CHAVEZ WAS NO GANDHI OR MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

March 31 was the birthday of Cesar Chavez who first gained fame in California by leading the migrant farm worker’s movement. In 1962, he was instrumental in founding the union now known as the United Farm Workers of America. Chavez led that union until his death in 1993.

James C. Harrington, a longtime civil rights activist and director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, helped Chavez in his efforts to organize farm workers in Texas. In Thursday’s Houston Chronicle, Harrington had an op-ed piece which was a glowing tribute that praised Chavez from here to heaven and compared him to Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

There is no doubt that back in the ‘60s and before, California’s migrant farm workers labored for miserably low pay and under deplorable working conditions. Chavez deserves to be honored for improving the lot of America’s farm workers but he was no Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr.

Harrington’s op-ed omitted an inconvenient truth. I was in California during those turbulent years of the clash between the farm owners and their workers. All over California, in an effort to bring those farmers down to their knees, Chavez’ followers destroyed the crops and sabotaged the agricultural equipment of farmers who refused their leader’s demands for better pay and working conditions.

And never once did I hear of Chavez ordering his followers to stop destroying farmers’ crops and damaging their farm equipment.

Latinos, together with their left-wing allies in this country, have succeeded in raising Chavez to sainthood. Excuse me folks, but in my book Cesar Chavez was no saint and he was no Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. either!