Excerpted from a plenary presentation by Maria Elena Durazo at the 2006 Bioneers Conference.
Cesar Chavez's last and longest hunger fast—36 days in 1988—was to protest the pesticide poisoning of farm workers and their children. He told his critics that there was something more important to the Farm Workers Union than winning better wages and working conditions: Protecting farm workers, their children and consumers from systematic poisoning through the reckless use of agricultural toxics.
Millions of Americans rallied behind La Causa, the farm workers' cause. It wasn't just because Cesar was battling on behalf the poorest and the most abused workers in America. It was also because he was championing the environment and struggling nonviolently.
Cesar Chavez taught me, and so many others, about building alliances between trade unionists, immigrants and environmentalists long before such things became widely understood or accepted. One of Cesar's disciples was my late husband, Miguel Contreras, who also got his start with the Farm Workers Union. When Miguel became leader of the Los Angeles labor movement in 1996, he worked tirelessly to build alliances and create partnerships to advance the cause of workers' rights in Los Angeles.
Miguel worked to transcend the traditional boundaries of the labor movement. He built alliances with faith-based activists during a long and bitter supermarket workers strike. He rallied support from clergy and community organizations during the lockout of long shore workers. Miguel forged a similar alliance during the successful fight to stop Wal-Mart from opening a superstore in Inglewood, working closely with the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, a community based non-profit group. When mostly African American bus drivers went on strike against the Metropolitan Transit Authority, Miguel rallied important support for the drivers. He mobilized pressure on public officials and among L.A.'s African American churches. He reached out to solidify support and awareness about unions among students.
Perhaps most importantly, Miguel turned the Los Angels labor movement into a champion of immigrant workers. In every struggle, the L.A. labor movement has generated support by forming alliances with a wide array of community, religious, minority, and student activists on issues beyond labor's traditional workplace concerns.
Today, new alliances are becoming powerful forces for change. On the national level, the Apollo Alliance unites nearly 16 million union members and 11 million environmental organization members to promote job creation in environmental technology. In Southern California, union members as diverse as municipal workers, engineers and laborers have come together to lay the foundation for an equitable and sustainable economy. One of our unions, Local 18 of the electrical workers, has pushed the city of Los Angeles toward a greener future.
On another front, a new coalition of L.A. area environmental, labor, faith-based, community and public heath organizations are working to promote sustainable trade and protect working families through the Coalition for Clean & Safe Ports. The current trucking system at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach is broken. Port trucking grossly pollutes the environment. Most drivers, 90 percent of whom are immigrants, lack basic benefits including decent wages, a retirement plan, health insurance, and the right to unionize. Our new coalition proposes a win-win solution in which the port would achieve clean, safe and sustainable growth and the drivers would see their lives and the lives of their families improved and protected, transforming an underground economy into a legitimate one.
Since the mid-1990s, political participation by Latino voters has risen dramatically. But the ugly specter of immigrant bashing is still raising its head across this land. Anti-immigrant elected officials have stalled meaningful and comprehensive immigration reform in congress. In December 2005 in the House of Representatives, the punitive Sensenbrenner Bill called for deporting undocumented workers in this country now and criminalizing their presence.
We know that immigrant bashers are everywhere. They're in the labor movement, they're in politics, and we know they're in the environmental movement. We all have the responsibility to teach our members not to blame immigrants, but rather embrace and organize immigrants, because immigrants have led progressive movements in this country generation after generation.
As the president of Unite Here! International Union wrote recently, "America was built by successive waves of immigrants, whether they came here voluntarily or involuntarily. The genius of this country has been its repeated ability to rejuvenate and re-energize itself with new immigrants, to fight against nativism and racism, to enable all of them to become Americans and to stand, eventually, alongside earlier arrivals, all woven together into the great tapestry of America."
These are human rights issues. The fact that the political future is also at stake should be a bonus. So let us continue striving to seek common ground and forge alliances at every opportunity between labor, environmental, and immigrant communities. Not just because it is the smart thing to do, but also because it is the right thing to do.
Maria Elena Durazo is one of the nation's most prominent Hispanic labor leaders. She is President of the Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees Union's Local 11, and General Vice President of H.E.R.E.'s International Union. She is first Latina woman to lead a major labor union in Southern California and was National Director of the Immigrant Workers' Freedom Ride. To listen to Maria's 2006 Bioneers plenary presentation "Building Alliances: Labor, Immigration and the Environment," visit the Bioneers Store.
