that's wha gets them in. my concern is why do they stay in. so the question is confederate psistence. >> in additio to taking a look at going into some of the diaries and other things, you take a quantitative look at who fought. what types of things did you come up with there? >> first thing is the standard argue system it's a rich man's war and poor man's fight. really a rich man's feig. rich counties overwhelmingly send hig numbers of men. in terms of correlation. you get a very strong correlation between wealth and slave holding and enlistment. theor wealth a county has the more slaves a place has the more men go t fight some rich men are actually over represeed in the army as posed to under represented. the other statistical element thats important is desertion. i found overa a 15% rate of desertion in confederate forces 10% because some those g back the desertion peaks in 62. the traditional argue system that it peaks late in the war. it steadily gs up and in

fact what i find is that desertion peaks in 62 because men are angry about the draft act and then it goes down and sort of levels f after that and isn't subjected to continual escalation over the course of the war. >> was there a difference in how the soldiers viewed the wa as opposed to the people on the homefront and their families? >> there is not initially. by 1864 those views start to diverge. what's important about the civil war. all-volunteer army. particularly inirginia those soldiers are never very f away from their homes in constant contact with their family they're as much a part of home communities as they are a part of new communities in the army. by 64 andarticularly the trench warfare around petersburg which lasts for 10 months you start to get this strong divergence where soldiers have become hardened and hardened to confederate civilians suffering and doing - viewing things differently than civilians are b that's late in the war. >> how did you conductost of your research for the book and how did you compile it into the book?

>> a lot of it was traveling to archives around virginia and the south reading diaries and letters that's the main qualitative evidence is diaries and letters and newspapers as well and then a lot of statistical work drawing on a great regimenal history series produced in the state of virginia that has come bile -- compiled out of the national archives all the service records of virginia soldiers so i created a statistically valid sample using those books and drawing soldiers out and going back to the u.s. census and trying to get demographic information about soldiers their rang in the house hole their amount of wealth, slave holding and then ran statistical assessments o them and sort of tried bring those two bodies one quantitative and one qualitative together to make a clear story. >>hy did you decide to write the book in the first place? >> i was interested in the question of "why we fight" wars and how we explain those and that for me ermg emerge as most important elm of that. confederates far long time.

particularly f lower and nonslave holding confederates. lower class. the argument has been it's a somewhat irrational war. doesn't make sense for them to fight and my arguement what i tell m students we have to give historical actors the same credit we wouldive ourselves. we rationalize is the bad way to put it i think. but we explainhings to ourselves in ws that make sense and they did the same thing and it was trying to figure out w they start and how they underand it over time because we continue to fight war. we continue to offer explanatinns that make sense to us and historically me quite baffleing a i wanted to catch that sort of dynamism and that change over te. >> great. we've been talking with dr. aaron sheeh-dean about his book "why confederates fought" family and nation and civil war >> thank you.

randy shaw. executive director of the tenderloin housing clinician san francisco presents a history of cesar chavez and the united farm workers cmntends the ufw influenced future social jus cities influence and affected the state of american labor immigrant rights and ascendancy of latinos in politics this event hosted by busboys and poets in washington, d.c. lasts about an hour. >> ap. >> thank you very much and thank everybody for coming. was at a book reading in portland few weeks ago and someone said to me afterwards you never worked for the ufw and you're not

latino so why did you write this book? so i thought i wld start by sort of explanning that in cas some of you were wondering. you know, i was always fascinated by people i'd come across who whe they were very young often teenagers still got involved with this organization that became so transformative that after they had their contact with the ufw they spent the next 30-40 years of their lives working for social justice. and i thought it's amazing people need to know what is it about this organization that had that kind o dramatic impact. becaus there was lot of organization of the 60s and 70s but none exceeded the ufw in buildings -- building paep's confidence and instilling a lifetime commitment to social justice. and so that's why i wrote "beyond the fields" and my own connection to the ufw began in the 1970s because i was living in berkeley and i met someone named gary who

was a farm worker andere's how gary got involved and it atory that is somewhatery typical and some of you in this room i think have had this similar experience. so gary had gone to college for a couple years. decided he wanted to take a year off and figure out what he wanted to do and kick back whatever. walking through plaza in berkeley campus and there's a table there. in those days in the 60s and 70s you could not go on any college campus or any superlart and not have a ufw boycott staffer there. i mean, everywhere. that was all throughout north america in berkeley the are multiple people at the multiple tables and multiple locations and so he's there. had a list of signing up for volunteers and gary's looking at the information and figures i'll sign up. it would be nice. right. signs his name. goes home. how many of you have gone to a public pla. sign up to volunteer and you never hear from the people again. right? but what gary didn't know. many didn't know is fred ross senior who was cesar

chavez's mentor and trained him. had a rule for the u f w staff when people sign up, you call them that night and you ask them to do someing. get them involved right away. so gary gets a call that night and say hey, we need someone to come help us at a table at telegraph avenue tomorrow. can you do it? and he figures well, i did sign up so i have to follow through on what i agreed. so sure, i'll be down there. and the way the ufw did tabling anyone in here do any tabling with the ufw. the expression used is barking. i don't know if you know tex presentation barking. you go to a college campus today and people are like, students are sitting in front of the tables and they have literature and people walk by and they kind of nod. that wasn't the ufw way. they would be standing up saying hey, come on, com help the farm worker cause. come on in here. sign up. it wasn't passive so gary is watching this. the uf the staffer says to him. hey, why don't you try it.

