Cesar Chavez at the Root of Obama's Campaign: Grassroots Latino Voter Outreach

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/randy-shaw/cesar-chavez-at-the-root_b_134994.html

Randy Shaw
Posted October 15, 2008 | 05:29 PM (EST)

In the 2008 February primary elections, Latinos made up 30% of all total voters in California. Now, for the first time in U.S. history, Latino voters could play a decisive role in the presidential election.

If they do, we can thank Cesar Chavez and UFW alumni... and the city of Los Angeles.

Forty years ago, Cesar Chavez and the UFW went to Los Angeles to increase Latino voting for Robert Kennedy's California 1968 presidential primary campaign. Their strategy included voter registration drives, intensive door-to-door and street outreach, public visibility events and Election Day GOTV efforts. This strategy bolstered the political voice of Latinos and Democrats in Los Angeles, throughout California and across the nation. Today, these tactics are an integral part of the Obama campaign and could well decide the 2008 election.

Many UFW alums are working to elect Obama. Former UFW Organizing Director Marshall Ganz helped develop the "Camp Obamas" that have recruited and trained Obama campaign organizers, while former UFW Executive Board member Eliseo Medina serves on the Obama National Latino Advisory Council. And UFW alum Sharon Delugach, who left school at age 15 to work as an organizer for the UFW is now organizing for the Obama campaign in Southern Missouri.

The UFW grassroots voter organizing launched in 1968, an era when door knocking and "on the ground" outreach was considered outdated. But, the UFW treated political campaigns like community organizing drives and relied on people going door-to-door. The UFW was right. Talking neighbor to neighbor was successful in the barrios of East Los Angeles where large voting margins for Robert Kennedy helped provide his margin of victory.

After the end of the UFW's heyday, UFW alums implemented and enhanced the union's voter outreach strategies. In Los Angeles, in 1996, after UFW alum Miguel Contreras became head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, he used the UFW-inspired electoral model to greatly increase Latino and union member voting. UFW alums Eliseo Medina and Chava Bustamonte then took the Los Angeles model statewide, dramatically increasing the number of Latino Democrats, doubling the Latino share of the electorate and adding over one million Latino voters to the rolls.

FULL story at link.