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AUSTIN – It took 124 years, but the largest university in Texas on Tuesday unveiled a monument to a Latino leader, Cesar Chavez. “Cesar would be humbled to be acknowledged in this way,” said Juan C. Gonzalez, vice president for Student Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Chavez’s granddaughter, Christine Chavez, and the nation’s head of higher education were among the speakers as more than 1,000 people sang, cried, cheered remembered the legacy of the Mexican-American labor organizer who grew up picking crops in California and went on to found the United Farm Workers union. The statue is...

Thirty years ago, legendary union organizer Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers made history by winning the right to a secret ballot for migrant field hands in California who wanted to join a union. Today, in an odd twist, the UFW is trying to take that right away. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is weighing legislation sent to his desk last week that would allow unions to organize farm workers by collecting signed cards from a majority of those workers rather than conducting an election at which each employee makes a confidential choice in the privacy of a voting booth. The...

Thank you very much. Thank you. And thank you, Monica Lozano for the wonderful introduction; I really appreciate that. It’s great to be here today. As a matter of fact, I want to thank Monica and Janet Murguía for inviting me here to this great conference, and I want to thank also some people that are working for me in my administration for being here today and inviting me to come here today. First of all I want to just thank Rosario Marín, my Secretary of State in Consumer Services. Where is Rosario? Right here. Give her a big hand....

Attorneys for a group of students who sued the state to suspend the high school exit exam have filed an emergency request with a state appeals court. They want the court to urgently hear their claims the test should be suspended for this year's graduating class. On Wednesday, the state Supreme Court stayed a lower court's injunction that had barred the exam from taking effect for the Class of 2006. It meant the exam would be a requirement for seniors to graduate. The students and their parents argued that the exam is discriminatory because all California students do not have...

WASHINGTON - The United Farm Workers union has left the AFL-CIO and will join a group of breakaway unions known as the Change to Win Coalition, in a move the UFW hopes will boost recruiting efforts, officials said Thursday. The UFW, with about 27,000 members, joins the Service Employees International Union, the Teamsters, the United Food and Commercial Workers, UNITE HERE and the Carpenters in forming the dissident Change To Win Coalition. The Laborers International Union of North America also is part of the new federation, but has not left the AFL-CIO. "We view this as a positive step in...

# The movement built by Cesar Chavez has failed to expand on its early successes organizing poor rural laborers. As their plight is used to attract donations that benefit others, services for those in the fields are left to languish. Red letters flash inside the famous black eagle, symbol of the United Farm Workers: "Donate," the blinking message urges, to carry on the dreams of Cesar Chavez. Bannered on websites and spread by e-mail, the insistent appeals resonate with a generation that grew up boycotting grapes, swept up in Chavez's populist crusade to bring dignity and higher wages to farmworkers....

PHARR — Once a powerful and militant organization in the Chicano Liberation Movement, the Brown Berets made it known Wednesday that they will oppose the Minuteman border watch group with physical force if necessary. "We want to send the message ‘think twice before you come here,’" said Pablo Delgado, a Brown Beret leader, at a press conference at the Hidalgo County Democratic Party headquarters. The Minutemen have said they will come to Texas in October, although it is still unclear whether South Texas is in their outreach plans. Hidalgo County Democratic Party chairman Juan Maldonado said the party does not...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The small farm workers' union founded by labor hero Cesar Chavez joined a coalition of labor groups demanding changes in the AFL-CIO as the 50-year-old federation inched closer Friday to breaking up. The United Farm Workers union, based outside Bakersfield, Calif., brings to seven the number of unions in the Change to Win Coalition. Four of the coalition unions have threatened to bolt the AFL-CIO - the Teamsters and service employees, along with food and commercial workers and hotel, restaurant, retail, textile and laundry employees. The UFW, organized in 1962 and now consisting of 27,000 members, intends...

PAGE ONE advertisement Crucial Ingredient As Border Tightens, Growers See Threat to 'Winter Salad Bowl' Yuma, Ariz., Relies on Muscle From Illegal Immigrants; Security vs. Economics A Job Americans Won't Do By MIRIAM JORDAN Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL March 11, 2005; Page A1 YUMA, Ariz. -- Shortly before Thanksgiving last year, Tom Nassif did something few law-abiding citizens would ever think to do: He called the U.S. Border Patrol here and suggested agents stop manning a highway checkpoint intended to keep illegal immigrants out of the country. A former U.S. ambassador and currently the president of a...

Statement from Kerry on Cesar Chavez Day 3/29/2004 12:20:00 PM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: National Desk Contact: Laura Capps of John Kerry for President, 202-712-3000; Web: http://www.johnkerry.com SACRAMENTO, Calif., March 29 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Today, John Kerry visited the 4th Annual Cesar Chavez Youth Forum in Sacramento to talk with a group of children working on a service project commemorating Cesar Chavez Day. Kerry met with children and read an excerpt from Kathleen Krull's "Harvesting Hope," a children's book that details the story of Cesar Chavez's 340-mile march to protest the working conditions of migrant farm workers in California. The holiday...

