Home > Creating Change> Legislation>
Legislative News
Remarks by Arturo S. Rodriguez, President United Farm Workers of America Fair Treatment for Farm Workers Now March September 4, 2011—State Capitol, Sacramento
09/05/2011
Remarks by Arturo S. Rodriguez, President United Farm Workers of America Fair Treatment for Farm Workers Now March September 4, 2011—State Capitol, Sacramento
How many of you are here in Sacramento for the first time? Show me your hands!
How many of you have come to Sacramento in the last five years to fight for reform of the law?
How many of you helped get out the vote to elect people who will really represent us in this building in front of you?
To all of you who have traveled from so far away, from every major farm area in California—some of you leaving last night to be here early this morning—we are here to affirm a simple truth:
Si Se Puede!
We marched to Sacramento and Governor Brown listened.
We took many steps over these 200 miles. Governor Brown helped us take our biggest step forward yet by offering his own proposal in legislation by state Senate leader Darrell Steinberg that will significantly advance the cause of fair treatment for farm workers.
Yet these last five years have been about more than a campaign for a single law. It has been a struggle to win the fair treatment for farm workers that other workers in California won decades ago.
Today the pilgrimage ends, but the struggle continues.
For the anger we rightly feel when farm workers die from the heat because employers refuse to provide shade and water, struggle!
For the anger we rightly feel when we put in a hard day’s work and don’t get paid what we deserve, struggle!
For the anger we rightly feel over the speedups and mistreatment we endure in the fields, struggle!
For the anger we rightly feel because of the poisons we are exposed to every day in the fields, struggle!
When we convert the anger we so rightly feel into nonviolent struggle, we overcome the discrimination and mistreatment at the hands of the employers by asserting the strength and power that are ours when we unite together. * * * Forty-five years ago, when Cesar Chavez led that first historic pilgrimage to Sacramento, he talked about how marching “is very powerful.” Listen to his words.
[The march] is a powerful weapon, a powerful organizing tool, and it has a powerful influence on those who participate.
There is this anticipation. You have a definite starting place and…goal. You’re moving, making progress every step. That’s very comforting to people. It gives a great sense of calm, because it’s peaceable work. You can think much better, and you get a lot of courage. Then there’s the sense of personal sacrifice…
* * * There are countless inspiring stories during this pilgrimage of people who went out of their way to house and feed us, and care for our needs.
--On the first day of the march out of Madera, three farm worker women came up to us. “We can’t march with you, Arturo,” they said, “but this is for food and water for the marchers”—and they handed us nineteen dollars they scraped together.
--Two days later, Marcus, an ironworkers union member, was driving down Highway 99, spotted the marchers, turned around and came up to us to ask what was happening. He later returned with 20 cases of bottled water. The other day Marcus returned again after attending a union meeting in San Francisco where he collected $500 in donations he gave us. * * * So many marchers displayed personal courage and sacrifice.
--Alfredo Zamora is a veteran harvester at California Mushroom Farm in Ventura, a leader in the long struggle to win the union contract there. But he never participated in a march like this.
“When we started, I didn’t know if I could go the whole way in this heat,” he said. Alfredo is from the coast and not used to 100-degree temperatures. But he took courage and strength from seeing his fellow farm workers endure this arduous trek. Now he feels so proud he has stuck it out. And he has so much to go back and tell his fellow workers at the company.
--Odilia Chavez is a farm worker who made the difficult journey from Oaxaca to California seeking the dream of a better life. She is so proud of her son who is graduating from high school and getting scholarship offers from universities.
Now Odilia has walked the entire march from Madera to Sacramento to fulfill her own dream of dignity and fair treatment in the fields—also lending us her truck to pull the bathrooms and carry the water.
--Leonardo Lopez Gonzalez is a worker from Gallo of Sonoma who also marched the entire way. He has marched in great pain because his feet are horribly blistered. All along the way he’d use the bullhorn, shouting, “Si Se Puede!”
Many people told Leonardo to stop marching. He said, “No, I said I was coming and I am going to do this all the way until the end.” Leonardo’s wife came these last few days to help him complete his journey. * * * On Friday, Maria Elena Durazo, leader of the Los Angeles labor movement, was talking with us as we marched. This is a down moment for many people who believe as we do, we agreed. “Now it is so important to show people that if we fight we will win,” we concluded.
To all of those who tell us “No, you can’t” because we are too poor, we are too powerless, our opposition is too great and wealthy; to all who say that the public doesn’t care about us…
…let this march and what we have accomplished because of it demonstrate that when we organize, when we vote, when we march, when we sacrifice ourselves for others—in the end we will win.
With these new tools we are about to win, let us continue working hard to build our union—especially as we prepare to celebrate our 50th anniversary next year.
We extend a special invitation for all of you to join us at the UFW’s 50th anniversary convention next May in Bakersfield.
