49ers became just the second team to lose the Super Bowl while scoring more than 30 points (joining the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl XIII; the New England Patriots would join this list in Super Bowl LII).


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: For the Ravens, Anquan Boldin was the leading receiver with 6 receptions for 106 yards and a touchdown. Paul Kruger had three tackles and two sacks, while Ed Reed had five tackles and an interception. Reed's interception gave him 9 career postseason picks, tying the NFL record. Dannell Ellerbe had nine tackles, while Ray Lewis had seven tackles in the final game of his 17-season career.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: Baltimore's Jacoby Jones returned 5 kickoffs for 208 yards and a touchdown, two punts for 28 yards, and caught a 56-yard touchdown pass. He tied an NFL league record and set a Super Bowl record for longest kickoff return in a Super Bowl with a 108-yard return to open up the second half. Jones also set or tied the following records: the record for most combined yards in a Super Bowl game with 290, tied the record for most touchdown plays of 50 yards or more, with 2 and became the first player to score a receiving touchdown and return touchdown in a Super Bowl.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: For San Francisco, Colin Kaepernick completed 16 of 28 passes for 302 yards and a touchdown, while also rushing for 62 yards and another score, but had 1 interception. His 62 rushing yards were the second highest total by a quarterback in the Super Bowl, behind Tennessee Titans quarterback Steve McNair's record of 64 in Super Bowl XXXIV. Kaepernick also set a Super Bowl record for the longest rushing touchdown from a quarterback for his 15-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter. This beat the previous 6-yard record held by the 49ers' Joe Montana achieved in Super Bowl XIX.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: Frank Gore rushed for 110 yards and a touchdown. Michael Crabtree caught 5 passes for 109 yards and a touchdown, while Davis caught 6 passes for 104 yards. His 104 receiving yards tied Dan Ross's record for the most ever by a tight end in a Super Bowl. Patrick Willis was the top tackler of the game with 10, while Brooks had five tackles and a sack.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: Because of the power outage in the third quarter, the game set a Super Bowl record long running time of 4 hours and 14 minutes. During the presentation of the Vince Lombardi Trophy, Hall of Fame defensive end Richard Dent brought the trophy to the stage. Twitter announced that a record 24.1 million tweets were sent the night of the game.


title: Super Bowl XLVII

text: Officials wore the full-length black pants, introduced for cold weather in 2006, for the first time in a Super Bowl. The black pants were made mandatory during the 2012 season. The previous six Super Bowls were played either in Florida or a retractable-roof stadium with the roof closed, warm enough for officials to wear the traditional white knickers.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: Cesar Chavez (born Cesario Estrada Chavez ; ; March 31, 1927 – April 23, 1993) was an American labor leader and civil rights activist. Along with Dolores Huerta, he co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), which later merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) to become the United Farm Workers (UFW) labor union. Ideologically, his world-view combined leftist politics with Catholic social teachings.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: Born in Yuma, Arizona to a Mexican American family, Chavez began his working life as a manual laborer before spending two years in the United States Navy. Relocating to California, where he married, he got involved in the Community Service Organization (CSO), through which he helped laborers register to vote. In 1959, he became the CSO's national director, a position based in Los Angeles. In 1962, he left the CSO to co-found the NFWA, based in Delano, California, through which he launched an insurance scheme, a credit union, and the "El Malcriado" newspaper for farmworkers. Later that decade he began organizing strikes among farmworkers, most notably the successful Delano grape strike of 1965–1970. Amid the grape strike his NFWA merged with Larry Itliong's AWOC to form the UFW in 1967. Influenced by the Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi, Chavez emphasized direct but nonviolent tactics, including pickets and boycotts, to pressure farm owners into granting strikers' demands. He imbued his campaigns with Roman Catholic symbolism, including public processions, masses, and fasts. He received much support from labor and leftist groups but was monitored by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).


title: Cesar Chavez

text: In the early 1970s, Chavez sought to expand the UFW's influence outside California by opening branches in other U.S. states. Viewing illegal immigrants as a major source of strike-breakers, he also pushed a campaign against illegal immigration into the U.S., which generated violence along the U.S.-Mexico border and caused schisms with many of the UFW's allies. Interested in co-operatives as a form of organization, he established a remote commune at Keene. His increased isolation and emphasis on unrelenting campaigning alienated many California farmworkers who had previously supported him and by 1973 the UFW had lost most of the contracts and membership it won during the late 1960s. His alliance with California Governor Jerry Brown helped ensure the passing of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, although the UFW's campaign to get its measures enshrined in California's constitution failed. Influenced by the Synanon religious organization, Chavez re-emphasized communal living and purged perceived opponents. Membership of the UFW dwindled in the 1980s, with Chavez refocusing on anti-pesticide campaigns and moving into real-estate development, generating controversy for his use of non-unionized laborers.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: A controversial figure, UFW critics raised concerns about Chavez's autocratic control of the union, the purges of those he deemed disloyal, and the personality cult built around him, while farm-owners considered him a communist subversive. He became an icon for organized labor and leftist groups in the U.S. and posthumously became a "folk saint" among Mexican Americans. His birthday is a federal commemorative holiday in several U.S. states, while many places are named after him, and in 1994 he posthumously received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: Cesario Estrada Chavez was born in Yuma, Arizona on March 31, 1927. He was named for his paternal grandfather, Cesario Chavez, a Mexican who had crossed into Texas in 1898. Cesario had established a successful wood haulage business near Yuma and in 1906 bought a farm in the Sonora Desert's North Gila Valley. Cesario had brought his wife Dorotea and eight children with him from Mexico; the youngest, Librado, was Cesar's father. Librado married Juana Estrada Chavez in the early 1920s. Born in Ascensión, Chihuahua, she had crossed into the U.S. with her mother as a baby. They lived in Picacho, California before moving to Yuma, where Juana worked as a farm laborer and then an assistant to the chancellor of the University of Arizona. Librado and Juana's first child, Rita, was born in August 1925, with their first son, Cesar, following nearly two years later. In November 1925, Librado and Juana bought a series of buildings near to the family home which included a pool hall, store, and living quarters. They soon fell into debt and were forced to sell these assets, in April 1929 moving into the "galera" storeroom of Librado's parental home, then owned by the widowed Dorotea.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: Chavez was raised in what his biographer Miriam Pawel called "a typical extended Mexican family"; she noted that they were "not well-off, but they were comfortable, well clothed, and never hungry". The family spoke in Spanish, and he was raised as a Roman Catholic, with his paternal grandmother Dorotea largely overseeing his religious instruction; his mother Juana engaged in forms of folk Catholicism, being a devotee of Santa Eduviges. As a child, Chavez was nicknamed "Manzi" in reference to his fondness for manzanilla tea. To entertain himself, he played handball and listened to boxing matches on the radio. One of six children, he had two sisters, Rita and Vicki, and two brothers, Richard and Librado.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: Cesario began attending Laguna Dam School in 1933; there, the speaking of Spanish was forbidden and Cesario was expected to change his name to Cesar. After Dorotea died in July 1937, the Yuma County local government auctioned off her farmstead to cover back taxes, and despite Librado's delaying tactics, the house and land were sold in 1939. This was a seminal experience for Cesar, who regarded it as an injustice against his family, with the banks, lawyers, and Anglo-American power structure as the villains of the incident. Influenced by his Roman Catholic beliefs, he increasingly came to see the poor as a source of moral goodness in society.