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I: So I’m here today with Jennifer Ormond who participated in spring break in Professor Sean Anderson’s University 392 Service Learning in New Orleans. And Jennifer why don’t you give us a brief overview of the project that you participated in and the population that you worked with over spring break.

II: Well we went to the greater New Orleans area it wasn’t just the city of New Orleans. We spent some time in Plaquemines Parrish working with Woodland Trailer Park. It was a place that had extensive canopy damage to this natural forested area and the canopy damage actually allowed three invasive species to start to spring up. The park management did receive money from FEMA to restore this area but they had to first perform some type of impact survey and they didn’t have the money to do that so that’s where Cal State Channel Islands came in.

We were able to go and document the amount of invasive species last year and this year we were able to go and see how much more have since that time which once they had that they were able to present it to FEMA and receive the grant to restore this park area. We did that for three days. The other three days we were there we’d gone down Burris, Louisiana which is about an hour and a half south of New Orleans. This area was twenty feet underwater for three weeks and there’s not a single structure left standing there. Everybody is living in FEMA trailer parks. Everybody is trying to rebuild those that did return that is, I believe they said only about fifteen percent of the community has returned.

Last year they (CSUCI students) went down and worked on Pastor Mike’s house and he has a little community gathering hall for people to come, a parish type thing. This year he was pretty much complete with his house so we helped his neighbor out and his neighbors name was Helen. She was a pharmacist prior to Hurricane Katrina. Her home had the pharmacy at the front with her house in the back and just another example of complete devastation; she’s been living in a FEMA trailer park or a FEMA trailer behind her house for two and half years. What we were able to do there is some demo work we took down some brick siding, we moved a couple of steal tubs, fiber glass shower, four heating and air conditioning units, a lot of duct work we cleaned up a lot of debris around her home. I still felt as if we didn’t do enough but there was only so much that we could do with limited time and resources so we were able to help her a little bit.

I: So why did you choose to spend your spring break helping to rebuild that part of New Orleans? What attracted you to this project?

II: Primarily it was in the United States and I know not just as a University a lot of our government aid constantly goes to areas outside of the United States and there are a lot of areas here that need as much assistance if not more. New Orleans, Mississippi, Alabama, all the costal that’s in the public view and that’s I mean that’s one of the reasons why we chose to go there it’s not the end of it. I mean you can look at Appalachian Mountains and the communities in there, but that’s why I wanted to go primarily to help here at home so.

I: What did you learn about the community that you served while you were down there?

II: A lot of people, their first impression of us that we were there just as tourists which I guess they get a lot you know people coming just to gawk at all the damage but once they, once we talked to them they found out why we were there their attitudes completely changed. They’re so grateful to have any type of assistance. There’s not a lot of government resources going to them so anybody that comes to help them out they’re just, overwhelming gratitude. It was amazing. So for a community that’s still struggling they are not entirely on their feet. Going there I expected to see a little bit of damage, but I expected to see more of a re-building effort and that’s not really the case. Two and a half years later there’s still a lot of people that are living in sheer poverty. The magnitude it’s, it’s not something you see here.

I: What did you learn about yourself while you were down there? And what was one of the most important lessons that you learned?

II: For myself I learned that things really aren’t that bad, you know when you go to a place like New Orleans and like the greater New Orleans area where people are it’s like I said poverty, it’s not you know I freak out when my transmission goes in my car but these people lost everything they own. The real driving force is when we were working on Helen’s house and you would find pieces of her life like a broken Christmas ornament or you know and it’s you don’t think about that living day to day here and that’s what I brought home with it that you know I’m really grateful for what I do have, it may not be much but its certainly a lot more then a lot of people here.

I: So you feel as though this project impacted yourself personally, but do you also feel as though what you did down there impacted the community?

II: I think it, I think it did. I think like I said their gratitude expressed how much you know they really needed us there. They said they usually only get people over spring break and sometimes in the summer and the rest of the year they are left to fend for themselves so I think just us being there even for the week that we were was a huge help to the community, so.

