How Farm Workers Built Alliances to Sustain Collective Action

When the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) decided to join the Delano grape strike begun by Filipino farm workers, they faced several challenges. First the NFWA had only $75 in their treasury, leaving the union unable to provide financial support to farm workers at the start of the strike. This threatened the union’s ability to sustain the strike and jeopardized its long-term success. Second, growers sought to hire replacement workers, allowing them to continue harvesting and shipping grapes for sale. Third, farm workers needed education and training in nonviolence. Movement leaders anticipated that growers and local law enforcement would respond to the strike with verbal and physical aggression. Cesar Chavez, following the example of civil rights leaders like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., believed that nonviolence was essential for gaining public support and presenting the movement as a moral cause. However, when the NFWA joined the Delano grape strike, many striking farm workers had not yet received training in nonviolent resistance.

Leaders recognized that they couldn’t overcome these challenges alone, so they formed alliances with a diverse range of supporters, including religious groups, Black civil rights organizations, labor unions, and student activists. For example:

• The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee sent staff to Delano to train striking farm workers in nonviolence and how to interact with law enforcement.
• The Christian Migrant Ministry, a Protestant organization, provided food, clothing, and other necessities to striking farm workers.
• The United Auto Workers union pledged $5,000 a month to the farm worker movement for the duration of the strike.  

Each partnership was unique, with different groups supporting the farm workers in various ways. In November 1965, longshoremen in San Francisco—workers responsible for loading and unloading cargo—demonstrated their support in a distinct way. Filipino strikers from the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee and Mexican strikers from the NFWA traveled to the city to seek their support. ¹ Gilbert Padilla, co-founder of the NFWA, was among the group. Padilla recalls:

We went there as the grapes were being loaded onto ships to Japan … and I’m standing out there with a little … picket [sign] ... “Don’t eat grapes.” Then some of the longshoremen asked, “Is this a labor dispute?” And I [because I was nervous and didn’t know whether we were legally allowed to use the term] said, “No, no, no labor dispute.” So they would walk in. Jimmy Herman [president of the Longshoremen union] came over and asked me, “What the hell you doing?” and I told him we were striking … and then he says, “Come with me.” He took me to his office and he got on his hands and knees … and he made picket signs. And he told me, “you go back there and don’t tell nobody about who gave you this. But you just stand there … ” The sign said, “Farm Workers on Strike.” And everybody walked out! ²

1,250 cases of Delano grapes were on board the ship when the longshoremen stopped work. The dock workers demanded that the Delano grapes be removed before resuming work. The grapes were removed and sent back back to Delano. 

This reading is used in a Jigsaw activity in the lesson Building Support for the Farm Workers Movement: Supporting Question 4. Explore the other readings used in this activity: 

• Farm Workers Gain Support of Influential Leaders
• The California Grape Boycott
• The 300-Mile March to Sacramento

• 1“Striking Farm Workers Stop Grape Shipments at Docks,” The Movement, published by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee of California, December 1965, vol. 1, no. 12, 4.
• 2Marshall Ganz, Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement (Oxford University Press, 2009), 140.