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: The Chavez family joined the growing number of American migrants who were moving to California amid the Great Depression. First working as avocado pickers in Oxnard and then as pea pickers in Pescadero, the family made it to San Jose, where they first lived in a garage in the city's impoverished Mexican district. They moved regularly, and on weekends and holidays, Cesar joined his family in working as an agricultural laborer. In California, he moved schools many times, spending the longest time at Miguel Hidalgo Junior School; here, his grades were generally average, although he excelled at mathematics. At school, he faced ridicule for his poverty, while more broadly, he experienced anti-Latino prejudice from many European-Americans, with many establishments refusing to serve non-white customers. He graduated from junior high in June 1942, after which he left formal education and became a full-time farm laborer.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: In 1944, Chavez enlisted in the United States Navy, and was sent to the Naval Training Center San Diego. In July he was stationed at the U.S. base in Saipan, and six months later moved to Guam, where he was promoted to the rank of seaman first class. He was then stationed to San Francisco, where he decided to leave the Navy, receiving an honorable discharge in 1946. Relocating to Delano, California, where his family had settled, he returned to working as an agricultural laborer.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: In 1947, Chavez joined the National Farm Labor Union (NFLU), which, until its 1947 affiliation with the American Federation of Labor, was the Southern Tenant Farmers Union (STFU). (Later, the NFLU became the National Agricultural Workers Union.) That year, he was picketing cotton fields in Corcoran, near Delano, for the NFLU. The union had called a strike against the DiGiorgio grape fields in 1947. As in the STFU's strikes against cotton plantations in Arkansas, strikers formed "caravans" and marched around the perimeter of the DiGiorgio property, asking its workers to join them. Chavez led one of those caravans.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: Chavez entered a relationship with Helen Fabela, who soon became pregnant. They married in Reno, Nevada in October 1948; it was a double wedding, with Chavez's sister Rita marrying her fiancé at the same ceremony. By early 1949, Chavez and his new wife had settled in the Sal Si Puedes neighborhood of San Jose, where many of his other family members were now living. Their first child, Fernando, was born there in February 1949; a second, Sylvia, followed in February 1950; and then a third, Linda, in January 1951. The latter had been born shortly after they had relocated to Crescent City, where Chavez was employed in the lumber industry. They then returned to San Jose, where Chavez worked as an apricot picker and then as a lumber handler for the General Box Company.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: Here, he befriended two social justice activists, Fred Ross and Father Donald McDonnell, both European-Americans whose activism was primarily within the Mexican-American community. Chavez helped Ross establish a chapter of his Community Service Organization (CSO) in San Jose, and joined him in voter registration drives. He was soon voted vice president of the CSO chapter. He also helped McDonnell construct the first purpose-built church in Sal Si Puedes, the Our Lady of Guadalupe church, which was opened in December 1953. In turn, McDonnell lent Chavez books, encouraging the latter to develop a love of reading. Among the books were biographies of the saint Francis of Assisi, the U.S. labor organizers John L. Lewis and Eugene V. Debs, and the Indian independence activist Mahatma Gandhi, introducing Chavez to the ideas of non-violent protest.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: In late 1953, Chavez was laid off by the General Box Company. Ross then secured funds so that the CSO could employ Chavez as an organizer, traveling around California setting up other chapters. In this job, he traveled across Decoto, Salinas, Fresno, Brawley, San Bernardino, Madera, and Bakersfield. Many of the CSO chapters fell apart after Ross or Chavez ceased running them, and to prevent this Saul Alinsky advised them to unite the chapters, of which there were over twenty, into a self-sustaining national organization. In late 1955, Chavez returned to San Jose to rebuild the CSO chapter there so that it could sustain an employed full-time organizer. To raise funds, he opened a rummage store, organized a three-day carnival and sold Christmas trees, although often made a loss.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: In early 1957 he moved to Brawley to rebuild the chapter there. His repeated moving meant that his family were regularly uprooted; he saw little of his wife and children, and was absent for the birth of his sixth child.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: Chavez grew increasingly disillusioned with the CSO, believing that middle-class members were becoming increasingly dominant and were pushing its priorities and allocation of funds in directions he disapproved of; he for instance opposed the decision to hold the organization's 1957 convention in Fresco's Hacienda Hotel, arguing that its prices were prohibitive for poorer members. Amid the wider context of the Cold War and McCarthyite suspicions that leftist activism was a front for Marxist-Leninist groups, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began monitoring Chavez and opened a file on him.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: At Alinsky's instigation, the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA) paid $20,000 to the CSO for the latter to open a branch in Oxnard; Chavez became its organizer, working with the largely Mexican farm laborers. In Oxnard, Chavez worked to encourage voter registration. He repeatedly heard concerns from local Mexican-American laborers that they were being routinely passed over or fired so that employers could hire cheaper Mexican guest workers, or "braceros", in violation of federal law. To combat this practice, he established the CSO Employment Committee that launched a "registration campaign" through which unemployed farm-workers could sign their name to highlight their desire for work.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: The Committee targeted its criticism at Hector Zamora, the director of the Ventura County Farm Labor Association, who controlled the most jobs in the area. It also used sit ins of workers to raise the profile of their cause, a tactic also being used by proponents of the civil rights movement in the southern United States at that time. It had some success in getting companies to replace "braceros" with unemployed Americans. Its campaign also ensured that federal officials began properly investigating complaints about the use of "braceros" and received assurances from the state farm placement service that they would seek out unemployed Americans rather than automatically hiring "bracero" labor. In May, the Employment Committee was formerly transferred from the CSO to the UPWA.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: In 1959, Chavez moved to Los Angeles to become the CSO's national director. He, his wife, and (now) eight children settled into the largely Mexican neighborhood of Boyle Heights. He found the CSO's financial situation was bad, with even his own salary in jeopardy. He laid off several organizers to keep the organization afloat. He tried to organize a life insurance scheme among CSO members to raise funds, but this project failed to materialize. Under Chavez, the CSO secured financing from wealthier donors and organizations, usually to finance specific projects for a set period of time. The California American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) for instance paid it $12,000 to conduct voter registration schemes in six counties with high Mexican populations. The wealthy benefactor Katy Peake then offered it $50,000 over three years to organize California's farm workers. Under Chavez's leadership, the CSO assisted the successful campaign to get the government to extend the state pension to non-citizens who were permanent residents. At the ninth annual CSO convention in March 1962, Chavez resigned.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: In April 1962, Chavez and his family moved to Delano, California, an agricultural community in the southern San Joaquin Valley, where they rented a house on Kensington Street. He was intent on forming a labor union for farm workers but, to conceal this aim, told people that he was simply conducting a census of farm workers to determine their needs. He began devising the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), referring to it as a "movement" rather than a trade union. He was aided in this project both by his wife and by Dolores Huerta; according to Pawel, Huerta became his "indispensable, lifelong ally". Other key supporters of his project were the Reverend Jim Drake and other members of the California Migrant Ministry; although as a Roman Catholic Chavez was initially suspicious of these Protestant preachers, he came to view them as key allies.