I: Do you think that you would take, go back down there in the future possibly?

II: Yea. Yea I have two kids so it’s kind of hard for me to just pick up and go but I do want to return, maybe sometime over the summer take a week or so and go down there and just help where I can. A lot of the aide has gone to the city of New Orleans, but this was 400 square miles damage so there are so many communities out there that don’t see anybody except for the locals who’ll come down and give a weekend to pick up trash or something you know. So, I think if I do go down it will be in areas outside of the actual city.

I: Well thank you for sharing your experiences and thoughts with us today.

II You’re welcome.

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I: Ok. So we are here today with Heather Martin and Heather spent her spring break down in La Manzanilla Mexico. She was there with the University 392 course Service Learning in La Manzanilla. So Heather tell us a little bit why don’t you start off by telling us what year you are here at CSUCI and then give us some background on the project where you went and why you went down there?

H: So I, I’m a junior at and I’m an Environmental Science major and Research Management emphasis and we went down to La Manzanilla in Jalisco Mexico and we were there from Saturday to Thursday and then on Thursday of the week we went to La Gloria which is three hours north till Sunday, we came back on Sunday, and in both places we just did environmental research we did water quality testing and vegetation testing and we just kinda wanted to get the community more, more educated on how they are effecting the mangroves there that are in their backyard basically.

I: Why was this so important? Why was it so important to go down there and provide this community with an environmental education?

H: The community down there especially in La Manzanilla is being very bombarded with a lot of tourism and they’re developing in the mangroves and a lot of Americans are going down there and just, just putting up million dollar mansions on the coast and its just they, people don’t really understand like the effect that they have on the mangroves and then on their water supply and different things and so it was just really good for us to kinda go down and kinda partner with the organizations that were down there already trying doing something with preserving the mangroves and trying to rehabilitate them so it was good just to get them some more information and provide uh the opportunity we have with our technology and our equipment to help them with that.

I: Were you able to work with other students from other universities while you were down there?

H: We weren’t. It was just our school down at that point, but where we stayed in La Manzanilla they had different universities going down there I think every month so it’s pretty often that they had different Americans down there.

I: Why did you choose to engage in this type of project? What attracted you to it?

H: I being an environmental science major, I just wanted more experience in the field just for my resume and I’ve never been out of the country before and so it was the first time that I could really kind of go out on my own and kinda stand up and see like how like what it is like being in a different country and it was so important to kind of um see we’ve learned so much in the classroom about the different issues that you know third, third world countries face with especially with just environmental stuff so it was really important just to kinda go down there and see it first hand and see the actual challenges that the real challenge that it is trying to, trying to protect mangroves when the economy is hurting so bad that it’s good to develop and get more money but the negative effects are so much greater, so.

I: So did you feel as though by taking a Service Learning course that you were able to apply what you have learned in some of your other courses even the University 392 course to your service?

H: Yea, it was really cool because a lot of classes that you take here at Channel Islands we learn different like ways especially in the environmental program of how to kind of test things and um the different theories and stuff. And so to be there first hand and kind of see like the response of the community to, to kind of like how do you, how do you pick environment over money it’s, it’s it was very interesting so it was very easy to apply. It actually helped me understand the concepts a lot more then I learned in the classroom because being hands on like learning and being in it you kind of understand it a lot more then just reading about it.

I: So you spoke about the community, how did you navigate some of the challenges of the community, such as the language barrier? Are you fluent in Spanish?

H: I, I am defiantly not fluent in Spanish, I know a little bit from taking a few semesters, but there was um about three or four members that in the class were fluent in Spanish and so it was kinda cool to have them divided up amongst all of us and so they kind of helped a lot and then um the leaders uh that were down there living in Mexico they were fluent as well. And so every group that we went out doing our work in, there was at least one person that knew Spanish and could help kind of get through everything.

I: So could you tell me a little bit about what you learned about yourself being down there?

