Half century after grape strike, Phil Serna shaped by UFW activism

[Omaha Steve]

From left, Sacramento County Supervisor Phil Serna, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Fabrizio Sasso, head of the Sacramento Central Labor Council, talk Saturday, Sept. 27, 2015, at the celebration of the 50th anniversary celebration of the Delano grape strike. Behind them is a photo exhibit showing Kennedy’s father, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, meeting with labor organizer Cesar Chavez decades ago. Jocelyn Sherman United Farm Workers


http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article36772752.html

BY STEPHEN MAGAGNINI
[e-mail]
Before labor organizers Cesar Chavez and Larry Itliong led the Delano grape strike in 1965, every farmworkers union had been crushed, every strike had been broken and every struggle for collective bargaining rights had been stopped, said United Farm Workers President Arturo S. Rodriguez. The late UFW organizer Joe Serna Jr. – mayor of Sacramento from 1993 to 1999 – played a big role in helping turn that around.

His son, Phil Serna, was among the hundreds in Delano on Saturday to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the strike and grape boycott that transformed American labor and grass-roots politics. One of the hundreds of Latino elected officials inspired by the movement, Serna, 47, is chairman of the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors. He remembers his dad hosting Chavez in the family’s Curtis Park living room.

Today, roughly 400,000 farmworkers toil in California, some barely making minimum wage but others, such as unionized mushroom workers in the San Jose area, making $40,000 a year plus paid holidays and vacations and medical, dental and vision benefits. State laws now also require fresh water and toilets in the fields and ban the dreaded short-handled hoe, which condemned farmworkers to hours of stoop labor.

Q: Your dad became Sacramento’s first Latino mayor. How did he teach you about the UFW?

A: One of my earliest memories, when I was about 5, was on my father’s shoulders and we were picketing the Safeway then at Sutterville and Franklin. I learned it’s not enough to sit on the sidelines and let government happen to you.

I would go to my friends’ houses, see grapes, and explain to their parents why we didn’t have grapes at our house because of the way those who picked them were treated. That strike and boycott were the genesis of not just my father’s political activism but my appreciation for social change and equity.

FULL story at link.