it comes in pints?

Dude, not to add to your anger, but all I ever heard about the man was that he was a hero and practically a saint. Even in religion class. (That's what I get for going to a high school run by progressive nuns with a social justice agenda.) Seriously, I don't know anything about him at all.

Sold his soul to the progressive/leftist wing of the Democratic Party. And fucked over lowest-paid workers in the process. That pretty much sums it up.

I've heard both sides......and I agree with Ken. If there's a union out there worth the powder to blow it to hell, I've yet to see it. The UFW? Pfui!

And recently, I carefully did not support the move to unionize in my organization. I understood the reasoning behind the move; I did not agree with it, being the idealist that I am.

Y'all want details, e-mail me.

I hate pretty much any kind of "coercion" like that, where you are a Bad Evil Wrong-Thinking person if you don't agree 100% and close down your business or cancel school or forgive employees for not showing up.

Unions had a place - and in some parts of the world, may still have a place. But the one time I belonged to a union, it was mainly a big time-suck and a big money-suck out of my paycheck, and the meetings were basically sitting in a room for HOURS (seriously, the union leaders must not have had lives) and being lectured at about political matters that had no direct bearing on the work we were doing (and most of the political positions the union promoted were diametrically opposed to mine).

Yeah, at one time unions were necessary. I don't believe they are now and they have become largely self-supporting entities devoted primarily to their own existence. And I agree with your characterization, Ricki, for the most part.

But the UFW was far beyond that. They actively screwed over low-paid farm workers. Some of it was simply because the union bureaucreeps couldn't be bothered to revise stupid policies, some could only be described as theft.

They used ignorant workers (against the workers' own best interests, mind you) to further their political agendas, often agendas that had no direct bearing on the workers themselves. They reneged on contracts. They sent fired workers back to fill spots they were fired from, stalling the company operations. And more.

All in all, the friggin' Teamsters are a more honorable outfit.

Darren at "Right on the Left Coast" also commented that if these kids value their education so little, that they think taking a day off for some crap "protest" is a good idea...well, they're pretty much lined up for UFW type jobs in the future.

I think a better "protest" would be to work hard, to achieve, and to have a better life than what anyone who might be prejudiced against you would believe you could have, but then I'm just one of those evil right-wingers...

My sister went through a "hispanic phase" in college (we're German-Dutch, just to be clear.)
She not only named her cat Cesar, but she voted for everyone who had a hispanic surname, with no regard for their political agenda, to "give hispanics a place in government".
Her boycott of grapes lasted until she came home for summer vacation and Mom told her that we were still going to *buy* grapes: Sis just didn't have to *eat* them. :-)

I agree with you all regarding this but isn't it Spring Break? Maybe that's why the chitlands are out causing trouble?

Different districts have different breaks. Locally it was last week. I don't know about Sacto but the news report sounded like school was in session.

It ain't a protest unless somebody misses you where you were supposed to be, donchaknow.

What nightfly said.

Gee Ken, I'm not sure how you managed to get a 0% cuss rating. This post reads like one of mine.

I think the FFOT may have killed it.

I don't have a strong opinion on unions as a class, but I don't see why we have to designate a holiday in honor of every political agitator that comes along (assuming he's agitating for the left, of course). We already got rid of Lincoln's birthday in favor of Reverend Doctor Saint Martin Luther King Junior (PBUH). Whom do we have to bump to honor Cesar Chavez?

As Ricki points out, this is a move to force us to lionize a man we may or may not actually have any respect for. It's much the equivalent of demanding a holiday for Joe McCarthy and reviling anyone who questions his greatness.

Whether Chavez' legacy is positive or negative is irrelevant. Let us pick our own heroes; if we must have national ones, let them be ones we can all agree on.

Here in Portland, recently, the City Council decided pretty much all on their own to rename Interstate Avenue to "Cesar Chavez Avenue".

Fortunately, there was enough uproar (along the lines of "Why are you losers wasting my tax money?" and "What the hell does Cesar Chavez have to do with North Portland, anyway?") to cause them to back off their ludicrous plan of the day.

Good for them.

One of my Spanish teachers in college used to make us recite, "El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!" Talk about wasting the taxpayers money....
(And yes, it was a very liberal California university... which makes one wonder what the heck Ken was doing there...)

Because I was young and foolish enough to think "liberal" meant "liberal", not "Stalinist nut job".

No offense, my dear Julie, but you too were on the righter-most side on that campus.

Sigivald, I was in Portland when they forced through the name change on Union Avenue to Martin Luther King Blvd. Anyone who pointed out that the change wasn't done legally (they bypassed the city council or something) was shouted down as a cross-burning skinhead. Nothing must stand in the way of re-educating the public.

Funny that both streets go right through the neighborhood populated by people who should have benefited from King's work, but apparently never did.

Now, if they renamed a street in a Molalla trailer park for Chavez...

That's because I came from Nixon country -- Orange County. Compared to other OC'ers, I really *was* liberal! :-)