Cesar Chavez Day of Service event held Saturday in South El Monte, commemorating the late Labor leader’s fight for farm workers’ rights at the Stamford Avalon Community Garden in South Los Angeles It will be held in
More than 250 volunteers will come to Earthworks Farm to celebrate Los Angeles County Commissioner Hilda L. Solis’ partnership with CultivaLA, a nonprofit that promotes urban agriculture in the San Gabriel Valley.
The day of service is set to begin at 8:00 am and includes native plant installation, a presentation on increasing local food access, and a mulch and compost workshop.
CultivaLA describes its mission as transforming access to healthy food and wellness through people, social enterprise and environmental justice.
The memorial service begins at 10:00 am and includes mariachi and Aztec dancers, a resource fair with representatives from city agencies, youth services, and employment opportunities.
There are also gardening workshops and a farmers market with fresh produce.
The event comes two days before Los Angeles and Los Angeles County celebrate Cesar Chavez Day. The state holiday commemorating Chavez’s birth is Friday.
Chavez founded the National Farm Workers Association in 1962 with Dolores Huerta.
The union merged with the Farm Workers Organizing Committee in 1965 to form the UFW.
An advocate of non-violence, Chavez is best known for leading the grape boycott in 1965. This boycott spread nationwide in his 1968 and lasted until 1978. The result was increased wages for farm workers and a national focus on their plight.
Chavez and the UFW played a key role in the passage of the California Farm Labor Relations Act of 1975. This made California the first state to give farm workers the right to seek union representation and bargain collectively within an established legal framework.
Born March 31, 1927, in Yuma, Arizona, Chavez dropped out of school in the eighth grade and joined the fields as a migrant farm worker to support his family, witnessing the many adversities workers face every day. I made it
