By: Paul S. Marchand
SUMMARY: On the day on which we commemorate the life and achievements of Cesar Chavez, we remember that the struggle for social justice continues, whether for the workers who sustain our economy, or for Trayvon Martin.
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In recent days, as American society seems to be dividing into two antagonistic camps --- each largely talking past, not with, the other --- over the circumstances surrounding the killing of Trayvon Martin, a day set aside to commemorate the life and achievements of Cesar Chavez seems an appropriate time for reflection on the extent to which we are living up to our best ideals and being guided by what Abraham Lincoln so famously called the better angels of our nature.
Some years ago, I attended a dinner party composed largely of damn dangerous liberals with a propensity for free ranging conversation. After the dishes had been cleared, our table talk covered a wide variety of subjects, including the so-called Protestant Work Ethic.
One of our group, who had spent time in the Benedictine Order, suggested that what we called the Protestant Work Ethic might actually be better called the Benedictine Work Ethic, as it had been St. Benedict, in his Little Rule for Beginners, formulated 1500 years ago, who had first articulated the dignity of work and workers, reminding his congregation that to work is to pray, and that work itself is a form of prayer.
Since then, we have largely delinked the idea of work from the action of prayer. Ineluctably, work has come to be seen not as part of a divine economy, but as a mathematical term in the calculus of capitalism. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way in that evolutionary process, the idea of work and workers as possessing an inherent dignity that should be honored and respected, wound up being tossed overboard.
In the last two centuries, since the coming of the Industrial Revolution, we have been engaged in an ongoing struggle to reclaim and reaffirm the dignity of work and workers. If for highly skilled industrial workers that struggle was a difficult one, it was more so by orders of magnitude for the relatively unskilled migrant agricultural workers for whose dignity both Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta fought so long and so tirelessly.
Unfortunately, we still have yet to liberate ourselves from the proposition that the rights of the working poor, the middle class, and those who are in some way Other, are necessarily lesser things than the rights of those who possess power, wealth, or both. We still have much work to do when someone like George Zimmerman can kill a 17-year-old like Trayvon Martin with apparent impunity, and be thought in some circles a hero for doing so.
While it may be a cliché, it is nonetheless true that the most authentic measure of any society is to be found in how it treats those who lack significant or even measurable power. The true test of our ideals is not how well we take care of the healthy, the wealthy, or the well-connected, but how well we take care of the single mother trying to raise children, or the middle-class family struggling to keep from sliding into poverty, or the middle-aged worker who can’t afford health insurance, or even the 17-year-old African-American kid whose sole offense seems to have been that of being black in a gated community.
Cesar Chavez irritated a lot of people because he dared to speak truths that defenders of dominant dispensations would have preferred remain unspoken. It never ceases to amaze me how many Anglo Californians of a certain age bracket insist passionately to me that life for California’s Latinos and working poor was so much better before Cesar Chavez began to make trouble. Life may have been better for the fortunate few, but it certainly wasn’t better for those who labored under often horrible conditions to put food on our tables.
Cesar Chavez irritated a lot of people because he dared to insist on justice for those upon whose backbreaking labor the prosperity of California depends in such large measure. Those who have been calling for justice for Trayvon Martin have certainly irritated those who would be more comfortable living under a dispensation in which Rosa Parks would have stayed the back of the bus, and Trayvon Martin would never have been allowed inside a gated community.
But if we are truly the nation Abraham Lincoln described at Gettysburg as having been “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” then our American Revolution is incomplete as long as we ignore the basic humanity of those who feed us, or those who may not look like us, love like us, work like us, worship like us, vote like us, or see the world like us.
As we remember Cesar Chavez today, I don’t think it’s much of a reach to believe that were he still with us, he, too, would be calling for justice for Trayvon Martin. Still, the work of justice continues. Sí, se puede.
-XXX-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney in Cathedral City, California, where he lives and works. The views expressed herein are his own, and not necessarily those of any agency or organization with which he is associated. They are not intended to constitute legal invites, and should not be so construed.
