Viewpoint: Documentary recalls Salinas ag controversy (Chavez 70's lettuce boycott)

[Omaha Steve]

http://thepacker.com/Viewpoint--Documentary-recalls-Salinas-ag-controversy/Article.aspx?articleid=367542&authorid=577&categoryid=190&feedid=217&src=recent

Published on 06/19/2009 09:49am By Dawn Withers

The Salinas jail where Cesar Chavez was held for nearly a month in 1970 stands vacant and in disrepair. There’s no plaque commemorating Chavez’s detention during the lettuce boycotts, nothing mentioning Ethel Kennedy’s or Coretta Scott King’s visit to see Chavez, just a chain-link fence that lines the perimeter of the shabby-looking building.

The Old Jail, as it’s sometimes called, closed more than 30 years ago. It sits in front of a new government complex on busy Alisal Street where thousands of people walk or drive past it every day — many, I’m sure, without knowing what happened there.

The gothic revival building would have been torn down at the behest of the county Board of Supervisors seven years ago had preservationists not sued and the National Park Service not listed it on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004. At the time of their decision, one supervisor, a United Farm Worker ally no less, said he thought Salinas had enough memorials to Cesar Chavez.

The jail, at least for me, served as a reminder of the Salinas Valley’s unsettled history with the United Farm Workers and the violent strikes of the 1970s, which are still vividly remembered by the local farmworkers and agribusiness operators whose lives were changed.

The lettuce boycott, strikes, and UFW’s union activity in the Salinas Valley are still very much an open wound more than 30 years since the height of the violence and chaos. All this came to mind when I recently attended a public screening of an unfinished documentary called “Vinegar in the Valley.”

For better or worse?

The impetus for the film came about seven years ago when Joanne Taylor-Johnson, daughter of Bruce Church, whose eponymous company often fought the hardest against Chavez, approached the center about documenting growers’ side of the fight. (The Bruce Church Co. didn’t sign a labor agreement with UFW until 1996, and D’Arrigo Bros. Co. didn’t until November 2007, 31 years after their employees voted to join UFW).

FULL story at link.