H: Um, It was, it was really great because it was the first time I was able to get out of the country and so I just learned like really like how I kind of I learned like what I want to do after I graduate, what I wanna do with um in the fieldwork, it was just great experience kind of like maybe realize that I did wanna be out in the field and I did wanna travel and be in different communities and different areas of the world and just kind of learned about that. And I was just able to kind of grow my personality a lot and like being in the challenges of camping for nine days straight and not having to shower and kind of like testing just like my personality a little bit and being with people for ten days and not having a break from them it was, it was interesting. (Laughs)

I: Where did you camp?

H: We camped in La Manzanilla. We camped like on the beach like on the sand in our tents in both places actually in La Gloria and La Manzanilla so yea we didn’t have any, well in La Manzanilla we had showers but they were over the toilet showers and then in La Gloria we just had bucket showers were you fill up a bucket and just … so it was, it was interesting to kind of be like that for ten days.

I: Do you feel that what you did, the service that you did that it impacted the population or the community that you served?

H: I think it did. What we did was on such a small scale because we were only there for a couple days in each location but since different especially in La Manzanilla since at least once a month I think different universities go down there and do the same work that it’s, it’s repetitive and so I think the community of kind of sees that there is a need to help and um when I was in La Manzanilla in my team, there were four of us, we went and did mangrove restoration where we helped, we worked with um there was these gentlemen there, I worked with two guys. One of them was seventy five and one of them was eighty and one of my friends we helped put dirt bags to prepare um these little areas for mangrove planting basically and I was trying to talk to them with little Spanish that I had and um it was just very interesting just to kind of see like there’s these seventy five year old and eighty year old men who they told me they loved their job, like they loved going and just sitting on egg crates and filling bags with dirt and it was, it was very interesting and so I think that, that we helped a lot and then by having different groups go down there every year on that time like I think it’s, it like on the larger scale it really impacts them and kind of are understanding more of the, of the urgency of protecting the mangroves.

I: Before you went, were you able to reflect on any of your perceptions or assumptions or did you have sort of ideas of what this trip would be or the community would be?

H: I had no idea of what to expect. I heard stories from the previous years people that went and I was, I was just so excited and um since I’ve never been to Mexico I kind of had a little bit of an idea of like what the culture was from just being um from being around Mexicans here but it was, it was so different view point of the people living here from Mexico and it really just opened my eyes to such a greater perspective of the nation.

I: That was my next question, did you have a different perceptive of the community or population that you served?

H: Yea, definitely.

I: Sounds like it. Well it sounds like it was a great experience for you is there anything else that you want to share with us?

H: It was just; it was just the best trip I’ve ever been on. I’ve learned so much about myself, I’ve learned so much about the program and it was really great to be involved and see how different countries kind of get on with things especially ones that aren’t as privileged if you will say as, as the U.S. So, it was very interesting and I, I recommend that anyone that has the opportunity to go, should go. It’s great, it’s a great time.

I: Well thank you for your time today I appreciate it …

H: Thank you. Thank you.

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Transcript:

LO: Some college students spend their summers working to save money for school, others who can afford it travel. But one Ventura County student passed on the traditional vacation and instead spent last summer helping orphans in a war-torn African country. Cal State Channel Islands student, Kyle Morford, headed a successful local effort to bring electricity to an orphan’s village in Rwanda.

KM: When I went down there this summer and we walked into like the first house and they turned the electricity on and this light bulb above their heads lit up the entire room and that was something they never had before. It was really amazing I almost cried.

LO: Morford’s story starts more than two years ago when he was part of  the Channel Islands chapter of ROTARACT, which is like a junior version of the ROTARY CLUB.  He got a chance to go to Guatemala and help with the project to provide dental care to people who would otherwise go without.

KM: We worked for a dental clinic that served children that lived in the local villages, most of them where Mayan children. Imagine going down a big winding Amazon River and there is like little offshoots that shoot into the forest and you take those little things miles back and then these people live back there and they have nothing. There’s farmers maybe they have one cow and one chicken. So once a year a dentist comes into town and that was us. It was a very big eye opener when you see that kind of poverty and that kind of separation from the rest of the world. It really opens your eyes as to what else is out there and how the majority of the world lives.

