DiGiorgio elections
DiGiorgio elections
César Chávez holding up a statue of Jesus Christ and speaking into a microphone at Filipino Hall, Delano, 1966. Photo by John Kouns.
UFWOC members celebrating Sierra Vista Ranch’s elections at Filipino Hall, Delano, 1966. Photo by John Kouns.
The victory was the result of a successful campaign led by community organizer Fred Ross that went into full force in mid-July, after previous elections were deemed invalid and the NFWA, the Teamsters, and DiGiorgio agreed on new election rules. Ross trained coordinators and volunteers, including Ida Cousino, Eliseo Medina, Roberto Bustos, Pete Cárdenas, and two DiGiorgio forepersons, Joe Serda and Ophelia Díaz, to organize DiGiorgio’s workers and conduct a long-distance campaign.
Chris Hartmire talking to César Chávez at Filipino Hall, Delano, CA, 1966
Chris Hartmire (left, center) talks to César Chávez (right, center) at Filipino Hall in Delano, California on September 1, 1966. This was at a celebration of the UFWOC victory in DiGiorgio’s Sierra Vista Ranch elections. Fred Ross Sr. is in the background at the center of the frame.
The goal was to convince eligible voters, some of whom lived as far away as Texas or Mexico, to return to Delano for the elections and vote. On election day, voting began at six in the morning. “It was this huge beehive of activity,” recalled Eliseo Medina in an oral history with the Bradley Center. “I was learning about how to make sure that you got up the vote, or you delivered it. And then that you left nothing to chance.” Medina, who later became the highest ranking Mexican American union leader, remembers contrasting this with images in the news of the head Teamster organizer in his office with hardly anybody busy and certain that they were going to win.
The polls closed at 8:00 pm and the ballots were locked up and escorted by the California Highway Patrol to San Francisco to be counted. “I knew that if we lost this one, we would lose the union because the public wouldn’t have supported us after that,” said César Chávez in Jacques Levy’s book, Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa. The day when the ballots were counted, all gathered in Filipino Hall. Chávez got up and he gave first the results in the packing shed: Teamsters 94, UFWOC 43. “And then, he announced the vote for the field. He first announced the teamsters’ vote, I think it was something like 328 [331] for them. And I thought, Oh my god. Then he paused. And then he said, for the UFWOC, 530 votes. And for a minute, not a sound happened.
César Chávez announces the Sierra Vista Ranch’s elections at Filipino Hall, Delano, 1966. Photo by John Kouns.
“Then, it’s sort of like at the same time, all of us internalized what he had said. And this cheer erupted. Everybody went crazy and then people were crying and hugging and, and all of that. And that was, of all the elections I ever did in my life, that was the most special one. My first one, but it’s also one that was like redemption for us.”
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