Tom Deweese

April 6, 2022 By Sam Bushman

CESAR CHAVEZ WAS NO HERO

March 31^st is celebrated annually as a holiday in ten U.S. States to honor United Farm Workers Union founder Cesar Chavez as an American hero. I beg to differ!

Cesar Chavez is portrayed to the American public as a champion of poor Hispanic migrant workers who were paid mere pennies to work in the grape and lettuce fields of California. According to the tale, the farmers got rich off the backs of the migrant labor, selling the lettuce and making expensive wines from the grapes. Meanwhile the poor, misused migrants carried meager belongings on their backs and traveled from farm to farm, hoping to find work, perhaps a meal, and a place to sleep. Even little children were forced to work in the fields – just to keep the family alive. So goes the tale.

Into the breach of this John Steinbeck vision of misery steps one of the workers who braved the wrath of the “MAN.” Cesar Chaves, so the tale continues, stood bravely against threats of bodily harm, maybe even death, to help bring the poor migrant workers a decent wage and stable working conditions. He organized the United Farm Workers Union (UFW), organized protests and set up picket lines, staged fasts to get the media’s attention. His minions took on the battle cry “Huelga” (strike) and called on all Americans to boycott “non-union” lettuce and wines.

The 1960s and ‘70s was an era of unrest and college protests. That’s when students across the nation took up the UFW battle cry and participated in the boycotts. It became fashionable for liberal leaders to stand with Chavez. California Governor Jerry Brown (the first term) joined Chavez and all the usual Hollywood celebrities in protest marches in Sacramento. Bobby Kennedy flew in to embrace Chavez for the cameras during one of his famous fasting protests.

Chavez was hailed a hero to the oppressed poor. Streets and schools all over the state of California are named after him. Children wear tee shirts with his name and image emblazoned across the front. There was even a movie produced to reconstruct his heroic memory. However, labeling Cesar Chavez an American hero is akin to labeling Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky as Russian heroes.

Here are facts about Cesar Chavez that you will never read in a school text book, current history book, or see in the film.

There is no evidence that Cesar Chavez ever worked in a farm field in his life. He was a pool room thug selected and hand picket by radical communist organizer Saul Alinsky to create unrest among farm workers.
Chavez was well trained in the Alinsky propaganda and organizing techniques that are, still today, recognized as the most effective tools to misdirect and force radical ideas into the general population.
Cesar Chavez never tried to organize real migrant workers – those who had no real home, who carried their belongings on their backs and were basically nomads on the road.

For the most part, the workers Chavez picked on lived in nice homes, in stable neighborhoods and made a decent wage. The only migration they did was to move from farm to farm in their area to harvest the crops. It provided them steady work with farmers who regularly employed them. At night, they slept in their own beds.

Chavez never organized “non-union” workers. They were already members of the Teamster’s Union. What Chavez sold to the nation as a fight against “non-union” lettuce and grapes was really a jurisdictional fight against the Teamsters. Pretty hard to call the Teamsters “non-union.”

And so, for more than ten years, Cesar Chavez used the media, politicians, Hollywood, and college students to change the buying habits of the nation and paint a picture of big business oppressing the poor.

In 1974, when I served as Ohio Chairman of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) I was also running for a seat in the Ohio state legislature. My district was a small slice of Columbus that included the Ohio State University. My opponent was a dedicated left wing radical. Our district contained no farm land other than the agriculture department of the university. Yet, the main issue of our campaign became the debate over Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers.

In March of that year, Chavez came to the OSU campus. My opponent in the legislative race, Mike Stinziano, was seated next to Chavez on the stage. I was out front of the auditorium manning a picket line and protest. Eventually, as Chavez prepared to speak, my picketers and I marched inside the auditorium, straight down the aisle and sat on the edge of the stage to continue our protest. Stinziano and I eyed each other in this strange setting for a political campaign.

Chavez began to speak to the wide-eyed college students, teaching them organizing songs and getting them to shout “Huelga.” Then Chavez began to spin a tale of the terrible conditions of the non-union workers in the fields. Paul Bunyon would have been impressed. He told the students that to reduce payments to his union members, the farmers had developed a mechanical devise to pick the grapes. He said it was a huge vacuum designed to suck the grapes off the vine. But, said Chavez in a hushed tone, the machine also sucked up spiders, snakes and rabbits, all to be processed into the wine. As the crowd began to stir and make faces at the thought of it, Chavez quickly added, “so, if you won’t boycott Boonesfarm wine for our cause, at least do it for your own health.” That was Cesar for you… always concerned about the well being of others!

Two months later, I was invited to Toledo University by the local YAF chapter there to provide rebuttal to a separate appearance by Delores Huerta, Vice President of the United Farm Workers Union.

