http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2010/03/obama-on-chavez-a-spirit-of-possibility/1Mar 31, 2010
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Dolores Huerta (C), co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America (UFW), speaks alongside Arturo Rodriguez (2nd L), president of the United Farm Workers (UFW), and sons of civil rights activist Cesar Chavez, Fernando Chavez (L), and Paul Chavez (R), outside of the West Wing of the White House in Washington, DC, March 31, 2010, after meeting with US President Barack Obama where he signed a proclamation designating March 31, 2010 as Cesar Chavez Day.
Here's the text of President Obama's proclamation declaring this Cesar Chavez Day.
The co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America, who would have turned 83 years old today, inspired Obama's own work as a community organizer -- and coined one of the president's favorite political slogans, as you shall see. Obama met today with members of Chavez's family and the farmers' union, who are pictured.
The proclamation:
The rights and benefits working Americans enjoy today were not easily gained; they had to be won. It took generations of courageous men and women, fighting to secure decent working conditions, organizing to demand fair pay, and sometimes risking their lives. Some, like Cesar Estrada Chavez, made it the cause of their lives. Today, on what would have been his 83rd birthday, we celebrate Cesar's legacy and the progress achieved by all who stood alongside him.
Raised by a family of migrant farm workers, Cesar Chavez spent his youth moving across the American Southwest, working in fields and vineyards, and experiencing firsthand the hardships he would later crusade to abolish. At the time, farm workers were deeply impoverished and frequently exploited, exposed to very hazardous working conditions, and often denied clean drinking water, toilets, and other basic necessities. The union Cesar later founded with Dolores Huerta, the United Farm Workers of America (UFW), still addresses these issues today.
FULL story at link.