For you young ones, Cesar Chavez was one of the heroes of good liberals. He created the United Farmworkers union, drove up wages, and organized boycotts of many agricultural goods to improve working conditions for his members. (And I participated in some of those boycotts in the 1970s.) Here he is on KQED, the public television station in Los Angeles, talking about the importance of keeping illegal aliens from crossing the border to break strikes:
Speaking of "good ilberals" - one day when I was manning the Republican table at Berkeley, back in the 80s, I was engaged in a good-natured debate with a lefty when a girl comes up. Somehow, the topic became the UFW grape boycott (still going on at the time, though they were more complaining about pesticides and such). After my lefty buddy had given her the entire spiel, I interjected "and that's why you should eat Chilean grapes instead". She said "Thanks!" and moved on.
ReplyDeleteThe look on his face was precious - at the time, Pinochet was The Worst Living Person In The World.