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Links

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If you have suggestions for additional links that should be included here, please email me with ideas

Archives

These links provide detailed summaries of library collections, many of which were key resources for the book.

  • The UFW Archives, multiple collections with thousands of documents, photographs, tapes and videos, are housed at the Walter P. Reuther Labor Library at Wayne State University, which Cesar Chavez selected in 1967 as the repository for the union’s history.
    http://www.reuther.wayne.edu/use/ufwguide.html

  • Jacques E. Levy, who wrote an authorized biography of Cesar Chavez in 1975, conducted extensive interviews for a second unfinished book and then donated his entire collection of interviews and tapes to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.
    http://webtext.library.yale.edu/

  • The Jerry Cohen papers were donated by the UFW’s first chief counsel to his alma mater, Amherst College, which has digitized parts of the collection.
    http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/amherst/ma179.html

  • The Fred Ross papers are housed at Stanford University, which also has a number of other collections related to Chicano history and the farm worker movement.
    http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/spc/xml/m0812.xml

 

Readings

These are the links to collections of documents and photographs, amassed by institutions and individuals, that amplify the story of the farm worker movement.

  • The Farmworker Documentation Project contains a wealth of documents, remembrances, photographs, and audio-visual materials compiled by former UFW administrator LeRoy Chatfield.
    http://www.farmworkermovement.org

  • The California Agricultural Labor Relations Board has placed online all decisions dating back to 1975 when the board was established, as well as minutes of recent meetings and other general historical and current information.
    http://www.alrb.ca.gov

  • Contracts negotiated by the UFW, beginning with the DiGiorgio agreement in 1967, have been collected and digitized by the University of California at Davis.
    http://giannini.ucop.edu/ufw/#s

  • Oral histories and photographs documenting the UFW movement in Washington state have been compiled by the University of Washington.
    http://depts.washington.edu/pcls/ufw/

  • FBI files on the agency’s seven-year surveillance of Cesar Chavez and the UFW, initiated in 1965 because of unsubstantiated allegations that he was a communist, were first released in 1995.
    http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/chavez.htm

  • The CSO Project is an ongoing effort to document the history of the Community Service Organization, the group founded by Fred Ross, where a number of the early founders of the UFW first learned to organize in Mexican American neighborhoods across California.
    http://www.csoproject.org

  • Historical records of El Teatro Campesino, which began as an improvisational troupe performing skits to organize farmworkers during the Delano grape strike and grew into a world-famous organization, are housed at the University of California, Santa Barbara, which has made many videos available online.
    http://cemaweb.library.ucsb.edu/theater.html

 

Writings

This section contains links to a potpourri of published articles – some written at the time, some more recent; some by me, and some by other authors.

  • "Same old politics hurts New York farmworkers," Albany Times-Union, Jan. 29, 2010
    http://www.timesunion.com

  • "To Save Salinas," Los Angeles Times, Jan. 31, 2010
    http://www.latimes.com

  • “On Pilgrimage, September, 1973,” a journal by Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, about going to jail in Fresno for the farmworker cause.
    http://www.catholicworker.org

  • “Viva la Causa,” a 1973 article in the American Journal of Nursing by Marion Moses about her experience as a nurse in the UFW, working to improve health care for farmworkers.
    Viva La Causa.pdf

  • “Rosie’s 36 Year Saga to try to do something to help farm workers,’’ a journal by Rosemary Cooperrider about her work on the boycott, the picket lines, and living at La Paz.
    Rosie's 36 Yr. Saga.pdf

  • “At the Heart of a Historic Movement,” a July, 2000 essay in Newsweek by Chris Hartmire’s son about growing up in the farm worker movement.
    http://www.newsweek.com/id/85494

  • “New York Needs a Chavez,” a June, 2009 op-ed I wrote about proposed legislation to help farmworkers in New York State.

    http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp

  • “Study of History Demands Nuanced Thinking,” a July, 2009 op-ed I wrote about teaching Chavez in Texas schools.
    http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories

  • “How the UFW dug itself into a hole over water,” a September 2009 op-ed I wrote about the UFW’s political machinations.
    http://www.latimes.com/

 
 
 

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The LA Times Series

“UFW—A Broken Contract,” January, 2006. This is the four-part series I wrote for the Los Angeles Times about the United Farm Workers union today, investigating what the organization had become and how it came to stray so far from its original mission. I first delved into the history solely to understand the present – to seek explanations for why the union was no longer organizing farmworkers. I soon came to believe that the events of the late 1970s and early 1980s were so critical in shaping the UFW today that the history merited a separate story as part of the series. That article dealt with only a small sliver of the history, and my research convinced me that there was a much larger, richer story that needed to be told. That led me to write “The Union of Their Dreams.”


download LA_Times_Series.pdf


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