The Working Catholic: Forgotten Organizer by Bill Droel

           Most grammar school and high school students encounter Cesar Chavez (1927-1993) in one or another textbook. He is heralded as a pioneer in organizing agricultural workers and as a champion of Mexican-Americans. So in September 1965 who were those farm workers who went on strike and whose action launched a boycott that brought Chavez to national attention? The workers were Filipino-Americans.

        Today’s students and others probably assume that farm worker unions hardly existed until Chavez and others created the National Farm Workers Association in September 1962, writes David Bacon in Dollars & Sense (June/18). Not true. Larry Itliong (1913-1977), a Filipino-American, walked his first picket line in 1930, and even he did not invent farm worker organizing. The United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers, affiliated with the CIO, was long active in the State of Washington, Alaska and California. Itliong was involved with UCAPAW and in the late 1940s he led strikes among asparagus pickers, Bacon details. In 1959 an Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee was formed in the merged AFL-CIO. In the summer of 1965 Itliong led a successful AWOC strike in the Coachella Valley.

On September 8, 1965 Itliong gathered hundreds of workers into Filipino Community Hall in Delano, California for a vote to strike the area’s grape growers. It was a bold move and Itliong realized he needed help. As is common with ethnic groups, Filipino-Americans and Mexican-Americans did not easily mingle in the community. Plus the two ethnic groups competed for jobs. Yet Itliong approached Chavez to join in the strike. Until then, Chavez was spending his time building the base and lobbying; he had yet to launch any job action; only 200 workers were paying dues to his NFWA. But Chavez realized his opportunity and within two weeks joined forces with the Filipino-Americans. Thus began the now famous Delano Grape Strike and National Boycott. Four flags were prominent in the first demonstration: the U.S. flag of course plus the flag of the Philippines, of Mexico and the flag/banner of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

In time the group’s named was changed to United Farm Workers Organizing Committee and then to United Farm Workers Union (www.ufw.org). Itliong served as an assistant to the new union, including as director of national boycotts.

The efficacy of organizing requires some oiled hinges. For example, on one side there is hyperbole and some boastfulness. On the other there is thoughtful compromise. On one side the organizer agitates hesitant people. On the other side the organizer affirms people, even as they belatedly take small steps. On one side of the door the organizer fosters fierce loyalty within the group, enough to withstand external criticism. On the other side of internal fidelity the organizer must create openness to wider society, a commitment to inclusiveness and dispel tribalism.

On one side the organizer must project confident charismatic qualities to attract busy and creative leaders. On the other side the organizer must stay out of the limelight, nurture collective leadership and dampen personality factions. For Chavez, “loyalty to Chavez” often superseded the development of leaders and the external mission of the organization, as Mirian Pawel details in her sympathetic biography The Crusades of Cesar Chavez (Bloomsbury, 2014). His style was too often arbitrary. In fact, over time Chavez imported the cult-like techniques of Synanon into the UFW. Like all of us, Itliong had faults. But he spoke against Chavez’ authoritarianism. The problem, Chavez replied to Itliong, is that “you won’t obey my orders.” Thus in October 1971, Itliong resigned from UFW.

Organizing farm workers is still difficult. It is probably more difficult than in the mid-1960s. A new strategy, called worker centers, shows promise. These are not unions and cannot directly have labor contracts. This restriction is advantageous in some situations, though worker centers have shortcomings.

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (www.ciw-online) is the best-known worker center. One-by-one CIW cajoles a major food outlet to join its Fair Food Program. The outlet agrees to purchase only from Fair Food certified vegetable growers. Those growers, in turn, have agreed to pay a couple pennies more to farm workers for each bushel of, let’s say, picked tomatoes. Burger King, Taco Bell and more are participating. The CIW cajoling, you already suspect, includes national boycotts, demonstrations and more.