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: Chavez spent his days traveling around the San Joaquin Valley, meeting with workers and encouraging them to join his association. At the time, he lived off a combination of unemployment benefit, his wife's wage as a farmworker, and donations from friends and sympathizers. On September 30, 1962, he formalized the Association at a convention in Fresno. There, delegates elected Chavez as the group's general-director. They also agreed that, once the association had a life insurance policy up and running, members would start paying monthly dues of $3.50. The group adopted the motto "viva la causa" ("long live the cause") and a flag featuring a black eagle on a red and white background. At the organization's constitutional convention held in Fresno in January 1963, Chavez was elected president, with Huerta, Julio Hernandez, and Gilbert Padilla its vice presidents.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: Chavez wanted to control the NFWA's direction and to that end ensured that the role of the group's officers was largely ceremonial, with control of the group being primarily in the hands of the staff, headed by himself. At the NFWA's second convention, held in Delano in 1963, Chavez was retained as its general director while the role of the presidency was scrapped. That year, he began collecting membership dues, before establishing an insurance policy for FWA members. Later in the year he launched a credit union for NFWA members, having gained a state charter after the federal government refused him one. The NFWA attracted volunteers from other parts of the country. One of these, Bill Esher, became editor of the group's newspaper, "El Malcriado", which soon after launching increased its print run from 1000 to 3000 to meet demand.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: The NFWA was initially based out of Chavez's house although in September 1964 it moved its headquarters to an abandoned Pentecostal church in Albany Street, West Delano. During its second full year in operation the association more than doubled both its income and its expenditures. As it became more secure, it began to plan for its first strike. In April 1965, rose grafters approached the organization and requested help in organizing their strike for better working conditions. The strike targeted two companies, Mount Arbor and Conklin. Aided by the NFWA, the workers struck on May 3, and after four days the growers agreed to raise wages, and which the strikers returned to work. Following this success, Chavez's reputation began to filter through leftist activist circles across California.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: In September 1965, Filipino American farm workers, organized by the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), initiated the Delano grape strike to protest for higher wages. Chavez and his largely Mexican American supporters voted to support them. The strike covered an area of over 400 square miles; Chavez divided the picketers among four quadrants, each with a mobile crew led by a captain. As the picketers urged those who continued to work to join them on strike, the growers sought to provoke and threaten the strikers. Chavez insisted that the strikers must never respond with violence. The picketers also protested outside strike-breakers' homes, with the strike dividing many families and breaking friendships. Police monitored the protests, photographing many of those involved; they also arrested various strikers. To raise support for those arrested, Chavez called for donations at a speech in Berkeley's Sproul Plaza in October; he received over $1000. Many growers considered Chavez a communist, and the FBI launched an investigation into both him and the NFWA.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: In December, the United Automobile Workers (UAW) president Walter Reuther joined Chavez in a pro-strike protest march through Delano. This was the first time that the strike attracted national media attention. Reuther then pledged that the UAW would donate $5000 a month to be shared between the AWOC and NFWA. Chavez also met with representatives of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which became an important ally of the strikers. Influenced by the civil rights movement's successful use of boycott campaigns, Chavez decided to launch his own, targeting companies which owned Delano vineyards or sold grapes grown there. The first target selected, in December 1965, was the Schenley liquor company, which owned one of the area's smaller vineyards. Chavez organized pickets to take place in other cities where Schenley's grapes were being delivered for sale.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: By 1965, Chavez was aware that the numbers joining the picket lines had declined; although hundreds of pickers had initially struck, some had returned to their jobs, found employment elsewhere, or moved away from Delano. To keep the pickets going, Chavez invited left-wing activists from elsewhere to join them; many, particularly university students, came from the San Francisco Bay Area. Recruitment was fueled by coverage of the strike in the SNCC's newspaper, "The Movement", and the Marxist "People's World" newspaper. By late fall 1966, a protest camp had formed in Delano, opening its own medical clinic and children's nursery. Protesters were entertained by Luis Valdez's El Teatro Campesino, which put on skits with a political message. Within the protest movement there were some tensions between the striking farm-workers and the influx of student radicals.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: In March 1966, the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare's Subcommittee on Migratory Labor held three hearings in California. The third, which took place in Delano, was attended by Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who toured a labor camp with Chavez and addressed a mass meeting. As the strike began to flag in winter, Chavez decided on a march of 300 miles to the state capitol at Sacramento. This would pass through dozens of farmworker communities and attract attention for their cause. In March, the procession started out with about fifty marchers who left Delano.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: Chavez imbued the march with Roman Catholic significance. Marchers carried crucifixes and a banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe and used the slogan "Peregrinación, Penitencia, Revolución" ("Pilgrimage, Penitence, Revolution"). Portraying the march as an act of penance, he argued that the image of his personal suffering—his feet became painful and for part of the journey he had to walk with a cane—would be useful for the movement. At each stop, they read aloud a "Plan de Delano" written by Valdez, deliberately echoing the "Plan de Ayala" of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata. At Easter, the marchers arrived in Sacramento, where over 8000 people amassed in front of the state capitol. Chavez briefly addressed the crowd.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: During the march, Chavez had been approached by Schenley's lawyer, Sidney Korshak. They agreed to contract negotiations within 60 days. Chavez then declared an end to the Schenley boycott; instead, the movement would switch the boycott to the DiGiorgio Corporation, a major Delano land owner. DiGiorgio then called an election among their vineyard workers, hoping to challenge the NFWA's influence. A more conservative union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, were competing against the NFWA in the DiGiorgio workers' election. After DiGiorgio altered the terms of the election to benefit a Teamster victory, Chavez removed the NFWA from the ballot and urged his supporters to abstain. When the vote took place in June 1966, nearly half of eligible workers abstained, allowing a Teamster victory. Chavez then appealed to Pat Brown, the Governor of California, to intervene. Brown agreed, wanting the endorsement of the Mexican American Political Association. He declared the DiGiorgio election invalid and called for an August rerun to be supervised by the American Arbitration Association. On September 1, Chavez's union was declared the victor in the second election. DiGiorgio subsequently largely halted grape production in Delano. The focus then shifted to Giumarra, the largest grape grower in the San Joaquin Valley. In August 1967, Chavez announced a strike against them followed by a boycott of their grapes.