Honor labor leader Chavez with a holiday

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.suntimes.com/news/puente/893253,CST-EDT-puente14.article

TERESA PUENTE [e-mail]

My mother grew up in a family of farm workers and started working in the fields when she was only 6 years old.

They picked beets and cotton, and like many other Mexican-American families, they followed the migrant trail from their home state of Texas to Illinois. My mom's family found work on a tomato farm near Elk Grove Village and, for a time, 12 of them lived in a garage.

They eventually moved to the city and found factory jobs in Chicago. My mom was the youngest, and she went on to graduate from high school here.

When my siblings and I were growing up, my mom made sure we learned about Cesar Chavez, the leader of the United Farm Workers of America who led the labor struggle for farm workers in the 1960s. He called on Americans to boycott grapes, and my parents took that call seriously.

They carted all five of us children to suburban supermarkets on Saturdays, where we had family pickets and passed out farm-worker literature. Growing up, I learned that Chavez was a hero and a leader for Latino civil rights. He went on hunger strikes and called attention to the abuses suffered by workers in the fields. He won hard-fought contracts to give them better wages and safer working conditions.

It wasn't a lesson I read in history books, but one passed down to me by my parents.

FULL article at link.

[Bobbieo]

1. Let's give him Columbus Day along with the Native Americans!

[gabeana]

2. That would not be a bad idea

however, who gets columbus day off anymore?