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Cesar Chavez's Commonwealth Club Address (1984)

Thu Mar 13 13:12:18 EDT 2014
By Vocabulary.com (NY)Visual Thesaurus Moderator
Cesar Chavez's address to The Commonwealth Club of San Francisco on November 9, 1984 seeks support for the United Farm Workers. This speech starts with a description of a tragedy that highlights the mistreatment of migrants and ends with the belief that the descendants of Hispanic farm workers are the future of California and their accomplishments will enrich the entire nation.
E-text available here.
excrement
Today, thousands of farm workers live under savage conditions--beneath trees and amid garbage and human excrement--near tomato fields in San Diego County--tomato fields which use the most modern farm technology.
implement
Farm workers are not agricultural implements--they are not beasts of burden to be used and discarded.
flourish
That dream was born in my youth. It was nurtured in my early days of organizing. It has flourished. It has been attacked.
chattel
That dream, that vision grew from my own experience with racism--with hope--with the desire to be treated fairly and to see my people treated as human beings and not as chattel.
exploit
It grew from the frustration and humiliation I felt as a boy who couldn't understand how the growers could abuse and exploit farm workers when there were so many of us and so few of them.
assert
We experienced some successes in voter registration in politics in battling racial discrimination--successes in an era when Black Americans were just beginning to assert their civil rights and when political awareness among Hispanics was almost non-existent.
infamy
The UFW was the beginning! We attacked that historical source of shame and infamy that our people in this country lived with.
rhetoric
Farm workers acknowledged we had allowed ourselves to become victims in a democratic society--a society where majority rule and collective bargaining are supposed to be more than academic theories or political rhetoric.
dignity
The union's survival--its very existence--sent out a signal to all Hispanics that we were fighting for our dignity.
ironic
How ironic it is that the same forces which argue so passionately that the union is not influential are the same forces that continue to fight us so hard.
diminish
Our union will forever exist as an empowering force among Chicanos in the Southwest. And that means our power and our influence will grow and
not diminish.
intimidation
It means the right to be free from threats and intimidation by growers is an empty promise!
negotiate
It means the right to sit down and negotiate with your employer as across the bargaining table--and not as peons in the field--is a fraud!
clout
The other trend that gives us hope is the monumental growth of Hispanic influence in this country--and what that means in increased population, increased social and economic clout, and increased political influence.
ravage
The growers only have themselves to blame as they begin to reap the harvest from decades of environmental damage they have brought upon the land--the pesticides, the herbicides, the soil fumigants, the fertilizers, the salt deposits from thoughtless irrigation--the ravages from years of unrestrained poisoning of our soil and water.
wanton
Thousands of acres of land in California have already been irrevocably damaged by this wanton abuse of nature.
subsidy
Growers only have themselves to blame for increasing attacks on their publicly-financed hand-outs and government welfare: water subsidies; mechanization research; huge subsidies for not growing crops.
subjugate
For generations, they have subjugated entire races of dark-skinned farm workers.
covet
These are the sins of the growers--not the farm workers.
We didn't poison the land.
We didn't open the door to imported produce.
We didn't covet billions of dollars in government handouts.
pessimistic
I am told, these days, why farm workers should be discouraged and pessimistic: The Republicans control the Governor's Office and the White House.
inevitability
We have looked into the future and the future is ours! History and inevitability are on our side.
humiliate
You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.
thrive
The consciousness and pride that were raised by our union are alive and thriving inside millions of young Hispanics who will never work on a farm!
idealism
The day will come when the politicians do the right thing by our people out of political necessity and not out of charity or idealism.
creed
And on that day, our nation shall fulfill its creed and that fulfillment shall enrich us all.

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