There are also unions of farm workers. Farm Labor Organizing Committee (www.floc.com), based in Toledo, Ohio and affiliated with AFL-CIO, has a respectable history. Along the turf where Itliong once tread, is recently formed Familias Unidas por la Justicia (www.familiasunidasjusticia.org), an independent union. It brokered a positive relationship between berry pickers and Sakuma Farms. First though Familias Unidas had to wage a national boycott of Driscoll Berries and Haagen-Dazs ice cream—both of whom purchase from Sakuma Farms.

Our National Park Service has a Cesar Chavez Monument in Keene, California. Johnny Itliong, Larry’s son, and others want the Park Service to expand with perhaps a site in Delano, California and to honor Itliong, Filipino-American farm workers and all those who act for agricultural justice.

Droel’s booklet, What Is Social Justice, can be obtained from National Center for the Laity (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629; $5)

The Working Catholic: Economic Class, Part IV by William Droel

   Go to the barbershop and get a hold of The Atlantic (June/18). Its cover features a baby in a Yale University outfit. Matthew Stewart contributes a 14-page article that gives fresh perspective to our economic scene. In recent years the class divide has been termed the 99% and the 1%. Years ago it was called bourgeois and proletariat. I’ve also heard it called the upper crust and the working stiffs, or the big shots and the rest of us.

The really rich (You-Can’t Touch-This) are the top, top 1/10%. Amazingly, there are only 160,000 households in this category. They currently hold 22% of U.S. wealth—about the same percentage as they held in the 1930s. Stewart’s story is about the next 9.9%. In dollars, it takes $1.2million net worth to enter the 9.9%. To get midway into that group takes $2.4million and its top echelon has $10million in wealth. If you have over $10million sitting around, you are entering the top, top group.

It is tempting to call this 9.9% group the nouveau riche. Stewart explains, however, that those in the 9.9% do not suddenly come into money. Yet, they are a new aristocracy because they inherit important advantages. Specifically, Stewart with fascinating details says those in the 9.9% inherit a model of stable family life and also inherit enough of what it takes (money, connections and more) to obtain a degree.

Stewart, a Princeton-educated philosopher, goes beyond a straight economic analysis to unpack a difficult dynamic. There is a “difference between a social critique and a personal insult,” he writes. But all of us are prone to reject that difference. We do not possess enough objectivity to leave personalities out of it. And even if we grasp the difference, we feign powerlessness over the social reality. Those in the 9.9% justifiably believe they have done something proper by using the institution of marriage. They see their college degree as evidence of intelligence, persistent study, an encouraging family and more. In other words, the 9.9% (like all of us) make the implicit presumption that blameless (moreover virtuous) actions must add up to a good society. It is hard for all of us to grasp that seemingly innocuous behavior can scatter obstacles around society, causing inequality to harden, mobility to stall and democracy to languish.

This point is all the more difficult to make without getting trapped into identity politics, righteousness, resentful feelings, victim posturing or sloganeering. The trap is disguised within many uttered or unexpressed phrases like, “It is my hard-earned money.” “It is your lazy lifestyle.” “The best people get into the best college.” “Don’t act on your privilege.”

Catholicism has a corresponding concept that recognizes that systems can be unjust, even if individuals are well-meaning and blameless on one level. Catholicism says, for example, that poverty is a social sin or a structural evil. This obviously does not mean that being poor is sinful. Nor does it mean that being rich is sinful. (Catholicism by the way has never had the prosperity gospel notion that being rich is a sign of virtue.) Structural sin means that the original aspirations of an institution or a system have greatly departed from God’s plan. A sinful or unjust institution or system makes it harder for people to be holy—poor people and rich people. By contrast, a healthy institution makes it easier for people to be whole and holy.

Catholicism has no better luck at explaining the “difference between a social critique and a personal insult.” A Catholic homilist, for example, almost never mentions racism or sexism. It would be counterproductive because the congregation immediately goes into default position. Catholicism, which is eager to increase participation in the sacrament of reconciliation, has no ritual for dealing with exclusionary school systems, with an unfair wage structure or with closed housing patterns. Who would confess what to whom? And how do any of us make amends?

It is easy to moralize. It is hard to devise realistic change. Start though with Stewart’s Atlantic article. If a 14-page article is too long for one haircut, ask your barber to loan you the magazine for a couple days.

