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

by Ganz, Marshall
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ISBN: 9780199757855
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Used - Trade Paperback - 9780199757855

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Overview

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 industry's 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 movement's struggles, set-backs, and successes.

  • Format: TradePaperback
  • Author: Ganz, Marshall
  • ISBN: 9780199757855
  • Condition: Used
  • Dimensions: 9.10 x 0.90
  • Number Of Pages: 368
  • Publication Year: 2010

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