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Event
Cesar Chavez: The History and the Legacies of His Movement
Berkeley Arts & Letters Presents
Cesar Chavez: The History and the Legacies of His Movement
Miriam Pawel, author of Union of Their Dreams:
Power, Hope, and Struggle in Cesar Chavez's Farm Worker Movement, in conversation with Larry Tramutola, Tom Dalzell, and Peter Schrag
Thursday, October 7
7:30 PM
A generation of Americans came of age boycotting grapes, swept up in a movement that vanquished California's most powerful industry and won dignity and contracts for impoverished farm workers. Four decades later, United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez's likeness graces postage stamps, and school and streets are renamed in his honor.
But the real stories behind la causa âÂ" both its historic accomplishments and tragic disintegration âÂ" have remained buried. Pulitzer-winning journalist Miriam Pawel has changed our understanding of the UFW forever, crafting a powerful, poignant account of a movement and the people who made it.
Drawing on a rich trove of unpublished documents and exhaustive interviews, award-winning journalist Miriam Pawel finally unravels this vital chapter of American history in a haunting, intimately reported narrative. With a novelist's empathy and a historian's care, Pawel chronicles the well-known story of how Chavez built the first successful union for farmworkers -- and the lesser-known story of how he tore it down. The Union of Their Dreams weaves the stories of key participants into a powerful portrait of a movement, from the heady excitement of the early David-versus-Goliath victories through the pain and disillusionment of the later years, when Chavez faltered in the transition from firebrand to union leader.
Pawel's spellbinding narrative offers the definitive account of a milestone in the struggle for social justice in America, provoking a broad conversation of how that struggle informs lives and politics today..
Miriam Pawel is a prize-winning reporter and editor who spent twenty-five years working for Newsday and the Los Angeles Times. She was recently an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellow and a John Jacobs Fellow at the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies. Joining Miriam this evening are Larry Tramutola, who runs an Oakland-based political consulting firm and relies every day on the organizing lessons he first learned as a UFW volunteer. He worked for the farm worker movement for 11 years, including as national boycott director and a top administrator; Tom Dalzell, who bypassed law school and became a lawyer through an apprenticeship with the the UFW legal department in the 1970s. He has worked as a union lawyer ever since, and is now business manager of IBEW Local 1245; and Peter Schrag, for many years the editorial page editor and later a weekly columnist for the Sacramento Bee, who currently contributes to The Nation, Harper's, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications. He is a visiting scholar at the Institute for Governmental Studies at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of several books, including Paradise Lost, California: America's High-Stakes Experiment. Final Test: The Battle for Adequacy in America's Schools, and Not Fit for Our Society. He is the 2010 winner of the Carey McWilliams Award from the California Studies Association.
$12 advance ($6 students with ID and Hillside Club members), $15 (for all) at the door, online at Brown Paper Tickets or 800-838-3006.
Hillside Club
2286 Cedar Street, Berkeley
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LocationHillside Club
2286 Cedar Street
Berkeley, CA 94709
United States
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| Kid Friendly: No |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: No |
| Wheelchair Accessible: No |
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