Portside

The new film, Cesar Chavez: History is Made One Step at a Time, doesn't capture the diversity of the farmworkers' movement. "When I was a farmworker, before the strike, we lived in different worlds - the Latino world, the Filipino world, the African-American world and the Caucasian world," Eliseo Medina as interviewed by David Bacon for In These Times.

Reader Comments-Fast-food strikes; Cecily McMillan; Campus Unions; Vietnam War; Farley Mowat; Ukraine; Power of Imagination; Filipino Americans and Farm Labor Movement; BDS; Food; William Worthy - R.I.P Announcements - Strike! & New Forms of Worker Struggle -May 28; Bold New Era or Hard Times for Organized Labor? -June 4; Organizing 2.0 Conference -June 6-7; The Origins of Inequality: Grassroots Economics Training for Understanding & Power -June 14 (all New York)

The movie, Cesar Chavez, documents his life and his role in the 1965 Delano Grape Strike. An aspect of the film is the largely forgotten contributions of Filipino Americans to the farm labor movement. Since the 1920s, when Filipinos first learned to organize into unions in Hawaii, Filipinos were important leaders in organizing farmworkers to fight against unfair working conditions.

Cecily McMillan Trial Update - Sentencing May 19; Reader Comments-Neanderthal Intelligence; Artificial Intelligence, Algorithms, Bitcoins; Charter Schools - their massive fraud; What's a Union For; Paul Robeson Jr.; Cesar Chavez film; Food - Toxic?; Announcements - Building Up the Peace Movement From the Grassroots - New York-May 12; May 15 strike - Low Pay is Not OK; Help save the Haymarket Monument; The Charley Richardson Guide to Kicking Ass for the Working Class

Reader Comments: Eliseo Medina and UFW; American Exceptionalism; Income Gap;Atomic Bomb Near Mishap; Walmart; Govt Shutdown; Syria & Peace movement; South Africa; Iran; Prisons for Profit graphic; Announcements - National Teach-In on Syria -Oct 8; Che Guevara Assassination - Bay Area-Oct 19; Support CUNY Students; Organizing Boot Camps-United Students Against Sweatshops; Economic Bill of Rights for the 21st Century - New York-Oct 18; Job Opening at In These Times

In today’s United States, labor unions and Latino voters are two key pillars of progressive politics. Yet when Eliseo Medina worked for the UFW from 1965-1978, the situation was very different. The UFW was the only union that prioritized grassroots electoral outreach, and among the few groups focused on registering Latino voters and getting them out the vote. Medina would play a key role in expanding this UFW model nationally, and through the broader labor movement.