he figures oh, sure why not. he's up the getting io it. he spends about an hour on his feet barking and getting into it and people are signing up and he goes home feeling he did his day's work. he did his volunteer for the cause and now he's back to work. you know life goes on. he gets a pho call that nit. gary we really appreciate all you've done. you've been great but really need a favor. cesar chavez is speaking at st. joseph. the shipwrecked church on 10th street and we really need someone to help do security for him. now, i alwayssk audnces if you were asked to perform curity for cesar chavez would anybody say no? of course he said yes. so he's down there on 10th street and he's there for about an hour and all of a sud then is a guy who just two days earlier had an end for ufw cesar chavez comes up and says i really want to thank you for henls --

helping us out. i really appreciate it. gary suddenly had a life plan. he started from that point on working full-timeor the ufw at $5 a week plus room and board. he then went to work for hotel workers along with a number of other ufw folks i got to know. he then wen k the workor sciu. he's been a labor organizers -- organizer for the last 30 plus years. unlikely that would have been his future. we don't know where would have gone. think about the experience. he was recruit so intently ven the unlt opportunity to meet cza chave and change his life direction. i met garyecause my then girlfriend and long time wife was one of gary's volunteer lists when he was staffer and you know, we noticed gary would drop by her apartment like around 5:30. and she'd be makinginner and time would go on and it would be about dinner time. gary. we're goingo have dinner

would you like to stay for dinner? don't mind if do i. because when you're livg on $5 a week plus room and board you have to be pretty resourceful. and what the ufw folk learned was they knew how to live off the land. i discuss in the book. how many people hear migue contrary res. i asked the person because miguel one of the most influential people in modern american history but many haven't heard of him. he ended up drawing mos of his success and fame from the theme he should hav and i discuss him in detl los angeles county federation of labor. but miguel in the early part of his life was up in tore ron to -- toronto and with marshal ganes and these were central valley fox he spent his whole life there. toronto is kind ofold and when czar sent you up to work on a boycott. wasn't like he gave you money for expenses. so they had the $5 a week and had to figure out how to get warm. marshaand jessica noticed

how did miguel get three nice coats? d tn they started getting phone calls. it was the base cans tn it was the dominicans and each group was saying is miguel tre? he said he wanted to consider joining our ganization? well, muel had given the impression he wanted to join and they gave him a coat to keep him warm. living off the land. jeica whn was picking crops at age four. farmorkeramily goes up to toronto. does a good job. czar says you've done such a good jobessica. we're going to send you to montreal to run the boytt by yourself. you know what language they speak in monotree -- montreal? they speak french. jessica was raised speaking spanish and then learned english. she knew no french at all. czar sends her over there by herself st -- a 19-year-old fee mall in a male dominated

area wit the labor movement in montreal. not knowing the language and on $5 a week. also thefw didn'tive a budget. it isn't like today you start off and going to do an organizing drive allocate all of this money and all of these workers. it was jessica h to find her own place to live and survive. as i discussed in the book she ends up the montreal labor people just love her. super markets in moneal across the board stop selling nonunion grapes and she has this great success. despite the fact not ven speaking the dominant language and figured out a way to raise money from religiousroups and labor folks and succeed. and so again, if jessica had not had the opportunity the ufw and she became a great organizer he sled -- she led the fight against pesticides who would have hired her as an organizer. labor unions in those days didn't hire women in male dominated fields there would have been no place for her.