SUMMARY: On the day on which we commemorate the life and achievements of Cesar Chavez, we remember that the struggle for social justice continues, whether for the workers who sustain our economy, or for Trayvon Martin.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In recent days, as American society seems to be dividing into two antagonistic camps --- each largely talking past, not with, the other --- over the circumstances surrounding the killing of Trayvon Martin, a day set aside to commemorate the life and achievements of Cesar Chavez seems an appropriate time for reflection on the extent to which we are living up to our best ideals and being guided by what Abraham Lincoln so famously called the better angels of our nature.
Some years ago, I attended a dinner party composed largely of damn dangerous liberals with a propensity for free ranging conversation. After the dishes had been cleared, our table talk covered a wide variety of subjects, including the so-called Protestant Work Ethic.
One of our group, who had spent time in the Benedictine Order, suggested that what we called the Protestant Work Ethic might actually be better called the Benedictine Work Ethic, as it had been St. Benedict, in his Little Rule for Beginners, formulated 1500 years ago, who had first articulated the dignity of work and workers, reminding his congregation that to work is to pray, and that work itself is a form of prayer.
Since then, we have largely delinked the idea of work from the action of prayer. Ineluctably, work has come to be seen not as part of a divine economy, but as a mathematical term in the calculus of capitalism. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way in that evolutionary process, the idea of work and workers as possessing an inherent dignity that should be honored and respected, wound up being tossed overboard.
In the last two centuries, since the coming of the Industrial Revolution, we have been engaged in an ongoing struggle to reclaim and reaffirm the dignity of work and workers. If for highly skilled industrial workers that struggle was a difficult one, it was more so by orders of magnitude for the relatively unskilled migrant agricultural workers for whose dignity both Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta fought so long and so tirelessly.
Unfortunately, we still have yet to liberate ourselves from the proposition that the rights of the working poor, the middle class, and those who are in some way Other, are necessarily lesser things than the rights of those who possess power, wealth, or both. We still have much work to do when someone like George Zimmerman can kill a 17-year-old like Trayvon Martin with apparent impunity, and be thought in some circles a hero for doing so.
While it may be a cliché, it is nonetheless true that the most authentic measure of any society is to be found in how it treats those who lack significant or even measurable power. The true test of our ideals is not how well we take care of the healthy, the wealthy, or the well-connected, but how well we take care of the single mother trying to raise children, or the middle-class family struggling to keep from sliding into poverty, or the middle-aged worker who can’t afford health insurance, or even the 17-year-old African-American kid whose sole offense seems to have been that of being black in a gated community.
Cesar Chavez irritated a lot of people because he dared to speak truths that defenders of dominant dispensations would have preferred remain unspoken. It never ceases to amaze me how many Anglo Californians of a certain age bracket insist passionately to me that life for California’s Latinos and working poor was so much better before Cesar Chavez began to make trouble. Life may have been better for the fortunate few, but it certainly wasn’t better for those who labored under often horrible conditions to put food on our tables.
Cesar Chavez irritated a lot of people because he dared to insist on justice for those upon whose backbreaking labor the prosperity of California depends in such large measure. Those who have been calling for justice for Trayvon Martin have certainly irritated those who would be more comfortable living under a dispensation in which Rosa Parks would have stayed the back of the bus, and Trayvon Martin would never have been allowed inside a gated community.
But if we are truly the nation Abraham Lincoln described at Gettysburg as having been “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” then our American Revolution is incomplete as long as we ignore the basic humanity of those who feed us, or those who may not look like us, love like us, work like us, worship like us, vote like us, or see the world like us.
As we remember Cesar Chavez today, I don’t think it’s much of a reach to believe that were he still with us, he, too, would be calling for justice for Trayvon Martin. Still, the work of justice continues. Sí, se puede.
-XXX-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney in Cathedral City, California, where he lives and works. The views expressed herein are his own, and not necessarily those of any agency or organization with which he is associated. They are not intended to constitute legal invites, and should not be so construed.
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