Rep. Lois Capps (D-Santa Barbara)
“César Chávez’s campaigns for farm worker justice changed the face of agriculture in this country, by improving living standards for migrant workers, reducing the use of harmful chemicals on farms, and awakening Americans to the process by which agricultural products go from the fields into homes,” Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, reported Friday in a media release.
“By using nonviolence and bringing together different groups of people — including Mexicans, Mexican-Americans and Filipino-Americans — his campaigns continue to be a model for us today,” she said
“We have a special connection to César Chávez on the Central Coast. He lived in Oxnard as a child with his parents, who were migrant farm workers, for several seasons. And he returned to Oxnard as an adult to lead one of the first successful United Farm Worker organizing campaigns, in 1958-1959, and later to march for social justice,” Capps said. “We honor his legacy by continuing the fight for equality for workers across this country — fair pay, access to health care, and economic security.”