Usually, when we commemorate the holidays dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr. or César Chávez, we talk about their individual histories and their organizing struggles for justice. That is fitting; they are national heroes and an inspiration to us.
I want to take a different tact, however, for this year’s César Chávez holiday. I want to offer what I think César would be saying about the current situation of immigrant farmworkers in Texas (and around the country, for that matter). I’m drawing on my experience working with him for eighteen years as his lawyer in Texas and marching with him for six days across the Rio Grande Valley in 1982 for just wages.
No one seriously doubts that the agriculture industry would crash were it not for the tens of thousands of immigrants working long days in the hot sun, bent over, and climbing rickety ladders to harvest the food we buy for our tables.
Were that crash to happen, it would take a millisecond to reverse and rearrange our laws to ensure that we had enough food to eat and at a reasonable price.
There is a double whammy at play here. Not only is the current war on immigrant farmworkers irrational, but it is also a mechanism for agribusiness to doubly exploit workers and suppress their wages even more. People living in constant fear of being deported are willing to work for even less to support their kids. That is not fair or just.
What I say here, of course, is not just true of farmworkers, but true of the people who do our construction, work in our restaurants, clean our buildings and houses, and do that menial work that Americans will not do. It’s a farce, and we all know it, to say they are taking jobs away from people in this country.
Immigrants have their jobs precisely because Americans won’t do hard, gritty farmwork.
There have been repeated experiments in the fields, keeping the jobs only for local people. Those experiments have failed and failed quickly, within days, because Americans will not do that work. It’s too hard, too oppressive, too injurious to health, too much exposure to pesticides — all besides the pitifully low wages.
Maybe this year when we commemorate the life of César Chávez on March 31, we might take some time to add a bit of realism to what we’re talking about in terms of food on our tables and farm laborers’ livelihood. We are the ones, not the farm workers, who benefit from their labor. They sustain our lives, while barely supporting their families.
I could quote the Scriptures or cite learned writings and eloquent speeches of our political leaders of the past (and some of the present), but we all know them already. They are not unknown or strange to us. The problem is that we let our less-than-noble instincts get the better of us and continue to abuse the people who support our lives.
And we need to do more than just get our thoughts straight and our sense of justice in line. We need to take action. We need to let politicians hear that they are leading us astray for their personal political gain, not for the general good. They are not supporting the working people of this country. They’re not supporting farm laborers. They’re ignoring the consequences of what they’re doing; the workers, and we all, will suffer.
There’s too much selfishness afoot in the land these days and too little respect for those who help support us. That is not the American ideal; that is not what our country is committed to. César Chávez lived up to that ideal, as should we.
(Jim Harrington, a human rights attorney, is the retired founder of the Texas Civil Rights Project.)