person who is now executive vice president who has a long history which i discuss in the book has said if not for the ufw he probably would vended up at the best case scenario a foreman on a ranch. instead he just walks into -- he was a farm worker. he went into the hiring and orked -- any work today? no. but we%re going to have this farm election. do you want to be involved in that. yeah, why not. sure. just like with gary. sure, i'll give it a shot. i don't know what it is about. fred ross senior was training a lot of young peopleow to win that election. and realized gee, iind of like organizing. he does suc a good job. czar says i'd like you to heybs ourñi chicago5a boycotqñ 's like 19 years old. chicago. he thoht chicago was like a few towns down the road. said, no. you have to f to chicago. you know. he goes to chicago does such

a good job that when there's this antifarm worker legislation in florida. where it is going to jus stop any future efforts to orgaze farmworkers ty say go down to florida and kill that legislation. he goes ther like jessica in montreal. no money no,+ budget.qwht(myok heçó eventually raised $50:i for the campaign. he gets there and he meets with the labor officials in frida. and they say, he says what do you think. he said hey, forget it. this bill's a done deal. the best you can do is work out some kind of compromise d water it down a little bit. this is hope dples -- hopeless. he says you don't understand. i'm from the ufw. we don't compromise. and i discuss in detail in the book how he did this. by the time he was done the florida citrus industry was begging the legislator the kill t bill. the entire touri industry at florida was at risk due to him sort of you have to

read how it actually happened. but kind of got this view maybe there was a tie fid -- typhoid epidemic in florida caused by bad conditions for farmworkers didn't wan anythi to0 do with farm worker leglation. $5, he kills thatiece of edge slags. what the -- legislation. what the ufw did is give people a chanae. they gave latinos a chance that woul@ not otherwise have chance and gave women a ance and you know, in thoseays labor was very sexist and i'm not saying -- i know people are going to say there's still things to work on. but you know,xd afl-cio would have their convention with like women in bikinis in miami beach places and saying to women this is not really a place for you. similarly if you are progressive like a new left activist and you wanted to help workers. be part of the labor movement well, people know who george is or i should

say. geor was heading the ark flc i o at the time. george supported the vietnam war and george used to -- ji a quote in the book about this he thought all these protesters that kind of smelled and were dirty. if you're a new levist and you want to help workers are you going to go work for george? no. you're going to warnlt want toor for this hip progressive union the ufw. so youave latinos and you have women and you have sort of activists, new leftists all saying you know what, we do he a place, we can find a home in t ufw and it can be at t ufw. and you look at people like luis valdez. peter jones who is in the book under the labor heritage background. do people know who luis valdez is. really one of the most influential cultural figures of our era.

he was very involved with thearmer movement from the earliest stages. what's interesting even though valdez a radic suppord the cuban revolution he was also supportive of the religious iconicy of the farmworkers union. someone like h would never are been part of the afl-cio in that area he started a thing that became whole cultural compone that the uaw identified with. that's why the movement was so successful and why it is so interesting to say look at all of these people andw3 all the incredible work they did.xd and if it hadn't been for the ufw maybe or they've been born 15 years later, we would have lost all of that great talent. the people shaping today's movements. i talk about t electoral work and you know we all read in tober, "washington post" had a story about how

the oma electoral campaign sort of reinvented electoral politic. people see those articles reinvent electoral politics and i read that and said gee, i gss you think that but if you bead my book you see all the obama campaign they did have computers and all but all they really did is take what the ufw did in 1968, 72 and6 a then with ufw alumni then brought with them throughout calirnia and then other states. you know, you rd about in 1968 the dominant book about the presidential election in america was called the selling of the president. people remember that book. joe mcgins picture of nixon a the cigarette pack and the whole message of american politics in the 60s and 70s and into the 80s was it's all about television advertising. television advertising mailers. it's a marketing thing. the ufw had a different

direction. they were old school. the way to get latinos mut to vote and people out to vote you have to go door-to-doornd spend te talking at doors and you have to do real grassroots activism around elections to get turnout among low-income people. they're not goi respond to television ads and they provedhat in '68 making -- for robert kennedy make sure he won the democrac primary in californaa proved that in state election in '72 and proved that again in '76 and went on to prove it in other elections. their alumni. so with the0 -- what the obama campaign did is they went back to a model the ufw had created 3 years earlier -- 30 years earlier. the grass roots and keeping track of everything and knocking on doors and not just asking how they're going to vote but trying to recruit the as being organizers at the door. that's what the ufw did in 1968. so there's so many aspects of phe ufw their legacy that

apply today that jus simply have beenorgotten. i was saying to someone before when you say to someone you know, you remember det. terrible pesticide. most people don't know det was eliminated in the united states because the farmworkers pssed for it. because jessica who grew up in the fields was convinced all these pesticides that everyone got used toprague. in those days no one was a talk about organic anything. spray pesticides and go eat the food. what the heck. well, she was convinced she was getting headaches and the people, the workers she wasalking to were getting headache. hey, something's wrong here. went to ufw council and said jerry yo have to work on this and at first he was skeptical. she convinced him. he went to cr and said cz we have to make pesticides a priority at first wasn' sure but afterwards said sure absolutely. as discussed in the book. before first earth day before 1970 befe people heard about