LO: Morford was so moved by the trip he decided to try to find his own project.

KM: I was really just looking for some way to make a difference in the world. I wanted some kind of international service project because I had been volunteering with the Red Cross. I went to Katrina and volunteered for three months. I wanted to look outward more because I knew that there was extreme poverty and I wanted to look some where in Africa for some type of service project to do and I started making phone calls and I sent out a global email through the ROTARACT club at school and I got invitations to go to about 20 different countries in a matter of 2 days. So I was overwhelmed with all these projects from people all over the world.

LO: That search led the college student to Rwanda a nation torn apart a part by an ethnic war in the 1990’s which left more than 800,000 people dead and the country in shambles.

KM: I just kind of sorted through them and there where some good projects. There were some projects that where too big , too small. One day I got an instant message from this guy named Christian Pakuani he lives in Kigali Rwanda he had kind of the similar position that I did in his club which is like international project specialist. We got to know each other over a couple of months with e-mail and text messages then we decided that with our connections and the poverty in Rwanda that we could actually impact a lot of people.

LO: Morford’s Rotary contact in Rwanda told them about a small community of orphans basically forced to survive on their own.

KM: It’s kind of like a big orphan village 22 houses fill up a few acres that are kind of scattered around the street, that are mud streets. There are 120 kids they live in what is called childhood households which means that there are no adults present no parents that is they’re all orphans from the genocide of ‘94 and they raise each other. So let’s say there is a 15 year old and they are the oldest in the house their main job is to raise every other kid. You’re talking five or six kids they have to raise as a full time parent and this is very sad but it’s empowering when you see these kids. I mean their way older than a 15 or 16 year old would be in our society.

LO: The orphans go to school but they also have to work to survive.

KM: They would go to work the younger kids anywhere from 6-12 years old goes to work because they have no other means. They have no parent they have to find a kind of income so they would go to work during the day. After school they would come home and they would try to study but sitting by fire light inside these little houses it’s not very good to study.

LO: So Morford went to work he and his Rwandan counterpart negotiated a deal with the nation’s power company to have electrical service installed in the orphan’s homes. The international relation student appealed to the Rotary clubs and other groups here in the south coast raising 16,000 dollars to get the lights up and running. The international team also got the Rwandan government to step up to help fix up the houses.

KM: The Kigali Rotaract club contacted the Kigali government, the Rwandan government, and got a huge grant to fix up the houses before used to be made up of mud bricks and sticks with sheet metal for roughs. The government came in and totally revamped them. They concreted the walls concreted the floors insulated the house now the wind can flow through and they won’t fall apart in the rains, it’s just very beneficial to the kids.

LO: Morford and his Rwandan counterpart now are in the process of setting up a business cooperative for the orphans to help them generate enough money to keep the lights on. The Cal State Channel Islands student says that the big goal is to give the orphans a chance to succeed in the world.

KM: The main goal of the electricity project was upward mobility to provide a basic resource like electricity so they can study at night. If they can study they can get an education they can get a better job. When they are older and they don’t have to rely on these subsistence jobs you know they can find a job in the technology industry or something like that. So the whole project was to provide upward mobility for these children.

LO: Morford says it’s been personally rewarding and very emotional as he saw how grateful the orphans where for something as basic as electricity which we tend to take for granted. The real pay off came when he visited Rwanda for two weeks.

KM: It took a lot of my time and a lot of effort but it was worth it. When I saw that first light bulb come on they kept coming to me one person by person child by child saying thank you thank you so much now I can read now I can study and it really raised my hopes what can really be done around the world as far as helping out. I just saw the need in the world as far as the poverty and how people live on a dollar a day or less and I don’t know ever since then its become like a personal goal of mine to try to work towards an end to that amend.

LO: The CSUCI student believes he’s actually found his calling in life. After graduating from Cal State Channel Islands Morford wants to go on and get his doctorate in international relations and then use his education to help children around the world. Lance Orozco KCLU news.

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Transcript:

Dr. Grove: Ok Kyle, why don’t we start with you telling us about your project.

