Transcripts For CSPAN3 Delano Grape Strike 20151026 : vimars

Berlin and the African American story and take your questions or historians joining us throughout the day. World war ii 70 years later live from the National World war ii museum, saturday, november 7, beginning at 11 00 a. M. Eastern here on American History tv on cspan3. Next, lorraine agtang, who participated in the 1965 delano grape strike, joins a panel of historians to discuss its history and legacy as well as the early days of the Farmworkers Movement. California State University bakersfield and Bakersfield College cohosted this event. Its about 90 minutes. Mr. Asher the next portion of our program is a Panel Discussion on the history and legacy of the grape strike. It is an honor to have with us one of the heroes of the strike, ms. Lorraine agtang. They started the strike in 1965. Lorraine and her family lived for years in the same farm labor camp outside delano. She was 13 when the strike began. When it was won in 1970, she and her family proudly went to work under union contract. They walked out on strike again in 1973. She was the first manager of the retirement village you saw in this film near delano that the Farmworkers Movement built for elderly and displaced filipino farmworkers in 1974. In 1975, with the passage of the Agricultural Labor relations act, lorraine organized farmworkers from multiple ethnicities for the first secret ballot state conducted union elections. She has been a dedicated activist with the Farmworker Movement ever since and continues to work to tell the story of the contributions to the movement. Next is dawn, an associate professor of history at San Francisco State University. She received an m. A. In Asian American studies from ucla and a phd in history from stanford. Her research focuses on filipinoAmerican History, historic and cultural preservation, and filipinoamerican foodways. Shes the author of little manila the art of making a Filipino Community in stockton, california, which was awarded an Honorable Mention for the Frederick Jackson turner award. She is working on a biography of the labor leader we just saw a film about. Dr. Mario sifuentes is a professor at the university of california merced who earned his phd in american studies at brown university. He was a Generation College First Student from a farm working background. His first book, by forest and by fields, tells the story of mexican immigrant workers in the agricultural and therefore restation refo industry in the pacific northwest. He teaches courses in food history, labor history, and immigrant history. Hes the founder of the oregon history project and is currently curating a Museum Exhibit on the 10th anniversary of you see merced u. C. Merced. Rounding out our panel is dr. Todd holmes, a historian and researcher with the bill lane center, for the American West at stanford. He earned a bachelors and masters degree from california State University sacramento and completed his phd at yale. Hes the awardwinning author of numerous publications on the political, economic, and environmental history of california. And the American West as well as his forthcoming book titled the first of fracture. At stanford, he helps direct the bill lane centers rural rest west initiative and is the principal researcher for the Centers California Coastal Commission project. Just two final reminders, each panelist will have 15 minutes to present. Our timekeeper will inform you when you have five, and three minutes left. To the outings, i would request you silence your cellphones and be respectful to our guests. Questions and answers will follow all the presentations. Thank you. Ms. Agtang good afternoon. Like he said, i was only 13 years old when the strike again. I remember working that day in the field when there was, like, this big commotion going on and people screaming and yelling. My father said to us, come on, we are leaving. I asked what he meant, and he said there was a strike. I had no clue what a strike meant. He was saying that the filipinos were out on the picket lines. It was interesting to me to see them out there screaming and yelling. My experience with the filipino farmworkers are that they were pretty mild. Nice guys, hard workers. They dont want to make anyone mad, especially their growers, so what was all this commotion about . From that point on, my whole life story changed. I would probably still be living in delano with seven kids working in the fields. That made an impression on me, my first exposure to civil disobedience. I was born in delano, born in the labor camp that we lived in with my six siblings. We were finally excited when that whole period was over. I am half filipino, half mexican. The filipinos started a strike. Two weeks later they knew they , could not do it alone because the mexicans were working and breaking the strike. They came and asked them to join the cause. Though cesar was not quite ready, he knew that this was the time. If they did not get together then, they were never going to get together. I remember as a kid sneaking into filipino hall, how great it was for me personally to see the meetings with the filipinos in the blush and to see the meetings with the filipinos and the mexicans and workers working together for a common cause. Historically, growers pitted the workers against each other. I remember them telling us that mexican worker crews were picks were picking more boxes of grapes than we were, so people work harder to catch up with them. Out in the community, they did not have parties together. Seeing