environmentalists 1969 here at the senate office building the farmworkers wereaving a hear on pesticides as i describe in the book they make safeway and the big grocery stores look ri dick rouse and -- ridiculous and end up proving the case on pesticides and what happens is this, the growers say to chavez and this is not widely known, we'll settle the great boycott. we'll agree to union grapes. we'll agree to phe wages you want. you can have your hiring hald. you can have the working conditio you want. big victory right. most people would have id we won. let's call it. but the growers also said we have to have the unlimited right to spray pesticides. cesar wouldn't do. that he refused to reach a deal the e the grape boycott that allowed the farms to spray workers endanger their health. in those ds no one ever heard of the term environmental justicend the sierra club thoht that's not nur issue, we're in the lakes and mountains

not spraying latino workers in the fields of california. they kind of built the environmental justice movement. they were the model for it. and you know ultimately when they reached these contracts in 1970 with the g growers the were provision in all the contracts that banned the sprague o harmfulym pesticides. becauseñxdñi the state governmet das do you remember who the governor of californiaçó was during heyday of the farm wore worker movement?ñi ronald reagan. and if that wasn't bad enou. the president of the united states during that there 69 richard nixon and what tho two men had a lot of things in when but what they really had in chon is they loved being photograph eating grapes. we'll show those farorkers. grapes are wonderful. and in fact the boycott was so scessful. nixon had the defense department order a million pounds of grapes to make up for all the ones consumer

weren't buying. but the point is so when they won the grape boycott no more hazardous spri -- spraying and sadly jessica who had illustriousçi career after leaving ultimately died of cancer. no one could know it was from the spraying but it's highly suspected. but you could say she did suck seed in getting red r rid of de zwshgs making the whole nation aware of the problem of pesticides on our food. another area where the ufw people sort of forget they had a role in. the who had -- the whole idea of surely -- clergy relations with labor. i think today so common to see labor unions involved having religious supporters. i don' know if win -- anyone's heard of lab groups in washington that work on justice coalition but people forget when the ufw in the 607s the religious commune wasn't working with labor unions in ct the religious unions

were at odds because labors supported the vietnam war and was strongly against it. when cesar first starts you say t farmworkers were catholic so. obviously theatholic church suppoed the rmworkers. well, who paid the salary of the cathoc bishops? not farmworkers. growers who are also catholic. soedar -- cesar's original staff were migrant ministers who were protestant. jim and chris they became a staff. because when cesar chavez started the ufw taking on ag gri business. taking on one of the biggest channels you could ever take on. taking on a challen sol often given credit for chavez inact ratsly. saul and i describe this in the book thought he was crazy. cesar had to leave the community services organization which was an organization that they didn't want orgized farmworkers. he thought latinos were an urban people and need to be

moved to the cities and organized there. everybody thought cesar was crazy. he decides t lawn afternoon farm worker move wment a total budget of $2.50 monthly dues and he and his wife pickg crops as farmworkers. so not a lot of money. he gets the migrant ministers to be his staff. they work full-time as the ufw staff. and then he has a big march in 1966 the virgin of guadalupe following him through the entire march and suddenly faith-based activists are sayin we want to be part of the farmworkers movement. d it grows and grows. robert kennedy comes out to c#z a hearing and he tellshe bishops you can't beñixdçót( a l bishop and. not aligned with the farmworkers. which at that point for robert kenly --xd kennedyost influential catholic in the country was significant. as i discuss in the book the faith-based, the farmworkers are profound religious movement. cesar had a fast in 1968

which was incredibly successful and i was really a sense of drawing religious based activists into this which helped build the movement. so he brought in all o these groups, women, latinos new leftists religious folks into a social change arena they otherwise would not have been part of. and that's what made this movement so great. and the important thing to remember is this is not, my bo is not a history book and we're not talking history here. we'rnot saying let's g relive the days of the 607 and p 07s -- 60s and 70s when all of this was going on. i have a chapter ird the book about a cam tan -- campaign that took pla in the university of miami in 2006. the title of the chapter is yes, we cane. and someone said to me in one of my readis randy hate to tell you you've got a typo in your book. i said no, no, they used yes we can for the cane because it it was miami hurricanes. have people heard of justice

for janitors? it was conceived by stephen lerner an ex-uf boy cat staffer who said gee, we've got to figure out a way to organize janitors because they were used to be organized historically and deunionized in the early 80s. he said farmworkers, i'm sorr january tors are a lot like farmworkers in high-rises. at the time everyone said you can't organize latinos. particularly undocumented latinos. they just can't be organized but he said let's t these farm worker tactics and he went to denve withnother ufw alum a they succeeded in winning unionization in denver. and then went on to l.a. and big century city thing have a picture in the book on. they won justice for janitors and justice for janitors explodes where we have orgafized janitors all ov america and now what happens is people say oh, well, you can't give a lot of credit for that because latinos just rush to join

