Letter from Delano: A Determined Nonviolent Struggle
Channel: Juan Rodriguez
Date: 2022-08-22

In March of 1966, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Larry Itliong and leaders from the farm worker movement organized a massive march of 300 miles from Delano to Sacramento – the longest protest march ever in the United States at that point. 

In September 1965, the Delano Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), mostly made up of Filipino grape pickers, went on strike, demanding payment of $1.40 an hour plus 25 cents per box of grapes picked. AWOC's leader knew that a successful strike must include not only Filipino workers but also the many Mexican and Chicano workers in Delano. He reached out to Chavez and the NFWA, who gave him their support and expanded the strike's goals to include union contracts signed by the growers and laws allowing farmworkers to unionize and engage in collective bargaining

The Delano growers were powerful, with many connections to the police, judges, and politicians in the community; they had accumulated vast wealth over the years and were recalicitrant to give any of it up. They hired armed security guards to intimidate the strikers. Picketers were sprayed with pesticides, threatened with dogs, verbally assaulted, and physically attacked. Chavez responded by sending his allies in the clergy to walk the picket lines “as a reminder to police, grower security guards, and growers that the rest of the world was watching."

#cesarchavez #farmworkers #ufw