them in filipino hall just made me a whole person, finally. To see them working together. When the 1973 strike began, i that is when i got involved politically. I was working and went out on strike again, and thats when the boycott began. A man was killed and then the boycott began. I went to work with farmworkers because i had a family and could not boycott. Many families did join the boycott. Manolos went on the boycott. They had never been out in the field. And now they were in in new york as chicago asking every day americans not to eat grapes in front of the market. Who knew that five years later, many people in the United States were not eating grapes, and it hit the pocketbooks of many of those growers. They finally signed the contract. Those men were already old. Those guys never were going to go back to work. That was one of the things they always said. We are not going to go back to work because they were old. , my job being the first manager was to go out to the labor camp to try to talk filipinos into retiring and come out to the village. Have you ever tried to talk a filipino into retiring . Ugh. [laughter] ms. Agtang because thats all they knew, was to work. They worked and died in the labor camps. There were stories of people finding money in their mattresses. Like my uncle, who never really learned how to speak english. They lived in a labor camp a quartermile from us. Them, they did not get married. It was against the law for them to marry. By the time they could, they were old. They were hurt. They were jilted. They were not going to get married. He offered them a safe place to die in dignity. I first had gone to work with the clinics, so i like seeing those pictures of the 40 acres, the clinic, and the service center. When people needed help applying for social security, any other they of paper they needed, had doctors 24 hours, like my friend over there says. This was like a fivestar hotel for them. They had a filipino cook. Tony arlington was a cook. They had their gardens, and people from all over california would come and visit them. Actually, it was a labor of love, built by labor people and by College Students from san diego to San Francisco, and they would come on the weekends to help build it. They grow attached to them. Tomorrow is the big celebration at 40 acres. A lot of them will be there tomorrow. They loved the men. Proud,ere strong, hardworking men that taught us all so much about how to be able to stand up. It took me years to understand they were standing up for what they wanted when they had not before that. Then, in 1975 when the Agricultural Labor relations act was passed providing for secret ballot elections, i had the opportunity to go out and organize. And by then, we were organizing puerto ricans, arabs. There were workers from all over the world that can to work on the grapes. And it was a great time. I have always been an activist. , iave always represented came to the capital of sacramento to receive an award for representing Filipino Workers, and for rob, when he had taken av 123 to add to history the filipino strikers in the history books. 123. Tified on behalf of av and i tell young people you have to get active in your community, and you have to work with everyone in your community. Unless you do that, you are not going to get anything done. You have got to find out what the needs are of everyone at the table. And together, youve got to have each others back to get what you want. Thank you. [applause] any questions . Yes. I just want to make a clarification before the panel goes on any further. In looking at the history of the Filipino Workers, they have an Organization Called Agricultural Workers association that was founded in stockton, california, under dolores was working with the cso at the time, and that is how the organization was founded. Cso went on to organize in other areas and awa continued. They would have their crew boxes would negotiate with the rays would be for pay. In 1965 when they went to coachella to negotiate the rate they wanted, they got it. , thethey came to delano growers would not give them the pay raise they wanted. Mr. Asher she wants to make her presentation on the topic you are talking about. We want to wait until im not going to get into a lot of detail about awa mr. Asher we will have a conversation after the panel is finished. There was a mistake that i want to address. Basically, when they went to ise, they did ra not get it. So their history was if they did not get the raise, they would do a work stoppage, and that is what happened in 1965. In 1968 when they did the work stoppage, dolores was at the meeting where they voted for it. It took several days. It was not two weeks, and it was not that the farmworkers were breaking the strike because it was a work stoppage. They wanted to see if the growers were going to give them their pay increase, and they did not. So thats when the swa decided to join the strike eight days , later. Csoas one of the early organizers and can also probably talk about what was going on. Thank you. Thats all i wanted to say. [applause] ive got a question. Ms. Mabalon good afternoon, everyone. I want to say what an honor it is to be with all of you and thank you to dean asher for inviting me to be part of this event. I want to begin with a quote from philip veracruz. How many of you have read this book . My classmate is one of the editors of the book, so i want to give him props for this. [applause] ms. Mabalon in the book, vera cruz says this. Our role in the union has not been written