a mass meeting and not to commit the NFWA any further. But that meant watching AWOC lose, and suffering all the consequences.
Chavez concluded that the NFWA had to enter the strike, despite his own assessment that the workers were not powerful enough to win. Was the organization, then, walking into a disaster? Cesar answered his own question: maybe, but not necessarily. If it could effectively involve outside supporters in the strike, it might overcome the unfavorable local balance of forces. He pointed out that Padilla and the Migrant Ministry had done just that in the rent strike. A vast mobilization of outside support might even turn this more conventional battle into a winner. It was a gamble, a long shot, Chavez argued, but what other choice did they have? They should join the strike, not be discouraged by expected early setbacks, and try to make the strike last long enough so that the power of their supporters could be felt locally. They must not strike and run.
Such a notion was much in the air in the late summer of 1965. Over the previous few years, the civil rights movement had mobilized liberal supporters in the North in an effort to overcome the seemingly all-powerful local forces supporting segregation in the South. That strategy had had its ups and downs, with SNCC and the Southern Christian Leadership Council disagreeing about its ultimate effectiveness, but it had just scored a spectacular national victory with the Selma march and the subsequent passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Chavez specifically cited those gains, and the strategy behind them, at the meeting, as he had been thinking about the applicability of civil rights strategy to the farm worker movement for some time. Six months earlier he had told a meeting of Mexican American leaders, according to one of the people at the meeting, Bert Corona, “that the reason the farm workers’ organizing drive could win in the days ahead was because they could ally themselves with a new feature in American social and political activity—the movement for civil rights, the movement of the youth, and the movement of the poor.”21
And who better than Chavez to see that the strategy of the civil rights movement could be used by his newly developing National Farm Workers Association? His Community Service Organization had been essentially a Mexican American civil rights group—it was no great stretch to think of the NFWA more as a continuation of the Mexican American civil rights struggle than as a conventional effort to organize a union. Not that the two conceptions of the NFWA could be easily separated, even theoretically. As the organization’s leaders often argued, one of the reasons that wages and working conditions were so bad was because farm workers were not covered by the same laws as all other Americans. Legally they were second-class workers, only recently granted workers’ compensation (owing primarily to the lobbying efforts of Dolores Huerta, coupled with the voter registration campaigns of the CSO and the NFWA), still lacking unemployment insurance, not covered by organizing rights under the National Labor Relations Act, with separate and unequal coverage by Social Security, child labor, and minimum-wage laws. In its first two years, the NFWA had placed considerable emphasis on political action (forging temporary alliances with liberal Democratic politicians and participating in Sacramento legislative hearings) to change this second-class status. Righting those wrongs was surely as much a civil rights battle as it was a union fight. As Chavez had been arguing for some time, this conception of the NFWA not only made good sense in the fields, it made perfect sense in terms of the overall political situation in the country. Who was more popular with the general public, civil rights leaders or union officials?
Once Chavez came to believe that joining the strike was the least worst choice, he urged the others to make that choice with full energy and enthusiasm. They were not hard to convince. Here was another mark of his political agility: he proposed to make a virtue of necessity. The Filipino strike and the enthusiasm of the workers was a great opportunity, he concluded, because the NFWA could transform this local struggle into a statewide and regional fight. Chavez was not clear on how that might be done, but he mentioned, almost as an aside, that they would have a better chance if they fought nonviolently: the strikers should not use the guns, sticks, and chains that had been taken to hand in almost all earlier farm worker battles.
A mass meeting was called for September 16, Mexican Independence Day—two days hence. People would be ready to celebrate, and speakers could evoke the radical traditions of Mexican nationalism when urging workers to join the strike. But only an experienced crew could arrange for such a meeting in two days’ time, as they would have to rush through all the necessary preparations—securing the hall, printing and distributing thousands of leaflets, arranging for numerous radio announcements, and planning the agenda. By all accounts the mood at the mass meeting was upbeat and energetic. A relaxed, humorous Gilbert Padilla chaired the meeting; a norteño trio sang patriotic songs; NFWA treasurer Tony Orendain warmed up the crowd (attendance estimates range from 800 to 1,500) by leading various vivas—“Viva la Causa! ” “Viva la Huelga! ” “Viva Cesar Chavez! ” The local hero Epifanio Camacho gave the most impressive speech, calling on the workers to become the true “sons of Zapata.” A subdued, modest Chavez tried to impress upon people how hard the struggle would be, and made a plea for nonviolence. Speakers from the floor recalled earlier battles, one even alluding to the 1933 Pixley martyrs, who had been murdered in the historic cotton strike. The crowd interrupted the speakers with rhythmic clapping and various vivas of their own, and clearly endorsed the strike, which was set to start the next Monday morning.
They had a weekend to prepare. The staff called the Oakland Catholic Worker collective and the Bay Area Friends of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and two SNCC organizers came down immediately. Certified letters were sent to the growers, asking for negotiations. Chavez approached Delano’s mayor and a friend in the California State Mediation and Conciliation Service, hoping that they could convince the growers to talk, but the growers rejected all offers. Picket captains were appointed and assigned to various ranches. Huerta met with Itliong, who dropped his request that the NFWA join AWOC, and welcomed its direct participation in the strike.
All that remained was a meeting with AWOC’s Al Green. Hartmire set it up, with himself as the mediator. Chavez and Drake represented the NFWA; Green came alone. Chavez, whose NFWA had little money, proposed a joint strike fund to Green, who had access to plenty. AWOC was paying as much as $40 a week to the Filipino strikers. Green said no, he wouldn’t share funds. Nor would he agree to a joint strike committee or sign a mutual nonraiding pact. He did agree that the two groups should make the same strike demands and cooperate fully in what, technically, would be separate strikes. After the meeting, Green and Chavez stood together to have their pictures taken.
Green left town immediately afterward. He was still disdainful of the NFWA and “that Mexican,” as he called Chavez. He was not interested in the strike; Itliong could run it. He was confident that his backing from the AFL-CIO and his close relations with West Coast Teamster leaders meant that he held all the important cards in AWOC’s rivalry with the NFWA. In fact, everything had been worked out by those below him, and the meeting had done little more than fill him in on the news. His hand was far weaker than he assumed. The AFL-CIO money would do him little good. That Mexican, the little man he had just brushed off, was several jumps ahead of him, about to become a darling of history. And although history often chooses her darlings capriciously, this time she did not. Her favors were bestowed on the one who best understood her current passions and inclinations.
The first day of the strike, Monday, September 20, about a hundred people showed up at the NFWA office ready to picket. Most of the others who had voted to strike four days earlier went back to work. Were they really on strike? No official union offering even minimum benefits had called this strike, nor had there been a spontaneous walkout to set it off. The doubt was so pervasive that even Teresa Fabela, Helen Chavez’s sister and sometime babysitter, went to work at the Mid-State Vineyards. This wasn’t a serious familial betrayal; it was just a reflection of the general confusion.22
People may have gone to work not knowing whether the strike was on, but once the pickets appeared, many walked off the job. Enough people joined in the first two weeks—several hundreds for sure, perhaps thousands—so that production was seriously reduced. The NFWA leadership transformed the quickly escalating number of volunteers, both farm