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: An agreement was reached that Chavez's NFWA would merge with the AWOC, resulting in a new United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC). AWOC's Larry Itliong became the new group's assistant director, although soon felt marginalized by Chavez. UFWOC was also made an organizing committee of the AFL-CIO; this ensured that it would become a formal part of the U.S. labor movement and would receive a monthly subsidy. Not all of Chavez's staff agreed with the merger; many of its more left-wing members mistrusted the growing links with organized labor, particularly due to the AFL-CIO's anti-communist views. UFWOC was plagued by ethnic divisions between its Filipino and Mexican members, although continued to attract new volunteers, the majority Anglos brought into the movement via left-wing and religious groups or as part of social service internships. Chavez brought new people, such as LeRoy Chatfield, Marshall Ganz, and the lawyer Jerry Cohen, into his inner circle. His old friend, Fred Ross, had also joined. Soon, the secretary-treasurer Antonio Orendain was left as the only Mexican migrant in the union's senior ranks.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: In June 1967, Chavez launched his first purge of the union to remove those he deemed disruptive or disloyal to his leadership. His cover story was that he wanted to eject members of the Communist Party and related far-left groups, although the FBI's report at the time found no evidence of communist infiltration of the union. Some longstanding members, such as Esher, left because they disapproved of these purges. Tensions between Chavez and the Teatro had been building for some time; the Teatro's members were among those highly critical of the union's new links with the AFL-CIO. Chavez was concerned that the Teatro had become a rival to his prominent standing in the movement and was questioning his actions. Chavez asked the Teatro to disband, at which it split from the union and went on a tour of the U.S.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: The union purchased land known as The Forty Acres for their new headquarters. Chavez hoped for it to be a "spiritual" center where union members would relax; he designed it to have a swimming pool, a chapel, a market, and a gas station, as well as gardens with outdoor sculptures. He wanted the main building to be decorated inside with Gandhi quotations in English and Spanish. Meanwhile, Chavez was increasingly concerned that his supporters might turn to violence. Members had engaged in the destruction of property, something they regarded as not breaching the movement's ethos on non-violence. Chavez's cousin Manuel had tampered with refrigerator units on trains, so that grapes being shipped out of Delano spoiled before reaching their destination; Chavez noted that "He's done all the dirty work for the union. There's a lot of fucking dirty work, and he did it all." In February 1968, the Giumarra company obtained a contempt citation against the union, claiming that its members had used threatening and intimidating behavior against its employees and had placed roofing nails at the entrances to its ranches.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: In February 1968, Chavez began a fast; he publicly stated that in doing so he was reaffirming his commitment to peaceful protest and presented it as a form of penance. He stated that he would remain at Forty Acres for the duration of his fast, which at this point had only a gas station there. Many members of the union were critical of what they saw as a stunt; Itliong was annoyed that Chavez had not consulted the union's board before making his declaration. The union introduced a motion urging Chavez to cancel his plan, although this failed. Father Mark Day announced that a mass would he held every night at Forty Acres. These attracted many of Chavez's supporters, with the gas station decorated as an impromptu shrine. Sympathetic Protestant clergy and Jewish rabbis also spoke at these masses. After three weeks, Chavez's doctors urged him to end the fast. He agreed to do so at a public event on March 10. He invited Robert Kennedy to be the guest of honor at this event. Kennedy arrived at the event, which was attended by thousands of observers as well as the national press, and there they shared bread.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: Not long after, Kennedy announced his candidacy to be the Democratic Party's next presidential candidate. He asked Chavez to run as a delegate in the California primary. Throughout May, Chavez traveled across California, urging farmworkers and registered Democrats to back Kennedy. His activism was a contributing factor to Kennedy's victory in that state. It was at the victory celebration in Los Angeles, an event attended by Chavez, that Kennedy was assassinated on June 5. Chavez then attended Kennedy's New York funeral as a pallbearer. Kennedy's assassination came two months after that of Martin Luther King, generating growing concerns among the union that Chavez would also be targeted by those who opposed him.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: In May, Chavez appeared on the "Today" television show and announced a boycott of all grapes produced in California. The boycotters' message was that consumers should avoid buying California grapes so that farmworkers would get better wages and working conditions. Supporters across the country picketed stores selling California grapes and disrupted annual meetings of several supermarket chains. Chavez hoped that by putting pressure on the supermarkets, they in turn would pressure the grape growers to give in to strikers' demands. The growers hired a public relations firm to counteract the boycott, warning stores that if they gave in to the boycott they would soon be faced with similar boycotts for many other products. The growers also turned to the newly elected Governor of California, Ronald Reagan, who in turn sought the support of the Teamsters.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: Chavez's back pain worsened and in September 1968 he was hospitalized at O'Connor Hospital in San Jose. He followed this with a recuperation stay at St Anthony's Seminary in Santa Barbara. He returned home, but finding it too crowded moved in to Forty Acres. Due to a donation from the United Auto Workers, the union had erected an office and meeting hall here, with a trailer being used as a medical clinic; it was still far from Chavez's original vision. He used his image of physical suffering as a tactic in his cause, although some of his inner circle thought his pain to be at least partially psychosomatic. By 1968, Chavez was a national celebrity. Journalists increasingly approached him for interviews; he granted particularly close access to Peter Matthiessen and Jacques E. Levy, both of whom wrote favorable books about him. In July 1969, Chavez's portrait appeared on the front of "Time" magazine. Within the union, personal loyalty to Chavez became increasingly important; tensions between him and Itliong grew.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: In March 1969, the doctor Janet Travell visited Chavez and determined that fused vertebrae were the source of his back pain. She prescribed various exercises and other treatments which he found eased his pain. Between September and December, Chavez traveled the country in a Winnebago speaking at dozens of fundraisers and rallies for the grape boycott. At a speech in Washington D.C., he came out publicly against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, a topic he had previously avoided speaking on, because his son Fernando had been arrested as a conscientious objector.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: In the late 1970s, Chavez also sought to advance his control over the California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA), a group which advocated for farmworkers. Chavez demanded that the CRLA make its staff available for union work and that it would allow the union's attorneys to decide which cases the CRLA would pursue. Under the leadership of Cruz Reynoso, a former Chavez ally, the CRLA refused. Pawel believed that these attempts reflected Chavez's desire to be seen as the only voice for farmworkers.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: Chavez negotiated with Lionel Steinberg, a grape grower in the Coachella area. They signed contracts allowing Steinberg's products to be sold with a union logo on them, indicating that they would be exempt from the boycott. Other Coachella growers regarded Steinberg as a traitor for negotiating with Chavez but ultimately followed suit, resulting in contracts being signed with the union. In July 1969, the Delano growers agreed to negotiate. Chavez insisted that their negotiations also cover issues at the Delano High School, where several pupils, including his own daughter Eloise, had been suspended or otherwise disciplined for protesting in support of the boycott. On July 29, 1970, the Delano growers signed contracts with the union at the Forty Acres Hall, in front of press. These contracts agreed to wage rises for pickers, the introduction of a health plan, and new safety measures regarding the use of pesticides on the crop.