LeRoy Chatfield - To Serve the People: My Life Organizing with Cesar Chavez and the Poor

LeRoy Chatfield

WITH JORGE MARISCAL

2019 by the University of New Mexico Press

All rights reserved. Published 2019

Designed by Mindy Basinger Hill

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

NAMES Chatfield, LeRoy, 1934 author. |

Mariscal, George, author.

TITLE To serve the people: my life organizing with Cesar Chavez and the poor / LeRoy Chatfield with Jorge Mariscal.

DESCRIPTION Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. |

IDENTIFIERS LCCN 2019015591 (print) | LCCN 2019021651 (e-book) |

ISBN 9780826360885 (e-book) | ISBN 9780826360878 (jacketed cloth)

SUBJECTS: LCSH: Chatfield, LeRoy, 1934 | Chavez, Cesar, 19271993Friends and associates. | United Farm Workers of AmericaBiography. | Labor leadersUnited StatesBiography. | Political activistsUnited StatesBiography. | Mexican American migrant agricultural laborersHistory20th century. | Labor movementUnited StatesHistory20th century. | Social justiceUnited StatesHistory20th century. | United StatesSocial conditions1960-1980.

CLASSIFICATION LCC HD6509.C48 (e-book) | LCC HD6509.C48 C54 2019 (print) | DDC 331.88/13092 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019015591

COVER ILLUSTRATION LeRoy Chatfield with Cesar Chavez in Porterville, California, 1965. Chatfield had just bailed Chavez out from the Tulare County jail. Photographer unknown. Courtesy of the Chatfield family.

We dedicate this book to the young organizers who,
even as we write these words,

are doing the hard work of listening to the People

the homeless, refugees, students,

the undocumented, farmworkers,

the undervalued of every colorinsisting they

be treated with dignity and given

the opportunity to achieve a better life.

If we aspire to be good, we must ceaselessly work

to serve others,

serve them in a perfectly disinterested spirit.

If we hear people crying in distress,

we should immediately run to them and help them.

After doing what was needed

we should feel that it was all a dream.

Mahatma Gandhi

One of these [volunteers] was LeRoy Chatfield, who withdrew from the order of Christian Brothers and left his job as a Catholic high school principal in Bakersfield to tackle an endless series of top-level tasks. Intense, dedicated, bright, and efficient, Chatfield was easily identified by his tall, gaunt frame, blue eyes, and blond hair.

Jacques LevyCESAR CHAVEZ: AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF LA CAUSA

I learned a lot working under LeRoy Chatfield. I saw him as a quiet person with a lot of passion for confronting injustices and making them right. He taught me to not be afraid of those in higher positions and how to confront and solve problems.

Gloria Serda RodriguezUFW

You were our teacher.... You were sincere and you modeled for us the importance and meaning of our work. We learned to do what would seem impossible in order to help make better the lives of the farmworkers. You did it, LeRoy. You did everything possible to help the boycott accomplish its goal and I am certain you helped develop many great and committed leaders in the process who have gone on to change the world in countless and untold ways.

Maria FuentesLA BOYCOTT

LeRoy was and will always be one of our star mentors from the movement at its peak.

Richard YbarraUFW

/ Jorge Mariscal

Welcome.

I call my writings Easy Essays, a title I borrowed from Peter Maurin, who was a French Christian Brother and who, with Dorothy Day, founded the Catholic Worker Movement in 1933, the year before I was born. Peter Maurin passed away in 1949 at age seventy-two and Dorothy Day in 1980 at age eighty-three, exactly my age as I write this preface.

Maurin wrote his Easy Essays in versealways about social justiceand published them in the Catholic Worker newspaper. I was a longtime faithful subscriber to the newspaper and read it cover to cover. Antiwar actions, conscientious objectors, social justice, civil rights, labor rights, feeding the hungry, Houses of Hospitality for the poor, back-to-the-farm movementthe topics went on and on. I soaked it up. The cost of the newspaper was one cent per issueand still is. Of course, readers who admired the Catholic Workers commitment to voluntary poverty and service to the poor supported their work financially.

My Easy Essaysnow numbering well over two hundredare not erudite literary material, uniquely profound, or the product of academic training. I wrote them without any expectation that a handful of them would be published in book form. I have Professor Jorge Mariscal to thank for that honor.

The essays that follow are written using everyday words in simple sentences to tell a brief story, recount a childhood memory, or explain social issues I have thought a lot about or discussed with people with whom I have worked and admired. More often than not, the subject matter of my writing is the shameful absence of social justice I have personally witnessed at various times in my life and my response to it.

Of course, essays of this nature will reveal more about me than I wish, but since nothing can be done about it except to not write them, this discomfort falls into the painful category of unintended consequences.

If any of these essays promptor provokeyou to think about the importance of social justice in our society and its absence in your own life experience, so much the better!

Very nice to make your acquaintance.

LeRoy Chatfield CESAR CHAVEZ DAYMARCH 31, 2019

To my wife of fifty-two yearsBonnie Burns Chatfield. The luckiest day of my life was the day I met Bonnie Burns in Bakersfield, California. The smartest decision I ever made was in San Francisco, when I asked her to marry me. She answered: Are you sure you want to get married? I said: Yes! Working in the movement, raising a young family, providing and promoting educational opportunities, being politically active, building a professional career, welcoming the grandchildrenthe list goes on and on. Until you meet Bonnie, you have not met Superwoman.

In memory of my parents, Raymond Chatfield (19141970) and Lucille LaGrande Chatfield (19121997), who supported my desire to leave home at age fourteen to pursue my Catholic education.

In memory of my friends and colleagues, Cesar Estrada Chavez (19271993) and Helen Fabela Chavez (19282017), who founded the farmworker movement in 1962 and lived in voluntary poverty for thirty-one years, dedicating their lives to work for social justice for farmworkers. They changed the course of my life and that of millions of others.

In memory of Daniel Delany (19342015), who, along with his wife, Chris Delany, founded Loaves & Fishes in 1983 to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless in Sacramento, California. The Delanys infused Loaves & Fishes with the philosophy of the Catholic Worker Movementnonjudgmental hospitality. Since its founding, Loaves & Fishes has served more than 7.5 million full-course, home-cooked noon meals to the homeless and hungry residents of Sacramento.