Kyle: Well the project is many stages. It’s about seven stages right now. The first stage involved collecting money so we can fund for an electricity project for orphans in Rwanda; in an orphanage where 120 kids live in 22 houses and they are also members of 1994 Genocide.

Dr. Grove: Great and so why did you do this?

Kyle: I saw a need in Rwanda. I saw that there was a huge lack of funding and resources going into these orphanages and I figured I could do something about it.

Dr. Grove: Neat and then once you made contact with your counterpart in Rotoract, in Rwanda, what steps did you take to figure out what you needed to do for the project and how did you go about getting those resources?

Kyle: The first thing I did was I started calling around. I got the phone book and I started making calls to local government people. Started calling around Camarillo, to the legislative; just trying to find out what resources were available what was going on down in that area. Then I started calling local service clubs like Rotoract and the Lions Club and seeing if they could help in any of these projects that I am working on.

Oh and how did I figure out about getting those resources? Well once I made contact with Rotary I found out I should be going to the Rotoract Club at our school. I went and talked to the Rotoract club, which I am already a part of, we never did any thing like this to this scale. And so I started making more connections with the Rotary members, going to their meetings every Wednesday, and eventually started making more contacts and then we got some grant proposals together and we started approaching local business and organizations and just asking for funds and telling them what we are doing. Just grant writing proposals mainly.

Dr. Grove : In your opinion what has the value of your project been to the people in Rwanda? What did you see that you were giving them?

Kyle: Well when I went down there the biggest thing that I noticed was when they took us into this dark house and all of a sudden they turned on of the light switches and the whole room lit up and it was because of us and the project that we started that these people had electricity. Before us the kids would come home from work and they wouldn’t have any electricity to study. So the project was a huge success because now the kids could home form work and study and get a better education which allowed them to get better jobs in the workplace and will eventually be able move out of the orphanage and be self-sustained .

Dr. Grove: That is such a huge impact that it just keeps giving over such long period of time, it’s real neat to see that.

Kyle: Exactly.

Dr. Grove: When you think about your own experience what has the value of the project been to yourself and what have you learned as a result of the project?

Kyle: Well I kind of just learned how much one person really could effect change. I never thought in my life that I would be able to bring electricity to an orphanage to all children in Rwanda. That’s something I never thought I would be able to do, but with the right partnerships and the right team helping you out it’s possible. So I guess it made me realize that I can make a difference and it just takes a lot of hard work.

Dr. Grove: How specifically do you see this work, this civic engagement, as enhancing what you learned in your classes on campus?

Kyle: Actually, everything I’ve learned on campus really helped when I was in Rwanda. Even from just watching how my teachers act, because when I was down there I was teaching an English class and so just seeing how the teachers acted and reacted to students that helped out a lot. My political science classes, it was great because when I was down there I was talking, I was living actually, in the house of one of the Senators of Rwanda, and so all we did was talk about politics, and my political science classes enabled me to talk about the World Bank and African debt crisis and all these really important things to these people. When its theories to me its like their real life and so it put a face to all the theories and principles that I’ve learned in school so far.

Dr. Grove: What would you like to see our campus do to support this type of project, which is really international service work and we don’t have a lot of infrastructure to support that now. So what would like to see happen here to support that?

Kyle: Well I think we should strengthen the institutions that we have on campus. I think we need more funding because I came to the campus initially and asked what the campus could do to help and they basically told me I was on my own as far as fundraising because they didn’t have any budget to support this kind of student activity. I think that’s really a shame because if you look at some schools on the east cost, a student project like this could get 40,000 dollars pretty easily form school grants so I think its just kind of a big shame; its part of being such a new university. But I think that we need to grow in the way of supporting students and fundraising and building up the structures that we have in place right now.

Dr. Grove: Just in conclusion, is there anything you would like to say to other students who might think they want to do something about the global problems they hear about but they don’t really know what they can do?

