Sal Si Puedes (Escape If You Can): Cesar Chavez and the New American Revolution Read Free Page A

than we ever thought we could work and do things we
never thought we could do. We had to keep up with Cesar.
Many of us couldn’t—and couldn’t keep working for no
pay—and that’s why a lot of us left.”
    He could also be compassionate. If he saw you were down,
he’d pick you up, encourage and support you. In the most difficult
moments, when the odds seemed stacked against us and
the prospects appeared bleak, he’d tell corny jokes. They were
so bad we had to laugh.
    Cesar was once in a San Jose hospital suffering intense
pain from a back condition aggravated by his years toiling with el cortito , the infamous short-handled hoe. Worried about security,
the hospital moved him into the maternity ward. After
the move, with Helen, his aides, and guys from his security
detail around, Cesar summoned the nurse. “What’s wrong,
Mr. Chavez?” she asked. “Is your back hurting you?”
    “No nurse, I’m having labor problems,” he deadpanned.
Everyone broke out laughing.
    Cesar knew that his celebrity status opened doors—and we
used it to stage media and fund-raising events and to book
him for in-studio appearances when I advanced his national
boycott tours. But he was always uncomfortable being singled
out for recognition. He knew that there were many Cesar
Chavezes, countless men and women who made genuine sacrifices
and accomplished great things but whose names are
largely unknown. He rarely accepted personal awards or let
people name things for him.
    Today Cesar’s name adorns schools, streets, libraries, parks,
and other public places. Seven thousand people witnessed the
launching in 2012 of the U.S. Navy’s latest Lewis and Clark –class
dry cargo ship, USNS Cesar Chavez , recognizing his
Navy service at the end of World War II. Later that year President
Obama visited La Paz, where Cesar had lived and
worked in his last quarter century and where he was buried in
1993. Before another crowd of seven thousand, the president
proclaimed a small part of the grounds as the Cesar E. Chavez
National Monument, the 398th unit of the National Park Service,
holding the same status as the Statue of Liberty and
Grand Canyon. We have stopped counting the thousands of
annual commemorations and observances that keep growing
more than twenty years after his passing. Eleven states now
celebrate his March 31 birthday as an official holiday.
    Local recognitions are gratefully acknowledged; they are
also often expressions of ethnic and community pride. If Cesar
were here, he would likely scold people for wasting time on
such gestures.
    The greatest monument to Cesar Chavez isn’t on a street
sign or a building. It’s the inspiration to work for change that
he instilled among his own people and in millions of other
Americans from all walks of life who have never worked on a
farm. Many people—including those who hadn’t even been
born when Cesar died—trace their social and political activism
to him.
     
    Another key to Cesar’s success was his constant challenging of
the status quo and how people were used to doing things. He
saw his role in the movement as getting people to think outside
the box and to become agents of change.
    That took curiosity and courage. Why couldn’t we boycott
or march or fast or bring cultural and religious traditions into
the union, even if other unions hadn’t done that?
    “I had a dream that the only reason the employers were so
powerful was that we were so weak,” Cesar said. He sought a
paradigm shift in people’s thinking. If workers could organize
and get stronger, he reasoned, maybe the growers wouldn’t
appear as strong. So farm workers’ fate was in their own hands.
    When you look closely at his strategies and tactics from a
historical perspective, four innovations stand out.
    The first was nonviolence. As a devout Catholic and a student
of Eastern religion, including Zen Buddhism, Cesar was
convinced that human life is special, a gift from God, and no
one has the right to take it