In his research, Drake discovered that the federal government had designed the homes to last no more than ten years. After World War II, growers had taken over the camps and continued to use them for their workers throughout the 1950s, until they began to divest from housing projects in favor of working with labor contractors to acquire day-haul laborers. By the 1960s, the Tulare County Housing Authority had taken over the camps, but it did nothing to improve the conditions. Drake conferred about the tenants’ rights with James Herndon, an African American attorney working on behalf of the poor in San Francisco. Herndon inspected the dilapidated facilities and informed Drake that the county was in violation of a 1947 law that restricted owners from raising rents on condemned dwellings. He recommended that they pursue legal action.50
Ever the organizer, Padilla encouraged Drake to take the bolder step of setting up a fund and asking tenants to pay their rent to them instead of the county. In return, Padilla and Drake promised to protect the tenants if the county attempted to evict them from the camp. Although not everyone participated, enough did, and county officials began to send eviction notices. They also sent the sheriff to intimidate the residents, although Padilla reassured them that the county had no legal standing to force them to pay. “I said, ‘[The] County doesn’t know … who’s paying … so when they come to you to tell you to pay [your rent], screw ’em.” According to Padilla, several residents followed his directions and lived in the camp for months, rent-free. They paid whatever they could to the fund set up by Padilla and Drake, which was deposited in the bank in case they needed it to take legal action against the county. Padilla also raised awareness of the problems in the camp by inviting the secretary of labor to visit; he also attracted the attention of the local press.51
The standoff between the residents and the county eventually erupted when the local housing authority chose to raise the rents to cover its losses. The action angered the newly empowered residents, who took to demonstrating against the county. Drake recalled the scene: “One day the Tulare County Housing Authority arbitrarily raised the rent on the condemned, tin shacks from $19 to $22 per month! I drove down to the camp not knowing this, and there was Gil under the water tank, standing and shouting on top of a car. By the time he got down, he had started a rent strike—300 families joined!”52 Padilla, Drake, Havens, and a young college student, Doug Adair, counseled the Woodville families to join with residents of the nearby Linnell camp in Farmville to create one big march to the Tulare government office building. The protesters overwhelmed housing authority officials, who took cover in their offices until the marchers moved on to a local park for a celebration. In the months that followed, Drake and Padilla took the county to court, where they won a settlement that restored the original rent and forced the housing authority to build a new facility on the same property.53
The Tulare rent strike inspired many farm workers and a number of local organizers to join the NFWA. Among them was Brother Gilbert, a priest who had left his post as principal of the Catholic Garces High School in Bakersfield to help lead the march. “I wore my official Christian Brothers black suit, black silk vest, and a white starched collar somewhat similar to the clerical collar worn by the Catholic clergy.” Brother Gilbert, later known by his birth name, LeRoy Chatfield, eventually left the priesthood to become a critical member of Chavez’s team. During the rent strike, he carried a placard with a quote by the famous union organizer, Joe Hill: “Don’t Mourn—Organize!” Chatfield got the idea from a Catholic anarchist friend, Ammon Hennacy, who ran a Catholic Worker hospitality house in Salt Lake City. “Even though I had never participated in a farm worker ‘rent strike’ march before,” recalled Chatfield, “I thought Joe Hill’s quotation was appropriate for the occasion.”54 Chatfield was not alone in his lack of experience. Many considered the rent strike an important opening salvo in a new movement to improve the lives of farm workers in the San Joaquin Valley.
A STRIKE IS NOT ENOUGH
While the National Farm Workers Association built its organization, Al Green and AWOC continued to work on a parallel track in the southern deserts and elsewhere in the San Joaquin Valley. Although disappointed by the failure to halt the use of Mexican nationals as scab labor in the Imperial Valley, AWOC kept the pressure on, believing that the national mood toward the bracero program had shifted in its favor. AWOC’s national sponsor, the AFL-CIO, wanted to be organized and ready in the fields when the bracero program ended. To prepare for this moment, national representatives channeled funds to Green and Clive Knowles, who searched for the most likely workers to organize. The national office also pursued legal action against the U.S. Department of Labor to enforce ceilings on the employment of Mexican nationals who remained in the labor market. This move guarded against the replacement of domestic workers who, they believed, constituted AWOC’s future.55
Green and Knowles reached out to many workers, including those within Chavez’s fold. Padilla recalled that when he left the CSO, Green tried to persuade him to come work for AWOC. “I didn’t like the program,” Padilla said, “because they were organizing labor contractors.”56 This strategy circumvented organizing in the fields in favor of appealing to middlemen who maintained communication with several workers at a time. This was particularly true among Filipino labor contractors who stayed in contact with Filipino migrants as they spanned the entire West Coast, working in canneries, on boats, and on farms from Alaska to Arizona. As the Fresno State College study showed, however, these same men could be as exploitative as the growers for whom they worked, often retaining the greatest share of the money set aside for hiring field hands. The decision to organize contractors rather than the rank-and-file workers betrayed the organizing philosophy that Chavez, Padilla, and other CSO veterans had learned from Fred Ross. Chavez articulated the philosophy years later: “Fred used to say that ‘you can’t take shortcuts, because you’ll pay for it later.’ He believed society would be transformed from within by mobilizing individuals and communities. But you have to convert one person at a time, time after time.”57 Padilla and Chavez regarded AWOC’s approach as the kind of shortcut Ross had advised them to avoid.
Chavez stayed true to his training even when workers themselves called on him to take stronger action. In March 1965, for example, a worker on a local rosebush farm, Epifanio Camacho, appealed to Chavez to organize a strike against the grower for repeatedly breaking promises of better pay. Chavez resisted, advising Camacho to have patience. By 1965, NFWA leaders had expanded its membership to approximately 1,200 through such painstaking methods that they believed would pay dividends later.58
In contrast, AWOC’s approach garnered some immediate success, especially among Filipino workers. Larry Itliong, a veteran of the Pacific migration and a former labor contractor, epitomized the AWOC organizer. Born in San Nicolas, Pangasina, the Philippines, Itliong arrived on the West Coast in 1929 and worked in various crops throughout California and Washington, including a lettuce farm where he lost two fingers in a harvesting accident. He also canned salmon in Alaska and met many labor organizers along the way, some of them affiliated with the Communist Party. By the early 1950s, he had risen to the position of labor contractor in Kern-Tulare County while maintaining radical political views that made him an appealing candidate for membership in AWOC. In 1956 he joined the labor union organizing committee and began to assist Green, Knowles, and another organizer, Norman Smith, in attracting other Filipinos to the organization, including a young Peter Velasco and Andy Imutan. Along with Itliong, two other veterans of the fields, Philip Veracruz and Ben Gines, joined AWOC’s organizing efforts and became key figures in AWOC’s attempt to establish a foothold in the San Joaquin Valley.59
In spite of differences in their approach, AWOC and NFWA members had mutual respect and stayed in contact. Itliong was present and organizing among Filipino workers at the time of the Tulare rent strike, whereas Padilla maintained a positive but distant relationship with the Filipino organizers he encountered. Although exceptions existed, NFWA confined much of its organizing effort to Mexican field workers, a decision that mirrored the heavy Mexican influence in the CSO. AWOC had greater success among Filipinos, likely a reflection of its emphasis on organizing contractors, in which Filipinos played an important role.
In the summer of 1965 the tracks of these two upstart unions converged in the grape