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Title
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Life After the CSO: Some of the Founding Leaders of the San José Chapter
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Description
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Alicia Hernandez, who did not like being in the spotlight that can accompany a leadership role, moved to San Francisco to continue nursing.
Leonard Ramierez became a probation officer and helped to open the James Ranch Juvenile facility in Morgan Hill (William F. James Boys Ranch). He became chair of the United Way of Santa Clara County, a founder of the Hispanic Development Corporation, and a member of the GI Forum.
After leaving the CSO in the early 1960s, Fred Ross helped organize residents of Guadalupe, Arizona, primarily Mexican Americans and Yaqui Indians, to gain basic services such as paved roads and stop signs. He then taught organizing skills to students at Syracuse University working on a campaign, supported by federal “War on Poverty'' funds, to organize African American residents living in dilapidated public housing. The idea of paying organizers with government funds to stir up people to challenge government policies proved controversial, and the funding was eventually halted. Returning to California in 1966, Ross became the organizing director of the United Farm Workers Association. He assisted the UFW in a campaign over who would represent workers at DiGiorgio, a major grower in the San Joaquin Valley. He would spend the late 1960s and 70s assisting Chávez and the UFW with various elections and boycotts, training thousands of UFW volunteers in his organizing methods. Well into the 1980s, he trained a number of groups working on a broad range of issues, from U.S. intervention in Central America to nuclear disarmament. One of his favorite axioms described the role of the organizer: “A good organizer is a social arsonist who goes around setting people on fire.”
Recruited by Saul Alinsky to become a full-time organizer, Herman Gallegos decided to pursue his career in social work and received his Masters in Social Work (MSW) from U.C. Berkeley, becoming an advocate for Chicano youth and active in the local CSO. After graduation, Gallegos worked as a district director with the San Bernardino County Council of Community Services, a social planning demonstration project supported by the Rosenberg Foundation. In 1965, Gallegos, Dr. Ernesto Galarza, and Dr. Julian Samora were recruited by the Ford Foundation to serve as national affairs consultants. The group explored potential philanthropic support, making recommendations and identifying solutions to address the growing needs of Latino communities. Gallegos went on to become executive director of the National Council of La Raza in 1968, co-founder of Hispanics in Philanthropy, and a U.S. public delegate to the 49th General Assembly of the United Nations.
César Chávez left the CSO because of its emphasis on urban social justice issues. In 1962 he and Dolores Huerta co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (later the United Farm Workers of America). Chávez believed it was important that the new union succeed through nonviolent tactics (boycotts, pickets, and strikes). Although Chávez’s methods as an organizer and labor leader were sometimes controversial, the movement he led brought farmworkers dignity and self-respect, as well as better wages and working conditions. In California, he pushed through what remains today the most pro-labor law in the country, the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, granting farm workers the right to organize and petition for union elections. As stated in the César Chávez Special Resource Study, issued by the National Park Service in 2012: “César Chávez is recognized for his achievements as the charismatic leader of the farm labor movement and the United Farm Workers of America (UFW), the first permanent agricultural labor union in the history of the United States. The most important Latino leader in the U.S. during the twentieth century, Chávez emerged as a civil rights leader among Latinos during the 1950s. Moreover, Chávez and the UFW sought to inspire all men and women to respect the dignity of labor, the importance of community, and the power of peaceful protest.“
The legacy of these organizers from an earlier time can be seen in the work of a generation of activists and community organizers who joined the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s and '70s, transforming their lives and inspiring the activism that continues through today.
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Identifier
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B4SV Exhibit Topic Five: Slide 023
