Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership Organization and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement

About this book

Why David Sometimes Wins tells the story of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers groundbreaking victory drawing important lessons from this dramatic tale. Since the 1900s large-scale agricultural enterprises relied on migrant labor--a cheap unorganized and powerless workforce. In 1965 when some 800 Filipino grape workers began to strike under the aegis of the AFL-CIO the UFW soon joined the action with 2 000 Mexican workers and turned the strike into a civil rights struggle. They engaged in civil disobedience mobilized support from churches and students boycotted growers and transformed their struggle into La Causa a farm workers movement that eventually triumphed over the grape industrys Goliath. Why did they succeed? How can the powerless challenge the powerful successfully? Offering insight from a longtime movement organizer and scholar Ganz illustrates how they had the ability and resourcefulness to devise good strategy and turn short-term advantages into long-term gains. Authoritative in scholarship and magisterial in scope this book constitutes a seminal contribution to learning from the movements struggles set-backs and successes.