She taught the students the same organizing songs, peppered with the chants of “Huelga.” Then she proceeded to tell the same story of the great machine. Only this time she described it, not as a great vacuum cleaner, but as a picker with huge fingers that plucked the grapes along with the snakes, rabbits and spiders. I pointed out to the audience that if the UFW was going to fan out across the country to tell lies, they should at least be consistent lies.

Huerta proceeded to call for a boycott of all “non union” lettuce and grapes. I again pointed out that many of the farm workers picking the grapes were, in fact, members of the Teamsters Union and had been so for many years. I asked when the Teamsters became non union and the only response offered was that I was a Teamster lackey! Sigh…

Huerta went on with her well rehearsed tale of the terrible lives of the non-union farm workers, and demonstrating the success and power of the UFW by claiming that 200,000 farm workers had now joined their union. An interesting trick, since there weren’t 200,000 farm workers in the state.

What both Chavez and Hureta both failed to tell their audiences was:

How the UFW formed “goon squads” designed to intimidate the non-UFW workers in the fields by threatening them with physical harm if they continued to work.
How the UFW used Catholic priests to intimidate the deeply religious workers by calling them scabs.
How the majority of those on the UFW picket lines were actually college students bussed in from across the country.
How UFW negotiations actually resulted in less pay for farm workers.

If this is the kind of America we have become, where a pool room thug, trained by a Marxist, can be officially honored by as many as ten states, as a hero, then there truly has been a silent American revolution and truth, justice and the American way has lost.

The farm workers in California, in the 1970s, knew what a threat Chavez was to them and they hated him. They tried to tell America then, but the media, Hollywood, and liberal politicians had their own agenda to promote. Does that sound familiar? So, puffed up on their own “compassion” and in the name of their version of justice for the poor, they sacrificed the very people they claimed to help… all for the “cause.”

In a truly moral and honest society, Cesar Chavez would be relegated to the trash heap where he belongs. It’s time to push back.

TOM DEWEESE

Tom DeWeese is one of the nation’s leading advocates of individual liberty, free enterprise, private property rights, personal privacy, back-to-basics education and American sovereignty and independence.

January 28, 2022 By Sam Bushman

PLASTIC IS NOT A THREAT TOM DEWEESE

I am fed up to my burning ears with the carte blanche castigation of plastic. Plastic is one of the greatest inventions ever, not only for modern society, but also for the environment. If plastic seems to now pose an environmental threat, it’s not plastic’s fault – but the fault of the environmental movement itself.

The use of plastic reduces the need for other natural resources. Plastic bags, cups, and plates save the need for more paper. It saves the trees the greens are so concerned about. Plastic tables and chairs and lamps also save the demand for wood. Plastic bumpers on cars eliminate the need for chrome, a natural mineral the greens worried about a couple of decades ago – plastic provided the saving solution. And the use of plastic in cars makes them lighter and therefore more fuel efficient. Plastic makes heart transplants possible. Plastic is used in a wide variety of medical devises, without which people would either die or be denied happy, useful lives. There is no natural wood, paper, or glass substitute.

It’s interesting to note that the decade-old American obsession with bottled water resulted from environmentalist scares over possible chemicals in municipal tap water. Green radicals like the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) spewed horror stories of tap water full of rocket fuel, arsenic, germs, feces, lead, and pesticides. Plastic bottles provided the solution. Now the pendulum has swung and we’re all supposed to forget the earlier scaremongering over tap water and obey the new scare over water bottles. Crisis to crisis – whatever keeps up the green fundraising and power-building. It’s also interesting to note that one of the biggest promoters of the return to tap water is the National Conference of Mayors. Many cities are now taxing each bottle used. A classic move – right out of the government handbook. Vilify it and then tax it.

So the mantra goes, plastic bottles and products are filling the landfills. Says one ad (by a water filter company with an ulterior motive to compete with plastic water bottles), America uses enough plastic water bottles to ring the earth several times in a year. Plastic bottles don’t degrade, they say, so they will be in the ground forever. The collectively acceptable answer, of course, is that we simply must ban them and any other use of plastic, if possible.

One corporation using the anti-plastic propaganda is the Whole Foods super market chain which forces its suppliers to provide “sustainable” and recyclable packaging for their products or they will be banned from the store’s shelves. The chain also does not use plastic carrier bags. Instead, it uses either paper bags or encourages customers to bring in their own reusable cloth bags. Whole Foods is a large enough force in the grocery market that such policies force other chains to follow suit. That, of course, is its political strategy.

Whole Foods CEO, John Mackey, is a full-fledged promoter of Sustainable Development as a political policy. He talks of corporations “doing good,” through a policy of “Conscious Capitalism.” I love the use of those words, “responsible;” “good,” “conscious.” Says who? Rather than a businessman, Mackey is ultimately promoting his own political agenda on the buying public. That isn’t free enterprise; it’s a form of activism designed to covertly enforce behavior modification techniques on the buying public.