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: In July 1970, the Grower-Shipper Association representing lettuce growing companies in California's Salinas Valley renegotiated its contracts with the Teamsters, allowing the latter union to represent their employees. Chavez was angry at this, traveling to Salinas to talk with the lettuce cutters, many of whom were dissatisfied with the way that the Teamsters represented them. In August, thousands of cutters marched into Salinas, converging at Hartnell College where Chavez addressed them. Rallying against the Teamsters, he emphasized that their union was run by white people, in contrast to the largely non-white makeup of the lettuce cutters. There, the cutters voted to go on strike. Over the coming days, many of them joined the UFW. Chavez decided that the strike should initially target the valley's largest lettuce grower, Interharvest, which was owned by the United Fruit Company. Seeking to avoid industrial action, the Teamsters set up a meeting with Chavez, where they eventually reached an agreement. The Teamsters agreed to relinquish their contracts with the Grower-Shipper Association, opening the way for the Salinas lettuce cutters to choose the UFW as their representative.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: The Salinas lettuce growers secured a temporary restraining order preventing a strike, at which Chavez initiated another protest fast. Amid a ten-day truce, he reached an agreement with Interharvest but not the other Salinas growers. Thus, the strike against them began on August 24, when cutters started picketing the lettuce fields. Lettuce production slumped by three quarters and prices of lettuces doubled. Various restraining orders were issued against the picketers, and when they broke them they were fined; the UFW paid many of these, as well as financially supporting the strikers in other ways. This proved expensive for the union, and Chavez decided that the pickets could not be maintained. Instead he decided to switch towards a boycott of Salinas lettuce. Chavez selected the Bud Antle company as the first target of the boycott campaign.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: Bud Antle secured an injunction legally preventing a boycott against them, but Chavez continued regardless. Due to this, Chavez was charged, found guilty of contempt of court, and sentenced to ten days imprisonment in the Monterey County jail. During Chavez's imprisonment, supporters held a round-the-clock vigil outside the jail. Among those who visited him were Martin Luther King's widow Coretta Scott King, and Robert Kennedy's widow, Ethel Kennedy. She took part in a rally which included a Roman Catholic mass; it was opposed by a group of local counter-protesters who opposed the concentration of leftist activism in their community. These events attracted national media attention. Soon after, the California Supreme Court voted to dissolve key aspects of Bud Antle's injunction and ordered Chavez's release.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: Chavez wanted a more remote base for his movement than Forty Acres, especially one where he could experiment with his ideas about communal living. To this end, the Hollywood movie producer Edward Lewis, a wealthy supporter of Chavez's, fronted the purchase of an old tuberculosis sanatorium in Keene, along the foothills of the Tehachapi Mountains, for the union. Chavez named this new base Nuestra Señora Reina de la Paz ("Our Lady Queen of Peace"), although it became commonly known just as "La Paz". Renovating the existing buildings, he invited various families to come and live there. In creating this commune, he drew on Gandhi's experiments with "ashrams" in India; he envisioned it as a retreat center where workers could come for three day retreats modeled on the Roman Catholic "cursillo". La Paz became the union's new headquarters, something that various backers and funders were critical of due to its remote location; Chavez said that this was necessary for his security, particularly following allegations of a plot against his life. At night, the perimeter of the commune was patrolled by armed guards. The organization at La Paz was often chaotic, with frustrated detractors in the movement referring to it as "Magic Mountain". Amid his growing frustrations with Chavez's leadership, Itliong resigned in October 1971.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: Arizona became the first state to pass a bill that was designed to keep the UFW out of their state; this would criminalize boycotts and make union elections among farm-workers almost impossible. In response, Chavez drove to Arizona and demanded a meeting with Governor Jack Williams, who refused. They subsequently launched a campaign to gain a recall election to remove Williams from office. This started the UFW's first major farm-worker campaign outside California. Farmworkers rallied outside Williams' office while Chavez embarked on a fast in the Santa Rita Center, a hall used by a local Chicano group. On the nineteenth day of his fast, Chavez was hospitalized. He then broke the fast at a memorial mass on the anniversary of Robert Kennedy's death, where he was joined by the folk singer Joan Baez. It was during the Arizona campaign that the UFW started using the slogan "Si Se Puede" ("It Can be Done"), which subsequently became closely associated with it.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: Chavez increasingly pushed for the UFW to become a national organization, with a token presence being established in Washington State, Oregon, Idaho, Texas, and Florida. Parts of the union expressed concern that it was now overstretching its resources. Chavez also pushed for the California Migrant Ministry, which supported the UFW, to transform into a National Farm Worker Ministry (NFWM), insisting that the UFW should have the power to veto decisions made by the NFWM.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: At the AFL-CIO's request, Chavez had suspended the Salinas lettuce boycott, but prepared to relaunch it eight months later as the growers had only conceded to one of their demands. Tensions grew between the UFW and AFL-CIO, with the latter's president George Meany concerned that if the UFW broke the law by extending its boycott to cover supermarket chains then the AFL-CIO could be held liable. As a result, Chavez formally requested a charter so that the UFW could become an independently chartered union separate from the AFL-CIO; he was loath to do so as it meant losing the AFL-CIO's subsidy.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: While Chavez had been focusing on Salinas, his brother Richard had been tasked with overseeing the UFW's activities in Delano. In early 1972, Richard visited Chavez and confronted him about the problems in Delano, telling him that the union was losing support among farmworkers and that they were in danger of losing the contracts when they came up for renewal. In Richard's opinion, Chavez was losing touch with the union's membership. There was anger that members were expected to pay monthly dues to the union when their work was usually seasonal; there was also frustration at the union's $1-a-week voluntary fund to support the Salinas strikers. Part of the membership thought that Chavez's new isolation at La Paz was leading him to take decisions unpopular with the farmworkers. There were concerns about the inept and inexperienced volunteers, mostly English-speaking European-Americans, who were running the UFW's hiring halls; growers were complaining that these volunteers were often hostile and uncooperative. Union branches had been ordering members to miss work to engage in political rallies and Salinas picket lines, further angering growers. Chavez responded to these criticisms by reassigning his brother away from Delano. In late 1972, Richard and Huerta, his partner at the time, briefly left the UFW in frustration with Chavez's leadership. Other senior members continued to warn Chavez about the same issues that Richard did, but Chavez dismissed their concerns as grower propaganda.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: California growers then organized a ballot on Proposition 22 for November 1972 which would ban boycott campaigns in the state. Chavez tasked LeRoy Chatfield with running the campaign against it; at the ballot, Proposition 22 lost by 58 percent to 42 percent.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: In April 1973, the UFW's contact with grape growers in the Delano area expired. At this, Chavez called a strike in the Coachella Valley. The Teamsters union saw this as an opportunity to replace the UFW in representing the region's farmworkers. The Teamsters organized counter-protests; their picketers were often armed and violent clashes between members of the two unions broke out. The UFW used these instances of Teamster violence to rally public support for their cause. The AFL-CIO was concerned by this clash between unions, and Meany struck a deal with Chavez that they would provide the UFW with renewed financial support if it pushed for state legislation to govern the rights of farmworkers to organize. Chavez agreed; although he did not want such a law, he thought that Governor Reagan would never agree to it anyway. The AFL-CIO gave the UFW $1.6 million, allowing the latter to pay Salinas picketers $75 and later $90 a week.