Kyle: Yes, I think that the most important thing is that students really just need to start. If you have an idea about something like I did, start making phone calls, pick up the phone book start calling local business that have to do with that, start asking questions, start calling school representatives. Just start, the hardest thing in a big project like this is just getting the motivation to do something because its so overwhelming and its such a huge risk and such a huge commitment of time, but you just need to start, you need pick up the phone, you need walk to someone’s office, you need drop by visits, you just got to start. As soon as you start the wheel in motion, it all turns pretty easy and you really start seeing the benefits after a short period of time.

presented by Dr. Frank Barajas, Assistant Professor of History,

on the campus of CSUCI in Malibu Hall 140 on March 27, 2007

Download MP3 of Presentation [14.9MB, running time 21:43]

Transcript:
 
In that community we have these people creating their own community even though they are being uprooted from their homes in different parts from Ventura County. One of the individuals that was very important to all of this in terms of Cesar Chavez’s emergence was Fred Ross. Fred Ross during the 1930’s worked for the farm security administration; he worked the weed patch farm worker camp in the San Joaquin Valley, by Bakersfield. He saw how the growers really worked against the interest of the farm workers. 
 
He, after the great depression, worked for what is known as the Community Service Organization, the CSO, and the CSO would actually recruit Cesar Chavez to work; to be an organizer. Fred Ross writes a book, if you want to read a really good book about Ventura County, specifically about Oxnard, the labor movement, and Cesar Chavez’s origins, you should read Fred Ross’s “Conquering the Goliath,” Goliath being the agricultural industry here in Ventura County. They had control of all the major institutions, they probably still do; I shouldn’t speak in past tense. They had control of all the major institutions; school boards, for example, sheriff’s departments, the courts, churches, newspapers. So any time there was a threat to the interest of agriculture all these institutions came into line and created a Goliath. Hence the title, “Conquering Goliath,” and Cesar Chavez challenged Goliath, being David and was able to win and beat the power of this large industry. 
 
Fred Ross’s result, well what we learned, the CSO which was part of Saul Alinsky and I like to tell the story; when I was in Orange County I went to Santa Ana and they had Camp Campesino, it was a Mexican American theatre group. They had a great show and I met veteran United Farm Workers there. We got in a circle, we started clapping, doing the Chicano clap. Those of you in MEChA are familiar with the Chicano clap.  They started doing their vivas. “Viva Cesar Chavez,” “Que viva!” “Viva Dolores Huerta,” “Que viva!,” Viva Emelio Zapata,” :Que viva!” And then they say, “Que viva Saul Alinsky!” Saul Alinsky? Who is this Saul Alinsky guy?! 
 
Well many of the United Farm Worker veterans were trained by Fred Ross, who was also part of the Saul Alinsky Industrial Areas Foundation, which was this organization that went into communities and empowered disenfranchised people, poor people and they showed them how to take on the system, how to go to, for example, to city council meetings and how to leverage their strength. One example was, if you go to a city counsel meeting and threatened that your organization was going to have a chili cook off before they go to the meeting and yeah, yeah they are going to raise the steam, literally! Right?
 
 Those were the sort of tactics they would use. Grass root tactics in which to empower the community. And Saul Alinsky had this philosophy that you send organizers but they’re not permanent they are just there for a little while. For example, Cesar Chavez went to Oxnard, with the CSO, stayed two years and then he was out. Why? Because he did want them to be dependent on one person. He wanted the community to build their own leadership and have self determination in terms of their own lives. And one book, if you’re interested in reading about Cesar Chavez, in Oxnard particularly, there are segments with in it, by Jaques Levy, titled “Cesar Chavez: The Autobiography.” It is not about Cesar Chavez but about La Causa, The Cause. He (Chavez) comes to Oxnard with his wife in 1958 as part of the CSO to organize. Helen Chavez, his wife, and one thing I want to say about Helen, Helen Chavez was instrumental in the farm worker movement. They had about five or six kids. She was the one who raised the kids. She is the one who fed the kids but she also provided for the family; while Cesar Chavez was organizing. She was out in the fields working bringing in the income while Cesar Chavez was out organizing people; having his house meetings. 
 
