The Union Of Their Dreams

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

Are we still boycotting grapes?

As I travel around talking about "The Union of Their Dreams," I keep running into people who grew up boycotting grapes, lettuce and Gallo wine. "I still don't eat iceberg lettuce,'' one woman said in Amherst. I've been asked a few times if the grape boycott ever ended (it did -- many years ago). But for many people, particularly baby boomers on the East coast, the boycott is the primary association with Cesar Chavez and the UFW.

Even back during the height of the boycott, there was often a lot of confusion about just which produce UFW supporters were supposed to shun. No subsequent boycotts were as successful as the first grape boycott in the late 1960s, when the major supermarket chains were under so much pressure that they, in effect, forced the California table grape growers to sign contracts.

But at its height in 1975, more than 17 million people were refusing to buy table grapes, iceberg lettuce or Gallo wine, according to a Harris poll. It was a simple way for people "help the farmworkers." Many of the union's staff started out working on a boycott and ended up drawn into the movement.

One of the dramatic moments at the book launch last month at the National Steinbeck Center came when a man explained excitedly that he happened to be in Monterey on business, heard out about the event and rushed over. He said he had been a visiting German volunteer in the late 1960s helping with the grape boycott in Philadelphia. He met his future wife there, and they both ended up working for a time at the UFW headquarters in California.

Pete Beatty, an editor at Bloomsbury Press , came across these memorabilia -- UFW ads that Ramparts magazine ran for free during the Gallo boycott: 

Gallo wine labels to boycott

 Don't swallow Gallo

Reviews and news

It's been a great week for attention to "The Union of Their Dreams" in all sorts of venues .... from a recommendation in School Library Journal as an adult book that high school students should read, to a lead review in the Sunday Los Angeles Times. The book was featured in a Telemundo report in Bakersfield, mentioned in Tablet Magazine's weekly round-up of new reads, and was the subject of an insightful feature in the San Antonio Express-News.

Even in this age of shrinking newspapers and newspaper readers, it's clear that a review in a paper like the LA Times attracts attention -- the book shot up in the Amazon rankings this afternoon! People still read book reviews on Sunday morning, find out about books that interest them through the paper, and buy books!

I was happy that the book got some attention in Texas, a state with a lot of farmworkers and a history of its own with Chavez and the UFW. Elaine Ayala, the reporter who wrote the feature, asked smart questions that reflected an understanding that Chavez could still be a hero and have an important place in history -- yet have real flaws that needed to be discussed as well. She also understood how difficult it might be for some people to accept that. "Are we ready to hear this?" she asked me, referring to some of the revelations in the book about Chavez's destructive actions. And, like some of the other reviewers, she tied the problems of the past to the present situation, when farmworkers still don't have a union.