Module 2: Speeches by César Chávez

Babies born to migrant workers suffer 25 percent higher infant mortality rates than the rest of the population.

Today, thousands of farm workers live under savage conditions, beneath trees and amid garbage and human excrement near tomato fields in San Diego County; tomato fields, which use the most modern farm technology.

Babies born to migrant workers suffer 25 percent higher infant mortality rates than the rest of the population.

Farm workers are not agricultural implements; they are not beasts of burden to be used and discarded.

That dream, that vision grew from my own experience with racism, with hope, with a desire to be treated fairly, and to see my people treated as human beings and not as chattel.

I spent many years before we founded the union learning how to work with people.

We experienced some successes in voter registration, in politics, in battling racial discrimination—successes in an era where Black Americans were just beginning to assert their civil rights and when political awareness among Hispanics was almost non-existent.

And I believe that once you have taken a few moments to hear this message, you will concur in this verdict along with a million other North Americans who are already committed to the largest grape boycott in history.

But we also won a critical battle for all Americans. Our first contracts banned the use of DDT, DDE, Dieldrin on crops, years before the federal government acted.

A powerful self-serving alliance between the California governor and the $14 billion agricultural industry has resulted in a systematic and reckless poisoning of not only California farm workers but of grape consumers throughout our nation and Canada.

The hard-won law enacted in 1975 has been trampled beneath the feet of self-interest.

Blatant violations of California labor laws are constantly ignored.

And worst of all, the indiscriminate and even illegal use of dangerous pesticides has radically increased in the last decade, causing illness, permanent disability, and even death.

Human lives are worth more than grapes and the innocent-looking grapes on the table may disguise poisonous residues hidden deep inside, where washing cannot reach.

Parathion and Phosdrin are highly poisonous insecticides, similar to nerve gas, and are responsible for the majority of deaths and serious poisoning of farm workers.

Parathion and Phosdrin are highly poisonous insecticides, similar to nerve gas, and are responsible for the majority of deaths and serious poisoning of farm workers. They cause birth defects and are carcinogens.

What report can be cited at the hospital beds I visit, at growing numbers of wakes I attend?

My friends, the wrath of grapes is a plague born of selfish men that is indiscriminately and undeniably poisoning us all.