Legislature Clears Way for Chavez Holiday

California is set to become the first state in the nation to honor Cesar Chavez, the legendary leader of the United Farm Workers union, with an official paid holiday.

California lawmakers Thursday approved a measure to make March 31, Chavez’s birthday, a paid holiday for about 210,000 state workers--the first such state holiday in America to honor a Latino or an organized labor figure. Gov. Gray Davis said he soon will sign it into law.

Public schools and courts are not included in the holiday. But most schoolchildren are expected to spend the morning learning about Chavez’s life as a Mexican American farm worker turned civil rights figure through a special voluntary, state-funded curriculum.

Students at participating schools then will leave their classrooms and spend the afternoon performing some age-appropriate form of community service with the California Conservation Corps or the national AmeriCorps program.

UFW President Arturo Rodriguez said Chavez, who died in 1993 at age 66, would humbly have considered the holiday a tribute not only to himself, but to all campesinos in their struggle for humane wages and working conditions.

“We wanted to be able to provide young people knowledge about Cesar, who he was, what his philosophy was, but also a way to practice it,” said Rodriguez, who pushed for the educational component as a way to keep the Chavez legacy alive. “They will not only learn how someone else became involved in the issues he cared about, but will become involved in community service themselves.”

California, along with Texas and Arizona, already had designated a day in honor of Chavez. California’s new measure makes Chavez’s birthday a bona fide holiday with mandatory pay.

Chavez gained attention in the 1960s as the leader of the UFW, staging a massive grape boycott to bring national attention to wealthy growers’ barbaric treatment of poor farmhands.

In doing so, he became more than a labor leader for Latinos, particularly Mexican Americans, who took his mantra of “Si se puede,” or “Yes we can,” as a greater call to action. His early fights were marked by bitter, often brutal altercations between farmers and workers. But Chavez, an advocate of nonviolent protest, prevailed and won numerous concessions from farmers, including the outlawing of el cortito, the notorious short-handled hoe that farm workers considered crippling, from California’s fields.

In his later years, he became something of a kindly, Gandhi-type leader to urban Latinos, but continued to push hard for the causes he believed in, staging a famous 36-day, water-only fast that nearly killed him to protest pesticide use in 1988.

Though Davis said this week that he will sign the Cesar Chavez Day bill by state Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles), he would not say when. The betting in Sacramento is that he will do so at next week’s Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, making a statement that while Republicans claim to be interested in the issues that Latinos consider important, Democrats can point to results.

Others said Davis, wary of being overshadowed by convention news, may wait until next Friday, when the convention will have ended, for the signing ceremony. The event is tentatively scheduled for Los Angeles’ Olvera Street.

Davis and the Democrats who control the Legislature made it a top priority to dust off the Chavez bill, which had hit numerous roadblocks this year, and ensured that it cleared both houses and landed on the governor’s desk by week’s end.

Davis had originally hoped to sign the holiday bill, SB 984, into law on Chavez’s birthday. But when public schools were dropped due to concerns over costs, the UFW and other supporters balked, questioning whether state bureaucrats alone should receive a 13th paid holiday while farm workers toiled in the fields. After Polanco and Davis agreed to the educational program and Davis increased funding for farm worker housing in the state budget, those concerns faded.

Democrats unanimously supported the holiday, but some Republicans, primarily from Central Valley farm towns where Chavez continues to be a controversial figure, voted against it. Many Republicans in the Assembly and Senate declined to vote. It cleared the Assembly 49 to 11, and then received a final 25 to 0 vote of confirmation in the Senate.

“Never has there been a figure in human history that will receive the attention in our public schools that Cesar Chavez would through this bill,” said Assemblyman Mike Briggs (R-Clovis), one of the holiday’s most spirited opponents. “I’m sure Cesar Chavez is very concerned about state workers.”

Republican opponents also criticized the cost of the holiday: $34 million for state workers’ vacation pay, $12.5 million in extra overtime for those in mandatory positions, $1 million to develop the special Cesar Chavez school curriculum and $5 million in grants for the community service programs.

Other lawmakers, including Republicans, said the money is a pittance considering the importance of the man to be honored. In a day full of emotional personal accounts from Sacramento’s Latino lawmakers, one of the most poignant came from Assemblyman Robert Pacheco (R-Walnut).

A son of migrant farmhands, Pacheco calmly recalled being taken out of school by his parents at age 12 to help with the cotton harvest, working in the fields until his hands were bloody. He recalled entering movie theaters through a special side door and having to sit on one side of the aisle. He recalled being able to use the public swimming pool only once a week--on Friday, the day before it was drained.

He recalled how Chavez helped better the lives of thousands of poor immigrants like himself.

Whether business follows government’s lead and gives its workers another day off remains to be seen.

History would suggest it won’t happen. A recent national survey found that 16 years after Martin Luther King Day was declared a national holiday, only about one-fourth of the nation’s businesses give their workers the day off.

Chavez disciples chose not to focus on the negatives Thursday. Like King, they said, their hero’s accomplishments seem to gain appreciation with each passing day.

“At the time of his death, some of the media dismissed him as an anachronism,” said UFW spokesman Marc Grossman, who worked with Chavez for years and helped write many of his plain-spoken speeches. “But more than 30,000 people turned out to walk behind his casket. He is more popular now than ever. He has become a Latino icon.”