time to celebrate and honor the legacy of Cesar Chavez, widely regarded asa heroic figure. Chavez, a second-generation Mexican-American, founded the United Farm Workers in 1962 and is perhaps best known for organizing a “, worldwide grape .| boycott in the 1970s to draw attention to ~ @ the plight of migrant Cesar Chavez workers. He spent his life fighting to protect the rights of impoverished, disenfranchised farm workers. Chavez was born in 1927 on a small farm near Yuma, Arizona, but his father lost the farm. The family’s loss and subsequent hardships taught Chavez a lesson about the injustices associated with the life of migrant farm workers. In 1952, Chavez joined the Community Service Organization, a Latino civil rights group. He coordinated voter registration drives and campaigned against racial and economic discrimination. Chavez served as the organization's director for several years before leaving to found the United Farm Workers of America, the first successful farm workers union in U.S. history. Chavez’s efforts through the United Farm Workers helped bring about the passage of the 1975 California Agricultural Labor Relations Act, the country’s only law that protects farm workers’ right to unionize. A year after his death in 1993, Chavez was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor. To honor his accomplishments, Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.) introduced a bill to authorize the Sec- re i ma a |b fs i Cesar Chavez helped to improve the working conditions of migrant farm workers when he organized the United Farm Workers of America in the 1960s. retary of the Interior to study Chavez’s life with the idea of possibly naming a national parksite after him. The National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that serves as a watchdog of the parks, supports Solis’s efforts. A national leader in encouraging the National Park Service to diversify its ranks as well as addsites that reflect and celebrate the different faces of America’s multicultural society, NPCA’s Alan Spears points out that not one of the National Park System’s 388 units memorializes a contemporary Latino. “The addition of a site commemorating Chavez would be a step in the right direction,” says Spears. For more information about NPCAandits efforts to diversify the parks, visit www.npca.org.