Droel edits a free newsletter on faith and work; INITIATIVES, PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629.

The Working Catholic: Theology of Work by Bill Droel

It was in post-World War II Poland that a positive turn occurred in the theology of work.

For centuries Catholicism, with some important exceptions, gave pride of place to worldly abandonment, including a degree of disdain for normal work. In the prevailing Catholic understanding a saint-worthy spirituality meant intense contemplation which required a retreat from ordinary workaday obligations. This attitude was derived in part from Hellenistic and Gnostic influences. It was also partially a byproduct of too close an association between the church’s princes and royalty. 

 Poland was in ruins following World War II—industries destroyed, cities demolished. During six years of war, over six million people died. Poland, with a long history of aristocracy, was now receptive to a Marxist ideology of work. In this context Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski (1901-1981) wrote a remarkable retreat manual, Duch Pracy Ludzkiej (The Spirit of People’s Work). This relatively unknown book was translated into English in 1960 and published in Dublin, simply titled Work. In 1995 a New Hampshire publisher released it as All You Who Labor and also as Working Your Way into Heaven. This year it appears again in the United States by way of EWTN Publishing in Alabama, titled Sanctify Your Daily Life.

In recent months several U.S. Catholic bishops have launched a program or campaign to revitalize the church in their area. These efforts focus on under-utilized buildings, a relative shortage of clergy, low participation of young adults in liturgy and insufficient funds to maintain important ministries, especially Catholic grammar schools. Wyszynski approaches the revitalization project differently. Instead of starting with the church’s own internal difficulties, he mulls over the rebuilding society by way of a Christian vision of work. (As an aside: The U.S. publishers of Wyszynski’s book reflect our country’s individualistic self-help culture with titles and subtitles like Your Way and Your Life. The original thrust is more about improving society or perhaps the synergy between social renewal and virtuous Christians.)

 To develop his theme Wyszynski must first heave aside a common but mistaken reading of Genesis that says work is a punishment for original sin. “Even before the fall,” he writes, “people had to work, for they had to dress paradise. Work is therefore the duty of people from the first day of life. It is not the result of original sin; it is not a punishment for disobedience.”

Work is participation in God’s ongoing creation. God’s command in Genesis to “fill the earth and subdue it,” is a call to mobilization, Wyszynski writes. “When God announced the summons He saw the earth as it would become through work. God saw [all of us] who would go through the world in submissive service to Him, adding ever more perfection wrought by His power in work, to what God had made.” 

And then Wyszynski gives brilliant insight into a new theology of work. The perfection of things through work perfects the person doing the work, he details. Embedded in the very process of work itself is a prior plan. Workers can find a set of virtues in the work process, varying with the type of work. Thus good work requires that we follow and respect work’s own strict and binding rules. It takes the practice of various virtues to “bring our will into conformity with the laws and techniques of work,” Wyszynski concludes. All work has an interior spiritual aspect.

Wyszynski’s book includes meditations on several work virtues. Work well-done perfects society and each worker. Good intentions or exquisite management theories do not somehow spiritualize shoddy work, much less exploitation.  

In summary: Work serves as a mirror to our true self and to the real character of society. “Without external work, we could not know ourselves fully,” says Wyszynski. In our work “we discover the good and evil in ourselves” and in itself work is a spirituality.

U.S. Catholicism has challenges. Absent a thorough theology of work that relates to real jobs, to actual family life and to neighborhood sidewalks there will be insufficient attraction between Catholicism and young adults. Repositioning parishes and adopting new pastoral language is not enough. A spirituality of work that is accompanied by methods for social improvement has a chance of displacing our culture’s vacuous sloganeering, its impersonal work environments and its mistreatment of so-called economic losers. Is anyone thinking about a U.S. Catholic theology for work? Does anyone have a pastoral program for young workers?

Droel is the editor of Pope John Paul II’s Gospel of Work (National Center for the Laity, PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629; $5). It continues this consideration of Poland’s contribution to work theology.