Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Response from Rosalio Munoz About UFW Alums On Opposite Sides in Battle For Labor's Future by Randy Shaw

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6-03-2009 @11:36 PM ~
Gracias Companero Rosalio for putting matters in a more enlightened context!
I remember meeting Larry Itliong and hearing about Fred Ross. I was a youngster
in the Brown Berets about 18 years old when I first went down to Delano as part
of a Food Caravan down there.

So many good people are woefully ignorant about labor history in general.
I thought Cesar was too reluctant to offer up alternative more aggressive
methods of struggle back then, but the UFW remains and the Brown Berets
faded away. I have grown and kind of mellowed over the years. I can see
now the way Cesar was handling things was the best way to go, though I
heard he was not the meek humble man many saw when it came down to
conducting Union business and handling his staff.

I only wish he would of written more than he did... writings have a way of
out living their writers.

In waging war, be it spiritually based or not, not tangible tactic can be
discounted and the art of war requires looking at all possible tactics
and trajectories. Nowadays I see the validity of 'means' being appropriate
to 'ends' and do not believe that the ends justify the means or in any means
necessary, especially when mass mobilization has not been done on an on-
going basis, especially when there is not collective consciousness among the
masses and especially when La Raza as a unique people do not even have a
common terms for themselves that almost all can agree with in discussing
political-social matters, though, La Raza is understandable by many Chicanos
and Latinos it can have a negative connotation and Latinos is male gender.
I am comfortable with 'gente de el sol'.

Our strength, besides our numbers, is our diversity as a complex people of
many ways, different cultures and generally honest hard working people.
We do not riot, we can make bloody revolution, but we want to bring about
the necessary transformation as peacefully as we can in order to avoid any
future resentments by the descendants of anyone.

All the wars men have fought and there is still no social peace. Surely a new
approach is needed by vanguard leadership.

Education for Liberation!

Peter S. Lopez ~aka: Peta
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Yahoo Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com


http://anhglobal.ning.com/group/humanerightsagenda
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NetworkAztlan_News/
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From: Rosalio Munoz <rosalio_munoz@sbcglobal.net>
To: PETER S LOPEZ <peter.lopez51@yahoo.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 3, 2009 5:22:27 PM
Subject: Re: FYI: UFW Alums On Opposite Sides in Battle For Labor's Future

Peter here is a response of mine I sent to Portside which ran Shaw's article

Regarding UFW Alums On Opposite Sides in Battle For Labor's Future
by Randy Shaw  -Talking Union -- Posted on June 1, 2009

With friends like Randy Shaw its harder for Mexican American and other workers to take on their main enemy, corporate America.  In his article on the HERE-SEIU conflict Shaw overstates the severity of the conflict, which is serious, but ignores the tremendous unity of labor in the election of Obama, in the fights for a stimulus plan, the seating of Hilda Solis as Secretary of Labor, the growing strength (the New York Times and Wall Street Journal to the contrary not withstanding), in the fight for the Employee Free Choice Act and an immigrant worker friendly comprehensive immigration struggle.  Yes there are important issues to resolve, more democracy as well as disciplined unity in labor, the workers especially with success on the greater issues, will work out the problems, especially with such wonderful leaders as Dolores Huerta and Eliseo Medina.

I read Shaw's recent book on the UFW, Beyond The Fields,  and found it rich with information but poor on understanding.  Shaw says that key decisions by Cesar Chavez were decisive in the weakening of the UFW and not the changes in the correlation of forces in the class struggle world wide which set back workers globally for three decades. While agribusiness and farmlabor struggles are important, the main battle field is more metropolitan in factories, health facilities, harbors etc, etc, the return to more agressive tactics and mobilizing of the community established by left trade unionist before the McCarthy era was an important contribution of the UFW movement and union organizing, we are just now catching up where labor left off.

I have raised my concerns about Shaws take on these issues with him a few times and now feel compelled to share one of my main criticism of his work I told to him.  If he had written a book "about the Virgen de Guadalupe Juan Diego would turn out to be named Fred Ross."  For those not familiar with UFW and farmworker history Ross was an Industrial Areas Foundation profesional organizer who helped initiate the Community Service Organization the Mexican American civil rights group where Cesar learned about organization and who helped Cesar organize and run the UFW. Ross played an essential role in the history.  But so did others like Ernesto Galarza, Larry Itliong, J.J. Rodriguez and countless communists and other progressives.  Oh

Shaws predominately references white activists in the UFW who helped establish and propagate innovative tactics.  Just check out his books index for Spanish and English surnames.  Historical progress develops dialectically, or as Cesar might say the "Lord works in mysterious ways."  Monday morning quarterbacking it seems to me we are likely better off so many of the organizers went on to the labor and democratic struggles all over the country for virtually all progressive causes since Reagan was President than focussing solely on the farmworker struggle.  

The internecine fights between HERE and SEIU need to be resolved for the best, but we should not let them take our eyes off the prize which Shaw's critique tends to do. La Union Hace La Fuerza!, Si Se Puede!

--- On Wed, 6/3/09, PETER S LOPEZ <peter.lopez51@yahoo.com> wrote:

From: PETER S LOPEZ <peter.lopez51@yahoo.com>
Subject: FYI: UFW Alums On Opposite Sides in Battle For Labor's Future
To: "Net-Aztlan-News Group" <NetworkAztlan_News@yahoogroups.com>, "H-R-A Group" <Humane-Rights-Agenda@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Wednesday, June 3, 2009, 12:54 PM

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The struggle between for and against is one of the mind's most worse disease
as it tends to get stuck in the either-or polarity. The same as the Left-Wing
vs. Right-Wing political schizophrenia.

