trade unions

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, September 20, 2016

The following unions have issued statements in solidarity with those opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline; we will add additional unions to this list as we become aware of their having taken a similar stand:

1. New York State Nurses Association - September 1, 2016
2. IWW - September 3, 2016
3. Border Agricultural Workers - September 7, 2016
4. Amalgamated Transport Union - September 9, 2016
5. Communications Workers of America - September 9, 2016
6. National Nurses United - September 9, 2016
7. ILWU Local 19 - September 12, 2016
8. Oregon Public Employees Union (SEIU Local 503) - September 12, 2016
9. United Electrical Workers - September 12, 2016
10. ILWU Pacific Coast Pensioners Association - September 13, 2016
11. National Writers Union (UAW Local 1981) - September 16, 2016
12. California Faculty Association - ca. September 17, 2016
13. AFL-CIO Labor Coalition for Community Action, (includes the A. Phillip Randolph Institute, the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, the Coalition of Labor Union Women, the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, and Pride at Work) - September 19, 2016

(This may not be a complete list, but we will endeavor to correct any oversights as we find them. If you know of additional unions who have joined this list, please contact us at euc@iww.org.)

On the other hand, some unions insist on staying on the wrong side of history:

• AFL-CIO to Planet Earth: Drop Dead! - By Norman Solomon, CounterPunch, September 19, 2016
• AFL- CIO Bucks Progressive Allies, Backs Dakota Access Pipeline - By Dave Jamieson, Huffington Post, September 16, 2016
• Unions want governor to ensure safety - By Lauren Donovan, Bismark Tribune, September 7, 2016
• Hoffa Calls on N.D. Governor to Help Pipeline Workers - By staff, Teamsters, August 31, 2016

In Response, union members are encouraged to sign this appeal (instructions included within).

Dakota Access Pipeline Halted Again!:

• Federal judge cancels restraining order - By Caroline Grueskin, Bismarck Tribune, September 16, 2016
• Dakota Access Lake Oahe Work Stopped Pending Standing Rock Sioux Appeal - By staff, Indian Country Today, September 17, 2016; [related]: Dakota Access Pipeline construction temporarily halted - By Natasha Geiling, Think Progress, September 17, 2016 | Federal Appeals Court Halts Dakota Access Segment as Solidarity Protests Spread Nationwide - By staff, Unicorn Riot, September 17, 2016 | Appeals court halts Dakota Access Pipeline work pending hearing - By staff, Indianz.Com, September 16, 2016 | Judge drops injunction against tribal leaders - By Associated Press, Bismarck Tribune, September 16, 2016
• Heavy machinery removed from DAPL work site, former protest site, in Morton County - By Max Grossfeld, NBC KFYR TV 5, September 13, 2016
• In Dramatic Reversal, White House Halts Dakota Access Pipeline Construction Under Missouri River - Jan Hasselman and Dave Archambault II interviewed by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!, September 12, 2016; [related]: Water Protectors at Standing Rock React to Obama's Intervention in Dakota Access Pipeline Battle - By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!, September 12, 2016 | Native American Activist Winona LaDuke at Standing Rock: It's Time to Move On from Fossil Fuels - Winona LaDuke interviewed by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!, September 12, 2016 | Lakota Activist Debra White Plume from Pine Ridge: Why I am a Water Protector at Standing Rock - Debra White Plume interviewed by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!, September 12, 2016  | Did Obama Just Avoid War with Great Sioux Nation? - By Anne Meador, DC Media Group, September 10, 2016 |

Direct Actions against the Pipeline Construction Continue:

• Sacred Stone Camp prepares for winter weather - By Sara Berlinger, NBC KFYR TV 5, September 16, 2016
• We delivered 33K petitions today! - By staff, Bakken Pipeline Resistance Coalition, September 14, 2016
• Protests shift along pipeline route - By Lauren Donovan, Bismarck Tribune, September 14, 2016
• Standoff at Vermont Rising Tide #NoDAP Blockade - By staff, Earth First! Newswire, September 13, 2016
• N.D. Pipeline Protester: 'It's About Our Rights As Native People' - By Jeff Brady, NPR, September 12, 2016

And Solidarity Actions Take Place All Over:

