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It’s time to strike. Hang la bandera roja with the huelga fluttering amidst the auspicious beauty of the skyline on your front porch; when it gets cold wrap it around your shoulders como una colcha so that you relive the magical flight to obtain social justice. Step back into nostalgia and reflect back on the relentless moments and inexorable memories that remain locked in your subconscious, needing something to trigger those memories, taking you back to the battles in the Colorado fields as agribusiness and farmworkers tangled in political warfare.
This is a landmark year as a National Movement to create a national holiday for César E. Chávez takes form. National coordinator, Evelina Alarcon has reached out to the Denver area and requested assistance in this prestigious undertaking.
Several heavy hitters have stepped to the plate including James Edwards Olmos, Carlos Santana and Martin Sheen to add credibility to this illustrious movement. A national holiday for César Estrada Chávez sounds like it would be a shoe in; however, there are skeletons that will be yanked out of the closet before this comes to fruition. Heroes of Chávez’ type appear only periodically in a person’s lifetime and are seldom heralded or given due respect while on this earth. It is not until they have transcended into another existence that their loss is felt.
The César Chávez Peace and Justice Committee is planning its 7th Annual march and celebration, inviting the Denver community and its many organizations to participate in the planning and implementation of our event. The committee embraces all struggles and supports self-determination for all groups who strive for freedom and resist further colonization and all forms of oppression including gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality and disability. Throughout the year committee members engage in activism of all sorts.
Celebrating César Chávez is only symbolic. A national holiday is secondary to what César Chávez preached. His legacy and ideals for the creation of a just nation reminds us that many groups remain shackled in forms of poverty and exploitation. Chávez never reduced human beings to objects; he believed in the inherent dignity of each person as they struggled for the creation of a true humanity. He believed in a multiethnic and multiracial society. He was a human and civil rights activist who, I am sure, is turning over in his sepultura wondering when activists will arise out of the tomb of apathy, ready to take action against the current limited democracy that has a strangle hold on the silent majority.
He supported los inmigrantes que tambien trabajaban en los files silently oppressed as legislators historically wrangled in wonderment about their collective fate. Chávez knew that it was through nonviolent action that social change would take place. Remember that this summer campesinos refused to come to the great state of Colorado to pick the crops even when what appears to be just wages were offered to them.
I had brief conversations with presidential candidate organizers in both Obama and Clinton camps and encouraged their organizers to take this issue and place it on each of the agendas of both presidential candidates as they pander to Latinos in their respective bids for executive chief of state. It does present a conundrum. Each of the candidates may be forced to answer tough questions about the continued construction of a wall between the two nations, citizenship, fair and humane guest worker programs and amnesty.
The Obamamites and the Clintonians are also engaged in intra-party political warfare. They have effectively evaded some of the real issues regarding comprehensive immigration policy. I have not yet heard either one of them state that they will tear down the wall.
As if we didn’t have enough on our plate, it appears that Homeland Security is now strong arming our brothers and sisters del sur to surrender their sacred lands for the continued construction of a wall that dialectically symbolizes the worst of human nature as it struggles to overcome pernicious internal land external forces that have historically been used tools to divide humanity.
The Apache Nation is requesting that sympathizers and revolutionaries sign their petition and express opposition, “to the United States of Federal Government funding and construction of the border wall, which would be imposed upon the international boundary zone connecting the United States of México and the United States of America, directly impacting indigenous peoples, an infrastructure project that would not coincide with a humane strategy for comprehensive immigration reform and increased security for the Untied States but would instead cause untold death and damage of historic proportions to indigenous cultures inherent to sustainable futures, human life, wildlife, water rights, ecosystems, endangered species scared to indigenous burial and ceremonial sites, historical properties, and sites, farmland, and international relations between the United States of México and the United States of America, and indigenous nations and communities.”
The activities will begin on Saturday, March 29th at 9:30 a.m. at St. Cajetan’s Church on the Metro campus where an inter-denominational speak out will take place, followed by a march to West High School and a celebration with music, speakers, and awards. Weekly Monday meetings are being held at The Laughing Bean Café, beginning at 4:30 p.m. As part of the over all community activities, the Chicana and Chicano Studies Dept. at Metropolitan State College of Denver will feature Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, as a guest speaker. This event will take place at the St. Cajetan’s Church on the Metro campus on Tuesday, February 26 at 1 p.m. All are invited.
I also want to take time out to thank El Semanario for its wonderful support throughout the years as urbanites continue to walk mano-a-mano with campesinos in a quest for equality.
Its time to strike!
Ramón Del Castillo, Ph.D. is an independent journalist.
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