Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Louren Bogelbaum. Here, the fight for human rights is never
Speaker 1: done alone. It's borne by a multitude of visionary leaders,
Speaker 1: carried on by armies of believers in a better future,
Speaker 1: and waged in a variety of ways. One such leader
Speaker 1: was Caesar Estrata Chavez, whose humility and resolute certaintude in
Speaker 1: La Casa made him a hero to millions. For the
Speaker 1: article this episode is based on How Stuff Work. Spoke
Speaker 1: with Mark Grossman. Chavez is speechwriter and a spokeperson for
Speaker 1: the Caesar Chavez Foundation. He said, why were they drawn
Speaker 1: to him? Because he had great faith in them. He
Speaker 1: had faith they could do great things. Chavez is known
Speaker 1: as an American union builder and a relentless advocate for
Speaker 1: the rights of abused farm workers during the furious nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: He was also a devout Catholic who believed in the
Speaker 1: goodness of his fellow humans and the power of nonviolent resistance,
Speaker 1: and to this day, Caesar Chaves remains a darling of
Speaker 1: America's counterculture, a soft spoken, sly smiling, immovable object standing
Speaker 1: in the path of the country's rich and powerful the
Speaker 1: child of Mexican American parents, Chavez was born in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty seven in Yuma, Arizona, into a migrant farm family
Speaker 1: in the southwestern United States. He and many others commonly
Speaker 1: worked ten to twelve hour days, often bent over a
Speaker 1: short handled hoe, for wages that would barely keep them alive.
Speaker 1: He estimated that he attended sixty five different schools as
Speaker 1: a kid. He never got past the eighth grade. Chavez
Speaker 1: enlisted in the US Navy shortly before the end of
Speaker 1: World War Two, but soon returned to California, where he
Speaker 1: started a family of his own with his high school
Speaker 1: sweetheart Helen. By the early nineteen fifties, he was introduced
Speaker 1: to organizers in the Community Services Organization, a Mexican American
Speaker 1: civil rights organization. By the early nineteen fifties, he was
Speaker 1: introduced to organizers in the Community Services Organisms, which dealt
Speaker 1: with Mexican American civil rights, and by the late fifties
Speaker 1: he had become its national president. By the early sixties,
Speaker 1: Chavas was already in full dispute with the moneyed farm owners,
Speaker 1: who saw him and his swelling group of followers as
Speaker 1: a threat to their financial well being. He traveled the
Speaker 1: fields of California, signing up workers to join his fledgling
Speaker 1: National farm Workers Association, later to become the United farm Workers.
Speaker 1: Though Chavez lacked a full formal education, he was a
Speaker 1: voracious reader. He followed Mahama Gandhi and Martin Uther King
Speaker 1: Junior and took from them lessons of non violence. He
Speaker 1: also read the works of union organizers like Eugene V. Debs.
Speaker 1: His belief in the workers and their worth pushed him,
Speaker 1: and their belief in him sustained his work. A grossman, said,
Speaker 1: many people, for one hundred years before Caesar Chavas tried
Speaker 1: and failed to organize farm workers, people who had a
Speaker 1: lot more resources and money and had much better education,
Speaker 1: tried and failed, and he succeeded. I think because he
Speaker 1: was one of them. It was not an academic pursuit
Speaker 1: for him. Chavez endured government investigations and death threats from
Speaker 1: the rich and powerful. He often traveled with two fierce
Speaker 1: looking German shepherds named Boycott and Weelga meaning Strike, who
Speaker 1: were both friends to Javas and deterrence to those who
Speaker 1: might wish him harm. He also credited those dogs with
Speaker 1: his decision to become vegetarian, and he became an animal
Speaker 1: rights activist later in his life. As he had done
Speaker 1: in the fields as a young man, Chavez put in long,
Speaker 1: hard hours organizing workers, traveling from town to town, pushing
Speaker 1: for better wages, improved working conditions, and access to insurance.
Speaker 1: He employed boycotts and strikes to try to better the
Speaker 1: lives of those he represented. In nineteen sixty five, Chavez
Speaker 1: and the National farm Workers Association joined forces of the
Speaker 1: group of Filipino grape workers in the Delano, California grape strike.