• Hundreds Protest Dakota Access Pipeline - By staff, American Postal Workers Union, September 19, 2016
• 400 March, Seven Arrested While Disrupting Philly TD Bank Locations over Pipeline Financing - By Jed Laucharoen, Rising Tide North America, September 18, 2016
• Citibank Occupied to Protest Dakota Access Funding - By Angie Viands, Rising Tide Chicago, September 17, 2016
• Dakota pipeline protesters march downtown Seattle streets - By staff, KIRO TV 7, September 16, 2016
• On Solidarity with Standing Rock, Executive Clemency and the International Indigenous Struggle - By Leonard Peltier, CounterPunch, September 16, 2016
• Pittsburghers Stand with Standing Rock, Say No to the Dakota Access Pipeline - By C Raphael, Three Rivers Rising Tide, September 16, 2016
• Santa Fe Water Protectors Stand With Standing Rock Against the Risky Business of Dakota Access Pipeline - By Frances Madeson, CounterPunch, September 16, 2016
• Stand Up for Rural Communities: Say NO to the Dakota Access Pipeline & Extreme Energy Extraction on Sept. 22 - By Katie Doody, Land Stewardship Project, September 16, 2016
• Utah Land Defenders support Standing Rock and Red Warrior Camp! - By C Raphael, Utah Tar Sands Resistance, September 16, 2016
• 200+ #StandWithStandingRock Actions This Week - By Emily J, 350.org, September 15, 2016
• Solidarity with Standing Rock - By staff, Socialist Worker, September 15, 2016
• Solidarity with Standing Rock Sioux Warriors - By Doug Barnes and Anne Slater, Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women, September 15, 2016
• Anti-pipeline protesters across America stand with Standing Rock - By Katie Herzog, Grist, September 14, 2016
• Deepwater Horizon premiere in Toronto hit by Dakota pipeline protest - By Andrew Pulver, The Guardian, September 14, 2016
• 'Dreamers and Warriors' Unite For Global Day of Protest Against Dakota Access - By Lauren McCauley, Common Dreams, September 14, 2016
• Indigenous resistance grows as Standing Rock solidarity actions continue - By Sophia Reuss, Rabble.Ca, September 14, 2016
• Maine Students Sit-In Solidarity With DAPL & Protest Maine Pipeline - By Maine Students for Climate Justice, Popular Resistance, September 14, 2016
• #NoDAPL Protesters Shut Down 2 TD Bank Branches In DC - By staff, Beyond Extreme Energy, September 14, 2016
• Solidarity from the Amazon to Standing Rock - By Leo Cerda, Dallas Goldtooth, and Moira Birss, Amazon Watch, September 14, 2016
• How You Can Support the #NoDAPL Fight No Matter Where You Are - By Cristina, Go Fossil Free, September 12, 2016
• No Dakota Access Pipeline - By Jennifer Krill, Earth Works, September 12, 2016
• #NoDAPL & Holding Sacred Spaces Sacred - By May Boeve, 350.org, September 12, 2016
• Standing Rock protests: this is only the beginning - By Rebecca Solnit, The Guardian, September 12, 2016
• Vancouver TD bank occupied to protest ties with Dakota Access Pipeline - By Derrick O'Keefe, Ricochet, September 12, 2016
• Asheville: 8 Arrested After Throwing Down Against Pipelines and Prisons - By staff, It's Going Down, September 8, 2016

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, August 31, 2016

Statement from Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman, Dave Archambault II, August 15, 2016:

The United States via the Army Corps of Engineers is in the mist of moving ahead with an oil pipeline that officials are claiming is not potentially harmful to the Standing Rock Sioux Nation. I am here to advise anyone that will listen, that the Dakota Access Pipeline Project is harmful. It will not be just harmful to my people but its intent and construction will harm the water in the Missouri River, which is one of the cleanest and safest river tributary left in the United States.

We have been told by the officials that there will be breaches in the pipe line, but they claim that the situations are generally never very bad. This is unacceptable.

Our Mother Earth is sacred. All things evolve and work together. To poison the water, is to poison the substance of life. Everything that moves must have water. How can we talk about and knowingly poison water?