John Kerry Brings Economic Plan to California; Will Create 10 Million New Jobs and Lower Gas Prices 3/28/2004 6:44:00 PM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: National and Assignment desks, Political Reporter Contact: Laura Capps of John Kerry for President, 202-712-3000; http://www.johnkerry.com WASHINGTON, March 28 /U.S. Newswire/ -- With California suffering from George W. Bush's broken promises and failed policies on the economy, John Kerry will spend Cesar Chavez Day, Monday, in California talking about his plan to create 10 million new jobs during his first term in office and get the economy back on track. In February, Kerry received the endorsement of...

<p>WASHINGTON - House and Senate lawmakers rallied yesterday behind legislation that would legalize as many as 500,000 illegal immigrants employed as farmworkers, but the Bush administration has yet to endorse the measure.</p> <p>Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., the bill's chief sponsors, are urgently working to get the measure onto the Senate floor before the end of the year. They are trying for support from at least 60 senators. So far, the bill has attracted 54 sponsors from both parties.</p>

<p>KEENE, Calif. - Leaders of the United Farm Workers union announced Sunday they are endorsing John Kerry's presidential bid.</p> <p>The Democratic senator from Massachusetts has been a friend of the union for decades, said president Arturo Rodriguez. With victories last month in Iowa and New Hampshire, Kerry is also the front runner to take on President Bush.</p>

SAN JUAN(Texas) — For migrant workers at La Union del Pueblo Entero, it did not matter that U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy spoke to them in broken Spanish: They understood him as he spoke against the president’s immigration policy and cheered in support. Kennedy, D-Rhode Island, joined U.S. Rep. Rubén Hinojosa at the United Farm Workers camp on Monday "Si se puede, pero yo no puedo como mi amigo (It can be done, but I can’t do it like my friend) Rubén," Kennedy said as he introduced himself to a charged group of migrants and farm workers, quoting the UFW’s rally...

DELANO, Calif. (AP) - Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante accepted the endorsement of farmworkers in California's gubernatorial recall election Saturday, and fended off criticism of his past involvement with a Mexican-American student group that opponents have labeled racist. The United Farm Workers union is among several groups that have endorsed Bustamante while opposing the recall effort against Democratic Gov. Gray Davis. "I'm proud to stand with United Farm Workers, who I have marched with shoulder to shoulder, the farmworkers who are the heart of the agriculture industry," Bustamante, the grandson of Mexican immigrants, told a cheering crowd of more than...

<p>Grape farmworkers in Earlimart voted against United Farm Workers representation, leading union representatives to cry foul Wednesday. UFW representatives said 82% of the employers at Kovacevich "5" Farms were in favor of the union representation. Yet during election day, the UFW failed to secure the majority of votes at the polls.</p>

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - If anyone deserves a quiet retirement it's Dolores Huerta, but the co-founder of the United Farm Workers, who raised 11 children even as she led marches and strikes that repeatedly put her in hospitals and jails, isn't slowing down. She re-learned how to walk in time to march on Sacramento last year after a near-fatal aneurism left her incapacitated. And now she's giving away a $100,000 award she recently received for her lifetime of service, to launch a new foundation in her name.

Once again, we have proven that eGray Davis can RUN, but the cannot HIDE from FReepers, and their FRiends and......the "Chicken Man!"Over a DOZEN FReepers and our (soon-to-be-FReeper) FRiends joined with the ever-present "DEBATE Chicken" to FReep the elusive soon-to-be-EX-Governor of California as he tried to sneak into a United Farm Workers (UFW) rally at the Coachella Valley High School this afternoon. Once again there were MANY more not-yet-officially-registered-FReepers than there were actual FReepers.This is a GOOD thing!Pro-Simon "grassroots activism" is EXPLODING all across California, as MANY concerned citizens are responding to ANY notice - by e-mail or telephone -...

<p>United Farm Workers member Amelia Cadena, 87, of Earlimart is overcome with emotion as she celebrates Monday's bill signing on the north steps of the state Capitol.</p> <p>Ending weeks of suspense, Gov. Gray Davis on Monday sided with the United Farm Workers union, signing a pair of bills that for the first time will substantially change California's 27-year-old landmark farm labor law.</p>

<p>Gov. Gray Davis, choosing between bitter opponents in one of the most controversial calls of the 2002 legislative session, has signed bills offering mediation to California farmworkers in labor disputes with farmers.</p> <p>The governor's action capped months of political rallies that included a farmworker march through the Central Valley to Sacramento and a weekslong vigil by farmworkers and their supporters at the Capitol.</p>