Obama, the Nation, recognizing Cesar Chavez

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release March 31, 2010

CESAR CHAVEZ DAY, 2010

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA A 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. After serving in the United States Navy, Cesar Chavez became a community organizer and began his lifelong campaign for civil rights and social justice. Applying the principles of nonviolence, he empowered countless laborers, building a movement that grew into the UFW. He led workers in marches, strikes, and boycotts, focusing our Nation's attention on their plight and using the power of picket lines to win union contracts. "The love for justice that i s in us is not only the best part of our being, but it is also the most true to our nature," Cesar Chavez once said. Since our Nation's earliest days of independence, we have struggled to perfect the ideals of equal justice and opportunity enshrined in our founding documents. As Cesar suggests, justice may be true to our nature, but as history teaches us, it will not prevail unless we defend its cause.

Few Americans have led this charge so tirelessly, and for so many, as Cesar Chavez. To this day, his rallying cry --"Sí, se puede," or "Yes, we can," -- inspires hope and a spirit of possibility in people around the world. His movement strengthened our country, and his vision lives on in the organizers and social entrepreneurs who still empower their neighbors to improve their communities.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 31, 2010, as Cesar Chavez Day. I call upon all Americans to observe this day with appropriate service, community, and education programs to honor Cesar Chavez's enduring legacy.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirty-first day of March, in the year of our Lord two thousand ten, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-fourth.

BARACK OBAMA

On Cesar Chavez's Birthday
Response from Chavez Family & UFW President Following White House Meeting with President Obama

United Farm Workers President Arturo S. Rodriguez and Paul F. Chavez, Cesar Chavez's middle son and president of the Cesar Chavez Foundation, issued these statements following a meeting at the White House with President Obama and members of the Chavez family plus Rodriguez and UFW co-founder Dolores Huerta on what would have been the farm labor and civil rights leader's 83rd birthday.

From Arturo S. Rodriguez, President, United Farm Workers of America:

We thank President Obama for honoring Cesar Chavez on this important day for millions of Americans. We thank the President for his concern for the farm workers who feed our nation every day, and for his strong support of immigration reform. No other change is more urgently needed, and would be more lasting. We will share with President Obama 10 letters written to him by farm workers from across the country, telling him about the realities and challenges of their lives.

Cesar Chavez has been honored in hundreds of communities across the nation. His birthday is an official holiday in 11 states. But the best way to honor Cesar is by helping the farm workers to whom he dedicated his life, and by using our lives to serve others less fortunate than us.

From Paul F. Chavez, President, Cesar Chavez Foundation:

We thank President Obama for having the Chavez family and farm worker movement join him today. We recognize how his dedication to community and public service parallels my father's. Cesar Chavez's message was not just for farm workers or Latinos; it was universal: By helping ordinary people do extraordinary things, he inspired farm workers and millions of others from all walks of life who never worked on a farm to believe in themselves, to do things they would never have thought possible.

It was epitomized by the words from my father's 1972 fast in Arizona, "Si Se Puede!" ("Yes We Can"), which have been adopted by activists worldwide.

But my dad was also convinced we have a moral duty to give ourselves selflessly for others in a cause that's bigger than we are. He said, "Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and our own."

That's how a man with an eighth grade education who adopted a life of self-imposed poverty nonviolently challenged, and overcame, one of the richest industries in California and in the process inspired millions to social and political activism.

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