I’ve been told and taught that it is our responsibility to stand for our relatives, the ones that crawl, the ones that fly, the ones that burrow, the ones that swim, the ones that flower. Relatives that cannot speak for themselves. Who will speak for them? We have to speak for those who are not here – our ancestors, for those children who are not yet born. Our ancestors left sacred sites for us. We have to speak for them. Children not yet born will not live without water. We have to speak for them.

Several of our Lakota and Dakota relatives have had visions and dreams. They have been visited in a spiritual sense and have been told that there is a black poisonous snake trying to come among us. Our relatives have said this.

Our instructions say snakes are good – they serve a great purpose in the web of life. Our elders and the elders before them have given us wonderful teachings and a beautiful way to live and co-exist with all that is, however, the black poisonous snake we are being warned about does not come from the Creator. It is man-made and the creature is made of nothing but Greed. There is nothing good that has ever come from Greed. Greed is pure poison. It blinds and twists thinking. It is what my people have endured and continue to endure.

Right now the Rosebud reservation, the Cheyenne River reservation, the Pine Ridge reservation and my Standing Rock reservation represent five of the 10 poorest places or counties in the United States, according to the 2010 Census. Our state of being is not our fault. We did not cause this. United States lawmakers and their policies caused this. Why?? Greed – and now again, even what little we have left is under attack.

Is it too much to respectfully and peaceably request that we not live in fear of being bitten by this creature of eminent harm? Isn’t living in fear and terror unacceptable in the United States?

The United States should use all its will and power to be a real great world leader. It should swear off oil production because we all know it is harmful to it is to our planet. The United States should use all its wisdom and technology to develop alternative sources of power. It should be a great wise leader to preserve and enhance this earth, not knowingly destroy the webs of life.

What I ask is that my fellow American citizens stand with my people to stand with us. I ask you to please call or write your Senators and Representative to stop this blindness and this greed.

And, if nothing else, please, offer a prayer for my people and all the people who are standing with us in prayer. Just offer some thoughts of protection for us. We ask that you offer a prayer for sensibility and common sense on behalf of all the two-legged that walk as this is not just a Lakota/Dakota issue, this is a human issue.

This land that is being disturbed was once ours. Our people, our Indian Nations lived and governed our peoples all over this territory. This land across the Cannonball River that is now threatened was forcibly taken from us and there was nothing that we could do about it then and now.

Nonetheless, we still believe that we are the keepers of this beautiful land. Although it was taken from us, we know, we must stand and speak on this land’s behalf. We want everyone and the federal government to respect this land and take care of it. That is why our people are standing up and standing with the land and water. We have to be here. It is instructions that the Creator has given us. We have to be here. We have to stand to protect ourselves and those cannot speak for themselves.

When the President of the United States came to Cannonball, I did not ask him for anything. I tried to let his wife, Michelle and him, see for themselves a little of our reality. They saw our people in our happiest times, singing and dancing, but they also heard the tough reality of life for so many of our youth.

I believe both were impacted but knowing what I know now, I wish I would have asked President Obama to help us in this struggle.

I will pass away someday, which is all part of the Creator’s plan, but I have a son and daughter. I have no doubt that they will give me grandchildren. What will we leave for our grandchildren? Poisoned water? The substance of Life! In my language, we describe water as the source of Life. We say Mni Wiconi!

My Tribe asks how can we live with ourselves if we don’t respect the rights and needs of our future generations?

Today I realize that everything happens for a reason. Although I didn’t ask the President for a dime, I see our people are peacefully speaking out in a good way now. This is hugely important to my Tribe and all of our Tribal Nations. This peaceful demonstration is a cry to stop the desecration of land and water.

I pray that the powers that be, hear our prayer because all this behavior we are exhibiting is a prayer on our part.

Thank you for listening and enjoy your families, your children and grandchildren.

To Join in the Struggle

• Red Warrior Camp Facebook Page
• Support the Sacred Stone Camp
• Urgent Appeal for International Observers – By Joseph White Eyes, Michelle Cook, and Carolyn Raffensperger, Indigenous Environmental Network, August 23, 2016

By Bradley Allen - Indybay, April 5, 2016

On Sunday, April 3, Michael Garcia and fellow Watsonville Brown Berets traveled a short distance to Salinas, California to attend the annual Cesar Chavez March and Rally presented by United Farm Workers (UFW). The Watsonville Brown Berets were joined by members of Familias Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ), an independent farmworker union in Burlington, Washington fighting for a union contract, and initiators of the boycott against Driscoll's.

