Confronting the past

For the people whose stories are told in "The Union of Their Dreams,'' reading the book has brought on many emotions -- joy, catharsis, pain, sadness, discomfort, enlightenment. It's not easy to confront one's own past and relive decisions made decades ago. While each of the major figures in the book has responded differently, they all have expressed one common sentiment: How much they did not know.

In this short video, put together from the book launch at the National Steinbeck Center, three of the central characters in the book talk frankly and movingly about their emotions and discoveries, and how the book has helped them come to terms with the past -- Jerry Cohen, the first chief counsel to Cesar Chavez, Chris Hartmire, the Presbyterian minister and loyal Chavez confidant who was eventually thrown out of the union, and Sabino Lopez, a farmworker who rose to become a union leader, and was then purged.

Video from Salinas

Comments

[esperanza perez]

there is at last some thruth to what is in this book. Coming from a farmworker that was born in Delano,I saw things that that are not discussed anywere else. Why is that I ask, maybe in part that a majority of those farm workers were in this country illegally and were afraid to discuss or say anything negative about Chavez. I lived it and I know.

[geoffrey mohan]

The Chris Hartmire video is incredibly heart-rending, but ultimately uplifting. That Chris doesn't like the Chris he reads about in the book - but agrees it's accurate - is both a great endorsement of the author and a catharsis for everyone, including him. I find it timely that this progressive generation is taking another look at its past, as the World War II generation did, as Vietnam veterans did, etc. It was an important and dramatic time in America and it shook people at their roots.