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: Amid the Delano strike, one of the UFW strikers, the Yemeni migrant Nagi Moshin Daifullah, died after an altercation with a police officer breaking up a bar-room fight. The UFW portrayed Daifullah as a martyr for the cause and over 5000 people marched at his funeral, with Chavez fasting for three days. Chavez then called off the Denalo strike, stating that he would do so until the federal government guaranteed the safety of UFW protesters; the government believed that this was a cover to conceal the financial problems that the strike was causing the UFW. By this point, the UFW had lost much of its membership, and most of its California contracts, to the Teamsters. Many farmworkers found that while the Teamsters appeared less interested in workers' rights, they did not expect their employees to spend their weekends on political campaigns and boycotts as the UFW did.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: In September 1973, the UFW's first constitutional convention was held in Fresno, representing the final step in the organization becoming a full union. A new constitution was announced that gave the group's president, a post occupied by Chavez, significant powers; he feared that greater democracy would paralyze the group. At the convention, the UFW agreed to scrap monthly membership fees in favor or charging members 2 percent of their annual income. It also announced that volunteers who had worked for the UFW for more than six months could become members with voting rights. Previously, membership had been restricted primarily to farmworkers. The new executive committee, which included Huerta and Richard Chavez, was racially mixed, although some members expressed dissatisfaction that it did not contain more Mexican Americans. By 1974, the UFW was again broke and its boycott was floundering. That year, "The New York Times Magazine" opened with a headline: "Is Chavez Beaten?". Chavez flew to Europe to urge the unions there to block the imported goods that the UFW were sending there. He traveled through London, Oslo, Stockholm, Geneva, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Brussels, and Paris, although he found that the unions were cautious about joining his campaign. In Rome, he met with Pope Paul VI, who commended his activism.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: Chavez increasingly blamed the failure of the UFW strike on illegal immigrants who were brought in as strikebreakers. He made the unsubstantiated claim that the CIA was involved in part of a conspiracy to bring illegal migrants into the country so that they could undermine his union. He launched the "Illegals Campaign" to identify illegal migrants so that they could be deported, appointing Liza Hirsch to oversee the campaign. In Chavez's view, "if we can get the illegals out of California, we will win the strike overnight." This was a reiteration of an early view he expressed concerning the problems the UFW boycott faced in 1972; Chavez believed that illegal labor could undermine any strike undertaken by agricultural workers could be undermined by "wetbacks" and "illegal immigrants". Huerta urged him not to refer to migrants who had come to the U.S. illegally as "illegals" but Chavez refused, stating: "a spade's a spade." Some UFW field offices refused to collaborate with the campaign, and the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) refused to allow its interns to work on it, at which Chavez cut the UFW's links with the NLG.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: While Chavez had been in Europe, his cousin Manuel Chavez had established a UFW patrol, or "wet line", along Arizona's border with Mexico to stop illegal migrants crossing into the United States. There were rumors that this patrol was employing violence against these migrants, beating and robbing them and in one case castrating a man. These allegations soon appeared in the local press. A Mexican investigation determined that the UFW had bribed San Luis city officials to prevent them from interfering in these activities along the border. A Mexican union, the Confederation of Mexican Workers, broke its links with the UFW over the issue. Chavez dismissed the reports of violence as the smears of paid provocateurs, a claim which many of his supporters accepted. Chavez protected Manuel, while the executive board kept silent on his activities, regarding him as useful. The Chicano activist Bert Corona staged a protest against the UFW wet line, at which Chavez directed Jerry Cohen to launch an investigation into the funding of Corona's group.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: In 1974, Chavez proposed the idea of a Poor People's Union with which he could reach out to poor white communities in the San Joaquin Valley who were largely hostile to the UFW. Meanwhile, the UFW announced that it would launch a boycott of the Gallo Wine company. In February 1975, the UFW organized a four-day march from San Francisco to the Gallo headquarters in Modesto, where a crowd of around 10,000 protesters amassed. The Modesto march had been a means of trying to rekindle the successes of the late 1960s and a public display of strength despite the setbacks that the UFW had experienced.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: In November 1974, the Democratic Party's candidate, the modern liberal Jerry Brown, was elected governor of California. At this point, farm-worker's rights took center stage in the state's political agenda. Chavez met with Brown and together they developed a strategy: Brown would introduce a bill to improve farmworkers' rights, at which the UFW would support a more radical alternative. Brown would then negotiate a law with other stakeholders that included all the UFW's bottom lines. The purpose of this law would be to guarantee farmworkers the right to a secret ballot in which they could decide which union, if any, should represent them in their negotiations with their employer. Brown signed the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act (ALRA) into law in June 1975. This was widely seen as a UFW victory, as California now had the most favorable labor bill in the country. Chavez nevertheless worried that it would kill the movement's spirit, stating that the cause would now lose "the essential fight of recognition, which is the one that appeals to the human mind and the heart", instead focusing on more prosaic issues such as wages and benefits.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: The ALRA law created a state agency, the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB), to oversee union elections among farmworkers. Brown appointed a five-person board to lead the ALRB which was sympathetic to Chavez; it included the former UFW official LeRoy Chatfield. As the UFW prepared for the elections in the fields, Chavez organized a "1000 mile march" from the San Diego border up the coast in July 1975. During the march, he stopped to attend the second UFW convention. For the campaign, the UFW hired 500 organizers, many of them farmworkers. The UFW won more elections than it lost, although in instances where it went head-to-head with the Teamsters, the latter beat the UFW. This indicated that the UFW's greatest strengths were among vegetable and citrus growers, rather than in their original heartlands of the Delano vineyards. The Teamster victories in the Delano vineyards angered Chavez, who insisted that there had not been free elections there. Chavez criticised the ALRB and launched a targeted campaign against Walter Kintz, the ALRB's general counsel, demanding his resignation. He also put pressure on Governor Brown to remove Kintz.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: UFW organizers moved to follow their electoral victories by signing contracts with the growers; the UFW needed these contracts to stabilize its finances. Meanwhile, to develop the UFW's administration, Chavez hired the management consultant Crosby Milne, whose ideas led to a restructuring of the union. These reforms further centralized the union's powers among the executive committee. The changes involved decision-making powers being delegated from Chavez to the department heads, although Chavez—who liked to oversee everything personally—found this difficult to adhere to in practice. As part of these reforms, Chavez continued to call on the union's leaders to all relocate to La Paz, which many were reluctant to do. In July 1976, Chavez traveled to New York to attend the Democratic Party's National Congress, at which he gave a speech nominating Brown as the party's presidential candidate. Brown would come third in the contest, which would be won by Jimmy Carter. Carter went on to win the 1976 election, initiating an administration that was keen to fund UFW projects.