-: I almost see war.
(Rosa speaking Spanish)
(speaking Spanish) is I am the queen.
So we did this little skit, and of course,
it got more hilarious
as the names got more hilarious.
And some of the names were actually our names, right?
Like Paspena, that was his name.
That's one of the skits I remember.
There was another skit where it's supposed to be
like a dinner at a university
and this round table of people,
and there's a Mexican male sitting there,
and the rest of the people are white middle-class males,
and they're all saying to him,
"You like the soupy Lupe?"
Like once in a while,
they're talking to each other
and they turn to him and go,
"Do you like the soupy lupe?"
To the Mexican kid.
The Mexican guy and then they announce,
"And our speaker for tonight is..."
And it happens to be Lupe,
whatever his name is.
And according to the skit,
he gets up there and just blows everybody away.
Pretty much like Bernie Sanders (laughs)
or Michelle Obama, right?
James Wall: True, true.
-: And then of course,
it's announced during the skit that the table
and everybody's just like,
"Oh my God, he's our speaker."
And, "We just thought he was
"this little Mexican attending the event," right?
And he comes back to the table.
In the end, the punchline is,
"You like the (chuckles) the speechy son of a bitchy?"
(both laughing)
So those were the two skits that I remember that we did.
We did them at UT.
We did them at East Austin,
where we were doing voter registration.
We just did 'em in every chance we had.
It didn't matter.
We actually were invited to Baylor
for Ethnic Week. -: Oh, my gosh.
Oh, my gosh.
-: And we were there on Mexican day to do our little skits.
James Wall: Whoa! -: That was fun.
James Wall: Really? (laughs)
-: Yeah, no.
We also our little...
The El Teatro Chicana group
did some commercial for Sissy Farenthold.
James Wall: Oh, really?
-: And the dilemma was, do we do it or not?
'Cause are we Raza Unida?
Are we gonna support
Sissy Farenthold? -: So in other words
there was a rivalry between Lawrence and Anita.
-: Somewhat, somewhat between like any group of people
there were differences and...
James Wall: Right, let me rephrase though.
You had talked about I don't wanna say misogyny
but there was a male-centric leadership
-: When I first got there.
James Wall: Right, in La Raza Unida.
-: In the National Chicano.
James Wall: The National Chicano.
-: Yeah. -: But was that evident
in La Raza Unida as well?
Or was it pretty egalitarian? -: Well,
I didn't see that too much, but I think I saw it
in the UT Mexicanos who were from the valley, Robstown,
and when I first started going
to National Chicano organization,
I saw that they were not interested
in having us be leaders.
So for me the farm worker struggle
was not about me and leadership.
It was about I'm part
of a movement and we're all in this together.
James Wall: Yeah.
-: And the farm worker movement had a lot of female nuns,
Delores Huerta, farm worker wives,
because eventually I did go to live
with a farm worker family.
Bill Chandler and Irene Chandler were the organizers
and I lived with them in San Antonio,
and we organized on the boycott in San Antonio.
James Wall: Really?
-: So, there was a different environment.
There was we're all in this together.
But we all worked together
and the thing about doing the commercial
for Sissy was the Teatro Chicano people,
and it was a loose group.
It wasn't like, you know,
we were incorporated or anything.
Some of us decided we would go do the commercial
because the commercial was about register to vote.
You are now 18 and now you now have the right to vote
because it was brand new.
Remember before that it had been 21.
James Wall: True, yeah.
-: So we did this commercial where
a father is saying to his young daughter,
"You're 18 years old.
"Did you know that you now can vote?"
And she gets all excited
and decides to go to register to go vote.
And in the end,
because it's a Sissy Farenthold commercial
she says, "Si, si, si,"
and we did those innocently not
choosing to choose a side
whether it was Raza Unida or Sissy Farenthold.
We just did the commercial
because it was gonna get people
to go out and register.
James Wall: I see.
-: And then we went into East Austin
and did the voter registration drives.
So what happened after that?
I was there 'til '71 and
the farm worker's struggle had gotten to the point
where they were starting the food strikes
'cause there had been the deaths
of the organizers in California.
And so I got really...
I made the choice to just do farm worker stuff.
