One Night In America Robert Kennedy Cesar Chavez And The Dream Of Dignity Steven Bender by Steven Bender 9781594514289, 9781317254966, 1317254961, 1594514283 instant download after payment.

Chronicles the warm friendship between Robert Kennedy and Cesar Chavez and embraces their bold political vision.Robert Kennedy and César Chávez came from opposite sides of the
country and from opposite sides of the “tracks” of class and race that
continue to divide so many Americans. But they shared a vision that the
lives and promise of all Americans were unfulfilled so long as the
American dream failed to extend to the desperately poor farm workers,
many of Mexican heritage, who worked the fields in California, the
Southwest, and elsewhere. This common bond of desire to help the
underprivileged, whether in rural fields or urban ghettos and barrios, drew
Chávez and Kennedy together in the 1960s in a brief but inspirational
friendship. An assassin’s bullet in June 1968 did more than sever a
friendship between two devoted family men—it set back the cause for
equality for farm workers, for the poor, for Mexican Americans, for us all.
Nearly forty years after that tragic night in Los Angeles, the dream that
Chávez and Kennedy shared remains unrealized. Arguably, farm workers
today are even worse off than they were in the 1960s—most farm workers
make less than $10,000 a year and only a lucky few have health
insurance. In 2005, only 2 percent of California’s field laborers were
represented by a union. After their brief moment in the national spotlight
in the 1960s during the grape boycott, agricultural workers faded from
public consciousness. Few people eating grapes or a salad today wonder or
care about the wellbeing of the laborer who picked their food, and worker
rights have been lost in the shuffle of an increasingly mechanized and
globalized economy.
The poverty that Chávez and Kennedy worked to overcome extended
beyond the fields to the cities and barrios. Building momentum since the
1960s, U.S. poverty has proven its resilience. Hurricane Katrina in 2005
delivered a tragic reminder that the poor remain among us in urban and
rural landscapes, and their numbers are growing.