Cesar Chavez Day 2015: Senator Robert Menendez Observes Cesar Chavez Day, Proposes Resolution to Commemorate Civil Rights Leader
U.S. Senator Robert Menenedez is observing César Estrada Chávez Day by introducing a resolution to honor and commemorate the Civil Rights leader.
A list of politicians sponsored the resolution including Sen. Cory Booker, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Sen. Jack Reed and Sen. Elizabeth Warren and more.
The resolution honors the accomplishments of Chavez starting from the day he was born on March 31, 1927 and his first days on a family farm.
Chavez joined the thousands of migrant farm workers at the age of 10 after a bank foreclosure made his family lose their farm, according to the full resolution. He worked tirelessly in the fields and vineyards.
He went to more than 30 different elementary schools then quit to be a full time migrant farm worker. By the age of 17, Chavez joined the United States Navy to serve two years.
The civil rights leader grew to organize campaigns for farm workers to gain fair working conditions and reasonable wages.
That kind of effort is exemplified today through migrant farm workers' protests for equal rights and fair working conditions.
"Cesar Chavez had the rarest kind of courage-moral courage-and he had great faith in the promise of America," said Sen. Richard Durbin.
"In many ways, America is becoming the place Cesar Chavez dreamed of. But I think Cesar Chavez would also remind us that the struggle for equal justice is far from over," he added.
Sen. Michael Bennet said, "Decades after he led the charge on behalf of Latino farm workers for fair wages and safe working conditions, Cesar Chavez's legacy as a leader in our nation's Civil Rights movement lives on."
Chavez was born in Arizona to poor immigrant farm workers and later founded The United Farm Workers, the first successful farm workers union in the United Sates.
He won the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Aug. 8, 1994.
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