FIGHT IN THE FIELDS: CESAR CHAVEZ

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Fight in the Fields : Cesar Chavez

In Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez, by Margo Sorenson, two teenagers were not paying attention in history class, and their teacher assigned them Saturday school, pulling weeds. Kenneth and Aleesa weren’t friends, they were caught passing a note to someone. After, they started to work on Saturday, they both drank from a blue water jug, that sent them back in time. To the year 1965, where Cesar Chavez was helping out the field workers get their own union. By putting on a strike against the Schenley Company, who grow grapes in Delano, California, and sold them around the world. While, the teenagers were in the past, they lived and worked with the Lopez’s, Juan, Rosa, and their son Luis. Luis helped Kenneth and Aleesa understand what was happening during that time with the NFWA- National Farm Workers Association and the strike to get the workers a union of their own, and they all joined the NFWA. Which ended in the year 1970 and they were able to go back to their time. Both Kenneth and Aleesa were able to experience the strike first hand, and when they went back home, they wished that they had paid a little bit more attention in class, and that they were going to from then on.
Even though, this is a fictional book, it tells a true story about the struggle of the farm worker to obtain a better life for themselves and their families. There are two main themes in this book, non-violence, and the fight for dignity. Cesar Chavez was a non-violent man who would do anything to not get in a fight while they where boycotting the growers. One, incident in the story was when a grower pulled out a gun, and he pointed it at the strikers, Chavez said, “He has a harder decision to make, we are just standing here in peace…” The picketer were beaten and put in jail before they would fight back and that is what why all farm workers look up to Cesar Chavez , along with his good friend Martin Luther King Jr. Non-Violence is the only way to solve anything. The growers in that time did not care about their workers, if people were striking, the growers would go to Mexico and bring in Braceros, mean that they would not have to sign the union contract and not take union workers, who were willing to work if the grower would sign the contract.

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