Thousands of people worked over five historic decades with César Chávez and the United Farm Workers (UFW). Millions of people across North America boycotted grapes and other products. Now they are asked to help capture history through a unique interactive web site, www.ufwstories.com, the union is launching as it prepares to observe its 50th anniversary in 2012.
Countless men and women who rallied to the farm workers’ cause between 1962, and today—17 million according to a 1975 nationwide poll—are invited to tell their stories and post photos and mementos. They range from strikers, full-time organizers and staff to volunteer pickets, marchers and consumers who backed the boycotts. The UFW asks them to share what they did, and are still doing, for farm workers in this official location that preserves these stories and makes them available for future generations.
The UFW is appealing to people who traveled to Delano in car caravans bringing food and clothing to the grape strikes, fanned out across the country to distant cities and stood in front of local supermarkets to organize boycotts, joined the boycott on their college campuses, marched or worked during a strike, organizing drive or political campaign.
Stories need not involve momentous events. The union is also searching for tales of countless every-day acts of support and selflessness that allowed the UFW to succeed where others failed for 100 years to organize farm workers. This novel web site acknowledges people whose important contributions are too often ignored or forgotten.
After posting their stories, visitors to the web site can read accounts and view the photos and mementos of others like them who participated in this important part of América’s history.
The web site seeks to record many ...