and sometimes intentionally deleted because the anglos who wrote the story did not know all the facts and we did not speak up. I just want to say what a privilege and honor it has been to be a historian of the Filipino American experience and try to piece together the story of the Filipino Americans in the United States and the filipino role in the united Farmworkers Movement. I want to give a back story. Im going to go to september 8. We can talk about what happens after the nsw in the q a in the succeeding panels, but i want to give a little more context about Filipino American labor organizing. Thank you, lori, for talking about awa, which i will talk about as well. When the strike began, one of the strikers talked to a local reporter and this is what he said. For more than 30 years, i have been in strikes in the yield. I think we are going to win this one, that whether or not we win the growers will know they have , been in one hell of a fight. I want to talk about militancy , discipline, the long history of Filipino American Union Organizing that brings us to that moment september 7, 1965, in filipino hall in delano. To understand the story, we need to go to 1898 in which they become a colony of the United States and the Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association begins to recruit filipinos into the sugar plantations. Other asian workers were excluded from emigrating to hawaii because it was a territory of the United States. When the recruiters went to the central and northern part of the philippines they look , specifically for workers who were illiterate. They wanted to make sure these were workers who would not try to organize. Many thousands of filipinos wanted to go to this fabled land called america that their teachers are told them about. Many of them lied. They were illiterate. Their american educators had told them about something called a labor union. Kind of ironic, right . Empire is funny that way. I want to start with the sugar plantation workers in hawaii, who come over in 1906 and start to come by the thousands. This man, a selfeducated lawyer, begins to organize. In 1920, he leads the Filipino Workers on strike. They lose. In 1924, he also leads Filipino Workers on strike, and they lose. These are the strike leaders. In this town in the island of hawaii, 17 filipinos are shot dead by police when they are out on strike. This is a terrible and violent strike. Again, another strike that filipinos lose. The hspa does not take any more chances. They blacklist those who had been on the plantations. Where else will they go . Many of the strike leaders come to california and begin to work in the fields and also start organizing. In this Labor Migration cycle i will just go over this very briefly from february to june, from the 1920s through the 1960s and 1970s, the filipinos are working asparagus, in the stockton area. And thats where my roots are. The daughter and granddaughter of farmworkers. From june to august, many of the workers are working in the alaskan salmon canneries. From august 2 october, they are working grapes. November to january, they are pruning. Or it is a season they take off. These Filipino Workers are working under brutal conditions. Racial violence, rigid segregation. This is the famous positively no filipinos allowed sign in stockton. Look magazine in 1946. In a way to survive this very brutal work, particularly asparagus, in which they are and bent over 10 to 12 hours a day, they begin to work in crews under contractors and are to starting to innovate like working by the piece or by the pound, and depending upon the contractor, for much of their needs for advances in pay and finding them jobs. The contractor system later on in the history of united farmworkers will be something kind of controversial, especially as we get into the history of the hiring hall, and we can talk about that later on. Filipinos also are working in the alaskan salmon cannery. In 1933, filipinos start a union there, which becomes local seven, and that union is actually still in existence now. Many of the leaders of the Agricultural Workers organizing committee came out of the alaskan salmon Cannery Union. Local seven was known as one of the most radical unions in the entire labor landscape. So radical that they were kicked out of the cio right after world war ii because so many of their leaders were either communist or accused of being communist. These were the founders of the camry workers and farm laborers union. Larry came to the United States at the age of 15 in 1930. He became Vice President and dispatcher of this union. Amongst other labor organizing activities, he goes on strike. He organizes sardine workers in san pedro and becomes a leader in this union. The leaders of the Cannery Workers Union were murdered in 1934. Much of this labor history is marred by violence. Leaders protecting themselves against police violence, against violence from employers, from other contractors, etc. So the leaders are murdered. At about the same time, filipinos working in the lettuce fields in salinas form the Filipino Labor Union and go on strike in 1934. This strike is also brutal and broken, but amongst the veterans of this strike are people like chris, who becomes a leader in the alaskan salmon Cannery Union and becomes a mentor of sorts for many filipino labor organizers. In 1939, asparagus workers in stockton form a union called the filipino Agricultural Laborers association. Many leaders are people like chris, larry. They were also members of the alaskan salmon Cannery Un