11:30 a.m. Saturday, August 30, in Delano
Bustamante accepts UFW support at site where Robert Kennedy embraced Cesar Chavez in 1968
Arnold on wrong side of farm worker battle
Central Valley farm workers will join United Farm Workers President Arturo S. Rodriguez and Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante on Saturday where Cesar Chavez’s union was founded in Delano to announce the UFW’s opposition to the recall of Gov. Gray Davis and its endorsement of Bustamante on the Oct. 7 ballot.
Farm workers will assemble in Delano where Sen. Robert F. Kennedy helped Chavez end his 25-day fast for nonviolence on March 10, 1968. Kennedy became “the first nationally prominent political figure to unequivocally side with Cesar Chavez and the farm workers against the corporate agricultural lobby,” notes Rodriguez, Chavez’s successor and son-in-law.
Since then Kennedy family members, including Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, have championed the UFW against California’s $30 billion-a-year agricultural industry.
Yet Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger describes unions like the UFW as “special interests” while insisting corporate supporters—including Schwarzenegger advisor David Murdock, chairman and CEO of Dole Food Co.—won’t adversely influence him. Most members of Schwarzenegger’s top campaign team were aides to former Gov. Pete Wilson.
“Under Gov. Wilson, enforcement of the laws protecting farm workers was effectively shut down,” Rodriguez notes. “We can’t risk another Republican governor who’s against the farm workers and for the corporate growers.”
Who: Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, UFW President Arturo S. Rodriguez, farm workers.
What: Announcing UFW endorsement of “no” on recall, “yes” on Bustamante and “no” on Prop. 54.
When: 11:30 a.m., Saturday, Aug. 30, 2003.
Where: “Forty Acres,” birthplace of the Cesar Chavez-founded UFW, Garces Hwy. & Metler Ave., just west of Delano, Calif.
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