Forty-five years ago on this date, August 24, 1970, the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC) leader César Chávez called for a consumer boycott of lettuce to support the strike against lettuce growers who would not negotiate contracts with farm workers for decent wages and working conditions. UFWOC was the predecessor organization to the United Farm Workers (UFW). The Delano grape boycott had recently shown some success, and the union was eager to advance workers’ claims into new fields.

To keep the UFW out of California lettuce and vegetable fields, most Salinas Valley growers signed sweetheart contracts with the Teamsters Union. Some 10,000 Central Coast farm workers respond by walking out on strike. The UFW used the boycott to convince some large vegetable companies to abandon their Teamster agreements and sign UFW contracts.

The so-called Salad Bowl strike was a series of strikes, mass pickets, boycotts and secondary boycotts that led to the largest farm worker strike in U.S. history. Shipments of fresh lettuce nationwide virtually ceased, and the price of lettuce doubled almost overnight. Lettuce growers lost $500,000 a day. A state district court enjoined Chávez personally and the UFW as an organization from engaging in picketing, but both Chávez and the union refused to obey the court’s orders.

Violence against UFW workers became increasingly widespread in the fields. On November 4, 1970 a UFW regional office was bombed.

Chávez spent from Dec. 10 to 23 in jail in Salinas, Calif., for refusing to obey the court order. Former Olympic gold medal-winning decathlete Rafer Johnson, Coretta Scott King, widow of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Ethel Kennedy, widow of Robert Kennedy, visited him in jail.

On March 26, 1971, the Teamsters and UFW signed a new jurisdictional agreement reaffirming the UFW’s right to organize field workers, although Teamsters did continue to organize in some places, with frequent violent attacks on UFW members. The Teamsters finally left the field in 1973.

After a dramatic 110-mile march from San Francisco, which gathered more than 15,000 people by the time they reached the E & J Gallo Winery in Modesto on March 1, 1975, UFW’s persistent action led directly to the passage of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which went into effect on August 28th. The UFW organized thousands of agricultural laborers into unions, in many cases winning recognition and negotiated contracts.

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  • Straight_Depth [they/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    The Rebel Alliance, or as it' is fully known, "Alliance to restore the Republic" are a bunch of libs. You're fighting a torturous insurgency against a galaxy-spanning empire for the purpose not of a new, better system, but for the same system that led to the empire's rise to begin with? What's gonna happen thirty years after you win? Another guy exploits the combination of crises and parliamentary technicalities to get power again? Do you think you can just make minor changes and you're free of fascism again? Do you really have this much faith in institutions and rules?

      • Cromalin [she/her]
        ·
        2 years ago

        i assume the partitionists and sectorists are calling for like, the parts of the galaxy the mandalorians controlled for centuries to all be one thing or something

    • Sen_Jen [they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      That could have been the point of the sequel trilogy, if any thought was put into it. In fact, if it had just been referenced that the First Order came to power because of the lukewarm reforms of the restoration, and that a true societal upheaval was needed, that would make the world a lot more coherent. As is, if you watch the movies it just resets to the status quo of the start of A New Hope

    • Cromalin [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      you watching andor? saw's scene in episode 8 was about this in a lot of ways

        • Cromalin [she/her]
          ·
          2 years ago

          it's super interested in this issue and the story of how the rebellion comes together from a group of wildly ideologically opposed groups, and i assume it'll be getting into how the neo-republicans ended up in power in season 2.

    • FnordPrefect [comrade/them, he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      lol, I never considered this but that makes the 7-9 trilogy art.

      "No, we aren't making basically the same movies as 4-6 because we are lazy and creatively bankrupt, but to emphasize that that's what the rebellion gets for being regressive instead of revolutionary"

    • baguettePants [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      The Empire looks pretty lib to me. The Empire characters fully believe they are fighting for order and justice. Empire is very similar to the US, whose libs are bringing "freedom and democracy" while destroying countries and murdering children in the process.

      Some Rebels see through this BS and are trying to provoke the Empire into revealing its fascist nature, so that everyone would join against it. Mon Mothma is a radlib or something, Luthen seems not. IMHO, the Empire is just libs going full fascist, as usual. When all is said and done, without lib support, there would be no Empire.