On solidarity:
The historic Delano grape strike was started when Filipino grape workers (led by Larry Itliong and the AWOC) and Mexican grape workers (led by NFWA) realized one thing:

As as long as those white growers could play them against each other, nobody would win. (1/)

The Filipino workers had already been organizing earlier in the season, and had established a minimum rate they could accept. They walked off together in Delano when this rate wasn’t accepted.

So, the growers replaced them with a new workforce, this time predominantly Mexican.

See, this is a classic tactic of holding onto power. Pit us against each other so we can’t fight back against the boss.

It’s especially effective to divide along cultural lines, when there isn’t an easy way for the workers to have a conversation all together, or to build trust.

Larry Itliong reached out to Dolores and Cesar and the workers of the newly formed National Farm Workers Association.

All of them knew that divided, it’s a race to the bottom. Fighting for scraps. Together? That’s a different story.

(PS I’m no historian. I just tweet.)

Chavez believed in the workers he led, but he was worried about their risks. So he held a meeting in the Our Lady of Guadalupe church. 1200 grape workers showed up.

When he laid out the facts, 1200 workers broke into a chant. “Huelga! Huelga!” (that means strike)

Solidarity.

They didn’t just give lip service to their solidarity. No separate picket lines, no chances for bosses to appeal to one side or the other.

They merged into one organization, the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee. They went on strike together, right after the big harvest.

They asked for union recognition. Growers laughed. They picketed. Racist police roughed them up.

Now enter two new characters to this solidarity story: the teenagers and the longshoremen.

(K-pop wasn’t born yet.)

Student activists followed that grape harvest, all the way to the docks in Oakland. The longshoremen heard out the story of the grape workers and refused to load the grapes.

Ten thousand tons of grapes rotted on the docks.

(Companies that DID load them learned about boycotts.)

So we have Filipino workers, Mexican workers, clever teens, the longshoremen... and solidarity strong enough to rot 10,000 tons of grapes.

Now introducing: Consumers. Volunteers went to stores and talked to shoppers about the grape workers.

Consumers began to boycott grapes.

All this required a lot of work and a lot of hard discussions at the dinner table. Sharing food builds community.

When UFW built a union hall, they built a strike kitchen- Filipino & Mexican workers cooked and ate together.

(So go on, talk to your dad about Black Lives Matter!)

A lion’s share of that Delano strike kitchen/union hall solidarity complex was funded via donations from the United Auto Workers.

Filipino & Mexican workers
Longshoremen in Oakland
Auto workers in Detroit
Grocery shoppers
Clever teens

+The Civil Rights movement, the whole time.

There’s a whole side plot about UFW & Black Panthers for another day. The two groups had an awful lot of differences, but they agreed on some things (that seem obvious, yet are still a problem!)

For example:
-White supremacy is absolutely awful
-Kids shouldn’t go hungry

It took 5 years of organizing, fighting, fasting, even murder.

When that grape union contract was signed, it was on the spot where auto workers, kids, longshoremen, moms and the Civil Rights movement all invested in solidarity.

Together, it’s possible.
#WeFeedYou