The Watsonville Brown Berets (WBB) and FUJ activists spoke with people assembled at Cesar Chavez Community Park and handed out flyers about the growing movement to boycott Driscoll's, the world's largest berry distributor. FUJ, along with tens of thousands of farmworkers in San Quintín, México, are fighting to end wage theft and poverty wages, inhumane production standards, and retaliation from protected union activity.

Although advocating for farmworkers' rights seems like it would be warmly welcomed by UFW, that was unfortunately not the experience for WBB and FUJ members. Garcia, born and raised in Watsonville, noticed that his friend was working the stage and asked if his group could have some time later to speak about the Driscoll's boycott. Garcia's friend, who was both the owner of the stage and a mariachi musician performing at the event, agreed to provide Garcia time. The stage owner, however, was then reportedly approached by UFW representatives and specifically told that UFW does not want WBB or FUJ speaking from the stage.

Prior to parading through the streets of Salinas, Garcia enthusiastically approached UFW Regional Director Lauro Barajas and asked if it was OK if they carried their “Boycott Driscoll’s” banner towards the front of the march. Garcia was denied and then told that UFW did not want him to carry the banner at all during the march.

By Gregg Shotwell - Socialist Worker, March 17, 2016

"The water crisis has also stoked the UAW's social-justice mission, union officials say."
-- Mike Colias, "How GM Saved Itself from Flint Water Crisis," Automotive News, January 31, 2016

"I put The Heretics in the deepest part of hell, though Dante had them spared, on higher ground."
-- Amiri Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones), The System of Dante's Hell, 1963

PUNDITS EXPRESS astonishment at the perdition of Flint, Michigan, as if the degeneration of a renowned American city is rare rather than emblematic of municipalities throughout the nation. Where have they been? Do they not recall the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in downtown Minneapolis during rush hour in 2007? Can a head in the sand feel so comfortable that they can't feel the tremors, quakes and reverberations?

New Orleans flooded in 1915, 1940, 1947, 1965, 1969 and 2005. Love Canal, Hinkley, California, and the Louisiana Industrial Corridor aren't anomalous cancer alleys. The United States is riddled with environmental depredation.

The calculated failure of American institutions not only to invest in vital infrastructure but to provide basic care for citizens isn't a shock, it's status quo. Every four years, the American Society of Civil Engineers [ASCE] publishes a report card for the nation's infrastructure. In 2013, the U.S. got Ds in drinking water, wastewater, inland waterways, roads, schools, dams, levees, aviation, transit and energy.

I guess it's uncivil for engineers to flunk an American marvel of mediocrity like Interstate 35W and other bridges, which were ranked at a C+. The overall D+ grade point average indicates that we did get some Cs in a few less precarious spots, like ports, parks and bridges. Take your hat off, hold your breath and pray to the EPA--we are about to cross the river of denial.

Gun ownership makes a home less safe, according to the statistics, but when a person feels surrounded by perilous social institutions and structural instability, it's natural to reach for a security prop, come as it may--blanket, rifle or bottle of gin.

For all the self-proclaimed greatness and chest-thumping bravado, Americans' expectations are low and receding like opinions pursued by dogged facts. Our characteristic emphasis on individuality and private property narrows and subverts the circumspection of our social purview to a belly-button muse.

The American Dream has shriveled into a gated community--the modern version of the besieged frontier stockade, now struggling to survive on minimum wage. What do you want to bet that more Americans invest in the lottery than the stock market?

The year before Delphi, a spinoff of General Motors, filed for bankruptcy in 2005, management garlanded the factories with a new slogan: "The Future Isn't What It Used to Be." And a sign posted on the demolished Buick City plant in Flint, Michigan, proclaimed, "Demolition Means Progress."

The policy of neglect is the counsel of despair. No wonder we have a volunteer army and multiple foreign wars. The homeland is hopeless. The walls of denial are caving in.

By Richard Mellor - Facts for Working People, February 15, 2016

In October 2104, supporters of this blog spent time on the picket lines at Waste Management, the company that handles refuse from Oakland and parts of San Leandro. The strikers were mostly the low paid sorters, sorting through trash every day for $12 an hour. They were mostly Latino, members of ILWU Local 6.

