When time came for me to get a few hours sleep, at around 10 or 11 each night, I would go to the home of the Ortizes, an older couple I was living with who had been farmworkers all their lives, and staunch supporters of the union for many years. During the time we had to talk, I learned of their struggle for the union; in the spring of 1973, when the hard won 3-year UFW contracts expired, the growers signed new contracts with the Teamsters. The UFW went out on strike; the reaction of Kern County was violent repression of the strike in the movie "Fighting for Our Lives". There were many beatings and arrests, and even spraying from a helicopter at one point. It was during the strike that Juan de la Cruz and Nadji Daifallah, who are two official martyrs to the union, were killed. One young woman, Marta Rodriguez who used to drop by the Ortizes' home on some evenings, was beaten and arrested during this strike. Francisco Ortiz told me how he was arrested during that summer and kept in jail in a crowded cell for sixteen days, fed on cold rice and water, and allowed to wear only his underwear. Josefina Ortiz was sprayed with a pesticide while on a picket and she developed a sore that took three years to heal.
When Juan de la Cruz and Nadji Daifallah were killed within three days of each other, Chavez sent the farmworkers to bring the struggle to marketplace.
The Ortizes had never lived in a city, spoke almost no English, and hardly read or wrote, yet they sold everything and went to New York City for eleven months. There, they lived ten blocks from where I grew up. While I was in my junior year in high school, the Oritizes were in my neighborhood in West Side Manhattan asking grocers to take the lettuce and grapes off their shelves.
Those who went to different field offices had different experiences. In Salinas where the union has about half its current contracts, the people on the summer program saw how a contract is administered and enforced, how a ranch committee works--the grievance proceedure, the hiring hall, and the seniority system.
Eileen Hagerty was sent to San Ysidro, and she described one of her experiences to me:
One morning we got up at 4:30 to go and see a ranch in north San Diego County. Genaro Zavalo formerly a farmworker, but then a full time organizer for the union, led us there. We went to see the living conditions. It was really bad. You hear about it but when you see it, it makes an incredible impression. The ranch was called Oceanview Ranch. The workers lived in the forests at the edge of the fields. Most were from Tijuana, but Oceanview was about 80 miles from the border so they can't commute everyday.
Some were living in hollows that they'd dug out of the ground; others had made little "houses" made from tomato stakes, sheets of plastic, and cardboard for the floor. There was a clearing where there were empty cans of soda, eggshells, and other "kitchen items". They bathed, washed their clothes and drank from the one stream nearby. There weren't any bathrooms, and you could come across human feces in the woods. Some people had just stretched sheets of plastic between two rows of tomatoes and slept there. At another ranch, the people we talked to had been promised work, but when they had arrived there was no work. The ones who were not working had to beg food from the ones who had work.
Kathy Rettig, a recent graduate of Penn State, also drove across the country with Eileen and me. She was sent to Hemmet, and had this to say about the experience there:
"Hemmet was a small retirement town in central southern California. It is white upper-middle class; the average age is 64. Also there is Hemmet Wholesale nursery which employs 150-200 agricultural workers. They voted to be represented by the UFW two years ago, and it has been two years of stalling negotiations. Our job was to bring Hemmet Wholesale to the negotiating table, harass the people connected with Hemmet Wholesale, and build up support in the town. We began with a petition of support on which we got some 500 signatures. We presented the list to the city council, the mayor, Robert Lindquist Sr., seniro partner of Hemmet Wholesale, is chairman of the board of the bank. Another leader of the local School Board is on the board of directors. The newspaper is controlled by an uncle. The man in charge of the Water District is also on the Hemmet Wholesale board, and the local Judge is a former distributor of Hemmet Wholesale products. The whole town is controlled by the Lindquists and their friends. Our effort along with efforts of Los Angeles and San Diego supporters picketing retailers such as Nurseryland and others who carried Hemmet products brought Hemmet Wholesale back to the bargaining table.
The other phases of the summer program involved two weeks at the headquarters in La Paz, three weeks on the boycott staff in either the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, or San Diego. The summer program ended at the third bi-annual UFW Constitutional Convention.
The experience in the boycott cities was as diverse and eventful as the field office work had been. To this city person, however, it was all much more familiar. The work there consisted of fundraisers and support organizing of all kinds--some worked on a benefit yard sale, some sold union graphics, buttons, and jewelry on the beach. I worked door to door, and discovered that with occasional exceptions, people give inversely to how much money they make. The other main activity was continuing to put pressure on Hemmet Wholesale's retailer outlets.
Hemmet, by this time, was coming to the bargaining table, but in body only. In particular, we concentrated picket lines in front of Nurseryland, because they had at one time agreed not to carry any more Hemmet products until a contract was signed and has then gone back on the agreement. So we took the case to the customers, and many turned away.
The final phase was the convention. I would add only that it was our job, along with the boycott staffs form the different cities, to serve the food to the thousand or so delegates and staff people, and so I washed pots during much of the convention.
Roger Wallach '78 spent this past summer in California as a member of the UFW summer program. He lives in Mather House and is majoring in History of Science. his job of running the convention that much easier, and prevented late night sessions from becoming early morning sessions. It was a warm and honest response. It was exactly what my doing a good pot washing job could mean to him. And, unlike so many "famous" people, he doesn't look vaguely past you when he speaks to you.
The kind of work I was involved in in Los Angeles is also being carried on here in Boston by the full-time staff people here. There is a Cambridge Neighborhood Support Organization and a Harvard support group will be forming as part of that organization. Last spring here we had a used book and record sale, we showed "Union Maids" and "The Grapes of Wrath" and sponsored a Cinco de Mayo celebration with La Raza. This year the struggle continues; for example we have brought and may again need to bring pressure on Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Co. which owns a controlling interest in Coachella Growers, who, like Hemmet Wholesale, are refusing to bargain in good faith. The UFW experience certainly changed my viewpoint on farmwork, and agribusiness.
As Julie Monda '80 put it, "I came back here to Harvard with a decision of returning and being useful to the movement. The summer lets you look critically at Harvard, what so many people are doing here and how it is producing the tools of oppression for tomorrow.