UFW's Cesar Chavez Facebook App Commemorates His Life on the Anniversary of His Death

It was April 23, 1993 when the world got the news that Cesar Chavez had passed away. Mr. Chavez was in Arizona staying in a rental apartment on union business and unfortunately died in his sleep. According to the New York Times obituary that day:

Blending the nonviolent resistance of Gandhi with the organizational skills of his mentor, the social activist Saul Alinsky, Mr. Chavez captured worldwide attention in the 1960′s. Leading an initially lonely battle to unionize the fields and orchards of California, he issued a call to boycott grapes that soon became a cause celebre.

Mr. Chavez, who was described by Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 as “one of the heroic figures of our time,” was widely acknowledged to have done more to improve the lot of the migrant farm worker than anyone else.

Today the United Farm Workers sent out this mass email asking people to reflect on the life of Chavez considering the anniversary of his death is less than one day away. And since Arturo Rodriguez was a stand up guest on The Colbert Report on July 8, 2010 (see video below), we thought we would post this for you, our readers, to decide.

Tomorrow, we mark the anniversary of Cesar Chavez’ April 23 passing.

As a commemoration of Cesar’s passing, the UFW has updated our “Share your status with Cesar Chavez” Facebook App to feature quotes from Cesar that still apply today. With this easy to use App, you could help organize millions with Cesar’s words. Just post a status message with this App and all the friends on your Facebook newsfeed will see his words. Then by clicking on the link, they will have the opportunity to share them as well.

Click here to use the App now.

Cesar believed that no matter how poor you were, no matter how educated, everybody has to come together to solve problems. He felt the solution for everything was that we all had to be working together, had to be unified. We must approach our challenges as a group, not just as individuals.

I think that if Cesar were here today, he’d inspire you, as he did me, with his solution – work together, no matter your level of education or resources, to achieve our goals.

Si Se Puede! Viva Cesar Chavez!

Arturo S. Rodriguez
President

If you remember back in July 2010, Rodriguez was on The Colbert Report to discuss the UFW’s program, Take Our Jobs. Rodriguez explained that by the time they filmed that interview, of the people that had taken on the challenge only three people were still working in the fields*. Well, Colbert can never refuse a challenge and quickly added himself to the list.

*UPDATE [4-25-11, 2:10pm PST]: Restoring Truthiness contacted the Maria Machuca, Communications Director for the United Farm Workers of America asking for updated numbers regarding their Take Our Jobs campaign and this was her response:

As of 10-15-10 we received 10,200 inquiries at our TOJ web site and only 9 were confirmed to have found work or been offered work in the fields during our campaign. The harvesting season ends in most agricultural areas by the end of September.

TOJ campaign: We may continue through the summer 2011. We are evaluating the service we are providing to citizens and legal residents sincerely interested in working in agriculture as well as our contribution to the debate to change federal immigration policy. We’ll let you know.

We did have a few more questions for them such as: Do these numbers mean that many simply inquired and then never followed through? Or did they attempt the work but were not able to continue (by choice or maybe they got fired)? Did some not qualify for the work in some way? Is there maybe some sort of break down of the applicants/inquiries.

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