On this day in 1970, the largest U.S. farm worker strike in history, known as the "Salad Bowl Strike", began when field workers, organized with César Chávez and the United Farm Workers (UFW), struck, doubling the price of lettuce and costing sellers $500,000 a day.
The UFW had just won the Delano Grape Strike, which had lasted an astonishing five years, winning contracts with dozens of grape growers that were the first of their kind in agricultural history.
The origins of the Salad Bowl Strike lay in a jurisdictional dispute with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which had won the right to organize field workers after concluding a successful strike of drivers and packers in the lettuce producing sector in July.
The UFW strongly contested this claim, and, after negotiations broke down, between 5,000-7,000 field workers went on strike. The labor action was not just a strike, but also included mass pickets, boycotts, and secondary boycotts by the participants.
The price of lettuce almost doubled immediately, and the interruption to work cost lettuce growers approximately $500,000 a day. The strike was a bitter dispute which suffered violence and state repression. César Chávez, a leading labor organizer, was jailed after refusing to stop the picketing on court order. On November 4th, 1970 a UFW regional office was bombed.
The strike ended on March 26th, 1971 when the Teamsters and UFW signed a new jurisdictional agreement reaffirming the UFW's right to organize field workers, however jurisdictional disputes between the UFW and Teamsters continued for years afterward. In 1975, the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act (CALRA) became law, establishing the right to collective bargaining for farmworkers in that state, a first in U.S. history.
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It feels like you have to choose between having any kind of principles or being successful, enjoying things, and having friends.
vent
A person in this group I'm in is always talking about how they hate fascism and they're ACAB and trans rights. They then started talking about their work and how they called in the police to a major store that was being robbed. They commented how they ruined that person's life and laughed like it was cute. And no one else thought that was bad, like that's just fine and normal. So I told them it wasn't funny and if I had done that I would feel really bad. But I had to just disengage because no one was on my side and I got scolded fir trying to shame someone just doing their job. Am I being over dramatic? The way they acted like it was cute that some desperate person is going to jail was sick. But I can't make a fuss about it because even though everyone in that group is all about "fuck cops", no one is on my side. I can either say nothing and stay, leave quietly, or make a stink and get ran out. If I leave then I loose the meager friends I've been able to make through a lot of mental effort and getting past trauma and I loose a lot of support from people who are helping me draw and get noticed. I don't know, just feels bad. 😕
you have to eat shit and choose your battles. personally i would let it go and keep a mental note that they believe these things so i know who they really are behind the easy stuff like "fuck cops". unfortunately we cannot be ideologically pure and successful; the best we can do is to wait for some kind of power or success and then be as open as we can about how we feel