The truck drivers at waste Management are in the Teamsters union, but due to the usual pissing contests that take place between different sections of the labor hierarchy the drivers, whose job is crucial to the operation of the company, drove through the picket lines. As the drivers drove in to the plant we could see by the expressions on their faces that they didn’t like doing it. It goes against the grain for any class conscious worker to do such a thing, help the bosses’ break a strike.

What was even more sickening were the Teamster officials, alongside the bosses ushering their members in, making sure they weren’t impeded. In other words, they took action that helped undermine the strike, increased the suffering of the workers on the lines and increased the chance of a victory for the multi-millionaires that profit from the waste business. According to PR Watch,Waste Management's top executives combined made $119,201,381 from 2006 to 2012.

I approached one driver who had his window open and asked him how he felt about crossing the lines: "I don't like it but our leadership says we have to.", he replied.  He drove through and I turned and asked the striker for a copy of the leaflet they ere handing out appealing for help and solidarity..  The Teamster official then came scurrying over and told me to "Stop harassing my drivers, if you want to harass anyone harass me." As if he cares about his drivers.

As if being on strike isn’t bad enough and having the overpaid officials of a potentially powerful union ally act as strikebreakers by telling their members to work across a picket line, top union officials were busy attacking the striking workers in the media. Rome Aloise, who is a VP of the Teamster Joint Council 7, a Teamster International Vice President and also an official in Local 853 that represents the drivers at Waste Management, told the Mercury News that the fight against Waste Management is “unrealistic” and that the workers were just “pawns” of the ILWU leadership and that the campaign for these workers , “…is based on a promise that cannot be met and is designed to create false hopes for the workers.”

Aloise was joined in the public offensive against these $12 an hour workers who sort through garbage 8 or ten hours a day, by Don Crossato, an official with Machinists union probably on over $100,000 a year, and Felix Martinez, of Teamsters local 70. They both agreed that what the workers were asking was “unrealistic” with Crossato claiming the differences didn’t “warrant a strike”. The workers were asking for a raise from $12 to $20. 

Rome Aloise made $346,722 in salaries and allowances in 2014 according to the Teamster for a Democratic Union that’s beside all the other perks like double pensions. Aloise, the strikebreaker and union bureaucrat is now in hot water as the members of an Independent Review Board have recommended to the IBT General Executive Board that he be brought up on charges for “requesting and receiving things of value from IBT employers..” and among other things “entering in to sham collective bargaining agreements with the GrandFund” and interfering in union elections.

The reality is that pretty much all union contracts are “sham”, contracts in the sense that the entire labor leadership from the AFL-CIO on down has thrown in the towel when it comes to fighting the bosses; they don’t have to openly act criminally in the sense that they break the law. They simply refuse to fight and hold back any rank and file movement from below that challenges the relationship they have built with the bosses’ based on labor peace.They don’t even pretend any more. They openly call for concessions and that their own members must sacrifice in order to help the employers out. This entire strategy flows form the dominant philosophy in the trade union movement today, the Team Concept. This manifests in many forms, Labor/Management partnerships, Focus Groups, Quality of Life Circles, Interest Based bargaining etc. The union hierarchy practices this Team Concept strategy on the job in the form of cooperation with the boss and in the political arena through their association with the Democratic Party acting as agents of this major capitalist party in the workers’ organizations.

The likes of Aloise and others who suck the life blood out of the labor movement betray their members, and live high on the hog at their members’ expense are the lowest type of human being. To betray workers, to side with the forces of capital against labor, to use the workers' organization for one’s own advancement, is criminal.

None of us are exempt from such betrayals. Many a rank and file member has entered the leadership with good intentions but ended up betraying those they claimed to fight for. Many others simply quit. Any individual or group that offers themselves as an alternative to the present ideologically bankrupt leadership must unequivocally reject and abandon the Team Concept on the job and in politics through the Democratic Party. They must openly campaign against the present leaders' concessionary policies.

