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Well, what, why You've gained some victory? Certainly, but why have you not really been firmly established that you don't have, for instance, the legal protections that other unions have? You're still fighting things like proposition 22? Well, because we're pretty much like unions, were we're in the

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same spot that industrial workers were trying to organize themselves, Uh, say in the beginning of the turn of the century and through the 20s, you know, and even through the first part of the 30s, Uh, 11 of every three jobs in California. So what a four

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or $5 billion dollar industry. So this is the reasons. And then we're up against a, an employee community with the, with the growers that is living at least 100 years behind the times, they have a mentality. And I think psychologically they resent that very, very much.

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That's why in some cases, they want to look to other unions to come in. And do you feel that the, that you you've reached the point where you're established? A but you're you're here to stay or is it still a day to day precarious thing? No,

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it's still our day to day precarious thing. It's it's difficult because we don't have a strike fund yet. We don't have a legal department that is establishing the department. We don't have research department that can give us information. We need, we don't have the money to

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do those things. We still depend on contribute practically gone. We've accomplished a very tremendous things. We don't have a union as yet. We're struggling very hard and we think we will, but we've been able to accomplish probably one of the greatest things is that we've been

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able to break certain myths. First of all, there was a great myth before when we started organized to enlist the, the tremendous support from the, from the farm workers. A we're developing them a spirit of solidarity and and a real desire to battle for justice and

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a very, very strong following. Then we've gone to the cities and we've done the same thing with large numbers of our France throughout the, throughout the country, from the religious community, from the labor community, from the liberal community, from the students from ah the ethnic groups

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uh to support us in what we're doing. And in this way we've been able to be successful without the support from the cities. They will destroy us in no time flat. Well, why did you personally start, why were you interested in this? Well, uh like you

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know, I've been I was a farm worker and consider myself to be a farm worker for many years prior to begin the beginning the organization of the union. I had a I had a a dream that the only reason the employees were so powerful was not

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because they infected that much power in terms of dealing with the lives of their workers that will, but that what made it, what made them truly powerful was that we were weak. And if we could somehow began to develop some strength among ourselves, that I thought

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somehow we could begin to equal that uh balance in that power in agriculture. And so we start off by with a lot of faith and with very little experience in labor organizing because we has spent a lot of time in community organization and that's that's what

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I knew best. But I applied some of the techniques that we learned in 10 years prior to organizing the beginning the farm workers union and they paid off well, how did you learn these techniques? What'd you do before you got into the Farmworker movement? Why was

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a farm worker? And then in Early 1952, ah I came in contact with the community service organization, the CSO which was being organized in Los Angeles ah which was now spreading to other parts of California. And they came into san Jose where I was working on

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a farm and I came in contact with them through through my parish priest and I joined them. We were doing voter registration and I like the idea, I could see the connection between voter registration and getting some things for us in the lottery where I lived

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in san Jose and I started off with him that way. And uh I I was so I guess so committed to the to the work, you know, that soon after that they need another organizer. Someone who trained so fred ross who was the the West Coast

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director and working for the C. S. I used to work, he was working for. So Lewinsky at the time hired me and he trained me uh contrary to uh to public, you know, uh what the public thinks. I was not trained really by Alinsky. Although I

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worked with him, I was really trained by fred ross and I I paid attention to what he did, how he did things. I really wanted to learn how to organize. And I think I learned my lesson. I had 10 years under him. So when I came

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to organize farmworkers, I had a lot of confidence. Why did you leave to see us learn to read and write? And I learned to organize and a lot of things because see when I joined the sea. So I was working in in an apricot orchard. Getting

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started called 48.5 cents an hour then. And so I put myself through school, that was my school. But fred ross training. Well, what about the labor movement itself? Have you learned anything from being with them? I have I've learned you know what I learned just by

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being a chicano. You know, I learned that when the big problem, but we're schedule very heavily. We have a lot of friends helping us and we're we think we're going to win after committed that it says as well, it's it's wrong, you know. So I learned

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that in the labor movement, there's an awful lot of people in the labor movement in the lower ranks, dedicated men who don't get any any ah public credit for what they do, but who are very dedicated. That's what keeps the the wheels of labor moving moving.

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And we also learned by meeting many of them that they're really dedicated and that a lot of the criticism at Labour that is fashionable today is not really deserved. It maybe deserved in some instances, but but right down at the local union level, there's tremendous human

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beings that don't have a heck of a lot. We learn from them tremendously. Have you gotten struggle? And every labor union guy knows that when we're talking about recognition, you're really talking about the guts of the union, we're not striking for really for a wage increase

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or for a pension fund were striking for the very elemental things that Labour and that they understand very well and we get tremendous support from them. Also, I might mention that there's always been a I mean, tentative the movement, correct. Is it still, I mean, how

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do you struggle in a world where there are very few non violent movements left? because you see Nonviolence is more powerful and violence and, you know, once we are able to understand that and accepted an experiment with it and be successful with it, it's not difficult

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to keep. In the beginning. We had some difficulty because we're in a world where we've been struggling for, Well, just before we won the contract was 58.5 months and most of our friends told us that it couldn't work, that we had to commit violence in order

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to make it work. And at that time, at that point it was still a so much hope and faith that it would work. You know, But since Since July left day of July of 1970, we know it works and we were able to to beat the

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grape industry and we're doing the same thing with the lettuce industry. We're gonna beat them too. Get them to understand that the works the right signing contracts. So nonviolent, it's very powerful and, and also it doesn't put a time limit on you and it doesn't take

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you off of your main objective. You know, we know we've seen in our own day in the last few years were very good groups with very with very uh high ideals and goals, you know, somehow got detracted from the course of Nonviolence and became involved in

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violent action. And all that happened was that the focus was taken away from the problems of the people and then they were focused on people in jail and and all of the other things that come as a consequence in society is not, is not set up

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in this country, especially in this country with its heavy anglo sex and traditions. They're not they're not equipped. The boycott. The power Nonviolence really rests on the on the rest of oil that you have to create in yourself of patients, not of being patient with the

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problems by being patient with yourself to do the the hard work. Also non violence Nonviolence assumes that the organizer has tremendous resources in terms of confidence and know how it is being is able to to shift me in the Scandinavian countries especially. So we've had our

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share of support. Well, nonviolent. These are the medicines gathering, but the liberal group. Yeah. Her name was yellow. Uh, now he's throwing up in the person. Yeah. All right. Yeah. There. Yeah. The way.