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The Strikers of Coachella: A Rank-and-File History of the UFW Movement

Online ISBN:
9781469671710
Print ISBN:
9781469672144
Publisher:
University of North Carolina Press
Book

The Strikers of Coachella: A Rank-and-File History of the UFW Movement

Christian O. Paiz
Christian O. Paiz
University of California, Berkeley
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Published online:
18 January 2024
Published in print:
10 January 2023
Online ISBN:
9781469671710
Print ISBN:
9781469672144
Publisher:
University of North Carolina Press

Abstract

Since the United Farm Worker (UFW) movement began its campaign to unionize California’s grape workers in 1965, it has held the public’s imagination. And yet, little is known about the UFW’s multi-racial members or their role in reshaping California’s agribusiness and rural communities. The Strikers of Coachella: A Rank-and-File History of the UFW Movement addresses this gap by recounting the UFW through its members in California’s Coachella Valley. For two decades, the UFW fought for farmworker rights and challenged ranchers’ former unchecked powers. Its members included ethnic Mexican families and migrant laborers, older Filipino American men, Yemeni immigrants, and African Americans. Members were also children and parents, married and single, ardent and concerned. They joined the UFW movement for a diversity of reasons at different times and places. Of these communities, the book asks: Who joined and sustained the UFW movement in the Coachella Valley? What did they demand and envision, and what costs were they willing to bear? Whom did they meet; what ideas and politics did they gain; how did they transform their work, communities, and themselves? Finally, what remains of their efforts and what do they teach readers about contemporary efforts to advance farmworker rights in the United States.These questions are central for understanding California’s present social inequalities and for articulating a politics that can address them. They also highlight the visionary and all-too-often forgotten local leaders who made the UFW into a national movement.

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