So I moved to San Antonio
with Bill Chandler and his wife and his three little girls,
and we moved into a house on Mistletoe,
which was where the freeway is now.
And the city had basically already started
to evacuate those houses.
But the city...
I don't know how that happened.
How Bill organized that.
Somebody from the unions must have helped him.
But Bill got us a house,
a really beautiful house on Mistletoe
and we organized out of that house.
And then somebody gave us an office
where the American Friends Service Committee office
in a theater building on Houston Street in San Antonio.
What's the name of that theater?
I can't remember now, but it's downtown.
James Wall: Oh, okay.
-: So we organized from there
and that was the period where
the Teamsters and the farm workers
were really not liking each other
'cause the Teamsters were trying
to take our farm worker people.
James Wall: Right.
-: And since I felt that really
the farm worker AFL-CIO was more representative
of farm workers that were...
And remember that farm workers are not migrant workers.
The whole idea with the farm workers organizing
this to have farm workers be like any other union members
where you have a stable job year round,
and you have your union contract will allow you
to stay settled. -: In one place.
So that's why I supported the boycott in Texas.
So my job both in Austin when I was a student
and then in San Antonio was to organize around the boycott
and around the Teamster struggle.
So I did that until '72.
James Wall: So the practical aspects
of organizing everybody always says organizing
and then I have no idea what's going on.
What was it that you were doing on a day-to-day basis?
Was that kind of
a new experience in terms of your learning on the job?
-: It was really learning.
I mean, I had already done voter registration
which I knew I had to go to this neighborhood,
this neighborhood, fill out these forms,
turn it into the district clerk, or whatever it was,
and so I knew that.
When the farm workers started organizing at UT,
it was just, "Hey, we need help from the students
"on the Safeway boycott, on the lettuce boycott,
"on the grape boycott."
So we at UT would raise money.
So we would try to get invited
by progressive people, professors.
James Wall: Oh, really?
-: Yeah, up in the Hills. -: Yeah.
-: You know, Democrats.
James Wall: Did that feel icky to you? (laughs)
-: No, it was pretty interesting.
Lovely homes.
So here's what we did.
We would get invited to people's homes to do fundraisers
and the students, myself included,
we were the organizers but
the person that became my husband
who was still a professor
he could talk west coast stuff
'cause he's a Californian teaching in Oregon.
So at some point we got the bright idea
okay we'll go do the fundraisers
but we'll introduce the farm worker struggle
and then let him talk.
James Wall: I see.
-: 'Cause he could do Oregon stuff, right?
So that's what we did in Austin.
The other part of organizing was to go to Safeway
and just be out there every Saturday
and do the handing out the leaflets,
the pledge not to eat lettuce,
not to eat grapes, to support farm workers.
That was the second way.
We did classes anywhere we could go.
We went to high schools.
Wherever people would invite us.
Austin was pretty accommodating.
Like there were a lot
of groups that wanted us
to come speak to them. -: Right.
-: So we did a lot of that stuff.
When I went to San Antonio, I had already done that
and Bill Chandler had been the person
that taught us how to work on a campus.
And now I was living with him
and he was a union organizer.
He had come from hospital unions.
James Wall: Right.
-: And then he got involved with the Farm Workers Union.
He had come to the valley to organize with Tony Orendain
and then he decided he was just gonna do the boycott stuff.
Not the farm worker stuff.
Not the organizing of members of the farm workers
but the boycott stuff.
So when he recruited me to come to San Antonio,
I already had done the other kind of UT kind of stuff.
Little did I know.
He woke up like 5:30 in the morning
and he started working.
So we would get up.
We would go to our office at the theater on Houston Street
and I can't remember the name of it
but the farm workers were across the hall from us,
and they were also...
I mean the American Services Committee people
and they were Quakers.
They were helping us.
John Dyer was the name of one of the All American Friends
and I think he was a young...
I'm not sure if he was a former priest but
he was with the American Friends Service Committee.
So what we would do is get up at 5:30, six, get ready,
go to the office, start making calls.
Can we meet at your event?
Can this union help us with this?
We had a newsletter that we would put together
and the AFL-CIO office
would let us come to their office and print it.
Another office would give us postage.
So we were always organizing for free stuff
and our salary was $5 a week.