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: In 1976, the ALRB ran out of its budgeted money for the year. The California legislature refused to allocate more money, so the ALRB closed shop for the year. Seeking to get the farmworkers' rights introduced by ALRA enshrined in California's constitution, in early 1976 UFW activists put forward the idea of Proposition 14, which would go forward to the electorate later that year. Chavez thought that Proposition 14 had little chance of being passed by the electorate and was concerned that devoting its resources to the campaign would be financially costly for the UFW. Brown also warned them not to, arguing that it would backfire on farmworkers by polarizing communities. Despite these concerns, Fred Ross urged the union to take on the issue, and after much debate, the UFW's executive board voted to involve itself in the 'vote yes' campaign on Proposition 14. Growers responded with a well-funded multi-media campaign that emphasized the claim that the measure would give unions the right to trespass on private property. When it went to the electorate in November 1976, Proposition 14 was defeated by a measure of two-to-one. Although this defeat had little serious impact on the UFW, Chavez took it as a very public rejection of him personally.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: Chavez blamed the defeat on the UFW's national boycott director, Nick Jones, who had been the only staff member to publicly voice disquiet over the Proposition 14 campaign. He claimed that Jones and the New York boycott director, Charlie March, had been part of a far-left conspiracy to undermine the UFW. Under pressure, in November 1976, Jones resigned; in a letter to the executive board he stated that he was "deeply concerned" about the direction in which Chavez was taking the union. Chavez also fired Joe Smith, the editor of "El Macriado", after accusing him of deliberately undermining the newspaper. He then ordered Ross and Ganz to interrogate everyone who worked on the campaign, ostensibly to decide on new assignments but also to route out alleged malcontents, agitators, and spies. Many of those involved in running the UFW's boycott expressed concerns about a McCarthyite-style atmosphere developing within the union, and Chavez's purge attracted press attention. As the criticisms of his leadership intensified, Chavez responded with further purges, inspired by those in China's Cultural Revolution. He became convinced that there was a far-left conspiracy, whose members he called the "assholes" or "them", who were trying to undermine the UFW. At a La Paz meeting in April 1977, later called "the Monday Night Massacre," Chavez called together a range of individuals whom he denounced as malcontents or spies. They were verbally abused by members of the executive board and ejected from the community. He later accused Philip Vera Cruz, the oldest member of the executive board, of also being part of the conspiracy, and forced him out.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: Chavez reversed many of the changes he had implemented under Milne's guidance, with executive board members being reassigned to cover geographic areas rather than having union-wide responsibilities. Milne, who had been living at La Paz, soon left, with Chavez later alleging he had been part of a conspiracy against the union. UFW had also entered into a negotiation with the Teamsters union, a process led by Cohen. The two unions reached an agreement by which the UFW would cease bringing litigation against the Teamsters if the latter ceased operating among farm-workers altogether. This left the UFW as the only dominant union among the farmworkers. The Teamsters agreed because farmworkers were a marginal group for them; their typically low incomes also meant that farmworkers did not generate sufficient funds for the union to warrant its ongoing and costly clashes with the UFW.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: Chavez told the executive committee that radical change was necessary in the UFW; he stated that they could be either a union or a movement, but not both. If the former, they would have to start paying wages to their staff, rather than rely on volunteers, which at that time they were not in a financial position to do. He instead urged them to become a movement, which he argued meant establishing communal settlements for members, drawing on a Californian religious organization, Synanon, as an exemplar. Chavez had become increasingly interested in Synanon, a drug-treatment organization that had declared itself a religion in 1975 and which operated out of a compound east of Fresno. He admired Synanon's leader Charles Dederich, and the way that the latter controlled his planned community. In Chavez's opinion, Dederich was "a genius in terms of people".


title: Cesar Chavez

text: In February 1977, Chavez took the UFW's executive board on a visit to the Synanon compound. There, they took part in a therapy system based on Dederich's own process, "the Game," as part of which each "player" was singled out in turn to receive harsh, profanity-laced criticism from the rest of the community. Dederich had told Chavez that "the Game" was key to reshaping the UFW, and the latter decided that he wanted everyone at La Paz to play it. He received tacit agreement from the executive board although some of its members privately opposed the measure. The Game took place at La Paz on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings, and at its height about 100 people were taking part in it each week. There it was used to shape behavior and punish nonconformity. Many individuals dreaded the humiliation it involved, disliked the obscenities that were part of it, and found going through it to be a traumatic experience. Chavez remained enthusiastic about the Game, calling it "a good tool to fine-tune the union". Many of those close to Chavez, including his wife and Richard Chavez, refused to take part. The farmworkers were not informed about the Game. Various long-term supporters of the UFW, including various clerical figures, visited La Paz at this time and left alarmed by how it had changed.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: Synanon provided the UFW with $100,000 worth of cars and materials; building links with Chavez's movement burnished Dederich's reputation with rich liberals who were among Synanon's core constituency. Dederich suggested that Synanon and the UFW establish a joint communal farm, and although the option was explored, it did not materialize. Following Dederich's advice, Chavez began grooming young people who had grown up in the movement to remain committed to him and his ideals. He created a curriculum for them to follow, which included the Game. Whereas Chavez had previously refused to accept government money, he now applied for over $500,000 in grants for a school and other projects. Formal celebrations and group rituals became an important part of life at La Paz, while Chavez also declared that on Saturday mornings all residents of La Paz should work in the vegetable and flower gardens to improve sociability. A rule was passed that everyone at La Paz had to wear a UFW button at all times on penalty of a fine. After attending a course in Los Angeles, Chavez began claiming that he could heal people by laying on his hands.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: In the field elections, the UFW was largely rebuffed by Filipino-American workers. Seeking to remedy this, in 1977 Chavez traveled to the Philippines as the guest of its president, Ferdinand Marcos. There, he was treated as a high-ranking dignitary, and received both an award from Marcos and an honorary doctorate from the Far Eastern University in Manila. He then spoke to a reporter from "The Washington Post" where he spoke positively about Marcos' introduction of martial law. This generated outcry in the U.S., especially among religious groups, who argued that Chavez was overlooking the human rights abuses taking place under Marcos' administration. Chavez then organized an event on Delano for five senior Filipino government officially to speak to an assembled audience. The incident eroded support among religious organizations, a key constituency for Chavez and the UFW.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: "Time" magazine published a story reporting on violence and child abuse at Synanon, which it termed a "kooky cult". Synanon launched a boycott of "Time" in response, with Chavez urging the UFW to support it, stating that they should assist their friends and help protect religious freedom. Los Angeles police then raided Synanon's compound and revealed evidence that Dederich had sanctioned the use of violence against the group's critics and ex-members; several senior members were also found guilty of murdering a lawyer representing ex-Synanon members. Shortly after, the Peoples Temple run by the civil rights activist Jim Jones, a group which had been closely linked with California's leftist movement, committed mass suicide at their Jonestown community. A Democrat assemblyman soon issued a press release comparing the cult surrounding Chavez to the Peoples Temple. The UFW stopped using the Game in response to these developments; Chavez's calls for it to resume were rejected by other senior members.