Wk 4: Filipino Farmworkers and the UFW

Hi there! Sorry for the short notice on readings and questions, but there were some technical mishaps in the process!

Below are some questions for you to think about before class today. Reflect on your readings and how they deal with today's topic: Filipino Farmworkers and the UFW.

1. Highlight the significant aspects of the Filipino-Chicano coalition in the Farmworkers movement as described in both of the readings. What are the strong points? What are the weaknesses? Do you believe that a stronger coalition was necessary?

2. Both readings significantly emphasized the importance of coalitions in activism. First of all, can you recall any other events in history where a coalition between two different ethnic groups of people was necessary for a movement to occur/to make a difference in a movement's outcome? What about Asian American history specifically? Finally, do you believe that multiracial coalitions are necessary in today's society for groups of people to organize on a single topic?

3. Beginning on pages 144 and 145 of Coalitions, Race, and Labor, the author Rony puts a good amount of thought into describing Filipinos as a minority within a minority, and how the earliest issue to building the coalition was distrust of the two racial groups to each other. Chicanos did not trust Filipinos, while employers simultaneously attempted to keep Filipino farmworkers under their control by threatening to remove seniority from the workers. This is a prime
example of a majority group attempting to pitting minority groups against each other. Is this a common tactic of majority groups throughout either American or Asian American theory? What does this do to the common movement of the minority groups? What impact does this
have on the majority group? What impact does this have on the minority groups? Finally, what was the outcome in this specific situation?

4. Last week, we discussed language issues as a subset of Asian American labor issues, and focused mainly on first, language as a barrier to understanding and trust, and second, language as a freedom to express one's culture. This week's readings brought about a new concept of language, where language is used as a tool to organize, as well as a tool to prevent organization of workers. Discuss these issues as they applied to the Filipino-Chicano situation.

A good resource to check out might be the UFW website: http://ufw.org
Go over their mission statement, vision, about us stuff and just how they define themselves.

Yay!