You see this image here in Oxnard in 1958, the CSO registering people. They were organizing for a particular congressional district. Charles Teague. was the incumbent republican. They had a democratic candidate which was more progressive and was reflecting more interest of the Mexican community in Oxnard. What Cesar Chavez wanted was not only have voter registration but also have citizenship classes. This is in 1958 in La Colonia, the Bonitas School.  Now it is called Cesar Chavez school and they had 300 students. They had a waiting list for people to have their citizenship and then vote. In La Colonia in 1958 there were 400 registered voters and by 1958 there were 1028 registered voters and almost 90% of them voted in that election. 
 
This organization was really grass roots. Let me just read a quote that he states in Jacque Levy’s books, “First thing I did was start house meetings. Then we started voter registration drives, because the November election is coming up and there was a good democrat running against their congressmen, the congressmen Charles Teague. I began to sign up people for citizenship classes and open a little office. About the third day I was there to service the people.”
 
 To service the people was also an organizing tool to also get people to be involved in not only the CSO but also later in the union. To provide service to the people that you feel indebted to in the organization then they will also serve you. What he learned from these house meetings it wasn’t the voting, it wasn’t the discrimination, it wasn’t the police brutality that they were experiencing. The number one issue was the use of the bracero workers in 1958. 
 
Braceros were part of a federal program instituted in 1943 by the United States government to bring Mexican workers to the US, as it was involved in the War against Japan and also Nazi Germany, with the idea being there was a labor shortage for agriculture. The industry needed a fast surplus labor supply to depress labor wages. Braceros were being subsidized by the federal government to growers. The government was subsiding the labor for growers and at the same time this program was displacing domestic workers. Mexican immigrants were displacing Mexican American agricultural workers. This became a very important issue. Cesar Chavez recognized this was the organizing moment of the CSO. 
 
Under the CSO office he would create his movement as detailed there and they were successful, in beating the Ventura County labor association. Basically an arm of the Ventura County Agricultural Association and he would get wind that this organization was becoming very politically uncomfortable for growers. One of the labor department employees who I figured out who this person was and I was able to interview him. 
 
Read him this book, this is Cesar Chavez, “After several days one of the men of the bureau of employment security called me to his room about midnight, and he said Cesar I am with you. I think what you are doing is a damn good thing. I want to help you. Then he said, “look I’ve got 18 years of service if they find out what I am doing I am going loose my job. It’s up to you if I can trust you, I’ll tell you something. Cesar Chavez said, “sure in fact I never mentioned his name,” he told me, “you know these people don’t want any investigations they don’t want anything public existing it is a time bomb, they don’t do any publicity on it and you’ve got everybody shook up,”  
Cesar said,” I didn’t realize the magnitude of the situation, so I thanked him. I thought if they don’t want any publicity fine. I knew what to do. The following morning we marched; about 60 or 70 of us. That’s when we discovered the power of the march. We started with a couple of hundred people in La Colonia and by the time we got through we must have had 10,000 people. Everybody was on it.” Among Mexicans a march has a very special attraction. 
 
We see from the experience in Oxnard, Cesar Chavez took the power of the march and used it in Delano. Just a couple of days ago on March 25th was the one year anniversary of the march in Los Angeles. Marches are power, they are powerful, and they are empowering. This is part of a legacy that we learn from the farm worker movement. That people began to speak for themselves and they began to advocate and they began to self determine for themselves and this history has to be told. And you have as a result, of the “conquering of the Goliath,” of Ventura County in 1959; we have birth of the United Farm Workers in 1965. 
 
We have an image here of Dolores Huerta and the strike. We have Cesar Chavez here in Oxnard, there is the state superintendent of schools Jack O’Connell marching with Cesar Chavez and you have the federal U.S stamp that has been now institutionalized. I wanted to pay a little homage to Jack Nava. Jack Nava passed away a couple years ago but he single handedly collected 65,000 signatures to have the U.S postal service adopt the stamp of Cesar Chavez. The legacy is still alive and the history still needs to be told. 
 
