Driving Cesar Chavez

The Unforgettable Day I Took the Union Leader Through Pennsylvania Coal Country

Of all the stories I’ve held on to from my time working for Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers, the one I like to tell is not from the fields of California but from the mines of Pennsylvania. It involves not only Cesar, but also a helicopter and a man named Flood.

My journey to working with the farmworkers had been an indirect one. I grew up mostly in Rialto, California, where my first successful organizing project involved getting my fellow Eisenhower High students to stage a sit-down strike until we were …