A Frontier for Workers’ Rights:
​​​​​​​The Delano Grape Strike and Boycott

"The Braceros had been imported from Mexico to work on California farms. They died when their bus, which was converted from a flatbed truck, drove in front of a freight train...thousands of farm workers live under savage conditions–beneath trees and amid garbage and human excrement–near tomatoe fields in San Diego County, tomatoe fields which use the most modern farm technology. Vicious rats gnaw on them as they sleep. They walk miles to buy food at inflated prices. And they carry in water from irrigation pumps. Child labor is still common in many farm areas."
~ Cesar Chavez, co-founder of the United Farm Workers union, Address to the Commonwealth Club of California, 1984

Interview with Lorraine Agtang, former Bracero laborer, The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, 2015

"Poisons pose serious health risks to workers and consumers: Parathon causes more worker deaths in California fields than any other organo-phosphate (nerve gas class) pesticide. Phosdrin also causes large numbers of workers to become ill. Dinoseb, a highly toxic chemical recently caused a farm worker death in Texas and kills large numbers of workers in other nations and in the U.S. Methyl Bromide causes more worker deaths outside agriculture than any other pesticide."

~Food and Justice magazine, published by UFW, 1985

"Farm workers are not given even the basic human necessities. They are not given toilets or drinking water in the fields. They cannot defend themselves when they are being degraded or humiliated or subjected to inhumane working conditions…a farm worker can pick as many as four tons of grape in one day – one person...the farm worker is subjected to a brutalization of the human body that is absolutely inhumane." 
~ Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers union, interview with the WBAI's Maria Huffman, 1968