unions. they just want to join unions they're easy prey and before it wa like you c't organize this group. that's what happens when you have successfulactic and strategies. when you go to this 2006 chapter in the book and if took the dates off you would think you're reading about a 1970arm work campaign. same ack. same relationship with religious groups spiritu fast. delores -- person goes on a ten day fast in miami. and it all happens the same blueprin for scess. the same blue print for success happened in 2006 as happened in all of these other campaigns. that's why i say if you look at the immrant rights movement and all of these movements going on today you can see the ratnship that harkinned back to either the personnel or rategies and tactics of the farm worker movement and i'll just mention the immigrant rights movemt. you know those millions that took to the streets in 2006. do you guys think -- the

media acted like oh, my goodness some spontaneous outburst. suddenly all of these milies just rush out to the streets and a lot of us are wondering well, gee well, we didn't even know there were 3,000 latinos in garden city kansasr whereñl do p=arom wata how do they have a march and tulsa, oklahoma and north carolina. remember those 2006 events not just seattle, d.c., boston they were allver the country and you kw why that happened. it's because a number of people from the ufw. alliancewith cardinal mahony i discuss this all in the book. an infrastructure was built but they played an important role. ..

the of labor and the george and gordon l. digns of the human rights cause. has anyone here heard othe immigrant workers freedom right? one person. he worked founion at that point whe that happened. it is understandable you haven't heard of it becaus it didn't ve a lot of media attention. this occurred in 2003 anwas set up by a lot of labor unions that immigrant rights groups and chch groups, and the idea was we are going to take ten buses from various places in america d drive through the country and all end up in d.c. and new york and along th way we are going to talk to people about immigrant rights. now i was at a meeting in d.c., i amorry new orleans in december 2002 with some labor people in this idea came up and everyone in the room said are these people crazy? in the preceding november the republicans just one the senate and they also have the house and they are thinking way, given his political moment in history unite here is gog to spend

money for atre it is going to spend money on having pple ride buses through america? that is crazy. here is what happened. where did those buses go on the freedom ride, waterloo, tulsa, the quad cities, all those small cities do we wondered in 200 where did all those people come from? i will tell you where they came from, those connections were made in 2003 and so, when suddenly they have to build up the big turnout in 2006, it is like we know who to ll in waterloo, know the people in tulsa, w know the penple in nebraska we know the people in spokane washington because we worked with them a few years ago on this event. when you look at the 2006 event, you know, the ufw influence was quite clear. the cover of my book has pictures of protesters widh the american flags.

remember in the early march there s a seriesf mches that occurred in march, april and may of 2006 and the early on a numbdr o marchers had mexican flags. do you remember that? all this complaint. they are not really americans, they are from mexico, mexan flags the cesar chavez confronted this, so cesar told people we are going to waive the biggest american flags were we go. no one is going to accuse us of being communists. eliseo madino whenever this so after the first criticism they made sure at all those ralliec and protests there w no progress of rallied there were more american flags and human rights protests and the got the best media of any otest we have ever seeno that is the kind of mia savvy they got from the ufw, so i think the big picture here is that it is amazng movement triumphing over impossible odds,

far morehan david and goliath, brought a generation of peop wo might not he been active this otherwise. somewhat, they might not have the opportunity to get the skills and training to dedicate their life. they might not have been so inspired ago at the it come of age in the '80s i don't know wha would have been there for them, so the reason i wrote this book is to say let's let this amazing incutor institution and think about you know, we need more of them for the what are we doing s that the people who all g involved the obama campaign a just thinking, i have g all these organizing skills but what do i do with them? no one will hire me. do i have to go to law school? is that whate areelling them? or let's take our best and brightest of those people and hire tm as organizers. iish the obama for america thing would rehire those people. they are hiring a very small number and the organization is not designed the way i would like it but it is something we should all think aboutecause here is a whole group of people

who would have such impact on our politics and now are in their 50s and 60s. we need to get the young people, the future charters who are going to triumph over possible odds for justice. we need to figure outweighs to help them so i will stop athat point and take questions and thank you all and iope he will buy the book here and fight for your friendsecause your friends would be inspired. i guarantee it is a very inspiring book which let people feel like we can overcome incredible odds, and big money does not always win and i think you'lld it, he will close the book. i also have a chart of all these people lafont three, people like peter jones to after they left in the stuff they did for social changeecause it is remarkable how many people have become part of social justice movements after leaving, so thank you very much and i will take some qutions. [applause]