I just want to thank Amanda Quintero and Pilar Pacheco for giving me the opportunity to participate in this week long celebration of the life of Cesar Chavez. Are there any questions?
 
 “Why did Cesar Chavez leave the area?” 

Because he had family roots in Delano and that was part of the community and networking and that was important to the movement; was to have family close by. Because remember he had six kids and Helen Chavez’s family was in Delano and there was also a agricultural need in terms of labor for a union there. So that’s why he left. He left Oxnard because he had more family in Delano. 
 
“Why Cesar Chavez, why him?” “Were there some events in his life that created this type of personality?”

He had the determination for a farm workers movement; for a union. Being part of a farm worker family he knew of the oppression that that farm workers experienced and he was very focused. He (Chavez) said, “People criticize me for being a fanatic.” This is what he says during an interview, “yes I am a fanatic. I am a fanatic about justice. I am a fanatic for brining housing. I am a fanatic for just wages for people. I am a fanatic for education and no matter what you want to do in life and do well; whether it be an educator, a lawyer, if you want to do something well you have to be focused and be fanatical about it.” So to answer your question, “Why him?,” because he was real fanatical about his calling to be a union organizer. There is a saying “Si Se Puede,” “It can be done.” Somehow when you use phrases they kind of loose their power, “Si se Puede” really has a power, it can be done in light of the circumstances. There are chances you may lose but chances are if we try with fanatical focus we can win. 
 
“Did he ever reflect on people in his life that were instrumental for the organization?”

Sure, one was Fred Ross. Fred Ross was looking for Cesar Chavez in San Jose. Cesar Chavez was hiding from him. He didn’t want to meet with Fred Ross because he thought Fred Ross was another anthropologist from Stanford or Berkeley. So all these guys want to know why we eat tortillas? That’s all they want to know. And then they take off and do their studies and they don’t help us out. Then he had this moment where it’s ok if he meets with him. He has a friend buy him beer and he says to them, “When I switch my cigarette from my left hand to my right hand we are going really let him have it and run him out of this house and tell him who he is.” And Fred Ross started telling him about CSO, the CSO is to combat police brutality, to fight discrimination in housing and in segregation, and Cesar never switched his cigarette. And Fred Ross convinced him that union organizing what was he was called to do. 
 
Why is La Colonia today a predominately Mexican community?

La Colonia is predominantly a Mexican community, up until recently it was also a place Asian immigrants lived; Asian American families lived and also African Americans. Because that was the only place they could live. Outside of La Colonia up until 1968 and even then it was repealed in 1968, which eliminated the use of restricted real estate, meaning you couldn’t buy a home because in the deed of property outside La Colonia said you cannot sell these homes to Mexicans. You can not sell your house to the workers, the Negros. You cannot sell these homes to Mongolians. So institutionally, systematically people were segregated into certain communities and you see La Colonia today being a legacy of that and you have certain dynamics emerge from this sort of discrimination. Like night gangs, which results from largely immigrants groups, because the children are really destabilized having immigrant parents but also living in a foreign country and so you have a lot of different issues feeding into certain phenomena. 
 
 
What are labor conditions like for agricultural workers today? Is there a lasting legacy form the union movement?

The union movement, now we are gonna do the present, which is kind of out of my area. Basically from my reading and maybe others can help the agriculture movement is pretty weak right now. The agriculture union movement is pretty weak, why? Because the industry is even stronger than it was back in the 1950s; it’s a more low level repression. One of the political figures, I wont mention his name because he is still in office, but he told me that in the 1970s when Cesar Chavez was organizing in Oxnard and you had picketers outside certain fields the Ventura County Sheriffs department came in with their helicopters to harass them. And they came really low on those protestors; basically trying to harass them from practicing the constitutional right to protest. So again, the issue of integration, we have political, the cultural, the social institutions blatantly manifesting their power against weaker groups in terms of politics, culture, society. The housing today is deplorable. All you have to do is go into certain pockets of Ventura County; you see very poor substandard deplorable housing. So its not that much different in many respects. 
 
Thank you very much.