Rank and file caucuses based on a program that demands and fights for what workers and our communities need rather than what’s acceptable to the bosses, or “realistic” to them and the Democrats must be built from the ground up. They should be built in the workplaces, offices, and construction sites where we work and meet every day and link up with the communities in which we live and work. Rank and file committees can and must look toward the unorganized and link up with the unemployed, the student movement and the myriad of movements that have sprung up throughout the country from Flint to the urban ghettos, the movement against police brutality and mass incarceration, disproportionally people of color, the rural communities and increasingly the suburbs. Small (community business) can also be an ally of labor if approached correctly. The offensive of the 1% will not cease and will in fact intensify as a disastrous US foreign policy and the cost of it in terms of human life and money will be laid on the shoulders of workers and the middle class. It is in the workplace where out power lies, our ability to stop the machine form running, to halt profit taking and organized workers have many allies but we have to use this power in conjunction and in solidarity with other social movements.

Rome Aloise is not alone, there is this type of blatant corruption within organized labor but the main problem is not crass criminal activity, it is that the heads of organized labor are ideologically bankrupt. They worship the market, they idolize profits, they have the same world-view as the 1%.

Were there a genuine militant rank and file caucus in that local, the drivers that objected to scabbing on their co-workers at Waste Management would have had somewhere to turn, they would have had it before it happened. This is the task facing the rank and file dues payer, ridding ourselves of the present leadership of our organizations. But it has to come from below; no one will do it for us. The time for whining has long gone.

By Frank Bardacke - Stansbury Forum, August 12, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

In April, 1993 Cesar Chavez died. In October, 1995, John Sweeney became the President of the AFL-CIO. Although the Arturo Rodriguez-led UFW was a minor supporter of Sweeney at the convention that elected him, nothing connected Cesar’s death to Sweeney’s election. But without the conjunction of those two events, there would have been no UFW/AFL-CIO strawberry campaign. Its very existence was rooted in happenstance. That should not surprise anyone interested in politics. Machiavelli claimed that half of politics was luck, or as he called it, fortuna. In the case of the strawberry campaign, at first it seemed like good luck, but by the end, for those who hoped for UFW and AFL-CIO renewal, it was surely bad.

In her eulogy at Cesar’s funeral, Dolores Huerta declared that Cesar died so that the UFW might live. It is a dubious claim—there is no indication of a Chavez suicide—but her meaning was not lost on many of the mourners. Under Cesar’s direction, the UFW had backed off organizing farm workers in the late 1970s and early 1980s, had lost most of its contracts by the mid-80s, and was, at the time of his death, no longer a force in the fields but rather a cross between a farm worker advocacy group and a mid-sized family business. As long as Chavez was alive that was not likely to change. Once he was gone, the UFW was free to make an effort to get back in the fields again.

They began, as they had to, by trying to improve their reputation among undocumented workers. Originally a union of mostly Mexican-American grape pickers, they had officially opposed “illegals” in the fields before 1975, championing the use of the Border Patrol against them and even setting up their own patrol on the Arizona border for a few months in 1974. That policy changed in 1975 with the passage of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act (ALRA), which made all farm workers, including the undocumented, eligible to vote in farm worker elections. But the changed policy never completely undid the original damage, and since the leadership of the union in the early 1990s continued to be Mexican-American and there were, by then, few Mexican farm workers left in the union, the UFW was considered by many farm workers, a “pocho” (slang used by Mexicans to describe Mexican-Americans) organization.

Thus, the UFW’s first step back into the fields was to take a leadership role against Proposition 187, the 1994 California initiative that denied State benefits to the undocumented and their children. Having made their new sympathy for the undocumented clear, the union won a new contract in the Central Valley roses, fought a victorious campaign in the mushrooms, and even signed a vegetable contract with their old nemesis, Bruce Church Inc. (although on close inspection the contract seemed to cover only a small percentage of Bruce Church workers). In 1995, the UFW leadership was lathered up, in the starting gate, and ready to race.

John Sweeney was also ready to go. Having won the AFL-CIO presidency with a rousing pledge to replace the conservative ways of the old bureaucracy with a new aggressive campaign to organize the unorganized, he was looking for an easy early victory. The UFW seemed to promise one. Relying on Rodriguez’s account of UFW popularity in the fields, and with no alternative assessment available, he went all in, put other organizing on hold, and committed his troops to what promised to be an opening victory for the New Voice coalition. As Gilbert Mireles, author of a pretty good (but also the only) book on the campaign, puts it: “It was almost inconceivable [to the strategists at the top] that workers would not be in favor of the union.”