Obviously, whatever hinders the free expression of farmworkers and all working
-class people should be opposed, but we should be careful not to throw the baby
out with the bathwater.

Let the workers involved decide in FREE OPEN AND MONITORED ELECTIONS and
they should be included in all matters that pertain to their real welfare. We need
to get away from any form of hero worship. If I recall correctly, Herman Delores
at first was not in support of Obama when he ran for President.

Education for Liberation!
Peter S. Lopez ~aka: Peta
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Yahoo Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo..com


http://anhglobal.ning.com/group/humanerightsagenda
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NetworkAztlan_News/
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----- Forwarded Message ----
From: "moderator@PORTSIDE.ORG" <moderator@PORTSIDE.ORG>
To: PORTSIDE@LISTS.PORTSIDE.ORG
Sent: Tuesday, June 2, 2009 9:40:50 PM
Subject: UFW Alums On Opposite Sides in Battle For Labor's Future

UFW Alums On Opposite Sides in Battle For Labor's Future
by Randy Shaw
Talking Union -- Posted on June 1, 2009

From Websource: PSL ~

http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/ufw-alums-on-opposite-sides-in-battle-for-labors-future/

by Randy Shaw

Randy ShawAfter electing the most pro-union President in decades, organized labor is being torn by internal fights.. And on different sides of these conflicts are veterans of the United Farmworkers of America (UFW), whose strategic innovations have shaped today's labor movement and whose "Si Se Puede" ("Yes We Can") rallying cry became the hallmark of Barack Obama's campaign.


One dispute, now occurring in California's Central Valley city of Fresno, pits Eliseo Medina, a former UFW Executive Board member and now Executive Vice-President of SEIU, against his former UFW Executive Board colleague, Dolores Huerta. The backdrop: an election to represent Fresno's 10,000 home health care workers, who are currently represented by SEIU. Huerta held a Fresno press conference on May 27 urging workers to oust SEIU and to instead join the newly created National Union of Health Workers (NUHW). Voting begins June 1, and continues for two weeks.


The other ongoing conflict finds SEIU and UNITE HERE–the two unions most shaped by the UFW's legacy–battling over SEIU's raids on UNITE HERE's jurisdiction and membership. This fight has put longtime UFW allies on opposite sides, and is causing strains throughout the entire labor movement. The struggle led UFW veteran Fred Ross, Jr., one of the nation's leading organizers who Medina recruited to join SEIU, to announce that he was leaving the union after ten years so that he could help UNITE HERE resist SEIU's attacks.


How did this conflict emerge? As recently as April 2006, UFW alums Stephen Lerner and Eliseo Medina asked Huerta and the prominent UFW veteran Reverend Wayne "Chris" Hartmire to come to the University of Miami to help SEIU win a "Justice for Janitors" organizing campaign. While Huerta pressed the janitors cause with University of Miami President Donna Shalala, Hartmire provided strategic advice to religious supporters. Similarly, SEIU worked closely with UNITE HERE on the massive immigration marches of spring 2006, and on the national campaign to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

But since 2006, two developments have raised questions whether SEIU President Andy Stern is leading his union down the same path that led Medina and other key leaders to leave the UFW, and that caused the farmworker movement's decline.


First, SEIU moved to consolidate its local chapters throughout the nation. While reducing administrative overhead and freeing up organizing dollars, the plan also gave Stern the right to select the leadership of the newly consolidated locals. This prevented workers from electing their own leadership for three years.


As a result, Stern appointees, not representatives elected by the membership, soon dominated SEIU's governing Executive Board. When the Board then made controversial decisions–such as breaking up its third largest local, whose former leadership then started NUHW–opponents argued that this was Stern's decision, not that of a truly democratic process.


Nearly thirty years ago, it was Cesar Chavez's decision to deny farmworker representation on the UFW's Executive Board at its 1981 convention that represented the final blow to his union's growth. In the years leading up to that event, Chavez's critics were often fired or forced out, raising the same questions about union democracy that have now emerged under Stern..


The second development that dividing UFW alumni was Stern's decision to encourage Bruce Raynor and the former UNITE to secede from UNITE HERE and join SEIU. On March 23, Raynor's faction affiliated with SEIU as "Workers United," and SEIU has been raiding UNITE HERE's hotel, gaming and food service workers on the grounds that they are now part of its jurisdiction. Stern engineered this major policy shift with little or no public debate within SEIU. Workers were shifted from UNITE HERE to SEIU through little-noticed, small turnout elections–such as less than 100 voting in a bargaining unit of over 2000–that make a mockery of union democracy.


The UFW precedent is clearly on many minds. Medina responded to Huerta's urging Fresno's home care workers to vote for NUHW by noting that in the UFW she "led the campaign to fire and expel" rank and file workers "because they were independent of the UFW leadership and accountable directly to the members." Huerta responded that Medina had left the UFW in 1977 "when Cesar most needed him." While the two have privately debated the UFW's legacy, the SEIU-NUHW battle has brought this dispute between two giants of the UFW and labor movement out in the open.


NUHW's appeal to Fresno home-care workers directly challenges SEIU's commitment to union democracy, and could prove the defining issue as balloting begins this week. But the election's end will not soon heal the wounds between the many UFW veterans on both sides of this conflict, weakening if not breaking the bonds between those working side by side for social justice for over three decades.


Randy Shaw is the author of Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century (University of California Press).


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