Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement
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Why David Sometimes Wins tells the story of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers' groundbreaking victory, drawing important lessons from this drametic tale. Since the 1900s, large-scale agricultural enterprises relied on migrant labor-a cheap, unorganized, and powerless workforce. In 1965, when some 800 Filipino grape workers began to strike under the aegis of the AFL-CIO, the UFW soon joined the action with 2,000 Mexican workers and turned the strike into a civil rights struggle. They engaged in civil disobedience, mobilized support from churches and students, boycotted growers, and transformed their struggle into La Causa, a farm workers's movement that eventually triumphed over the grape industry's Goliath. Why did they succeed? How can the powerless challenge the powerful successfully? Offering insight from a longtime movement organizer and scholar, Ganz illustrates how they had the ability and resourcefulness to devise good strategy and turn short-term advantages into long-term gains. Authoritative in scholarship and magisterial in scope, this book constitutes a seminal contribution to learning from the movement's struggles, set-backs, and successes.
Abbreviations xv1 Introduction: How David Beat Goliath 32 Beginnings: Immigrants, Radicals, and the AFL (1900-1959) 233 New Opportunities, New Initiatives: AWOC, Teamsters, and the FWA (1959-1962) 534 A Storm Gathers: Two Responses (1963-1965) 935 The Great Delano Grape Strike (1965-1966) 1196 Meeting the Counterattack: DiGiorgio, the Teamsters, and UFWOC (1966) 1677 Launching a New Union (1966-1967) 201Epilogue 239Appendix 255Notes 277References 317Index 337
