> > With the horror of the revelations of his sexual predations, an already > tarnished icon collapses. > > By the late 1970s, Chavez had begun dismantling the union that he led. He > told his staff to cease administering the contracts the UFW had won and to > all but stop organizing farms. He adamantly held to the union’s initial > policy of not paying its staff and its attorneys more than the bare > pittance it had paid at its founding. He spoke instead of building a vast > movement of the poor, though he declined to provide a focus, or targets, > for where that organizing should begin and how it should proceed. He > squelched all opposition within the union’s ostensible governing body; he > termed it treasonous. Over a period of years, he devoted meetings of union > officers and staff to the “game” devised by the then-fashionable drug rehab > organization Synanon, which featured members venomously attacking one > another, in the ostensible hope that this would bring the participants > closer together. Not surprisingly, it drove them further apart and broke > all bonds of trust. > > Also not surprisingly, the union quickly lost more than 80 percent of its > members, and since that time has never claimed more than 10,000 members. > (In recent years, under new leaders and buoyed by a new California law that > permits card-check recognition, the UFW has finally begun to grow again, > however modestly.) > > *https://prospect.org/2026/03/19/cesar-chavez-falls/ > <https://prospect.org/2026/03/19/cesar-chavez-falls/>* >
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