>> we do have this microphone set up over here for questions. and i would like to thank c-span's booktv for filming today's events, so thank you very much for coming out. and i also want to mention that i brought one copy of the activist handbook, my prayerbook if someone wants to buy for $15 wants to carryt with them to chicago would appreciate it. it is a great book and they are going to start stocjing it here. i may have one more someone needof the let's talk about this. any questions? >> my question is you started to elaborate on i for the end, what is going on now to organize the youth, especially like may be beginning as early as high-school? is there any organizing going on in the high schools? >> here is the problem. the problem iand the reason i was in new orleans, i used to run this organizin program called justice corp. and we would recruit people off of

campuses. the problem is there are youth programc and phere is even campusough, a lot of college students work on issues. the problem is the graduate college and then what is their employment opportunity? i was speaking and we were trying to encourage them to hire more. part of the problem is that a lot of jobs are not that interesting and there's a lot of a.c.o.r.n.'s felp there and ere are some opportunities but i thought the obama campaign, for example you said right now hey all you folks who worked on the obama campaign, i mean the people who worked in two months on andull time a really got some skis, we need you to help pass universal health re because we do need it. we need them to pass comprehensive immigration reform. we need that. why don't we hired the why don't we say tv ads, e-mail and all of that? why isn't somebody hiring them? i think iis great to ve technology and e-mail is

wonderful in cell phes but just think, in the farmworker days there were not cell phones. so when you have a list of people you had to call and you would call gary guthman, where did you make that call from? people are oftenn the boycott house and they live seven or eight to a house. there is only one phone in that hoe. sessom when to church is. they have a lot of obstaclese don't have but nevertheless they were more successful in some respec of the question is how we make people have careers working for social change. the reason my program and itas because i could not get enough groups willing to hire young people. there is an unfortunate bias among a lot of social change groups against hiring young people imparted th is young people flake out in don't stay in jobs, which i understand the part of it is the ufw treated organizing as an academic subject. it was a trade. i have theuote from marshall ganz said it was a tree.

it is fred rousen marshall gz, it sas a trade and that is what my bk highlights. it was a skill you learned. it was not like i have a big heart, i care about the justice and thpoor, go get them. their actual ski sets and strategies any to learn so when you get those from the two months with obama and now you are in your 20s and graduated college and no one is saying to you build on that,hat is like saying eliseo medina, he did really well butow you are going to be a ranch foreman or jessica you go back to be a farmworker. at is this thing that is unfortate and we have to figure outweighs to create those opportunities. i should mention that just today there was the kickoff of a national campaign to bring farmworkers and domestics under the national labor reations act because the whole reason cesar chavez had such a struggle was because farmwkers when they passed a law that said you can't

be fired for union activity in 1935, considered one of the shining highlight of the new deal, guess what? if you were a farmworker you could be fired. or a domestic. what race for domestic workers? african-american, latino and filipino so it was the races that. it was no diffent from what south africa did. very similar but for some reason todain the continental united states the only state that has the kind of full protectio for farmworkers as california. and now the u is launching this thing that and you'll be hearing about it but i think there's a hunger for people to get involved in that because it is just an injustice that the farmworkers are excluded. when the grape boycott, it was so crazy without the national labor relations act that when the great boycott the farmworkers wanted three-year contract.

when it expired the grnwe unilaterally said you know what? we want ourorkers to be with the teamsters. at that point in history that was organized cme the testers have limits on pesticide spraying so without the consent of the workers, suddenly farmworkers were in the teamsters union. that is how crazy it is without an agricultural labor relations act so that is happening and that is something you read about in the days ahead. otr questions? go up to the microphone there. >> can you hear me okay? great book b the way. >> thank you. >> i was curious about the process of writing the boo and yo said what motivated you to dot but how did you go about

dog the research angetting all the information you need, anthen one other quick question. if you could talk a little bit more about sort of your thoughts on this state of the progrsive movement tay or more narrowly, didn't dabor movement or both? i think in the book you talk a lot about what we are doing right in t progressive movement, which is great because we need do more with the same time i am curious to hear your thoughts and wha we could be doing better. >> let me answer the first question. i have to say i am very unusual in that i have not written three books and i am not a professor. ayma fuld-- i have a full-ti job running in non-prof and i also run a-- about this new campaigno i don't like taking time off to work exclusive on writing a bookut i am fortunate that i write very fast and i know what i'm looking for. i get to incredibly lucky breaks in this book. i started this book, it was

approved by the publication in late 2005, and interestingly enough the "l.a. times" had a four part series in january 2006 that basically said the theme of the series was, cesar chavez and ufw was a complete failure. look at the membership rules, lafite the conditions of rmworkers and of course michael book, the whole thesis of my project was the donatelli with the success of the legacy of cesar chavez by current totalsn the ufw so that inspired me to really get going because i haveo prove these "l.a. times" guys totally wrong. d2 phenomenal look, what hpens in the spring of 2006, immigrant rights movemen explodes. i mean so here it was already planning writing about this build up to the immigrant rights movement but i got lucky, it exploded. we could say see all this ground

for county pay off. i also have the university of miami campaign, a textbomk cam@aign. i could not hav written, it is like fiction and it is so perfect for my book. so i have those positive things happen and i also had the fortune of break-in november 2006 elections were viewed as a litmus test for latino voting power. remember the marches. one of the major marching themes in the spring of 2006 was, to debut march, tomorrow we have vote. today we march, tomorrow we vote. signs were evewhere. the republican party made a big gamble because they said do you know what? wean alienate latinos all w want because i don't care what the sign s, they are not going to vote. yeah they voting california because labor is always getting those people out there is no laboring in colorado xcel leaking voy headen after those marches people will be even more anti-immigrant as they were.

