No university wants to be caught promoting revisionist history. Nor should Sonoma State students be subjected to such history at the entrance to their new Information Center. Unfortunately, that is just what the new Cesar Chavez mural promotes, as we learned from the artist herself at the mural's recent dedication. Philippine-born Johanna Poethig pointed to two tall Filipino farmworkers towering above a huddled figure of Cesar Chavez at the center of the mural.
Filipino workers vote to strike.
Joined by Mexican workers, they formed the United Farm Workers. Students and others, she said, would learn the truth and give the Filipinos proper credit. Unfortunately, the facts are quite different. In 1959, the AFL-CIO chartered the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee and assigned a seasoned white organizer as director, who was later replaced with another white organizer. By September 1965, on the eve of the grape strike, the AWOC still had no genuine membership base nor a single contract with a grower.