Senate Bill sb0294

    Florida Senate - 2006        (NP)                       SR 294

    By Senator Hill





    1-398-06

  1                        Senate Resolution

  2         A resolution recognizing March 31, 2006, as

  3         "Cesar Chavez Day."

  4  

  5         WHEREAS, Cesar Estrada Chavez improved the lives and

  6  working conditions of millions of migrant workers and other

  7  laborers in America through his inspired leadership of the

  8  farm labor movement over a period of 50 years, and

  9         WHEREAS, born on March 31, 1927, near Yuma, Arizona,

10  Chavez witnessed firsthand, as a child, the devastation of the

11  Great Depression and was just 10 years old when his family

12  lost their farm and began to attempt to support themselves as

13  migrant workers, and

14         WHEREAS, as Chavez grew up, the Chavez family followed

15  the crops in California, along with approximately 300,000

16  other migrant farm workers in that state, living in temporary,

17  overcrowded, and unsanitary quarters having few supports for

18  health, education, or well-being, and

19         WHEREAS, after serving in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific

20  during World War II, Chavez returned to America to work in the

21  fields with his family and soon met and married Helen Fabela,

22  a woman who shared his social conscience and longing to see

23  improvements in the working and living conditions of migrant

24  workers, and

25         WHEREAS, together they began teaching Mexican farm

26  workers how to read and write in order to prepare them for the

27  test for becoming American citizens, hoping that, with

28  citizenship, migrant workers would become more willing to

29  organize to achieve their rights as workers, and

30         WHEREAS, Chavez's inspired career as a migrant labor

31  leader began with his recruitment in 1952 into Saul Alinsky's

                                  1

CODING: Words stricken are deletions; words underlined are additions.






    Florida Senate - 2006        (NP)                       SR 294
    1-398-06




 1  Community Service Organization, which held meetings to urge

 2  migrant farm laborers to register to vote and later to inspire

 3  them to form a union, and

 4         WHEREAS, 10 years later, appalled at the lack of

 5  progress and the continuing exploitation of migrant workers,

 6  Chavez left his own job to devote himself full-time to union

 7  organizing and 6 months later convened 300 union members in

 8  Fresno, California, the first meeting of the National Farm

 9  Workers Union, and

10         WHEREAS, a decade of dramatic struggle lay ahead for

11  the small union, requiring the tactics of strikes and boycotts

12  and leading to violence by strike-breakers and to repeated

13  arrests and jailings of Chavez and other union members, and

14         WHEREAS, throughout these struggles Chavez called for

15  nonviolence on the part of union members, and meanwhile public

16  outrage at the spectacle of the farm workers' treatment and

17  their struggles grew throughout the 1970s, and

18         WHEREAS, public officials, religious leaders, and

19  ordinary citizens from across America flocked to California to

20  march in support of the farm workers union while millions of

21  Americans supported the workers by supporting the boycotts,

22  and

23         WHEREAS, gradually progress was made for migrant

24  workers, in large part due to the visionary leadership of

25  Cesar Chavez, who continued to serve their cause - and

26  additionally the causes of a safe food supply and of equality

27  for racial minorities - until his death in 1993, and

28         WHEREAS, the vision, leadership, and personal sacrifice

29  of Cesar Estrada Chavez; his lifelong commitment to human

30  rights, social justice, and nonviolence; and his success at

31  building the migrant workers and farm labor movements to

                                  2

CODING: Words stricken are deletions; words underlined are additions.






    Florida Senate - 2006        (NP)                       SR 294
    1-398-06




 1  become the United Farm Workers of America call for our

 2  respect, appreciation, and recognition, NOW, THEREFORE,

 3  

 4  Be It Resolved by the Senate of the State of Florida:

 5  

 6         That March 31, 2006, is recognized as "Cesar Chavez

 7  Day" in the State of Florida.

 8  

 9  

10  

11  

12  

13  

14  

15  

16  

17  

18  

19  

20  

21  

22  

23  

24  

25  

26  

27  

28  

29  

30  

31  

                                  3

CODING: Words stricken are deletions; words underlined are additions.