James Wall: Wow.
-: So we lived in the farm worker house.
Somebody provided food.
I don't know where Irene got food.
Honestly, I just don't know.
Some of the restaurants like Mario's would feed us
if we were organizing.
The unions would contribute paper,
printing for the newsletter or whatever.
We were just constantly organizing.
Bill decided that my job was gonna be going
into the high schools who by now in San Antonio
were getting pretty interested in movement stuff.
And I remember the first time I went,
I took my little notes.
'Cause you know when you do school work, you have notes,
and you give your presentation from that.
And I remember I got off and he was in the back
of the classroom and we're all done
and people had signed the pledges,
and everything, and we were packing up the car
and he said, "You're never to use notes again.
"Never."
James Wall: Why is that?
-: Because this is your struggle.
You should know your struggle.
James Wall: Oh.
-: You should know your stuff.
James Wall: He wanted it to seem organic and ingrained.
-: Yes, because do you think (indistinct) uses notes?
Like no (chuckles).
So he was really hardcore. -: But that's kinda hard.
Yeah. -: But he was a great teacher
because he was absolutely AFL-CIO.
James Wall: Yeah.
-: Oftentimes we would go to other unions
like the Atomic Oil and Petroleum Workers.
It's oil, atomic oil, and chemical workers.
The labor unions consisted
of everything from laborers union to the auto workers
who were very sophisticated in their work.
So we went to every meeting we could go
to to push forward our farm worker agenda,
and to encourage people to sign the pledges,
and to donate money to the cause,
and churches, they're a big, big source of people.
So everywhere we could go, we would go.
There was a point in which we went
to the Democratic Convention
and I think that year it was in Houston
and we wanted on the platform that they should sign
on the Democratic platform to support the farm workers.
This was wild and the way we got in is we got a press pass
that we were with...
James Wall: Was this '72?
-: In Campesina.
James Wall: Wow. -: Yeah.
That we were with La Campesina
and Alma Canalis was actually a writer for Campesina
and she got us all a press pass.
So we were all there as press.
But actually we were organizing around the issue
of get us on the platform.
The Democratic Party in Texas is gonna support
the Farm Workers Union.
James Wall: How did that play out in practice?
-: Just publicity.
More people we're on the same side kind of thing
and I remember what happened was that they took a voice vote
and someone announced that's a majority.
And then people started like,
"No, it's not a majority," blah, blah, blah,
and so we had to organize
around the people that were our folks
but also around the less progressive people that were there.
I remember talking to 'em and saying, "This isn't fair.
"You know, you may not agree with our cause
"but this was not a fair counting of the vote,"
and some people that were not our supporters actually said,
"You're right, this isn't fair,"
and supported us in getting that on the platform,
which to me was enlightening
because liberals were always gonna be swaying
with us when it was accommodating,
but I really admired the right wing part of the party
who actually supported us on that one issue on that one day.
So that's the kind organizing we did.
We went everywhere.
There was a time when the Teamsters
were trying in Texas to have a PR thing about how
the farm workers were being misrepresented
by (indistinct) and the Farm Workers Union, and the AFL-CIO,
and the Teamsters were powerful, blah, blah, blah.
So Bill and myself and other people
we were encouraging debates with the Teamsters
and Bill was a really, really good organizer.
And he just had...
The AFL-CIO supported him a whole lot.
We also encouraged churches to support us
and I remember one time we came to Corpus Christi
and the Bishop was a big supporter.
James Wall: I see.
-: Bishop Flores was a big supporter.
I don't know.
I don't remember other churches being real supportive
but I think it's because Catholic churches
had more Mexican priests
and the nuns were amazing.
Everywhere we went, the nuns were everywhere.
There was a time when we went to Houston
to do some work with the unions in Houston
and I remember nuns just being everywhere
and they were still in their habits.
So they were amazing.
They were just really, really helpful.
So that impressed me a lot.
We had people that helped us in so many funny ways.
Barbara Jordan.
We all know who Barbara Jordan is.
Yes, she's amazing.
She was amazing.
I remember there was a time we just went
by and she gave us envelopes with her letterhead
on 'em because we needed envelopes to send stuff in
and all we did was like mark off her stuff.