In addition, Mackey’s drive to “do good” has a lot of unintended consequences. First, he has helped to perpetrate lies and prejudices to encourage lawmakers to ban valuable products. That causes job loss in that industry. Second, he is taking away the right of choice from those who don’t accept his position. Third, all so-called sustainable policies lead to one specific conclusion – higher prices for consumers. Fourth, his actions may well lead to endangering the health of many consumers. For example, removing plastic bottles for shampoos and conditioners and replacing them with glass bottles will be a hazard in the bathroom when they inevitably fall on the floor.

Finally there is a growing hypocrisy from the do-good faction. Some governments, such as in Fairfax County, Virginia are now charging 5 cents tax for every plastic bag, with the intention of returning us to the paper bags that were banned in the name of environmental protection for trees. The difference now is that the government will get to fill its coffers from the unnecessary regulations it imposed.

Of course, when political power is at stake, consumers are simply pawns to be manipulated. In San Francisco, where the city government banned the use of plastic bags, one resident wrote, “I remember when it began to rain last year while I was carrying my groceries home in a paper bag. As I chased my cans down the street, I cursed our idiot mayor and whoever among his stooges had decided to ban rainproof plastic bags in San Francisco. Paper is certainly biodegradable, for the process started even as I was carrying the bag home.” Where was her freedom of choice?

When one is driven by political correctness or globally-acceptable truth, one has a hard time looking past the “allowable” thought patterns to ask obvious questions. Are plastic bottles really a threat to landfills? Is there another way to dispose of plastic other than throwing it in landfills? Is there any other reason landfills are filling up, and is there a solution? There are answers to these questions, but they will surely make the greens choke on their tofu as they read them.

The fact is, according to a 2010 report by Angela Logomasini of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, plastic bottles are not filling up landfills. They represent less than one percent of landfill waste. She goes on to agree that they don’t degrade, “but nothing does.”

In addition, we have an artificial shortage of landfills because environmental regulations prevent new ones. We have no lack of land in America and could open numerous new land fills to meet growing needs. Angela Logomasini agrees that we have plenty of landfill space and adds, “one large landfill 44 miles by 44 miles could manage 1,000 years of our waste. Simple enough, but completely politically in-correct in today’s attack on logic. It’s much more acceptable to regulate and ban valuable products. That has become the American way.

Those old landfills, once full, could be used for other uses. By researching the subject I found a list of 10 former landfills around the nation that were converted to parks, golf courses, playgrounds, soccer fields, and shopping centers. One in Virginia Beach, VA, was converted into a full-blown city park called Mount Trashmore. We’re supposed to envision landfills as a no man’s land of devastation and waste forevermore (hence the need to block the creation of new ones). But, again, it’s not true.

Finally, there are at least two possible scientific solutions to the disposal of plastic — first, heat. Plastic products are produced and shaped through the use of heat. It melts at a very low temperature. Instead of throwing massive amounts of money into propaganda to destroy the plastics industry, those concerned over the disposing of plastic could develop and purchase heat-generating machines (without smokestacks) and place them at every landfill. Then, melt the plastic into reusable liquid. Well, perhaps that’s not as much fun as bullying us with anti-plastic police forces.

In 2020, scientists working at the University of Portsmouth developed and even better solution. According to their findings, Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) is the most common thermoplastic, used to make single-use drink bottles, clothing, and carpets. Usually, PET takes hundreds of years to break down in the environment, the leading attack against plastic. However, scientists have re-engineered a plastic-eating enzyme called PETase into an enzyme cocktail. Incredibly, this new PETase process can shorten those hundreds of years of plastic breakdown into a matter of days. That will revolutionize plastic recycling and eliminate the environmental danger.

However, as many now understand, little in these attacks against industrial revolution products have anything to do with science or truth. The roots of the environmental movement’s agenda lay in the determination to destroy free markets. The use of fear of ecological Armageddon creates political power and massive funding for them. So, actually solving the problem means losing the power and the money. That’s why no headlines have promoted solutions beyond banning the products.

Instead, there is now a steady march by the stores, which have always provided the bags (whether paper or plastic) for free, to embrace government regulations that will ban the bags. Providing those bags for free to every customer is a considerable cost for the store. Now, however, with the government’s new tax, in the name of environmental protection, they are succeeding in getting consumers to purchase their own “reusable” bags which the store now sells to you for a profit. It’s a new profit center built on environmental guilt. “Conscious Capitalism,” indeed. Partnerships between government and private corporations, for the sake of political power, is more accurately called fascism, and truth and liberty always lose in that game.