they were wrong and as i discussed in the booking great detail because i think it is imrtant to understand dutied using miguel contraris a eliseo medina this method of doing voter outreach developed the by the ufw they went to colorado and arizona in 2006 and defeated anti-emigrant republican congressman using the tactics. in races for the media said this is a litmus test for the latino vote,hey wt so they have lost, those elections well people would say brandy you wrote this book to talk about latino, all these great models and they didn't work. they did where can they rk in 2008 so it was even better for the book so i think that was positive in terms of tt but the way it was able to write thisook because i had to work on it nights and weekends nonstop, i was driven to tell the story of all these people it done amazing things for the last 40 years andost of whom the

erage person has never heard of. eliseo medina was executive vice president of seiu, i can tell you how of inis groups, have you ever heard of eliseo madino? >> they say no. miguel contraris was then a big fense. i was at an event, ever hear of miguel contraris? no. ufw folks never-- in terms of writing the book i h a pason to tell the story, tell the alumni come to tell all these people who whyelt hadn't been given the credit for the dramatic changes that have me in the world today. in terms of my view, i think we are at the great historic ti and obviously i was happy when barack obama adopted yes we can after the new hampshire primary but some of you may remember when barack obama said yes pecan, eryone in this room probably thought that is cesar

chavez,--emember he did not mention cesar chavez or the ufw. when we did this we said yes we can. that is because i believe the ufw had endorsed hillary and delores who was, did give obama a hard time for adopting as we can because she was the big hillary person but what many people don't know is where barack obama was going as soon as he left new hampshire. he was going to nevada to be endorsed by unite here and maria elena the rosove the widow of miguel contraris and for those folks, i guess we c did resonate so he had a secret message for them. and so, i think that we are in the great historical moment and although i do wish there were organizer is being-- i think it is the great period of time and i would just say this. what i don't want to see happen is all of you in this room and the people i talked to, the

spectators to history. what was so great about this fallas everyon felt like there are making history. you are out there doing is gat stuff, changing the world and setting amerhca in a new direction. now there's the risk of saying, let's read the internet. what this cn hav let's listen to keith olbermann and let's read this paper an@ we are being passive aga because it might be a vehicle to be involved so i was happy to see hord dean get smuckers the poor americand gid and organizing component there. the way to get people in fault, and i would also say don't let the media depress you. the media, it does its best to depress you and to make it seem there is all these problems. the democrats are feuding. you have got to really ignored because it is a different world. the mia is in a bubble. they arealking to themselves. by people get frustrated by it and if you are engaged yourself

you realize people do want change and i think this year is the year we have got to kind of make it. i am so thrilled that you are here a this is such an importttory and i had told u.s. spent four years with unitedarmworkers kenyan and i have my n on today from my time in the '70s but i suspect you did a taping of some of your interviews and im thinkg about the oral histories will be preserved from the various people because the library of congress would be a wonderful place perhaps to archive. >> i am glad you brought that up because there was a question that i did not really answer. i had one other lky thing. there is a man named lee roy chatfield. i talked about. he became very active in the farmworker movement and a number of other things and he decided with his own money as a labor of

love to create somhing called the farmworker documentation project, farmworker movemt.org so, i guess i hato do a lotof interviews and mostel my interviews, the vast majority we talking about people's contemporary work, their work in recent years because all these people submitted essay to the site and you can go to the site and read the essays. so instead of having to terview all these people, what they did in the '60s and '70s i can go to their essay and take things out. it is intesting about that because i got overwhelmgly positive responses to this book for the one of the most-- i got a harshly -- mail from a g who ote a farmworker boo called long time coming. he is a reporter. he was a reporter for the chronicle covering the movemt and he was mad about something i said tt it turned out, i was just quoti an essay so he was all happyt wasn't me. i made it clear, but people have

their views of history and wt is put in those essays people might disagree with at but i have a record of what this person said, so it is a great sight. it has got photos. the biggest collection, i think it has some oral stuff. in his fantastic. it is a great resource and hopefully people will connted as a resource because i take pas of it up. i take bits and pieces all kinds of stories of people, about ese inspiration's. you can read the whole thing on line. that is farmworker movement.org. farmworker movement.org. lindemann has a question. it is called the farmworker documentation proje. >> i read your book and i'm lookinorward to readingt bu having said that one concern i have, it seems like the way he presented this is that the stories are almost like horatio