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: The UFW continued to rely on voluntary labor, only paying a small number of employees, such as lawyers. When the union's lawyers, who were paid, asked for a raise, it generated a major debate among the executive committee. Chavez framed the issue along the lines of whether the UFW should start paying wages to everyone or instead continue to rely on volunteers. The executive committee split largely on generational lines, with older members backing Chavez's desire to remain a voluntary organization, and this attitude narrowly prevailed. Medina, one of only two former farmworkers on the board, resigned over the issue. Drake also resigned.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: Half of the lawyers left straight away, and the others in the coming weeks as the UFW switched to a voluntary legal department; the new volunteers were largely inexperienced. It was also in 1977 that the UFW declared that contributions to the union's political fund would become mandatory for members; this was then used to support political groups and candidates considered sympathetic to the UFW's interests.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: In June 1978, Chavez joined a picket in Yuma as part of his cousin Manuel's Arizona melon strike. This broke an injunction and Chavez was thrown into the county jail for a night. By 1978, there was growing anger at the UFW among vegetable workers; they were frustrated by its incompetency, especially in the running of its medical plan. In the 22 farmworker elections that took place between June and September 1978, the UFW lost two-thirds. To stop the loss of its contracts and members, Chavez launched his Plan de Flote, an initiative to regain the trust of the vegetable pickers. Chavez organized a new strike over wages, hoping that salary increases would stem the UFW's losses; the union made its wage demands in January 1979, days after its contracts had expired. Eleven lettuce growers in the Salinas and Imperial Valleys were included in the strike, which caused lettuce prices to soar.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: During the strike, the picketers trespassed on the Mario Saikhon company fields and attempted to drive away those still working. The foreman and other employees opened fire and one picketer, Rufino Contreras, was killed. Chavez urged the strikers not to resort to violence and with Contreras' father led a three-mile candlelit funerary procession, attended by 7000 people. In June, Ganz and other strike organizers planned a show of strength whereby strikers rushed onto the Salinas field to cause disruption. This generated violent clashes; several people sustained stab wounds and 75 were arrested. Vegetable growers accused Chavez of terrorism over the incident; Chavez criticized Ganz for organizing this without his approval. He then led a 12-day march from San Francisco to San Jose, beginning a fast on the sixth day. Arriving in Salinas, he met with strike leaders at a UFW convention. He argued that the strike was proving too costly for the UFW—it cost the union between $300,000 and $400,000 a month—and that they should end the strike and switch to a boycott campaign. The strike leaders rejected these suggestions. To end the strike, in August and September, several growers signed contracts with the UFW but many held out and the union was broke. Chavez continued arguing for a boycott, suggesting that the union could use alcoholics from the cities to run the boycott campaign, an idea most of the executive board rejected.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: Under the new contracts, the growers agreed to pay for paid workers' representatives whose job it would be to ensure a smooth relationship between the growers and the UFW. Chavez brought these paid representatives to La Paz for a five-day training session in May 1980. Ganz, who was becoming increasingly distant from Chavez, helped tutor them. Chavez called all staff to a meeting at La Paz in May 1981, where he again insisted that the UFW was being infiltrated by spies seeking to undermine it and overthrow him. He arranged for more of his loyalists to be put on the executive board, which now had no farmworkers sitting on it. At the UFW's Fresno convention in September 1981, the paid representatives nominated some of their own choices, rather than Chavez's, to go on the board. Chavez's supporters responded with leaflets claiming that the paid representatives were puppets of "the two Jews", Ganz and Cohen, who were trying to undermine the union. This brought allegations of antisemitism against Chavez. Seeking to undermine the paid representatives, Chavez proposed a measure that if 8% of workers at a ranch signed a petition, the representatives of that ranch would be obliged to vote for Chavez's chosen candidates. The measure passed.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: By October, all of those who had opposed Chavez's choices at the convention had been fired. They responded by launching a fast in protest outside the UFW's Salinas office. Nine of them then sued Chavez in a federal court, claiming that he had no right to fire them from positions that they had been elected to represent by their peers in the fields. Chavez responded with a counter-suit, suing them for libel and slander. He acknowledged to a reporter that in doing so, he was trying to intimidate the protester's lawyer, something which brought negative publicity for the UFW. One of the protesters, Chava Bustamante, got work with the California Rural Legal Assistance group, at which the UFW began picketing their offices, trying to get Bustamante fired. In court, Chavez denied that the paid representatives were ever elected, alleging that they were appointed by him personally, but produced no evidence to support this claim. The US District Court Judge William Ingram rejected Chavez's argument, ruling that the sacking of the paid representatives had been unlawful. The UFW appealed the ruling, which dragged out for years, until the paid representatives ran out of funds to continue.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: Opposition to Chavez's hostility to illegal migrants led senior UFW members in Texas and Arizona to break from the union and form their own groups, such as the Texas Farm Workers Union and the Maricopa County Organizing Project. Chavez and his cousin Manuel went to Texas to try and rally opposition to the schism. Manuel also went to Arizona, where he introduced a range of measures to undermine the new group. This led to the investigative journalist Tom Barry looking into Manuel's activities. It was revealed that under a pseudonym he had become a melon grower in Mexico, and that he was initiating strikes among U.S. melon pickers as a means of improving the market for his own produce. The UFW's reputation was further damaged after the magazine "Reason" exposed that the union had improperly spent nearly $1 million in federal funds. Federal and national investigations followed, confirming these allegations. The government asked the UFW to return over $250,000 in funds while the Internal Revenue Service ruled that the union owed $390,000 in back social security and federal unemployment taxes.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: In 1982, the UFW held a celebration of the twentieth anniversary of its first convention at San Jose. It was in October that year that Chavez's father died, with the funeral being held in San Jose. Chavez was also involving himself in a broader range of leftist events. He co-chaired Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda's fund-raising dinner for their Campaign for Economic Democracy. In the summer of 1982 he also appeared at Peace Sunday, an anti-nuclear event. The UFW had established itself as one of the largest political donors in California. Its political donations were often concealed from the public, funneled through intermediary committees. It donated thousands of dollars to Howard Berman's campaign to unseat Leo McCarthy as the Speaker of the California State Assembly because of McCarthy's role in defeating Proposition 14. Many Democrats feared that Berman would be beholden to Chavez and so backed Willie Brown, who won. The UFW subsequently also donated to Willie Brown.


title: Cesar Chavez

text: The UFW's membership, and the subsequent membership dues they paid, continued to decline. In January 1983, UFW contracts covered 30,000 jobs but by January 1986 this had fallen to 15,000. In 1982, the dues that membership brought in were $2.9 million although this had fallen to $1 million three years later. By the early 1980s, there was a burgeoning Latino middle-class in the U.S. Although Chavez hated the aspirational approach that had encouraged working-class Latinos to become middle-class, he recognized that this offered the UFW a wider support base. At the 1983 UFW convention, he announced the formation of a new non-profit organization, the Chicano Lobby. At the Lobby's launch, addresses were given by the San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros and the newly elected president of the Mexican American Political Association, Chavez's eldest son Fernando. To cope with its declining membership, the UFW sought to build its political influence. In November 1984, Chavez gave a speech to the Commonwealth Club of California. The UFW launched a print shop, with politicians who were eager to court the Latino vote increasingly used.