TIMELINE:
1967 Jimi Hendrix plays the Monterey Pop Festival.
1967 Martin Luther King says: “When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are
considered more important than people, the giant triplet of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are
incapable of being conquered.”
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CESAR CHAVEZ, UFW, AND THE GRAPE BOYCOTT
Here's some food for thought: In the late 1960s, thanks to Cesar Chavez (1927-1993) and the
United Farm Workers (UFW), deciding whether or not to buy grapes was a political act.
Chavez was born in Arizona and migrated to California with his family… who worked the fields
from Brawley to Oxnard, Atascadero, Gonzales, King City, Salinas, McFarland, Delano, Wasco,
Selma, Kingsburg, and Mendota. The quiet man who lived in a barrio called Sal Si Puedes
(“Get Out If You Can”) knew firsthand of the injustices imposed upon the migrant workers —
workers who had been trying to organize for a century. He and others like Dolores Huerta
fought back… not with violence, but with the formation of the National Farm Workers
Association (later to become the UFW) in 1962.
Three years after its establishment, the UFW struck against grape growers around Delano,
California… a long, bitter, and frustrating struggle that appeared impossible to resolve until
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