Driving Cesar Chavez

The Unforgettable Day I Took the Union Leader Through Pennsylvania Coal Country

Of all the stories I’ve held on to from my time working for Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers, the one I like to tell is not from the fields of California but from the mines of Pennsylvania. It involves not only Cesar, but also a helicopter and a man named Flood.

My journey to working with the farmworkers had been an indirect one. I grew up mostly in Rialto, California, where my first successful organizing project involved getting my fellow Eisenhower High students to stage a sit-down strike until we were …

Could Cesar Chavez Deliver Immigration Reform?

A Student of Chavez Is Leading a Fast on the National Mall; History Suggests the Tactic May Work

Forty-six years ago, Cesar Chavez huddled in Delano, California with a group of farmworkers he had launched on an improbable mission: to stop the sale of grapes until California growers …

Columnist and Editor Harold Meyerson

I Write the Word ‘Capitalism’ A Lot More Than I Used To

Harold Meyerson is a Washington Post columnist and editor of American Prospect magazine; he grew up in Los Angeles and was the longtime editor of the L.A. Weekly. Before talking …

There’s Still Hope For American Unions

But It’s a Long Climb Back

“When I was a little kid growing up in L.A. in the 1950s, about one in three American workers belonged to unions,” said Washington Post columnist and American Prospect editor-at-large …

There Is Power In a Union, Potentially, We Hope

Can U.S. Organized Labor Ever Be What It Was 50 Years Ago?

Organized labor used to be big in the United States. One out of every three workers was in a union, and manufacturing jobs were the backbone of labor. Today, manufacturing …

We’re All Temps Now

California Used To Embody Stable, Middle-Class Living. It Was a Brief Interlude.

The photo below was taken at the Lockheed Aircraft Company Christmas Party in Burbank in 1950. The smiling Lockheed workers are receiving awards in honor of their fifth anniversaries at …