By Miriam Pawel, The New York Times, March 31, 2021
More than three decades ago, Cesar Chavez, founder of the first successful union for farmworkers, predicted a future in which the cities of California would be run by people who looked like him.
“History and inevitability are on our side,” he said in one of his best-known speeches, an address to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. “The farmworkers and their children, and the Hispanics and their children, are the future in California.” In a tacit acknowledgment that his union had already lost strength, he said, “regardless of what the future holds for farmworkers, our accomplishments cannot be undone.”
His bittersweet vision proved prophetic: The legacy of the man born 94 years ago this week is in the cities, not the fields.
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