Sal Si Puedes (Escape If You Can): Cesar Chavez and the New American Revolution Read Online Free Page B

where he brought
generations of farm worker leaders away from their daily
struggles to plan, strategize, and be trained in how to run
their own union, to learn how “ordinary people can do
extraordinary things.”
    It was also his chance to build a community where he could
live out the principles he cherished. For years his avocation
was studying societies and institutions that organized people
around something other than money. They included Catholic
religious orders living in community, Bruderhof Christian
communities on the East Coast and in the Midwest that were
similar to the Amish but committed to helping the poor (their
kids came to work summers at La Paz), Dorothy Day and her
Catholic Worker movement, and Hare Krishna communities.
    Over the years I often heard Cesar denounce what he saw
as the narrowness and selfishness of materialism and
individualism. He embraced what could be defined by the Latin
word communitas , which for Cesar embodied the spirit of
community. The longtime journalist Ronald Taylor described
La Paz in the 1970s as “an unlikely setting for a trade union
headquarters. But it was a symbol of Chavez’s unique concept
[because] he  .  .  .  envisions a self-sufficiency and sense of
community that is disquieting to some of his followers.”
    Roughly 250 people, mostly volunteer staff and their families,
lived and labored at La Paz at any one time from the early 1970s.
It boasted a fully equipped community kitchen and a dining
area where residents and visitors gathered to share meals. Cesar
believed in working hard and in celebrating life. He brought
people together to break bread, especially for union observances
and during Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas holidays, when
many volunteers couldn’t get home. Passover seders were held.
Residents gathered early in the morning outside Cesar’s home
to sing “Las Mañanitas” on his birthday, March 31, which the
movement celebrated as Founder’s Day, since it marked the day
in 1962 when he began building what would become the UFW.
    There was a multiacre organic community garden that raised
much of the community’s produce. Cesar could get away from
the office and experiment with organic growing in the hopes
of offering alternatives to the craziness of pesticides.
    La Paz was also a personal refuge, a spiritual harbor for
him and movement staff, offering respite from tough
struggles in the fields and cities. The world outside La Paz could
pose serious personal dangers.
    Leaving his house each morning, Cesar passed through a
high chain-link fence encircling his large yard, erected in
1971 after one of the two credible threats on his life that the
union received in that decade. I was with him both times.
That year, agents of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms notified the UFW that a few grape growers had put
up money to have him killed. Agents identified the hit man
but not the growers. Cesar went on the road, never sleeping
in the same place twice. The California Highway Patrol later
arrested the hit man near Salinas, only a short distance from
where Cesar had been the day before, for completing another
murder for hire.
    After a few weeks on the road, Cesar told Helen, “I’m not
going to run. I’m not a coward. I have not done anything wrong
except fight for workers’ rights. I’m going back home. I don’t
care if they kill me. If that’s God’s will, let it be done.” He
returned to La Paz. That’s when the chain-link fence went
up—and Cesar’s security detail got beefed up.
    The union’s executive board ordered Cesar to accept the
detail, much to his chagrin. This wasn’t the Secret Service; the
“guards” were farm workers and UFW volunteers. Cesar
forbade them from carrying weapons. He rebelled against the
lack of privacy and restrictions on his personal freedom,
sometimes ditching the guards if he could.
    Cesar was given two magnificent German shepherds, which
he trained and named Boycott and Huelga