alger's stories, people that learned from ufw and have gone on to the great tngs. a couple of exames he gave of medina and learner, those guys are very involve in crushing reformers within seiu right now, the whole fhtith you h.w.. i know belorus is on the other side of that fight. it seems like the farmworkers have become less visible ever since the split in the labor movement and they arehoosing change to win over staying in the afl-cio and i'm just curious abt the other side of the coin. do you see, dino, at some of these people gone astray? >> let's be ver clear because this has comep before and i have a whole chapter in the book called the decline in th ufw beuse how could i write a book called beyond the fields if all of these people stayed in the ufw? and i will just y and i will

get to the other part about e current stuff, but, just a short answer to this. i'm not the first person to write about cesar chavez' incrsingly bizarre and paranoid behavior in the 1970's. there are well documented. it is, you know edu is known. and that is why every but he but dolores, all the major figures have left the ufw, all the names i have given you, that is why they were all gonby 1981. there is a particularly divive issuthat happened in the 81 convention whi was the last straw for pple but-- the issue was that there were farmworkers on t ufw executive board. and they had these ranch committees. the ufw had no locals. how could workers at the local site-- here we have locals.

they built up these ranch committees to give workers some say. there were no farmwkers, no practicing farmworkers on the executive bod ansell a number of the organizers learned to read a farm, they-- cesar still controlled the board but he was so paranoid by that time that he actually fired, the use procedural-- t present-- prevent the election and fire the people of involve from supporting it so it was a pretty anti-worker at. but or might an analysisiffers from every oth book that has been writtej, t other books likeighting fields, all of them, their argument is okay those people left t the ufw is still strong and the republican governors came to california for the next 16 years and that killed the movement. but that doesn't make sense when you think the greatest success of the ufw occurred when nixon

was presidenand reagan was governor so obviously having republican officials is not a factor other reason ufdecline buthat had a hall of fame of talent. it had a hall of fame of talen that then left and if you think the amazingly long and difficult struggle with this hall of fame of talent, with this massive national boycott organization and still the ticket long time, without those people how could they possibly succeed against agribusiness so it was no longer, after 81 bindi ufw sadly turn to like the same kind of retail-- t ads, hinote, came to replicate the unions he relled against originally. in terms of the reasons of which obviously came out after my book. the internal battle with asilo was unfortunate. i know the people very wl because i worked in san francisco. i think that story, eliseo--

this was a dispute wh the health care workers. i think that is the closer called. that fight is iore complex than some othe stuff arod the atre east of going on now with seiu and all and one thing about eliseo i think you could say is eliseo left the ufw in 1970 to eight. he left before anyf the other leadershipnd he was seen b ny pple as the future replacement for cesar chaveznd he left because h didn't, he felt cesar was going down the wrong track, was getting distracted with the. i discussed the various issues in the book where cesar was off track. but now i think he is a guy frankly wants to work on immigrant rights and does not want to get embroiled in this stuff. he just kindf goes along and that is what i think it is about but i will say there are people on bh sides. gary guthman work for you h.w.,

so there are people on both sides and you know, it is disappointing to see that but the ufw had its own internal issues and when you start thinking about it, labor unions seem to have continual internal issues. now that could be part of a whole separate analysis of why that is. i won't go into that tonight but is disappointing that we see labor, and i was talking to people today who say it is labor union, history of division. if you have that analysis, i will tell you and if you read this book, if you read this book you will see, there's no people in this country i have-- no organize i have greater admiration for than the hotel organizer of atre e and i talk about their campaigns because they are national hotel workers boycott came out of the farmworker playbook. i don't think they added boycott

in washington dc. they showed slides of the ufw grape boycott to train their staff and the community about how to do a boytt and they brought the boycott to the internet so when i see criticism from seiu of here that pains me famore than the disputing california which has a lot of internal components to it. but it is disappointing. i c't argue with you on that. cannot argue withou on that. any other questions? i think we havenother one here. >> it is actually not a question, but i have to confirm what you said that what i leard in the union during that time, the four years i spent wi the union, i am a university pfessor at this point and i have continued in health care. i have continued to use those skills and when you said, how do we help our young people to cet

back to it? i think it ally is incumbent on all of us to encourage the young people to get involved cause there are many you people that got very engaged during this last caaign and it is how we all support that and encourage tm and perhaps share rwn stories that these were ry, veryositive times and the skills learn, i continue to shareith my studts even today. >> and look at, you have to have a commitment to really recruitment. fred frostier during the '80s central america, the reagan admistration, intervening in central america, he decides we need an organization that is going to go into congressional districts into real intense attacks of the local level and build support and put pressure to stop contra aid. ..