Speaker 1: It lasted five years and included a boycott of table
Speaker 1: grapes that spread throughout the nation. A Chavas insisted, with
Speaker 1: an acute awareness of the violence that royaled the country
Speaker 1: that decade with other protests and civil rights movements, that
Speaker 1: the protest remained nonviolent, but as it wore on, many
Speaker 1: workers grew impatient. To focus strikers on staying strong without
Speaker 1: using violence, and to show those throughout the country their resolve,
Speaker 1: the Javas went on a twenty five day fast. Thousands
Speaker 1: streamed into the tiny windowless room near Delano to see him.
Speaker 1: During his fast, he lost thirty five pounds that's about
Speaker 1: fifteen kilos during those twenty five days. In a statement,
Speaker 1: Javes said, to be a man is to suffer for others.
Speaker 1: God help us to be men. It took more time,
Speaker 1: but in nineteen seventy grape growers signed their first union
Speaker 1: contracts with the farm owners, providing workers better pay and benefits.
Speaker 1: The Delano Fast was not the only one that Javes
Speaker 1: would undertake over his long career. He went for thirty
Speaker 1: six days out food in nineteen eighty eight to protest
Speaker 1: the threat that pesticides post of farm workers and their children.
Speaker 1: He continued to work and organize for the United farm
Speaker 1: Workers throughout his life. He was in Arizona in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety three helping to defend a union in a lawsuit.
Speaker 1: When he died peacefully at the home of a longtime friend,
Speaker 1: and he was sixty six years old, Some forty five
Speaker 1: thousand people attended his funeral in Deleno, California. He's now
Speaker 1: buried in Keene, California, where he lived and labored for
Speaker 1: the last quarter century of his life, and where the
Speaker 1: Caesar E. Chavas National Monument is now located. Throughout his life,
Speaker 1: Chaves fought for farm workers, but he stepped outside union
Speaker 1: activism too. He came out strongly against the Vietnam War
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties, and in the seventies was active
Speaker 1: in the struggle for gay rights. In nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: in a carefully crafted speech in front of the Commonwealth
Speaker 1: Club in San Francisco, his first time speaking from a script,
Speaker 1: Java's laid out his vision. That's an excerpt. Once social
Speaker 1: change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the
Speaker 1: person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the
Speaker 1: person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who
Speaker 1: are not afraid anymore. Our opponents must understand that it's
Speaker 1: not just a union. We have built unions like other
Speaker 1: institutions can come and go, but we are more than
Speaker 1: an institution. For nearly twenty years, our union has been
Speaker 1: on the cutting edge of a people's cause, and you
Speaker 1: cannot do away with an entire people. You cannot stamp
Speaker 1: out a people's cause. Regardless of what the future holds
Speaker 1: for farm workers, our accomplishments cannot be undone a la cassa.
Speaker 1: Our cause doesn't have to be experienced twice Today, the
Speaker 1: University of California, Berkeley has a student center named after Chavez.
Speaker 1: High schools, elementary schools, streets and parks bear his name,
Speaker 1: so does a Navy ship. In two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: the US Postal Service issued a stamp with his likeness.
Speaker 1: In twenty twelve, President Barack Obama christian the National Monument
Speaker 1: where Chavez is now buried even more in his honor.
Speaker 1: The people he inspired continued to carry on his work.
Speaker 1: A Grossman cited a couple of examples off the top
Speaker 1: of his head. A young teachers ad in California who's
Speaker 1: now a school district superintendent. A young paralegal who's now
Speaker 1: a superior court judge in the state. A Grossman said,
Speaker 1: he saw the greater good of helping people fulfill their dreams,
Speaker 1: and some of them were dreams that many of them
Speaker 1: didn't even know they had. He really instilled hope and
Speaker 1: confidence in people who never had them before. In August
Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety four, a little more than a year
Speaker 1: after his death, Chavez was awarded the Presidential Medal of
Speaker 1: Freedom by President Bill Clinton in a ceremony at the
Speaker 1: White House. Helen, an activist herself, received it in his place.
Speaker 1: Clinton said during the ceremony, the farm workers who labored
Speaker 1: in the fields and yearned for respect and self sufficiency
Speaker 1: pinned their hopes on this remarkable man, who, with faith
Speaker 1: and discipline, with soft spoken humility and amazing inner strength,
Speaker 1: led a very courageous life, and in so doing brought
Speaker 1: dignity to the lives of so many others, and provided
Speaker 1: us for inspiration for the rest of our nation's history.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article how Caesar Chavez
Speaker 1: united thousands of farm workers and became a civil rights
Speaker 1: icon on how stuffworks dot Com, written by John Donovan.
Speaker 1: Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio in partnership
Speaker 1: with how Stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang.
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