Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement
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.
1101396328
Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement
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.
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Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement

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

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

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

by Marshall Ganz

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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.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780195162011
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication date: 05/28/2009
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 368
Product dimensions: 6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Marshall Ganz joined Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers in 1965, where he worked for 16 years, and has since continued work with grassroots organizations to design voter-mobilization strategies for local, state, and national electoral campaigns, most recently with Barack Obama. Ganz is currently Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations
One - Introduction: How David Bear Goliath
Two - Beginnings: Immigrants, Radicals, and the AFL (1900-1959)
Three - New Opportunities, New Initiatives: AWOC, Teamsters, and the FWA (1959-1962)
Four - A Storm Gathers: Two Responses (1963-1965)
Five - The Great Delano Grape Strike (1965-1966)
Six - Meeting the Counterattack: DiGiorgio, the Teamsters, and UFWOC (1966)
Seven - Launching a New Union (1966-1967)
Epilogue
Appendix
Notes
References
Index
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